PRESEISTTED TO THE LIBRARY
Off
PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
BY
jVIPs. Aie:!i;andei:' Proudfit.
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
HISTORY
CHEISTIAI^ CHUKCH.
PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D.,
AFTHOE OP THE HI8T0ET OF THE APOSTOLIC OHUECn.
FKOM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE REIGN OF CONSTANTIIfE,
A. D. 1—311.
LIBRARY OF PRINCETON
nui
r\no
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
NEW YOEK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET.
EDINBURGH:
T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET.
MDCCCLIX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868,
By CHAELES SCRIBNEK,
In the Clerk's OflSce of the District Court of the United States for the Southern
District of New York.
B. OBAIOBEAD,
Printer, Siereotyper, ami Klectiocypw
Carton lUiiIliing,
81, S3, and iS Centre Utrcct.
PREFACE
Encouraged by the favorable reception of my History of the Apostolic
Church, I now offer to the pubUc a History of the Primitive Church from the
birth of Christ to the reign of Constantine, as an independent and complete
■work in itself, and at the same time as the first volume of a general history
of Christianity, which I promised several years ago, and which I hope, with
the help of Grod, to bring down to the present age.
The church of the first three centuries, or the ante-Nicene age, possesses a
pecuHar interest for Christians of all denominations, and has often been
separately treated, by Eusebius, Mosheim, MUman, Kaye, Baur, Hagenbach,
and other distinguished historians. It is the daughter of Apostolic Chris-
tianity, which itself constitutes the first and by far the most important chapter
in its history, and the common mother of CathoHcism and Protestantism, though <^
materially difiering from both. It presents a state of primitive simphcity
and purity unsullied by contact with the secular power, but with this also,
the fiindamental forms of heresy and corruption, which reappear from time
to time under new names and aspects, but must serve, in the overruling
providence of God, to promote the cause of truth and righteousness. It is the
heroic age of the church, and unfolds before us the sublime spectacle of our
holy rehgion in intellectual and moral conflict with the combined supersti-
tion, policy, and wisdom of ancient Judaism and Paganism ; yet growing in
persecution, conquering in death, and amidst the severest trials giving birth
to principles and institutions which, in more matured form, still control
the greater part of Christendom.
Without the least disposition to detract from the merits of my numerous
predecessors, to several of whom I feel deeply indebted, I have reason to
hope, that this new attempt at a historical reproduction of ancient Christianity
wUl meet a want in our theological literature and commend itself, both by its
VI PREFACE.
spirit and method, and by presenting with the author's own labors the results
of the latest German and English research, to the respectful attention of the
American student. Having no sectarian ends to serve, I have confined
^ myself to the duty of a witness — to tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth; always remembering, however, that history has a soul
as well as a body, and that the ruling ideas and general principles must be
represented no less than the outward facts and dates. A church history
without the life of Christ glovring through its pages could give us at best only
the picture of a temple stately and imposing from without, but vacant and
dreary within, a mummy in praying posture perhaps and covered with
trophies, but withered and unclean : such a history is not worth the trouble of
writing or reading. Let the dead bury their dead ; we prefer to live among
the Uving, and to record the immortal thoughts and deeds of Christ in and
through his people, rather than dwell upon the outer hulls, the trifling acci-
dents and temporary scaffolding of liistory, or give too much prominence
to Satan and his infernal tribe, whose works Christ came to destroy.
The account of the apostohc period, which forms the divine-human basis
of the whole structure of history, or the ever living fountain of the unbroken
stream of the church, is here necessarily short and not intended to supersede
my larger work, although it presents more than a mere summary of it, and
"^ views the subject in part under new aspects. For the history of the second
period, which constitutes the body of this volume, large use has been made of
the new sources of information recently brought to hght, such as the Syriac and
Armenian Ignatius, and especially the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus. The
bold and searching criticism of modern German historians as apphed to the
apostolic and post-apostolic Hterature, though often arbitrary and untenable
in its results, has nevertheless done good service by removing old prejudices,
placing many things in a new Hght, and conducing to a comprehensive and
organic view of the living process and gradual growth of ancient Christianity
in its distinctive character, both in its unity with, and difference from, the
preceding age of the apostles and the succeeding systems of CathoUcism and
Protestantism.
In the notes it has been thought preferable to quote sparingly, and only from
primary sources, without distracting the attention o? the reader by all sorts of
opinions and conjectures of later historians. But at the head of the leading
sections he will find a select bibhographical apparatus, in chronological order,
directing him to the best original and secondary authorities for more minute
information. This apparatus includes many English and American works
which have escaped the attention of German scholars, otherwise so famihar
with the remotest recesses of ancient literature. Owing to the want of aid
in this direction and my distance from large University libraries, I had to col-
(.
PREFACE. vil
lect them with considerable trouble, and must plead the indulgence of the
reader if the hst be still defective. It is to be regretted that English scholars
are not more careful in referring to authorities, and mostly neglect to men-
tion the place and date of pubhcation, as well as the edition made use of, so
that it is often impossible to verify their quotations. Bibhography, " the
mariner's compass in learning," has been rather neglected in England.
Lowndes' Manual, however, as revised and enlarged by Henry G. Bohn,
two parts of which have quite recently come to hand, promises when com-
pleted and brought down to the present time to remedy this defect, and to be
a valuable help to bibUographers.
In conclusion I must express, in this pubUc way, my sense of obligation to
the Rev. Edward D. Yeomans, for his assistance in the preparation of this
work. After I had vrritten a large portion of the present volume and
succeeding periods in EngUsh, and submitted several chapters to him for
revision, he expressed the wish that I might rewrite the whole in my native
German, which I did. The suggestion, I am now convinced, has had a
happy effect upon the plan, the contents, and the present form of the work.
He has executed the translation from my manuscripts with a rare degree of
ability and the most conscientious fideUty, and thus given it a far more genuine
English dress than I could have done myself. In the final revision and
the numerous additions to his translation I have taken care not to deface the
unity of style, although there may be still occasional Germanisms or other
defects, for which I beg alone to be held responsible. I sincerely hope that
my esteemed friend may be rewarded for his arduous labor by the same
unquahfied approval as that bestowed upon his translation of my History
of the Apostohc Church, in regard to which a competent critic and dis-
tinguished writer remarked, that it has "all the ease and freedom, the organic
fitness of the word to the thought, in short, the entire at-homeness of the
substance in the form, as if it were the original language of the composition ;
insomuch that one would scarcely suspect it of being a translation, unless he
were told so."
And now I commit this work to the great Head of the church with the
prayer that, under his blessing, it may aid in promoting a correct knowledge
of his heavenly kingdom on earth, and in setting forth its history as a book of
life, a storehouse of wisdom and piety, and the surest test of his own promise
to his people •, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
P. a
Theological Seminary, Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.
Nov. 8, 1858.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
§ 1 Nature of Church History, 1
§ 2 Branches of Church History, 4
§ 3 Sources of Church History, 6
§ 4 Duty of the Historian, 1
§ 5 Division of Church History, 10
§ 6 Uses of Church History, 15
§ t Literature of Church History, 15
FIRST PERIOD.
THE CHURCH UNDER THE APOSTLES, A.D. 1-100.
§ 8 General Character of the ApostoUc Period, 20
CHAPTER I.
PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY.
§ 9 Central Position of Christ in the History of the World, ... 32
§ 10 Judaism, . . . _ 34
§ 11 The Law and Prophecy, 38
§ 12 Heathenism, 41
§ 13 Grecian Literature and the Roman Empire, 45
§ 14 Judaism and Heathenism in contact, 49
CHAPTER n.
FOUNDING AND GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.
§ 15 Jesus Christ, S3
§ 16 The Miracle of P«ntecost, and the Birth-day of the Church, • - 59
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
§ 17 St. Peter, and the Church among the Jews,
§ 18 Preparation for the Mission to the Gentiles,
§ 19 St. Paul, and the Church among the Gentiles,
§ 20 Collision and Reconciliation of Jewish and Gentile Christianity,
§ 21 St. John, and the Last Stadium of the Apostolic Period,
FAOB
61
66
67
74
78
CHAPTER III.
APOSTOLIC THEOLOGY AXD LITERATURE.
§22 Unity of the Apostolic Doctrine,
§ 23 Different Types of the Apostolic Doctrine, .
§ 24 Heretical Perversions of the Apostolic Doctrine,
§ 25 Rise of the ApostoUc Literature,
§ 26 Character of the New Testament,
§ 27 The Gospels,
§ 28 The Acts of the Apostles,
§ 29 The Catholic Epistles,
§30 The Epistles of Paul, .
§31 The Revelation of John,
81
84
87
90
92
94
98
99
101
107
CHAPTER IV.
CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORSHIP.
32 Christianity and Individual Life,
33 Christianity and Society,
34 The Spiritual Gifts, .
35 Christian "Worship,
36 The Several Parts of "Worship,
37 Baptism, ....
38 The Lord's Supper,
39 Sacred Places and Times, .
109
111
114
118
119
122
125
127
CHAPTER V.
ORGANIZATION OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.
§ 40 The Ministry of the Gospel,
§ 41 Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, .
§ 42 Presbyters, Deacons, Deaconesses,
§ 43 The Council at Jerusalem, .
§ 44 Church Discipline,
§ 45 The Church, the Body of Christ,
130
132
133
136
136
138
TABLE OF CONTENTS. XI
SECOND PEEIOD.
FROM THE DEATH OF THE APOSTLES TO CONSTANTINE, A.D. 100-3 IL
PAG3
§ 46 Introductory View, 144
CHAPTER I.
SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITT.
§ 47 Hindrances and Helps, . .148
§ 48 Christianity in Asia and Africa, 153
§ 49 Oiiristianity in Europe, 164
CHAPTER II.
PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM.
§ 50 Jewish Persecution, 156
§ 51 Heathen Persecutions. Its causes and effects, 158
§ 53 Condition of the Church from Nero to Nerva, 162
§ 53 From Trajan to Antoninus Pius, 163
§ 54 Persecutions under Marcus AureUus, WG
§ 55 From Septimius Severus to Philip the Arabian, 168
§ 56 Persecutions under Decius and Valerian, 171
§ 57 The Dioclesian Persecution, and the Edict of Toleration, . . , 174
§ 58 Christian Martyrdom, 177
§59 Rise of the Worship of Martyrs and Relics, 181
CHAPTER III.
LITERARY CONTEST OF CHRISTIANITY WITH JTIDAISM AND HEATHENISM.
§ 60 Opponents of Christianity. Tacitus, Celsus, Lucian, .... 185
§ 61 Neo-Platonism. Porphyry and Hierocles, 190
§ 62 Summary of the Objections to Christianity, 195
§ 63 The Apologetic Literature of Christianity, 196
§ 64 The Argument against Judaism, 198
§ 65 The Defence against Heathenism, 200
§ 66 The Positive Apology, 205
CHAPTER IV.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH DOCTRINE IN CONFLICT WITH HERESY.
§ 67 Judaism and Heathenism as Heresy within the Church, . . . 210
§ 68 Ebionism, 212
§ 69 The Pseudo-Clementine Ebionism, 315
§ 70 Gnosticism. Its Name, Origin, and Outward History, . • . . 321
§ 71 The System of Gnosticism, 225
xii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAoa
§ 72 The Several Schools of Gnosticism, 233
§ 73 Manichaeism, 246
§ 74 The CathoUc Theology, 251
§ 75 The Holy Scripturea and the Canon, 254
§ 76 Tradition and the Apostles' Creed, 258
§ 77 God and the Creation, 263
§ 78 The Logos and the Incarnation, 266
§ 79 Christology, continued 274
§ 80 Tlie Holy Ghost, 277
§ 81 The Holy Trinity, 281
§ 82 Anti-Trinitarians. First Class, 287
§ 83 Anti-Trinitarians. Second Class, 290
§ 84 Redemption, 294
§ 85 Chiliaam, 299
CHAPTER V.
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IN CONTRAST WITH PAGAN CORRUPTION.
§ 86 Moral Corruption in the Roman Empire, 302
§ 87 The Christian Morality m General, 306
§ 88 Opposition to Pagan Amusements and Callings, 310
§ 89 The Church and Slavery, "* 315
§ 90 Prayer and Fasting, 321
§ 91 Marriage and Family Life, 325
§ 92 Brotherly Love and Love for Enemies, 336
§ 93 Treatment of the Dead. The Church in the Catacombs, . . . 341
§ 94 Asceticism, 346
§ 95 Voluntary Poverty and CeUbacy, 351
§ 96 Celibacy of the Clergy, 358
§ 97 Montanism, 361
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHRISTUN -WORSHIP.
§ 98 Places of Common Worship, 370
§ 99 Weekly and Yearly Festivals, 372
§ 100 Christian Symbols, 377
§ 101 Public Worship, 881
§ 102 The Eucharist, 386
§ 103 Baptism and Catechetical Instruction. Confirmation. . . . 895
§ 104 Infant Baptism and Heretical Baptism, 401
CHAPTER Vn.
ORGANIZATION AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH.
§ 105 Clergy and Laity, 407
§ 106 New Church Officers, 412
TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xlll
PAGB
§ 107 Origin of the Episcopate, 413
§108 Development of the Episcopate, 421
§ 109 Beginaings of the Metropolitan and Patriarchal Systems, . . . 425
§ 110 Germs of the Papacy, 426
§ 111 The Catholic Unity, 432
§ 112 Councils, 438
§ 113 Collections of Ecclesiastical Laws, 440
§ 114 Church DiscipUne, 443
§ 116 Church Schisms, ... 447
CHAPTER Vm.
THE CHURCH FATHERS AND THEIE WRITINGS.
§ 116 The Patristic Literature in general, . 452
§ 117 The Apostolic Fathers, 456
§ 118 Clement of Rome, .458
§ 119 Ignatius of Antioch, 463
§ 120 Critical Remarks on the Ignatian Controversy, 469
§121 Polycarp of Smyrna, 471
§ 122 The other Apostohc Fathers, Barnabas, Hermas, Papias. The Epis-
tle to Diognetus, ' . . . 475
§ 123 Justin the Philosopher and Martyr, 481
§ 124 The other Greek Apologists of the Second Century, .... 485
§ 125 Irenaeus, 487
§ 126 Hippolytus, 490
§ 127 The Alexandrian School, 495
§ 128 Clement of Alexandria, 498
§ 129 Origen, 501
§ 130 The other Greek Theologians of the Third Century, .... 509
§131 TertuUian and the African School, 511
§ 132 Cyprian, 519
§ 133 The other Latin Divines of the Third Century, 525
GENERAL INTPiODUCTION.
LITERATUKE.
C. Sagittarius: Introductio in historiam ecclesiasticam. Jen. 1694. F.
Walch: Grundsiitze der zur K. Gesch. nothigen Vorbereitungslehren u..
Biicherkenntnisse. 3d ed. Giess. 1793. Flugge: Emleitung in das
Studium u. die Liter, der K. G. Gott. 1801. Mohler (R. C.) : Einlei-
tung in die K. G. 1839 (Verm. Schriften, ed. Bollinger II. 261 sqq.).
Kliefoth : Einleitung in die Dogmengeschichte. Parchim & Ludwigs-
lust, 1839. Schaff : What is Church History ? A Vindication of the
Idea of Historical Development. Philad. 1846. H. B. Smith : Nature
and Worth of the Science of Church History. Andover, 1851. E-
P. Humphrey: Inaugural Address, delivered at the Danville Tlieol.
Seminary. Cincinnati, 1854. E. Turnbull : Christ in History ; or, the
Central Povrer among Men. Post. 1854. Shedd : Lectures on the Phi-
losophy of History. And. 1856. R. D. Hitchcock : The True Idea and
Uses of Ch. History. N. York, 1856, Bunsen : Gott in der Geschichte
oder der Fortschritt des Glaubens an eine sittliche Weltordnung. Bd. I.
Leipz. 1857 (Erstes Buch. Allg. Einleit. p. 1-134). A. P. Stanley:
Three Introductory Lectures on the Study of Eccles. History. Lond.
1857.
Compare also the introductory chapters of the general works on church his-
tory; especially those of Fleury, Alzog, and Dollinger, on the Roman
Catholic side, and, on the Protestant, those of Mosheim, Schroeckh;
Gieseler, Hase, NiEDNEif, KuRTZ (Haudbuch. 3d ed. 1853. I. 1-45),
and ScHAFF (History of the Apostohc Church ; with a General Introduc-
tion to Ch. H. IST. York, 1853. p. 1-134). Neander goes in medias res
without any formal introduction.
§ 1. Nature of Church History.
The liistory of tlie cliurcli is tlie unfolding in time of the
eternal purpose of redeeming love. It is tlie progressive deve-
lopment of the kingdom of heaven upon earth, for the glory of
1
2 § 1. NATURE OF CHURCH HISTORY. [gener.
God and tlie salvation of the world. It begins witli the creation
of Adam, who was himself a type of Christ, the second Adam ,
and with that j^romise of the serpent-bruiser, which relieved the
loss of the paradise of innocence by the hope of future redemp-
tion from the curse of sin. It comes down through the prepa-
ratory revelations under the patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets,
to the immediate forerunner of the Saviour, who pointed his
followers to the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
\ world. But this^ part of its course was only introduction. Its
proper starting-jDoint is the incarnation of the Eternal "Word,
who dwelt among us and revealed his glory, the glory as of the
only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth ; and next
to this, the miracle of the first pentecost, when the church took
her place as a Christian institution, filled with the spirit of the
glorified Eedeemer and entrusted with the conversion of all
nations. Jesus Christ, the God-man and Saviour of the world,
is the author of the new creation, the soul and the head of the
church, which is his body and his bride. In his person and
work lies all the fulness of the Godhead and of renewed huma-
nity, the whole plan of redemption, and the key of all history
from the creation of man in the image of God to the resurrection
of the body unto everlasting life.
In the subjective sense of the word, considered as theological
science and art, church history is the faithful and life-like
description of the origin and progress of this heavenly kingdom.
It aims to reproduce in thought and embody in language its
outward and inward development down to the present time. It
is a continuous commentary on the Lord's twin parables of the
mustard-seed and of the leaven. It shows at once how Chris-
tianity spreads over the world, and how it penetrates, transforms,
and sanctifies the individual and all the departments and institu-
tions of social life. It thus embraces not only the external for-
tunes of Christendom, but more especially her inward experi-
ence, her religious life, her mental and moral activity, her con-
flicts with the ungodly world, her sorrows and sufierings, her
joys and her triumphs over sin and error.
INTROD.] § 1. . NATURE OF CHURCH HISTORY. 3
From Jesus Clirist, since his manifestation in the flesli, an
unbroken stream of divine light and life has flowed through the
waste of our fallen race ; and all that is truly great and good
and holy in the annals of church history, is due, ultimately, to
the impulse of his spirit. But he works upon the world through
sinful and fallible men, who, while as self-conscious and free
agents they are accountable for all their actions, must still, will-
ing or unwilling, serve the great purpose of God. As Christ,
also, in the days of his flesh, was hated, mocked, and crucified,
his church likewise is assailed and persecuted by the powers of
darkness. The history of Christianity includes therefore a his-
tory of antichrist. With an unbroken succession of works of
saving power and manifestations of divine truth and holiness, it
uncovers also a fearful mass of corruption and error. The
church militant must, from its very nature, be at perpetual war-
fare with the world, the flesh, and the devil, both without acd
even within. For as Judas sat among the apostles, so " the man
of sin" sits in the temple of God ; and as even a Peter denied
the Lord, though he afterwards wept bitterly and regained his
- holy office, so do the disciples to this day deny him in word and
deed.
But then, church history also shows, that God is ever stronger
than Satan, and that his kingdom of light puts the kingdom of
. darkness to shame. The Lion of the tribe of Judah has bruised
the head of the serpent. "With the crucifixion of Christ his
resurrection also is repeated ever anew in the history of his
church on earth ; and there has never yet been a day nor an
hour without a^witness of his presence and power ordering all
things according to his holy will. For he has received all power
in heaven and in earth for the good of his people, and from his
heavenly throne he rules even his foes. The infallible word of
promise, confirmed by all experience, assures us, that all corrup-
tions, heresies, and schisms must, under the guidance of divine
wisdom and love, subserve the cause of truth, holiness, and
unity ; till, at the last judgment, Christ shall make his enemies
his footstool, and rule undisputed with the sceptre of righteous-
4 § 2. BRAXCIIES OF CHL'KCH HISTORY. [oEXKR.
ness and peace, and his cTiurch shall realize her idea and destiny
as " the fullness of him that filleth all in all."
Then will history itself, in its present form, as a struggling and
changeful development, give place to perfection, and the stream
of time come to rest in the ocean of eternity.
§ 2. BrancJies of Clnircli IlistorTj.
The kingdom of Christ, in its principle and aim, is as compre-
hensive as humanity. It is truly catholic, designed and adapted
for all nations and ages, for all the powers of the soul, and all
classes of society. It breathes into the mind, the heart, and the
will a higher, supernatural life, and consecrates the family,
the state, science, literature, art, and commerce to holy ends, till
finally God becomes all in all. Even the body, and the whole
■visible creation, which groans for redemption from its bondage
to vanity and for the glorious liberty of the children of God,
shall share in this universal transformation ; for we look for the
resurrection of the bod}^, and for the new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness.
Accordingly church history has various departments, corre-
sponding to the different branches of secular history and of
natural life. The principal divisions are :
1. The history of missions, or of the spread of Christianity
among unconverted nations, whether barbarous or civilized.
This work must continue, till the fullness of the Gentiles shall
come in, and Israel shall be saved. Besides foreign missions,
there is also an equally important work of domestic missions,
or the revival and reformation of lifeless or neglected portions
of the church itself.
2. The history of persecution by hostile powers ; as by Juda-
ism and Heathenism in the first three centuries, and by Moham-
medanism in the middle age. This apparent repression of the
church, however, proves a purifying process, brings out the
moral heroism of martyrdom, and thus works in the end for the
spread and establishment of Christianity. " The blood of mar-
tyrs is the seed of the church."
INTKOD.] § 2. BRANCHES OF CHURCH HISTORY. 5
Persecution, like missions, is both foreign and domestic. Be-
sides being assailed from without, the church suffers also from
intestine wars and persecutions. Witness the religious wars in
France and Holland, the Thirty Years' War in Germany, the
Puritan commotions in England; the crusade against the Albi-
genses under Innocent III., the persecution of the Waldenses, and
the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. These form the saddest
and darkest chapter in the history of the church. But they
show also the gradual progress of the truly Christian spirit of
religious toleration and freedom.
3. The history of church government and discipline. The
church is not only an invisible communion of saints, but at the
same time a visible body, needing organs, laws, and forms, to
regulate its activity. Into this department of history fall the
various forms of church government; the apostolic, the primi-
tive episcopal, the patriarchal, the papal, the consistorial, the
presbyterial, the congregational, &c. ; and the history of the law
and discipline of the church, and her relation to the state, under
all these forms.
4. The history of worship or divine service, by which the
church celebrates, revives, and strengthens her fellowship with
her divine head. This falls into such subdivisions as the history
of preaching, of catechisms, of liturgy, of sacred rites, esjoecially
the sacraments, and of religious art, particularly sacred poetry
and music. ^
The history of church government and the history of worship
are often put together under the title of Ecclesiastical Antiqui-
ties or Archaeology, and commonly confined to the patristic age,
whence most of the catholic institutions and usages of the
church date their origin. But they may as well be extended to
the formative period of Protestantism.
5. The history of Christian life, or practical morality and
religion ; — the exhibition of the distinguishing virtues and vices
of different ages, of the development of Christian philanthropy,
the regeneration of domestic and social life, the gradual abate-
ment of slavery and other social evils, the reform of civil law
6 § 3. SOURCES OF CHURCH HISTORY. [geneb.
and of government, the spread of civil and religious liberty, and
the whole progress of civilization, under the influence of Chris-
tianity.
6. The history of theology, or of Christian science and*
literature. Each branch of theology, exegetical, doctrinal,
ethical, historical, and practical, has a history of its own. But
the history of doctrines is here the most important, and is there-
fore frequently treated by itself. Its object is to show how the
mind of the church has gradually apprehended and unfolded
the divine truth given in the holy scriptures, how the teachings
of scripture have come to form the dogmas of the church, and
have grown into systems stamped with pubhc authority. This
growth of the church in the -knowledge of the infallible word
of God is a constant struggle against error and unbelief; and the
history of heresies is an essential part of the history of doctrines.
These departments of church history have not a merely
external and mechanical but an organic relation to each other,
and form one living whole ; and this relation the historian must
show. Each j)eriod also is entitled to a pecuHar arrangement,
according to its character. The number, order, and extent of
the different divisions must be determined by their actual import
ance at a given time.
§ 8. Sources of Church History.
The sources of church history, the data on which we rely for
our knowledge, are partly divine, partly human. For the his-
tory of the kingdom of God from the fall to the incarnation and
the apostolic age, we have the inspired writings of the Old and
New Testaments. But after the death of the apostles we have
only human authorities, which of course cannot claim to be infal-
lible. These human sources are partly written, partly unwritten.
I. The written sources include :
(a) Ofl&cial documents of ecclesiastical and civil authorities ; —
acts of councils, confessions of faith, liturgies, church laws, and
the official letters of popes, patriarchs, bishops, and synods.
" (b) Private writings of personal actors in the history; — the
INTUOD.] § 4. DUTY OF THE HISTORIAN. 7
works of the cliurcli fathers for the first six centuries, of the
scholastic and mystic divines for the middle age, and of the
reformers and their opponents for the sixteenth century. These
documents are the richest mines for the historian. They give his-
tory in its birth and actual movement. But they must be care-
fully sifted and weighed ; especially the controversial writings,
where fact is generally more or less adulterated with party spirit,
heretical and orthodox,
(c) Accounts of historians, whether friends or enemies, who
were eye-witnesses of what they relate. The value of these
depends, of course, on the capacity ajid credibility of the authors,
to be determined by careful criticism. Subsequent historians
can be counted among the direct and immediate sources, only so
far as they have drawn from reliable and contemporary docu-
ments, which have either been wholly or partially lost, like
many of Eusebius' authorities for the period before Constantine,
or are inaccessible to historians generally, as are the papal regesta f^
and other documents of the Vatican library.
(d) Inscriptions, especially those on tombs and catacombs,
revealing the faith and hope of Christians in times of persecu-
tion.
II. The unwritten sources are far less numerous ; church edi-
fices, works of sculpture and painting, and other monuments,
very important for the history of worship and ecclesiastical art,
and significant of the religious spirit of their age. The Gothic
cathedrals, for example, are a most instructive embodiment of
mediseval Catholicism.
§ 4, Dull/ of the Historian.
The first duty of the historian, which comprehends all others,
is fidelity, the reproduction of the history itself, making it live
again in his representation. His highest and only aim should be
to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
To be thus faithful he needs a threefold qualification, scientific,
artistic, and religious,
1, He must master the sources. For this purpose he must bo
8 § -1. DUTY OF THE niSTOIlIAISr, [gener.
acquainted with sucli auxiliary sciences as ecclesiastical philology
(especially the Greek and Latin languages, in which most of the
earlier documents arc written), secular history, geography, and
chronology. Then in making use of the sources, he must
thoroughly and impartially examine their genuineness and inte-
grity, and the credibility and capacity of the witnesses. Thus
only can he duly separate fact from fiction, truth from error.
2. Then comes the comjDOsition. This is an art, subject to aes-
thetic laws. It must not simply recount events, but reproduce
the development of the church in living process. History is not
a heap of dry bones, but an. organism filled and ruled by a rea-
sonable soul.
One of the greatest difficulties here lies in arranging the material.
The best method in general is, no doubt, to combine judiciously
the chronological and to23ical principles of division ; presenting
at once the succession of events and the several parallel (and
indeed interwoven) departments of the history in due proportion.
Accordingly, we first divide the whole history into periods, not
arbitrary, but furnished by the actual course of events ; and then
present each of these periods in as many parallel sections or chap-
ters as the material itself su2:o"csts. As to the number of the
periods and chapters, and as to the arrangement of the chapters,
there are indeed conflicting opinions, and in the application of
our principle, as indeed in our whole representation, we can only
make approaches to perfection. But the principle itself is never,
theless the only true one.
The ancient classical historians, and most of the English and
French, generally present their subject in one homogeneous com-
position of successive books or chapters, without rubrical divi-
sion. This method might seem to bring out better the living
unity and variety of the history at every point. Yet it really
does not. Language, unlike the pencil and the chisel, can exhi-
bit only the succession in time, not the local concomitance. And
then this method, rigidl}' pursued, never gives a complete view
of any one subject, of doctrine, worship, or practical lif(\ It con-
stantly mixes the various topics, breaking ofi:' from one to bring
INTROD.] § 4. DUTY OF THE HISTORIAN. 9
up another, even by tlie most sudden transitions, till tlie alterna-
tion is exhausted. The German method of periodical and rubri-
cal arrangement has certainly great practical advantages for the
student in bringing to view the order of subjects, as well as the
order of time. But it should not be made a uniform and mono-
tonous mechanism, as is done in the Magdeburg Centuries and
many subsequent works. For while history has its order, both
of subject and of time, it is yet, like all life, full of variety.
The period of the reformation requires a very different arrange-
ment from the middle age. And in modern history the rubrical
division must be combined with and made subject to a division
by confessions and countries, as the Roman Catholic, Lutheran,
Reformed churches in Grermany, France, England, and America.
The best method, then, is that which reproduces both the
unity and the variety of history, presenting the different tojoics in
their separate completeness, without overlooking their organic
connexion. Only the scheme must not be arbitrarily made, and
then pedantically applied, as a Procrustean framework, to the
history ; but deduced from the history itself, and varied as the
facts require.
3. But both scientific research and artistic representation must
be guided by a sound moral and religious spirit.
The historian must first lay aside all prejudice and party zeal,
and proceed in the pure love of truth. Not that he must become
a tabula rasa. No man is able, or should attempt, to cast off all
the educational influences which have made him what he is.
But the historian of the church of Christ must in every thing be
as true as possible to the objective fact, sine ira et studio ; do
justice to every person and event ; and stand in the centre of
Christianity, whence he may see all points in the circumference, all
individual persons and events, all confessions, denominations, and
sects, in their true relations to each other and to the glorious whole.
Then he must be in thorough sympathy with his subject, and
enthusiastically devoted thereto. As no one can interpret a
poet without poetic feeling and taste, or a philosopher without
speculative talent ; so no one can rightly comprehend and exhibit
10 § 5. DIVISIOX OF CnURCII HISTORY. [gexek.
the liistorj of Christianity without a Christian spirit. An unbe-
liever could produce only a repulsive caricature, or at best a
lifeless statue. The higher the historian stands on Christian
ground, the larger is his horizon, and the more full and clear his
view of single regions below, and of their mutual bearings.
Even error can be fairly seen only from the position of truth.
"Yerum est index sui et falsi." Christianity is the absolute
truth, which, like the sun, both reveals itself and enlightens all
that is dark.
So far as the historian combines these three qualiiications, he
fulfils his office. In this life we can, of course, only approach
perfection in this or in any other branch of study. Absolute suc-
cess would require infallibility ; and this is denied to mortal
man. The full solution of the mysteries of history is reserved
for that heavenly state, when we shall see no longer through a
glass darkly, but face to face, and shaU survey the developments
of time from the heights of eternity. What St. Augustine so
aptly says of the mutual relation of the Old and New Testament,
" Novum Testamentum m Veie7-e lately Yetus in Novo 'paiet^'' may
be applied also to the relation of this world and the world to
come. The history of the church militant is, throughout, but a
type and a prophecy of the triumphant kingdom of God in
heaven — a prophecy which can be perfectly understood only in
the glory of its fulfilment.
§ 5. Division of Church History.
The purely chronological or annalistic method, though pur-
sued by the learned Baronius and his continuators, is now gene-
rally abandoned. It breaks the natural flow of events, separates
things which belong together, and degrades history to a mere
chronicle.
The centurial plan, which prevailed from Flacius to Mosheim,
is certainly an improvement. It allows a much better view of
the progress and connexion of things. But it still imposes
on the history a forced and mechanical arrangement; for the
salient points or epochs very seldom coincide with the limits of
INTROD.] § 5. DIVISION OF CHURCH HISTORY. 11
our centuries. The rise of Constantine, for example, together
with the union of church and state, dates from the year 311 ;
that of the absolute paj^acy, in Hildebrand, from 1019 ; the
reformation from 1517 ; the peace of "Westphalia took place in
1648 ; the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England in
1620 ; the American emancipation in 1776 ; the French revolu-
tion in 1789.
The true division must grow out of the actual course of the
history itself, and present the diiferent phases of its development
or stages of its life. These we call periods or ages. In regard
to their number and extent there is, indeed, no unanimity ; the
less, on account of the various denominational differences esta-
blishing different points of view, especially since the sixteenth
century. The reformation, for instance, has less importance for
the Eoman church than for the Protestant, and almost none for
the Greek ; and while the edict of Nantes forms a resting-place
in the history of French Protestantism, and the treaty of West-
phalia in that of German, neither of these events had anything
to do with English Protestantism, compared with the accession
of Elizabeth, the rise of Cromwell, the restoration of the Stuarts,
or the revolution of 1688. But, in spite of all confusion and
difficulty in regard to details, it is generally agreed to divide the
history of the church into three principal parts, ancient, mediee-
val, and modern ; though there is not a like agreement as to the
dividing epochs, or points of departure and points of termina-
tion.
1. The history of the ancient church, from the birth of Christ
to Gregory the Great (a.d. 1-590), is the age of the Graeco-
Latin primitive Christianity, or of the church fathers. Its field
is the countries around the Mediterranean ; western Asia, north-
ern Africa, and southern Europe — just the theatre of the old
Eoman empire and of classic heathendom. This age lays the
foundation, in doctrine, government, and worship, for all the
subsequent history. It is the common progenitor of all the
various confessions.
Among these first six centuries, the first century, or the
12 § 5. DIVISION OF CHURCH HISTORY. [geneh.
apostolic period, the regulative and authoritative groundwork
of the whole church, requires to be treated by itself.
Then, at the beginning of the fourth century, the accession of
Constantine, the first Christian emperor, marks a. most important
turn ; Christianity rising from a persecuted sect to the prevail-
ing religion of the Grasco-Roman empire. In the history of
doctrines, the first ecumenical council of Nice, falling in the
midst of Constantine's reign, a.d. 325, has the prominence of an
epoch.
Here, then, are three periods within the first or patristic age.
2. The middle age is variously reckoned — from Constantine,
806 or 311 ; from the fall of the West Roman empire, 476 ;
from Gregory the Great, 590 ; from Charlemagne, 800. But it
is very generally regarded as closing at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, and more precisely, at the outbreak of the
reformation in 1517. Gregory the Great seems to us to form
the most proper ecclesiastical point of division. "With him, the
author of the Anglo-Saxon mission, the last of the church
fathers, and the first of the proper popes, begins in earnest, and
■with decisive success, the conversion of the Germanic tribes, and,
at the same time, the development of absolute papacy and the
alienation of the eastern and western churches. This suggests
the distinctive character of this middle age, the transition of the
church from Asia and Aft-ica to middle and western Europe,
from the Gr^co-Roman nationality to that of the Romanic and
Germanic tribes, and from the culture of the ancient classic
world to the modern civilization of Germanic Christendom.
The great work of the church then was the conversion and edu-
cation of the heathen barbarians, who conquered and demolished
the Roman empire, indeed, but were themselves conquered and
transformed by its Christianity. This work w^as performed
mainly by the Latin church, under a firm hierarchical constitu-
tion, culminating in the bishop of Rome. The Greek church,
though she made some conquests among the Slavic tribes of
eastern Europe, particularly in the Russian empire, since grown
so important, was in turn sorely pressed and reduced by Moham-
IXTROD.] § 5. DIVISION OF CHURCH HISTORY. 18
medanism in Asia and Africa, the very seat of primitive Cliris-
tianity, and at last in Constantinople itself; and in doctrine,
worship, and organization, she stopped at the position of the (
ecumenical councils and the ^patriarchal constitution of the fifth
century.
In the middle age, where the development of the hierarchy
occupies the foreground, three poj^es stand out as representatives
of as many epochs. Grregory I., or the Grreat (590), marks the
rise of absolute papacy ; Gregory YII,, or Hildebrand (1049), its
summit ; and Boniface VIII. (1294), its decline. Here we thus
have again three periods in mediaeval church history.
3. Modern church history, from the reformation of the six-
teenth century to the present time, moves chiefly among the
Grermanic nations of middle and western Europe, and from the
seventeenth century finds a vast new theatre in North America. )
Western Christendom now splits into two hostile parts — one
holding on the old path, the other striking out a new one ; while
the eastern church withdraws still further from the stage of his-
tory, and presents a scene of almost undisturbed stagnation.
Modern church history is the age of Protestantism in conflict
with Eomanism, of religious liberty and independence in conflict
with the principle of authority and tutelage, of individual and
personal Christianity against an objective church system.
Here again two or three different periods appear, which may
be denoted briefly by the terms reformation, revolution, and
restoration.
The sixteenth century, next to the apostolic age the most
fruitful and interesting period of church history, is the century
of the Protestant renovation of the church, and the Roman coun-
ter-reform.
The seventeenth century is the period of scholastic orthodoxy,
polemic confessionalism, and comparative stagnation. The
reformatory motion ceases on the continent, but goes on in the
mighty Puritanic struggle in England, which extends even into
the primitive forests of the American colonies. Then comes the
Pietistic and Methodistic reaction against dead orthodoxy and (
14 § 5. DIVISION OF CnURCn history. [gexer.
stiff formalism. In the Roman cliurcli Jesuitism prevails, but
opposed by the half-evangelical Jansenism.
In the second half of the eighteenth century begins the vast
overturning of traditional ideas and institutions, leading to revo-
lution in state and infidelity in church, especially in France and
Germany.
The nineteenth century presents, in part, the further develop-
ment of these negative and destructive tendencies, but with it
also the revival of Christian faith and church life, and the begin-
nings of a new creation by the everlasting gospel. At the same
time North America, full of vigor and promise, English and
Protestant in its prevailing character, but presenting an asylum
for all the nations, churches, and sects of the old world, with
a complete separation of the temporal and the spiritual power,
comes upon the stage.
Thus we have, in all, nine periods of church history, as fol-
lows : —
First Period : The apostolic church, a.d. 1-100.
Second Period : The church persecuted as a sect ; to Con-
stantine, the first Christian emperor, a.d. 100-311.
TniRD Period : The church in union with the Greeco-Roman
empire and amidst the storms of the great migration ; to pope
Gregory I. a.d. 311-590.
Fourth Period : The church planted among the Germanic
nations ; to Hildebrand. a.d. 590-1049.
Fifth Period : The church under the papal hierarchy and
the scholastic theology ; to Boniface VIII. a.d. 1049-1294.
Sixth Period : The 'decay of mediaeval Catholicism, and the
preparatory movements of Protestantism. A.D. 1294-1517.
Seventh Period : The evangelical reformation and the Roman
Catholic reaction. A D. 1517-1600.
Eighth Period : The age of polemic orthodoxy and exclu-
sive confessionalism. A.D. 1600-1750.
Ninth Period : The spread of infidelity, and the revival of
Christianity in Europe and America. From 1750 to the present
time.
INTROD.] § 6. USES OF CHURCH HISTORY. 15
§ 6. Uses of Church Ilistorij.
Churcli history is the most extensive, and, inckiding the sacred
history of the Old and New Testaments, the most important
branch of theology.
It has, in the first place, a general interest for every cultivated
mind, as showing the moral and religious development of our
race, and the gradual execution of the divine plan of Tedemption.
It has special value for the theologian and minister of the gos-
pel, as the key to the present condition of Christendom and the
guide to successful labor in her cause. The present is the fruit
of the past and the germ of the future. No work can stand un-
less it grow out of the real wants of the. age and strike firm root
in the soil of history. No one who tramples on the rights of a
past generation, can claim the regard of its posterity.
Finally, the history of the church has practical value for every
Christian, as a storehouse of warning and encouragement, of
consolation and of counsel. It is the philosophy of facts, Chris-
tianity in living examples. If history in general be, as Cicero
describes it, "testis temporum, lux veritatis, et magistra vitte,"
or, as Diodorus calls it, "a handmaid of providence, a priestess
of truth, and a mother of wisdom," the history of the kingdom
of heaven is all these in the highest degree. Next to the holy
scriptures, which are themselves, in fact, a history and deposi-
tory of divine revelation, there is no stronger proof of the con-
tinual presence of Christ with his people, no more thorough
vindication of Christianity, no richer source of spiritual wisdom
and experience, no deeper incentive to virtue and piety, than
the history of the church.
§ 7. Literature of Church History.
Staudlin: Geschichte u. Literatur der K. G. Hann. 1827. F. C. Baur: Die
Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung. Ttib. 1852. P. Schaff :
H. Apost. Church, p. 51-134.
Like every other science and art, church historiography has a
history, a gradual progress towards its true perfection. This his-
tory exhibits not only a continual growth of material, but also a
16 § 7. LITERATUEE OF CllL'llCll lllSTOUY. [ckxer
gradual, tliough sometimes long interrupted, improvement of
method, from the mere collection of names and dates in a Chris-
tian chronicle, to critical research and discrimination, pragmatic
reference to causes and motives, scientific command of material,
philosophical generalization, and artistic reproduction of the
actual history itself In this progress also are marked the vari-
ous confessipnal and denominational phases of Christianity, giving
different points of view, and consequently different conceptions
and representations of the several periods and divisions of Chris-
tendom ; so that the development of the church itself is mirrored
in the development of church historiography.
We can here do no more than mention the leading works
which mark the successive epochs in the growth of our science : —
1. In the apostolic church. The first works on church his-
tory are the canonical gospels of Matthew, Makk, Luke, and
John, the inspired biographies of Jesus Christ, who is the thean-
thropic head and the inexhaustible fountain of the whole history
of the kingdom of God. These are followed by Luke's Acts of
the Apostles, which describes the planting of the church among
Jews and Gentiles from Jerusalem to Rome, by the labors of the
apostles, especially Peter and Paul.
2. In the Greek church appear the first post-apostolic works
on church history, as, indeed, all branches, of theological lite-
rature there take their rise.
Eusebius, bishop of Cicsarea, in Palestine, and contemporary
with Constantine the Great, composed a church history in ten
books (ixxXiitfiaCrfjcii itfTopiaj from the incarnation of the Logos to
the year 324), by which he has won the title of the Father of
church liistory, or the Christian Herodotus. Though by no
means very critical and discerning, and fir inferior in literary
talent and execution to the works of the great classical histo-
rians, this ante-Nicene church history is invaluable for its learn-
ing, moderation, and love of truth ; for its use of sources, since
totally or partially lost; and for its interesting position of per-
sonal observation between the last persecutions of the church and
her establishment in the Byzantine empire.
INTROD.] § 7. LITERATURE OF CHURCH HISTORY. 17
Tlie work of Eusebius was continued in similar spirit and on
the same plan by Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret in the
\ fifth century, and Theodorus and Evagrius in the sixth, each
taking up the thread of the narrative where his predecessor had
dropped it. Of the later Greek historians, from the seventh
century to the fifteenth, the Scriptores Byzantini, as they are
called, NiCEPHORUS Callisti (about a.d. 1333) deserves special
regard.
3. The Latin church, before the reformation, was, in church his-
tory, as in all other theological studies, at first wholly dependent
on the Greek, and long content with mere translations and
extracts from Eusebius and his continuators.
The most popular of these was the Historia tripartita^ com-
piled by Cassiodorus, who died about a.d. 562.
The middle age produced no general church history of conse-
quence, but a host of chronicles, and histories of particular
nations, monastic orders, eminent popes, bishops, missionaries,,
saints, &c. Though rarely worth much as compositions, these
are yet of great value as material, which, however, needs to be
carefully sifted.
4. The Roman Catholic church was roused by the shock of the
reformation, in the sixteenth century, to great activity in this^
and other departments of theology, and produced some works of
immense learning and antiquarian research, but generally cha-
racterized rather by zeal for the papacy, and against Protestant-
ism, than by the purely historical spirit. The greatest Eoman
Catholic church historians are either Italians, and ultramontane
in spirit, or Frenchmen, mostly on the side of the somewhat
more liberal but less consistent Gallicanism.
First stands the Cardinal C^sar Baronius (f 1607), with his
Annales ecclesiastici (Eom. 1588 sqq.) in twelve folio volumes, on
which he spent thirty years of unwearied study. They come
down only to the year 1198, but are continued, though with
much less ability, by Eaynaldus, Bzovius, Spondanus, and
others (complete edition of Lucca in thirty-eight volumes folio),
to near the middle of the seventeenth century ; quite recently
2
18 § 7. LITERATURE OF CHURCH HISTORY. [gener.
Theiner lias resumed tlie continuation. This colossal work
stands wholly on the ground of absolute ultramontane papacy,
and is designed as a positive refutation of the Magdeburg Cen-
turies, which, however, it does not condescend directly to notice.
But it was severely criticized, and in part refuted, not only by
such Protestants as Casaubonus, Spanheim, and Samuel Basnage,
but by Catholic scholars also, especially Pagi. Still with all its
defects it remains invaluable to the historian, for its use of the
many rare and hardly accessible sources in the Vatican library
and other archives.
Natalis Alexander (tl724) wrote his Historia ecclesiastica
Veteris et Kovi Testamenti (Paris, 1699 sqq., 8 vols, fol.) in the
spirit of Gallicanism, learnedly, but in dry scholastic style.
The abbot Claude Fleury (f 1723), in his Ilistoire ecdesi-
asiique (Par. 1691 sqq., 20 vols., down to A. D. 1414, continued
by Fabre), furnished a much more popular work, commended by
mildness of spirit and fluency of style, and as useful for edifica-
tion as for instruction.
Jacques Benigne Bossuet, the distinguished bishop of
Meaux (f 1704), an advocate of Eomanism on the one hand
against Protestantism, but of Gallicanism on the other against
Ultramontanism, wrote in brilhant, eloquent style, and in the
spirit of the Catholic church, a universal history : Discours sur
Vhistoire universelle dci^uis le commencement du m,onde jusqu^d
V empire de Charlemagne (Paris, 1681). This was continued in
the German language by the Protestant Cramer, with less ele-
gance but more thoroughness, and with special reference to the
doctrine history of the middle age.
Tillemont (f 1698), who sympathized at least partially with
Jansenism and Gallicanism, composed a history of the patristic
age with great skill and conscientiousness, almost entirely in the
words of the original authorities : Memoires pour servir d Vhistoire
ecclesiastique des six premieres siecles jusiifiis par les citations
des auieurs ortginaux (16 vols. Paris, 1693 sqq.) ; by far the
most learned and the most useful of all the French church
histories.
^
IKTROD.] § 7. LITEKATURE OF CHURCH HISTORY. 19
Caspar Sacharelli : Historia ecclesiasiica, Eom. 1772-95.
25 vols, to A.D. 1185.
The German poet, Leopold von Stolberg (f 1819), witli the
enthusiasm of an honest, noble, and devout, but credulous and
uncritical convert, began a very full OescMchte der Religion
Jesu Christi (Hamburg, 1806 sqq.), which he brought down in
fifteen volumes to the year 430. The continuations by Kertz
(vols. 16-32, to A.D. 1300), and Brischar (vols. 33 sqq.) are quite
inferior.
Eohrbacher's Hisioire universelh de Teglise (Par. 1842-48,
vols. 29) is the last great French work in this department. It
avails itself of German investigations, but it is more strictly
Eoman than its Galhcan predecessors of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
The best Eoman Catholic manuals of church history are those
of DoLLiNGER, EiTTER, and Alzog.
6. The Protestant church historians.
The reformation of the sixteenth century is the mother of
church history as a science and art in the proper sense of the
term. It seemed at first to break off from the past, to depreci-
ate church history, by going back directly to the Bible as the
only rule of faith and practice, and especially to look most
unfavorably on the Catholic middle age, as a progressive cor-
ruption of the apostolic doctrine and discipHne. But on the
other hand it exalted priinitive Christianity, and awakened a
new and enthusiastic interest in all the documents of the apos-
tolic church, with an energetic effort to reproduce its spirit and
institutions. It really repudiated only the later tradition in
favor of the older, taking its stand upon the primitive historical
basis of Christianity. Then again,* in the course of controversy
with Eome, Protestantism found it desirable and necessary to
wrest from its opponent not only the scriptural argument, but
also the historical, and to turn it as far as possible to the side of
the evangelical cause. For the Protestants could never deny
that the true church of Christ is built on a rock, and has the
promise of indestructible permanence. Finally, the reformation.
20 § 7. LITERATURE OF CnURGH HISTORY. [gexeb.
liberating the mind from the yoke of a despotic ecclesiastical
authority, gave an entirely new impulse, directly or indirectly,
to free investigation in every department, and produced that
liistorical criticism, which claims to clear fact from the accretions
of fiction, and to bring out the truth, the whole truth, and no-
thing but the truth, of history. Of course this criticism may
run to the extreme of rationalism and scepticism, which oppose
the authority of the apostles and of Christ himself; as it actually
did for a time, especially in Germany. But the abuse of free
investigation proves nothing against the right use of it ; and is to
be regarded only as a temporary aberration, from which all
sound minds will return to a due appreciation of history, as a
truly rational unfolding of the plan of redemption, and a stand-
ing witness for the all -ruling providence of God, and the divine
character of the Christian religion.
Protestant church historiography has thus far jBourished most
on German soil. The following are the principal works:
Matthias Flacius (f 1575), surnamed Illyricus, a zealous
Lutheran, and an unsparing enemy of Papists, Calvinists, and
Melancthonians, heads the list of Protestant historians with his
great Ecclesiastica historia Novi Testamenti^ commonly called Cen-
turim Magdeburgenses (Basle, 1559-74), covering thirteen cen-
turies of the Christian era in as many folio volumes. He began
the work in Magdeburg, in connexion with ten other scholars of
like spirit and zeal, and in the face of innumerable difficulties, for
the purpose of exposing the corruption and errors of the papacy,
and of proving the doctrines of the Lutheran reformation orthodox
by the " witnesses of the truth " in all ages. The tone is there-
fore controversial throughout, and quite as partial as the Annals
of Baronius on the papal side. The style is tasteless and
repulsive, but the amount of persevering labor, the immense,
though ill-digested and unwieldy mass of material, and the bold-
ness of the criticism, are imposing and astonishing. The " Cen-
turies " broke the path of free historical study, and are the first
church history deserving of the name. They introduced also a
new method. They divide the material by centuries, and each
INTROD.] § 7. LITERATURE OF CHURCH HISTORY. 21
century by a uniform Procrustean scheme of not less than six-
teen rubrics : de loco et propagatione ecclesiae ; de persecutione et
tranquillitate ecclesiae ; de doctrina ; de baeresibus ; de cere-
mo nils ; de politia ; de scbismatibus ; de conciliis ; de vitis episco-
porum ; de baereticis ; de martyribus ; de miraculis et prodigiis ;
de rebus Judaicis ; de aliis religionibus ; de mutationibus poli-
ticis. This plan destroys all symmetry, and occasions wearisome
diffuseness and repetition. Yet, in spite of its mechanical uni-
formity and stiifness, it is more scientific than the annalistic or
chronicle method, and, with material improvements and consider-
able curtailment of rubrics, it has been followed to this day.
The Swiss, J. H. Hottinger (f 1667), in his Historia ecclesias-
tica iV. Testamenti (Zurich, 1655-67, 9 vols, fob), furnished a
Reformed counterpart to the Magdeburg Centuries. It is less
original and vigorous, but more sober and moderate. It comes
down to the sixteenth century, to which alone five volumes are
devoted.
The Hollander, Fred. Spanheim's (f 1649) Summa historiae
ecclesiasticae (Lugd. Bat. 1689), coming down to the sixteenth cen-
tury, is based on a thorough and critical knowledge of the
sources, and serves at the same time as a refutation of Baronius.
A new path was broken by GtOttfried Arnold (f 1714), in
his Unpartheiische Kirchen- und Ketzergeschichle (Frankfurt, 1699
sqq., 4 vols, fol.) to a.d. 1688. He is the historian of the pietistic
and mystic school. He made subjective piety the test of the true
faith, and the persecuted sects the main channel of true Chris-
tianity ; while the reigning church from Constantine down, and
indeed not the Catholic church only, but the orthodox Lutheran
with it, he represented as a progressive apostasy, a Babylon full
of corruption and abomination. In this way he boldly and effec-
tually broke down the walls of ecclesiastical exclusiveness and
bigotry ; but at the same time, without intending or suspecting
It, he opened the way to a rationahstic and sceptical treatment of
history. "While, in his zeal for impartiality and personal piety,
he endeavored to do justice to all possible heretics and sectaries,
he did great injustice to the supporters of orthodoxy and eccle-
22 § 7. LITERATURE OF CHURCn HISTORY. [gexek.
siastical order. Arnold was also the first to use the German lan-
guage instead of the Latin in learned history ; but his style is
terribly insipid.
J. L. MosHEiM (f 1755), Chancellor of Gtittingen, a moderate'
and impartial Lutheran, is the father of church historiography as
an art^ unless we prefer to concede this merit to Bossuet. In
skilful construction, clear, though mechanical and monotonous
arrangement, critical sagacit}', pragmatic combination, freedom
from passion, almost bordering on cool indifferentism, and in
easy elegance of Latin style, he surpasses all his predecessors.
His well known Insiitutiones Mstoriae ecdesiasticae aniiquae ei re-
centioris (Helmstiidt, 1755) follows the centurial plan of Flacius,
but in simpler form, and, as translated by Maclaine, and Murdock,
remains to this day the principal test-book of church history
in England and America.
J. M. ScHRoCKH (flSOS), a pupil of Mosheim, but already
touched with the neological spirit which Semler (f 1791) in-
troduced into the historical theology of Germany, wrote with
unwearied industry the largest Protestant church history after
the Magdeburg Centuries. His Chnsiliche Kirchengeschichte (Leip-
zig, 1768-1810) comprises forty-five volumes (the last two by
Tzschirner), coming down to the end of the eighteenth century.
This work, written in diffuse but clear and easy style, with
reliable knowledge of sources, and in a mild, impartial spirit, is
still a rich storehouse of historical matter. It forsakes the
centurial plan and adopts the periodic.
The very learned Insiitutiones historiae ecdesiasticae V. et N.
Tesiamenti of the Dutch Eeformed divine H. Venema (tl787),
contain the history of the Jewish and Christian Church down to
the end of the sixteenth century (Lugd. Bat. 1777-83, in seven
parts).
H. P. C. Henke (f 1809) is the leading representative of the
rationalistic church historiography. In his spirited and clever
Allgemeine Oeschichte der christliclien Kirche, continued by Vater
(Braunschweig, 1788-1820, 9 vols.) the church appears not as
the temple of God on earth, but as a great infirmary and bedlam.
IXTROD.] § 7. LITERATURE OF CHURCH HISTORY. 23
A. Neander (f 1850), the "father of modern church history,"
a child in spirit, a man in intellect, a giant in learning, and a
saint in piety, led back the study of history from the dry heath
of rationalism to the fresh fountain of divine life in Christ and
his people, and made it a grand source of edification for readers
of every confession and denomination. His Allgemeine GescJiichte
der Cliristlichen Religion und Kirche (Hamburg, 1825-52, 11 parts,
to the council of Basil, 1430), and numerous monographs, are dis-
tinguished by thorough and conscientious use of the sources,
ingenious combination, tender love of truth and righteousness,
all-embracing liberality, hearty evangelical piety in living union
with scientific thought, and by masterly analysis of the doctri-
nal systems and the subjective Christian life of men of God in
past ages. The aesthetic . and artistic part, and the political
machinery of church history were less congenial to the humble,
guileless simphcity of the author, and are therefore not treated
by him to the satisfliction of the advanced student. His style
is monotonous, involved, and diffuse, but unpretending, natural,
and warmed by a genial glow of feeling. Torrey's excellent
translation (Rose translated only the first three centuries), pub-
lished in Boston, Edinburgh, and London, in multiplied editions,
has given Neander's immortal work even a larger circulation
in England and America than it has in Germany itself.
From J. C. L. Gieseler (f 185-4), a profoundly learned, acute,
calm, impartial, conscientious, but cold and dry historian, we
have a Lehrhuch der Kirchengeschichle (Bonn, 1824-1856), in
several volumes, completed posthumously from his manuscripts ;
likewise translated into English, first by Cunningham, in Phila-
delphia, 1846, then by Davidson and Hull, in England, and now
carefully revised and edited by H. B. Smith^ in New York
(1857 sqq.). He takes Tillemont's method of giving the history
in the very words of the sources ; only he does not form the
1 The author of the best tabular view of church history, which may be profitalily
used in connexion witli Gieseler: History of the Christian CMirch in Tabular Form;
in 15 Tables. N. York, 1858.
24 § 7. LITERATURE OF CHURCH HISTORY. [gkner.
text from them, but throws them into notes. The chief excel-
lence of this invaluable and indispensable work is its very care-
fully selected and critically elucidated extracts from the original
authorities. The skeleton-like text presents, indeed, the leading
facts clearly and concisely, but does not reach the inward life
and spiritual marrow of the church of Christ.
Neander and Gieseler matured their works in respectful and
friendly rivalry, during the same period of thirty years of slow,
but sohd and steady growth, without being permitted to finish
them. The former is perfectly subjective, and reproduces the
original sources in a continuous warm and sympathetic composi-
tion, which reflects at the same time the author's own mind and
heart ; the latter is purely objective, and speaks with the indif-
ference of an outside spectator, through the ipsissima verba of the
same sources, arranged as notes, and strung together simply by
a slender thread of narrative. The one gives the history ready-
made, and full of life and instruction ; the other furnishes the mate-
rial and leaves the reader to animate and improve it for himself.
"With the one, the text is everything ; with the other, the notes.
But both admirably complete each other, and exhibit together
the ripest fruit of German scholarship in general church history
in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Besides these larger works, Protestant Germany has furnished
since 1830, a gTcat number of smaller manuals and compends of
church history, of which the most valuable and popular are those
of NiEDNER (1846), Hase (7th ed. 185-4 ; the same in Enghsh, by
"Wing & Blumenthal, New York, 1855), Guericke (8th ed.
1858 ; the 1st vol. translated or rather transfused into English
by Shedd, Andover, 1857), Lindner (1848), Jacobi (1850),
Fricke (1850), Kurtz (3rd ed. 1853 sqq.). It would be impos-
sible here to mention the countless monographs which appeared
during the same period, partly from the school of Neander,
partly from the more recent one of the equally learned and
talented, but sceptical Baur, of Tubingen, partly from the newly
revived school of orthodox confessionalism.
Among modern English church historians, we may name
IXTROD.] § 7. LITERATURE OF CHURCH HISTORY. 25
MiLNER (f 1797), wliose work, continued by Stebbing, agrees
most in its spirit with tliat of Arnold ; less learned and original,
but far more readable, popular, and edifying ; WADDiKGTOisr,
who gives us the ancient and mediasval church in three
volumes, and the continental reformation in three more (1835 If.) ;
FouLKES, the author of a Manual of Ecclesiastical History, from
the first to the twelfth century (1851) ; Eobertson", whose his-
tory embraces thus far in two volumes (1851: and '56) the first
six centuries, and the middle age, till 1122 ; Milman, who wrote
a history of ancient Christianity (1840), and of Latin Christianity
to the pontificate of Nicholas Y. (1854 sq. in 6 vols.) ; and Hard-
wick, fi:om whom we have a Manual on the middle age (1853),
and another on the Keformation (1856), to be followed by a third
volume on the first six centuries, and a fourth one on the period
since the Reformation. Each one of these works has its peculiar
merit ; but none of them can be ranked, either as to original
research, or art of composition, or general interest, with the
immortal masterpieces of English literature on the history of
Rome, Greece, and Great Britain.
America is as yet more engaged in making history, than in
writing it. Nevertheless it has already cultivated several con-
genial portions of secular history, especially that of Spain, Hol-
land, and the United States, with eminent talent and success.
It has also furnished recently the best translations of the German
standard works on church history, and thus seriously commenced
to direct its youthful energies to the holy of holies in the history
of mankind. This justifies the expectation of original works
which in due time shall review and reproduce the entire course
of Christ's kingdom in the old world with the faith and freedom
of the new.
EIRST PERIOD.
THE
CHURCH UNDER THE APOSTLES:
FROM THE
BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHK
A. D. 1-100.
FIRST PERIOD.
THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH:
FROM THE BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN,
A.D. 1-100.
SOURCES.
The canonical books of the New Testament. The writings of the early church.
Also some passages of Josephus, the Talmud, and heathen authors.
(Comp. N. Lardner : Collection of the Jewish and Heathen Testimonies
of the Christian ReUgion. Lond. 1764 sqq. 4 vols.)
LITERATURE.
F. BuDDEus: Ecclesia apostolica. Jen. 1729. Cave: Lives of the Apostles.
1684 (new ed. Lond. 1841 ; also New York, 1857). Benson : History of
the Planting of the Christian Religion. Lond. 1756 (in German by Bam-
oerger, Halle, 1768). J. J. Hess : Geschichte der Apostel Jesu. Ziir.
1788 (4th ed. 1820). Neander : Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung
der Kirche durch die Apostel. Hamb. 1832. 2 vols. (4th ed. 1847).
The same in Enghsh by Rylandj Edinb. ; reprinted in Philad. 1§44;,^ — .-
H. Thiersch : Die Kirche inoapostoiischien Zeitalter. Frankf. 1852. TKe
same in English by Th. Carlyle. Lond. 1852. J. P. Lange : Das apo-
stolische Zeitalter. Braunschw. 1854. 2 vols. P. Schaff : Geschichte der /■
apostolischen Kirche (Mercersb. 1851), 2nd ed. Leipz. 1854. The same j
in Enghsh by Yeomans, N. York, 1853, and Edinb. 1854 ; also in Dutch \
by Lubhnk Weddik, 1857. Lechler: Das apostohsche und nachapo-
stolische Zeitalter. 2nd ed. Stuttg. 1857.
Comp. also the critical works on the Acts of Luke, by ScTinecJcenhurger, 1841,
Zeller, 1854, and LeTcebusch, 1854 ; and the commentaries on the Acts,
by Baumgarien, Halle, 1852, 2 vols., also (in English, Edinb. 1856, f
3 vols.), Jos. Add. Alexander, K York, 1857, 2 vols., and H. B. Hackett, '
2nd ed. Bost. 1858.
On the chronology of the Apostolic age comp. Anger : De temporum in Actis f
Apostol. ratione. Lips. 1833. Wieselek : Chronologic des apostohschen
Zeitalters. Gott. 1848.
§ 8. General Character of the Apostolic Period.
The apostolic period, including tlie life of Jesus, is the fountain-
80 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
head of tlie history of tlie Christian church. Here springs, in its
original freshness and purity, the living water of the new crea-
tion. Christianity comes down from heaven as a supernatural
fact, yet long predicted and prepared for, and adapted to the
deepest wants of human nature. Signs and wonders and extra-
ordinary demonstrations of the Spirit, for the conversion of
unbelieving Jews and heathens, attend its entrance into the world
of sin. It takes up its permanent abode with our fallen race, to
transform it gradually, without war or bloodshed, by a quiet,
leaven-like process, into a glorious kingdom of truth and right-
eousness. Modest and humble, lowly and unseemly in outward
appearance, but steadily conscious of its divine origin and its
eternal destiny ; without silver or gold, but strong in faith, fer-
vent in love, and joyful in hope, full of supernatural gifts and
powers ; bearing in earthen vessels the imperishable treasures of
heaven, it presents itself upon the stage of history as the only
true, the perfect religion, for all the nations of the earth. At
first an insignificant and even contemptible sect in the eyes of
the carnal mind, hated and persecuted by Jews and heathens, it
confounds the wisdom of Greece and the power of Eome, soon
plants the standard of the cross in the great cities of Asia, Africa,
and Euroj)e, and proves itself the hope of the world.
In virtue of this original purity, vigor, and beauty, and the
amazing success of primitive Christianity, the canonical authority
of the single but inexhaustible volume of its literature, and the
infallibility of the apostles, those inspired organs of the Holy
Ghost, those untaught teachers of mankind, the apostohc age has
an incomparable interest and importance in the history of the
church. It is the immovable groundwork of the whole. It
has the same regulative force for all the subsequent develop-
ments of the church as the inspired writings of "the apostles have
for the works of all later Christian authors.
Furthermore, the apostolic Christianity is preformative, con-
taining the living germs of all the following periods, personages,
and tendencies. The whole history of the church, past and
future, is only the progressive analysis and application of prin-
§ 8. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE APOSTOLIC PERIOD. 31
ciples and prototjrpes given in tHe New Testament ; especially
of the three leading representatives of the primitive age, Peter,
Paul, and Jolm.
These apostles mark also the three principal steps in the mis-
sionary and doctrinal history of the first period. Peter repre-
sents Jewish Christianity ; Paul, Gentile Christianity ; John, the
union of the two.
But to see clearly the relation of the Christian religion to the
preceding history of mankind, and to appreciate its vast influ-
ence, we must first glance at the preparation which existed in
the moral and religious condition of the world for the incarna-
tion of the Son of God.
CHAPTEE I.
PKEPARATION FOE CHRISTIANITY IN THE HISTORY OF THE
JEWISH AND HEATHEN WORLD.
MosHEiM : Historical Commentaries on the State of Christianity in the first
three centuries, 1753, transl. by Vidal and Murdock, vol. i. oh. 1 and 2
(p. 9-82). Neander: AUg. Gesch. der christl Rel. und K. vol. i. 1842.
Einl. (p. 1-116). Schaff: Hist, of the Apostolic Ch., p. 137-188 (Engl,
trsl.). J. P. Lange: Das Apost. Zeitalter. 1853, I. p. 224-318. Bol-
linger (R. C.) : Heidenthum und Judenthum. Vorhalle zur Geschichte
des Christenthums. Regensb. 1857.
§ 9. Central Position of Christ in the History of the World.
As religion is the deepest and holiest concern of man, the
entrance of the Christian religion into histor}^ is the most mo-
mentous of all events. It is the end of the old world and the
beginning of the new. It was a great idea of Dionjsius " the
Little," to date our era from the birth of the Saviour, Jesus
Christ, the God-man, the prophet, priest, and king of mankind,
is, in fact, the centre and turning-point not only of chronology,
but of all history, and the key to all its mysteries. Around
him, as the sun of the moral universe, revolve at their several
distances, all nations and all really important events, especially
in the religious life of the world ; and all must, directly or indi-
rectly, consciously or unconsciously, contribute to glorify his
name and advance his cause. All history before his birth must
be viewed as a preparation for his coming, and all history after
his birth as a gradual diffusion of his Spirit and cstabh.'^hmcnt
of his kingdom. "All things were created by him, and for
him."^ He is " the desire of all nations."^ He appeared in the
* Col. i. 16. • Hag. ii. 7.
§ 9. CENTRAL rOSITIOX OF CIIPJST IN HISTORY. 33
"fulness of time,"^ wlien tlie process of preparation was finisTied,
and the world's need of redemption fully disclosed.
This preparation for Christianity began properly with the very
creation of man, who was made in the image of Grod, and des-
tined for communion with him through the eternal Son ; with
those common primordial revelations, which were made even to
the antediluvian fathers, and of which some vague memories
survive in the heathen religions.
With Abraham, some two thousand years before the birth of
Christ, the religious development of humanity separates into the
two independent, and, in their compass, very unequal branches
of Judaism and heathenism. These meet and unite at last in
Christ as the common Saviour, the fulfiUer of all the types and
prophecies, desires and hopes of the ancient world, while at the
same time all the ungodly elements of both league in deadly
hostility against him, and thus draw forth the full revelation of'
his all-conquering power of truth and love.
As Christianity is the reconciliation and union of God and
man in and through Jesus Christ, the God-man and Saviour, it
must have been preceded by a twofold process of preparation, an
approach of God to man, and an approach of man to God. In
Judaism the preparation is direct and positive, proceeding from
above downwards, and ending with the birth of the Messiah.
In heathenism it is indirect and mainly, though not entirely,
negative, proceeding from below upwards, and ending, with a
helpless cry of mankind for redemption. There we have a spe-
cial revelation or self-communication of the only true God by
word and deed, ever growing clearer and plainer, till at last the
divine nature appears in the human, to raise it to communion
with itself; here man, guided indeed by the general providence
of God, and lighted by the glimmer of the Logos shining in the
darkness,^ yet unaided by direct revelation, and left to his own
ways,^ " if haply he might feel after the Lord and find him."*
In Judaism the true religion is prepared for man ; in heathenism
» Mark i. 15, Gal. iv. 4. = Johu L 5. ' Acts xiv. 16. * Acts xvii 26, 27.
3
34 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
man is prepared for the true religion. There the divine sub-
stance is begotten ; here the human forms are moulded to receive
it. The former is like the elder son in the parable, who abode
in his father's house ; the latter, like the prodigal, who squan-
dered his portion, yet at last shuddered, before the gaping abyss
of perdition, and penitently returned to the bosom of his father's
compassionate love.^ Heathenism is the starry night, full of
darkness and fear, but of mysterious presage also, and of anxious
waiting for the light of day ; Judaism, the dawn, full of the fresh
hope and promise of the rising sun ; both lose themselves in the
sunlight of Christianity, and attest its claim to be the only true
and the perfect religion for mankind.
This process of preparation for redemption in the history of
the world, the groping of heathenism after the "unknown God"^
and inward peace, and the legal struggle and comforting hope of
Judaism, repeat themselves substantially in every individual
believer ; for every man is made for Christ, and his heart is
restless, till it rests in him.
§ 10. Judaism.
The canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. The Jewish Apocry-
pha. The writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, and the Alexandrian,
PniLO, and the Talmud. — Of service to illustrate and confirm the Jewisli
history before Christ are also heathen remains, especially the monu-
ments of ancient Egypt, better known since the French expedition, and
elucidated by the researches of Champollion, Rosellini, Wilkinson, Tay-
lor, Lepsius, Bunsen, Seyfiarth, and others; and tl>e very remarkable
monuments from Assyria, discovered by the excavations of Botta and
Layard, and transported to Paris and London. The fragments of Phoe-
nician and Chaldaic writers, on the contrary, yield little information ; and
the occasional accounts of the later Greek and Roman authors concerning
the Jews are full of error and bitter prejudice.
Prideaux: Old and New Testaments Connected in the Ilistory of the Jews
and neighboring nations, from the decline of the kingdoms of Israel and
Judah to the time of Christ. Lend. 1715, 2 vols. (1858 and many other
eds.). The same in French and Grerraan. Hess: Geschichte der
Israchtcn vor den Zciten Jesu. Ziir. 17GG sqq. 12 vols. Warburton:
Divine Legation of J^Ioscs demonstrated. 6 vols. Lond. 1788; best
* Luke XV. 11-32. ' Acts xvii. 23.
§ 10. JUDAISM. 35
edit, by Rich. Hurd, in 3 vols. Lond. 1856. Jost : Allgem. Geschichte
des Israelitischen Volkes bis in die neuste Zeit. Bed. 1832. 2 vols.
Milman: History of the Jews. Lond. 1829. 3 vols, republ. N.York,
1831. 3 vols. J. C. K. HoFMANN : Weissagung und Erfiillung. Nordl.
1841. 2 vols. H. EwALD : G-eschichte des Volkes Israel bis Christus.
Grott. 1843 sqq. 4 vols. J. H. Kurtz : Geschichte des alten Bundes.
Berl. 1853 sqq. 2 vols. The same: Lehrbuch der heiL G-eschichte.
Konigsb. 6th ed. 1853 ; also in Enghsh, by C. F. Schafler. Phil. 1855.
A. Alexander: A History of the IsraeUtish Nation from their origin to
their dispersion at the destruction of Jerusalem. Phil. 1853. E. C.
Wines : Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews. N. York,
1855. J. M. Jost: Geschichte des Judenthums und semer Serten.
Leipz. 1857 sq. 3 vols.
" Salvation is of the Jews."^ This wonderfal people was
chosen by sovereign grace to stand amidst the surrounding
idolatry as the bearer of the knowledge of Jehovah, the only
true God, of liis holy law, and of his comforting promise, and
thus to become the cradle of the Messiah. It arose with the
calling of Abraham, and the covenant of Jehovah with him in
Canaan, the land of promise ; grew to a nation in Egypt, the land
of bondage ; was delivered and organized into a theocratic state
on the basis of the law of Sinai by Moses in the wilderness ; was
led back into Palestine by Joshua ; became, after the Judges, a
monarchy, reaching the height of its glory in David and Solo-
mon, the types of the victorious and peaceful reign of Christ ;
split into two hostile kingdoms, and, in punishment of internal
discord and growing apostasy to idolatry, was carried captive by
heathen conquerors ; was restored after seventy years' humilia-
tion to the land of its fathers, but fell again under the yoke of
heathen foes ; yet in its deepest abasement fulfilled its highest
mission by giving birth to the Saviour of the world.
Judaism was amongst the idolatrous nations of antiquity like
an oasis in a desert, clearly defined and isolated ; separated and
enclosed by a rigid moral and ceremonial law. The holy land
itself, though in the midst of the three grand divisions of the
ancient world, and surrounded by the great nations of ancient
» 1 John iv. 22.
36 FIEST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100,
culture, was separated from them by deserts south and east, by
sea on the west, and by mountain on the north ; thus securing to
the Mosaic religion freedom to unfold itself and to fulfil its gTeat
work without disturbing influences from abroad. But Israel
carried in its bosom from the first the large promise, that in
Abraham's seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed.
Abraham, the father of the faithful, Moses, the lawgiver, David,
the victorious king and sacred psalmist, Isaiah, the evangelist
of the prophets, and John the Baptist, the impersonation of the
whole Old Testament, are the most conspicuous links, in the
golden chain of the ancient revelation.
The outward circumstances and the moral and religious condi-
tion of the Jews at the birth of Christ would indeed seem at first
and on the whole to be in glaring contradiction with their divine
destiny. But, in the first place, their very degeneracy proved
the need of divine help. In the second place, the redemption
through Christ appeared by contrast in the greater glor^'-, as a
creative act of God. And finally, amidst the mass of con'ujjtion,
as a preventive of putrefaction, lived the succession of the true
children of Abraham, longing for the salvation of Israel, and
ready to embrace Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah
and the Saviour of the world.
Since the battle of Philippi (B. C. 42), the Jews had been sub-
ject to the heathen Eomans, who heartlessly governed them by
the Idumean Herod and his sons, and afterwards by procura*
tors. Under this hated yoke their Messianic hopes were power-
fully raised, but carnally distorted. They longed chiefly for a
political delivei-cr, who should restore the temporal dominion of
David on a still more splendid scale ; and they were offended
with the servant form of Jesus, and A\ith his spiritual kingdom.
Their morals were outwardly far better than those of the heathen ;
but under the garb of strict obedience to their law, they con-
cealed great corruption. They are pictured in the New Testa-
ment as a stiff-necked, ungrateful, and impenitent race, the seed
of the serpent, a generation of vij)crs. Their own priest and his-
torian, Josephus, who generally endeavored. to present his coun-
§ 10. JUDAISM. 37
trymen to the Greeks and Romans in the most favorable light,
describes them as at that time a debased and ungodly people,
well deserving their fearful punishment in the destruction of
Jerusalem.
As to religion, the Jews, especially after the Babylonish cap-
tivity, adhered most tenaciously to the letter of the law, and to
their traditions and ceremonies, but without knowing the spirit
and power of the Scriptures. They cherished the most bigoted
horror of the heathen, and were therefore despised and hated by
them as misanthropic, though by their judgment, industrj^, and
tact, they were able to gain wealth and consideration in all the
larger cities of the Roman empire. After the time of the Mac-
cabees (B. C. 150), they fell into three mutually hostile sects.
1. The Pharisees, the "separate,"^ were, so to speak, the
Jewish Stoics. They represented the traditional orthodoxy and
stiff formalism, the legal self-righteousness and the fanatical
bigotry of Judaism. In the New Testament they bear particu-
larly the reproach of hypocrisy; with, of course, illustrious
exceptions, like ISTicodemus, Gamaliel, and his disciple, Paul,
2. The less numerous Sadducees^ were sceptical, rationalistic,
and worldly-minded, and held about the same position in Judaism
as the Epicureans and the followers of the New Academy in
Greek and Roman heathendom.
8. The Essenes^ were a mystic, ascetic sect, and lived in
monkish seclusion on the coasts of the Dead Sea. With an
arbitrary, allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, they
combined some foreign theosophic elements, which they borrowed
partly from the Pythagorean and the Platonic philosoj)hies, and
partly from the eastern religions.
The sect of the Essenes comes seldom or never into contact
' From taiS They were separated from ordinary persons by the suppcsed cor-
— r *
rectness of their creed and the superior hohness of their Hfe.
2 So called either from their supposed founder, Zadoek, or from pi^S "just."
3 From h05^ "physician;" according to some, a corruption of Diiion oVioi,
the "holy;" but most probably from the rabbinical >]^)-I) "watchman," "keeper;"
T -
COmp. ^spanevrai.
38 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
■vrith Christianitj under the AjDOstles. But tlie Phansces and
Sadducees, particularly the former, meet us everywhere in the'
Gospels as bitter enemies of Jesus, and hostile as they are to each-
other, unite in condemning him to that death of the cross, which
ended in the glorious resurrection, and became the foundation of
spiritual life to beheving Grentiles as well as Jews.
§ 11. The Law and Prophecy.
Degenerate and corrupt though the mass of Judaism was, yet
the Old Testament economy was the divine institution preparatory
to the Christian redemption, and as such received deepest reve-
rence from Christ and his apostles, while they sought by terrible
rebuke to lead its unworthy representatives to repentance. It
therefore could not fail of its saving effect on those hearts which
3'ielded to its discipline, and conscientiously searched the
Scriptures of Moses and the prophets.
Law and prophecy are the two great elements of the Jewish
religion, and make it a direct divine introduction to Christianity,
" the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prej^are ye the
way of the Lord ; make straight in the desert a highway for our
God."
1. The law of Moses was the clearest expression of the holy
will of God before the advent of Christ. It set forth the ideal
of righteousness, and was thus fitted most effectually to awaken
the sense of man's great departure from it, the knowledge of sin
and guilt.^ It acted as a schoolmaster to lead men to Christ^ that
they might be justified by faith.^
The same sense of guilt and of the need of reconciliation was
constantly kept alive by daily sacrifices, at first in the tabernacle
and afterwards in the temj^le, and by the whole ceremonial law,
which, as a wonderful system of types and shadows, perpetually
pointed to the realities of the new covenant, especially to the
one all-sufficient atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
But now God requires absolute obedience and purity of heart
' Rom. ilL 20: Afi ni^ow c-iyvtoo-ij afiapna;.
2 Ylatijyojyus tij XpicrriJc, ^ Gal. iii. 24.
§ 11. THE LAW AXD PROPHECY. 39
under promise of life and penalty of death. Yet he cannot
cruelly sport with man ; he is the truthful, faithful, and merciful
God. In the moral and ritual law, therefore, as in a shell, is
hidden the sweet kernel of a promise, that he will one day exhi-
bit the ideal of righteousness in living form, and give the mise-
rable sinner power to fulfil the law. Without such assurance
the law were bitter irony.
As regards the law, the Jewish economy was a religion of /.
repentance.
2. But it was at the same time, as already hinted, the vehicle f
of the divine promise of redemption, and, as such, a religion of )
hope. While the Greeks and Eomans put their golden age in ^
the past, the Jews looked for theirs in the future. Their whole '
history, their religious, political, and social institutions and cus-
toms pointed to the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment
of his kingdom on earth.
Prophecy, or the gospel under the covenant of the law, is really
older than the law, which " came in between " the promise and
its fulfilment.^ It begins with the promise of the serpent-bruiser
immediately after the fall. It predominates in the patriarchal
age, and Moses, the lawgiver, was at the same time a prophet
pointing the people to a greater successor.- Without the
comfort of the Messianic promise, the law must have driven the
earnest soul to despair. From the time of Samuel, some eleven
centuries before Christ, prophecy, hitherto sporadic, took an
organized form in a permanent proj)hetical ofiice and order. In
this form it accompanied the Levitical priesthood and the Davidic
dynasty down to the Babylonish captivity, survived this cata-
strophe, and directed the return of the people and the rebuilding
of the temple; interpreting and applying the law, reproving
abuses in church and state, predicting the terrible judgments and
the redeeming grace of God, warning and punishing, comforting
and encouraging, with an ever plainer reference to the coming-
Messiah, who should redeem Israel and the world from sin and
^ nao£icrfl>^£i/, Rom. V. 20; comp. Gal. iiL 19. -Beiit. xviii. 15.
40 FIRST PERIOD, A.D. 1-100.
miseiy, and establish, a kingdom of peace and righteousness on
earth.
The victorious reign of David and the peaceful reign of Solo-
mon furnish, for Isaiah and his successors, the historical ground for
a prophetic picture oi" a far more glorious future, which, unless
thus attached to living memories and present circumstances, could
not have been understood. The subsequent catastrophe and the
sufferings of the captivity served to devclope the idea of a Mes-
siah atoning for the sins of the people and entering through suf-
fering into glory.
The prophetic was an extraordinary ofiice, serving partly to
complete, partly to correct tke ordinary, hereditary priesthood, to
prevent it from stiffening into monotonous formality, and keep it
^ in living flow. The prophets were, so to speak, the Protestants
of the ancient covenant, the ministers of the s})irit and of imme-
diate communion with God, in distinction from 'the ministers of
the letter and of traditional and ceremonial mediation.
The flourishing period of our canonical prophecy began with
the eighth century before Christ, some seven centuries after
Moses, when Israel was suffering under Assyrian oppression. In
this period before the captivity, Isaiah ("the salvation of God ")>
who appeared in the last years of king Uzziah, about ten years
before the founding of Rome, is the leading figure ; and around
Hm Micah, Joel, and Obadiah in the kingdom of Judah, and
Hosea, Amos, and Jonah in the kingdom of Israel, are grouped.
In the period of the Babylonian exile, Jeremiah (i. e. " the Lord
casts down") stands chief. He remained in the land of his
fathers, and sang his lamentation in holy sorrow on the ruins of
Jerusalem ; while Ezekiel warned the exiles on the river Chebar
against false prophets and carnal hopes, urged them to repentance,
and depicted the new Jerusalem and the revival of the dry bones
of the people by the breath of God ; and Daniel at the court of
Kebuchadnczzar in Babylon saw in the spirit the succession of
the four empires and the final triuin[)h of the eternal kingdom of
the Son of Man. Tlic prophets of the restoration are Haggai,
Zechariah, and Malaclii. With Malachi, who lived to the time of
^ii^-c Z^/utu ^U^"-^ /^ftAJ^^
§ 11. THE LAW AND PROPHECY. 41
Neliemiah, the Old Testament prophecy ceased, and Israel was
left to himself four hundred years, to digest during this period
of expectation the rich substance of that revelation, and to pre-
pare the birth-place for the approaching redemption.
3. But immediately before the advent of the Messiah the
whole Old Testament, the law and the prophets, Moses and
Isaiah together, reappeared for a moment embodied in John the
Baptist, and then in unrivalled humility disappeared as the red
dawn in the splendor of the rising sun of the new covenant.
This remarkable man, earnestly preaching repentance in the
wilderness and laying the axe at the root of the tree, and at the
same time comforting with prophecy and pointing to the atoning
Lamb of God, was indeed, as the immediate forerunner of the
New Testament economy, and the personal friend of the heavenly
Bridegroom, the greatest of them that were born of women ; yet
in his official character as the representative of the ancient prepa-
ratory economy he stands lower than the least in that kingdom
of Christ, which is infinitely more glorious than all its types and
shadows in the past.
This is the Jewish religion, as it flowed from the fountain of
divine revelation and lived in the true Israel, the spiritual children
of Abraham, in John the Baptist, his parents and disciples, in the
mother of Jesus, her kindred and friends, in the venerable
Simeon, and the prophetess Anna, in Lazarus and his pious sis-
ters, in the apostles and the first disciples, who embraced Jesus
of Nazareth as the fulfiUer of the law and the prophets, the Son
of Grod and the Saviour of the world, and who were the first
fruits of the Christian church.
§ 12. Heathenism.
I. The works of the G-reek and Roman classics.
II. St. Augustine : De civitate Dei ; the first ten books. Is. Vossius : De the-
ologia gentili et pliysiolo. Christ. Frcf. 1675. 2 vols. Creuzer: Sym-
bolik und Mythologie der alten Volker. Leipz. 3rd ed. 1837 sqq. 3 vols.
42 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
0. MuLLER : Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftl. Mythologie. Giitt.
1825. Hegel : Philosophie der Religion. Bed. 1837. 2 vols. Stuiir :
Allgem. Gesch. der Eeligionsformen der heidnischen Yolker. BerL
1836. Hartung : Die Religion der RiJmer. Erl. 1836. 2 vols. Nagels-
bach: Homerische Theologie. Niirnb. 1840. The same: Die nacli
homerische Theologie des Griechischen Volksglaubens bis auf Alexan-
der. Ntirnb. 1857. Sepp (R. C.) : Das Heidenthum und dessen Bedeu-
tung filr das Christenthum. Regensb. 1853. 3 vols. Wuttke : Ge-
schichte des Heidenthums in Beziehung auf Religion, Wissen, Kunst,
Sittlichkeit und Staatsleben. Bresl. 1852 sqq. Scuelling: Einleitung
in die Philosophie der Mythologie. Stuttg. 1856, and Philosophie der
Mythologie. Stuttg. 1857. Maurice: The Religions of the World in
their Relations to Christianity. Lond. 1854 (reprinted in Boston).
Trench : Hulsean Lectures for 1845-6. No. 2 : Christ the Desire of all
Nations, or the Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom (a commentary
on the star of the wise men, Matt. ii.). Cambr. 4th ed. 1854 (also Philad.
1850). Comp. also Niebuhr's Rumische Geschichte, and Grote's His-
tory of Greece.
Heathenism is religion in its wild growth on the soil of
fallen human nature, a darkening of the original consciousness
of God, a deification of the rational and irrational creature, and a
corresponding corruption of the moral sense, giving the sanction
of religion to natural and unnatural vices.^
Even the religion of Greece, which, as an artistic product of
the imagination, has been justly styled the religion of beauty, is
deformed by this moral distortion. It utterly lacks the true
concej^tion of sin, and consequently the true conception of hoh-
ness. It regards sin, not as a perverseness of wiU and an offence
against the gods, but as a folly of the understanding and an
offence against men, often even proceeding from the gods them-
selves; for " infiituation " is a ''daughter of Jove." Then these
gods themselves are mere men, in whom Homer and the popular
faith saw and worshipped the weaknesses and vices of the Gre-
cian character, as well as its virtues, in immensely magnified
forms. They have bodies and senses, like mortals, only in
colossal proportions. They eat and drink, though only nectar
and ambrosia. They are limited, like men, to time and '■.pace.
Though sometimes honored with the attributes of omnipotence
* Comp. Rom. i. 19 sqq.
§ 12. heathenism:. 43
and omniseience, yet tliey are subject to an iron fate, fall under
delusion, and reproacli each other with folly. Their heavenly
happiness is disturbed by all the troubles of earthly life. Jupiter
threatens his fellows with blows and death, and makes Olympus
tremble, when he shakes his locks in anger. The gentle Venus
bleeds from a spear- wound on her finger. Mars is felled with
a stone by Diomedes. Neptune and Apollo have to serve for
hire and are cheated. The gods are involved by their mar-
riages in perpetual jealousies and quarrels. Though called holy
and just, they are full of envy and wrath, hatred and lust,
and provoke each other to lying and cruelty, perjury and adul-
tery. Truly we have no cause to long with Schiller for the
return of the "gods of Greece," but would rather join the poet
in his joyful thanksgiving :
" Einen zu bereichern unter alien,
Musste diese Gutterwelt vergehn."
Notwithstanding this essential apostasy from truth and hoh- "
ness, heathenism was religion, a groping after "the unknown
Grod."* By its superstition it betrayed the need of faith. Its
polytheism rested on a dim monotheistic background; it sub-
jected all the gods to Jupiter, and Jupiter himself to a mysteri-
ous fate. It had at bottom the feeling of dependence on higher
powers and reverence for divine things. It preserved the
memory of a golden age and of a fall. It had the voice of con-
science, and a sense, obscure though it was, of guilt. It felt the
need of reconciliation with deity, and sought that reconciliation
by prayer, penance, and sacrifice. Many of its religious tradi-
tions and usages were faint echoes of the primal religion ; and
its mythological dreams of the mingling of the gods with men,
of demigods, of Prometheus dehvered by Hercules from his help-
less sufferings, were unconscious prophecies and fleshly anticipa-
tions of Christian truths.
This alone explains the great readiness with -which heathens
embraced the gospel, to the shame of the Jews.^
'Actsxvii. 27 28. " Comp. Matt. viii. 10; xv. 28. Luke vii. 9. Acts x. 35.
44 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
These elements of truth, morahty, and piety in heathenism, may
be ascribed to three sources. In the first place, man, even in his
fallen state, retains some traces of the divine image, a conscious-
ness of God, however weak, conscience, and a deep longing for
union with the Godhead, for truth and for righteousness. In
this view we may, with Tertullian, call the beautiful and true
sentences of the classics, of a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle, of
Pindar, Sophocles, Plutarch, Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, "the testimo-
nies of a soul constitutionally Christian,'" of a nature predestined
Jo Christianity. Secondly, some account must be made of tradi-
tions and recollections, however faint, coming down from the
general primal revelations to Adam and Noah. But the third
and most important source of the heathen anticipations of truth
is the all-ruling providence of God, who has never left himself
without a witness. Particularly must we consider the influence
/ of .the divine Logos before his incarnation,^ the tutor of mankind,
the original light of reason, shining in the darkness and lighting
every man, the sower scattering in the soil of heathendom the
seeds of truth, beauty, and virtue.^
The old oriental forms of heathenism, the religion of the
Chinese (Confucius, about 550 B.C.), the Brahminism and the
later Buddhaism of the Hindoos (perhaps 1000 B.C.), the religions
of the Persians (Zoroaster, 700 B.C.), and of the Egyptians (" the
religion of enigma"), have only a remote and indirect concern
with the introduction of Christianity. But they form to some
extent the historical basis of the western religions, and tlic Per-
sian dualism especially was not without influence on the earlier
sects (the Gnostic and Manichean) of the Christian church.
The flower of jpaganism appears in the two great nations of
classic antiquity, Greece an.d Eome, With the language, morality,
literature, and religion of these nations, the apostles came directly
into contact, and through the whole first age the church moves
on the basis of these nationahties. These, together with the
Jews, were the chosen nations of the ancient world, and shared
* Testimonia animae naturaliter ChristianaD.
, ' Atfyos aaapKos, Aoyoj cTrepjiaTiKSi. „ * Comp. Jphn j. 4, 5, 9, 10.
§ 13. GRECIAN LITERATURE AND THE ROilAN EMPIRE. 45
the eartli among tliem. The Jews were chosen for things eter-
nal, to keep the sanctuary of the true rehgion. The Greeks
prepared the elements of natural culture, of science and art, for
the use of the church. The Romans developed the idea of law,
and organized the civilized world in a universal empire, ready
to serve the spiritual universality of the gospel. Both Greeks
and Romans were unconscious servants of Jesus Christ, "the
unknown God."
These three nations, by nature at bitter enmity among them-
selves, joined hands in the superscription on the cross, where
the holy name and the royal title of the Redeemer stood written,
by the command of the heathen Pilate, "in Hebrew and Greek
and Latin."^
§ 13. Grecian Literature and the Roman Empire.
The literature of the ancient Greeks and the universal empire
of the Romans were, next to the Mosaic religion, the chief agents
in preparing the world for Christianity. They famished the
human forms, in which the divine substance of the gospel, tho-
roughly prepared in the bosom of the Jewish theocracy, was
moulded. They laid the natural foundation for the supernatural
edifice of the kingdom of heaven. God endowed the Greeks
and Romans with the richest natural gifts, that they might reach
the highest civilization possible without the aid of Christianity,
and thus both provide the instruments of human science, art,
and law for the use of the church, and yet at the same time
show the utter impotence of these alone to bless and save the
world.
The Greeks, few in number, like the Jews, but vastly more
important in history than the numberless hordes of the Asiatic
empires, were called to the noble task of bringing out, under a
sunny sky and with a clear mind, the idea of humanity in its
natural vigor and beauty, but also in its natural imperfection.
They developed the principles of science and art. They liberated
' John xix. 2 a.
46 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
the mind from the dark powers of nature and the gloomy brood-
ings of the eastern mysticism. They rose to the clear and free
consciousness of manhood, boldly investigated the laws of nature
and of spirit, and carried out the idea of beauty in all sorts of
artistic forms. In poetry, sculpture, architecture, painting, philo-
sophy, rhetoric, historiography, they left true master-pieces,
which are to this day admired and studied as models of form and
taste.
All these works became truly valuable and useful only in the
hands of the Christian church, to which they ultimately fell.
Greece gave the apostles the most copious and beautiful language
to express the divine truth of the Gospel, and Providence had
long before so ordered political movements, as to spread that
language over all the world. The youthful hero Alexander the
Great, a Macedonian indeed by birth, yet an enthusiastic admirer
of Homer, an emulator of Achilles, a disciple of the scientific
world-conqueror, Aristotle, and thus the truest Greek of his age,
conceived the sublime thought of making Babylon the seat of a
Grecian empire of the world ; and though his empire fell to pieces
at his untimely death, yet it had already carried the Greek lan-
guage and literature to the borders of India, and made them a
common possession of all civilized nations ; so that the apostles
could make themselves understood through that language in
every city in the Eoman domain. The Grecian philosophy, ]\ar-
ticularl^* the systems of Plato and Aristotle, formed the natural
basis for scientific theology ; Grecian eloquence, for sacred ora-
tory ; Grecian art, for that of the Christian church. Indeed, not
a few ideas and maxims of the classics tread on the threshold
of revelation, and sound like prophecies of Christian truth ;
especially the spiritual soarings of Plato, the deep religious
reflections of Plutarch,' the sometimes almost Pauline moral pre-
cepts of Seneca. To many of the greatest church fathers,
Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and in some m.ea-
sure even to Augustine, Greek philosophy was a bridge to Chris-
' As in his excellent treatise : De sera numinis vindicta.
§ 13. GRECIAN LITERATURE AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 47
tian faith, a scientific sclioolmaster for Clirist. Nay, the whole
ancient Greek church rose on the foundation of the Grreek
language and nationality, and were inexplicable without them.
Here lies the real reason, why the classical literature is to this
day made the basis of liberal education throughout the Christian
world. Youth are introduced to the elementary forms of science
and art, to models of clear, tasteful style, and to self-made
humanity at the summit of natural culture, and thus they are at
the same time trained to the scientific apprehension of the Chris-
tian religion.
But aside from this permanent value of the Grecian literature,
the glory of its native land had, at the birth of Christ, already
irrecoverably departed. Civil liberty and independence had been
destroyed by internal discord and corruption. Philosophy had
run down into scepticism and refined materialism. Art had been
degraded to the service of levity and sensuality. Infidelity or
superstition had supplanted sound religious sentiment. Dis-
honesty and licentiousness reigned among high and low.
This hopeless state of things could not but impress the more
earnest and noble souls with the emptiness of all science and art,
and the utter insufiiciency of this natural culture to meet the
deeper wants of the heart. It must fill them with longings for a ,
new religion.
The EoMANS were the practical and political nation of anti-
quity. Their calling was to carry out the idea of the state and
of civil law, and to unite the nations of the world in a colossal
empire, stretching from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, and from
the Lybian desert to the banks of the Ehine. If the Greeks
had, of all nations, the deepest mind, and in literature even gave
laws to their conquerors, the Komans had the strongest character,
and were born to rule the world without. This difference of
course reached even into the moral and religious life of the two
nations. "Was the Greek mythology the work of artistic fantasy
and a religion of poesy ; so was the Eoman the work of cal-
culation adapted to state purposes, political and utilitarian, but
at the same time solemn, earnest, and energetic.
48 FIKST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
The Romans from the first believed themselves called to govern
the world. The
"Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento!"
had been their motto, in feet, long before Virgil thus gave it
form. The very name of the urbs aeterna, and the charac-
teristic legend of its founding, prophesied its future. In their
greatest straits the Romans never for a moment despaired of the
commonwealth. With vast energy, profound policy, unwaver-
ing consistency, and wolf-like rapacity, they pursued their
ambitious schemes, and became indeed the lords, but also, as
their first historian, Tacitus says, the insatiable robbers of the
world.^
This immense extension, it is true, brought with it a diminu-
tion of those domestic and civil virtues, which at first so highly
distinguished the Romans above the Greeks. The race of
patriots and deliverers, who came from their ploughs to the public
service, and humbly returned again to the plough or the kitchen,
was extinct. Their worship of the gods, which was the root of
their virtue, had sunk to mere form, running either into the
most absurd superstitions, or giving place to unbelief, till the very
priests laughed each other in the face when they met in the
street. The ancient simplicity and contentment had been ex-
changed for boundless avarice and prodigality. Morality and
chastity, so beautifully symbolized in the household ministry of
the virgin Vesta, had yielded to vice and debauchery. Amuse-
ment had come to be sought in barbarous fights of beasts and
gladiators, which not rarely consumed twenty thousand human
lives in a single month. The lower classes had lost all nobler
feeling, cared for nothing but " panem et circenses," and made
the proud imperial city on the Tiber a slave of slaves. The huge
empire of Tiberius and of Nero was but a giant body without a
soul, going, with steps slow but sure, to final dissolution. "We
have only to read the testimonies of its greatest authors, of
a Tacitus, a Seneca, or a Persius, to find the truth of Paul's dark
' " Raptores orbis, quos non orions, non occidens satiaverit."
§ 14. JUDAISil A^D HEATHENISM IN" CONTACT. 49
picture of heathendom, in the first chapter of his epistle to the
Eomans, fully certified by the heathens themselves, and to see
the absolute need of a divine redemption.
Thus far the negative. On the other hand the universal
empire of Rome was a positive groundwork for the universal
empire of the gospel. It served as a crucible, in which all
contradictory and irreconcilable peculiarities of the ancient
nations and religions were dissolved into the chaos of a new
creation. The Roman legions razed the jDartition-walls among
the ancient nations, brought the extremes of the civilized world
together in free intercourse, and united north and south and east
and west in the bonds of a common language and culture, of com-
mon laws and customs. Thus they evidently, though uncon-
sciouslj^, opened the way for the rapid and general spread of that
religion, which unites all nations in one family of God by the
spiritual bond of faith and love.
The civil laws and institutions, also, and the great administra-
tive wisdom of Rome did much for the outward organization of
the Christian church. As the Greek church rose on the basis of
the Grecian nationality, so the Latin church rose on that of
ancient Rome, and reproduced in higher forms both its virtues
and its defects. Roman Catholicism is pagan Rome baptized, a
Christian reproduction of the universal emj)ire seated of old in
the city of the seven hills.
§ 14. Judaism and Heathenism in Contact
The Roman empire, though directly establishing no more than
an outward political union, still promoted indirectly a mutual
intellectual and moral approach of the hostile j;eligions of the
Jews and Gentiles, who were to be reconciled in one divine
brotherhood by the supernatural power of the cross of Christ.
1. The Jews, since the Babylonish captivity, had been scat-
tered over all the world. In spite of the antipathy of the Gentiles,
they had, by talent and industry, risen to wealth, influence, and
every privilege, and had built their synagogues in all the commer-
cial cities of the Roman empire. They had thus sown the seeds of
4
60 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
y the knowledge of the true God and of Messianic hope in the field
/■'^ of the idolatrous world. The Old Testament scriptures were
translated into Greek two centui'ies before Christ, and were read
and expounded in the public worship of God, which was open to
all. Every synagogue was, as it were, a mission-station of mono-
theism, and furnished the apostles an admirable place and a most
natural introduction for their preaching of Jesus Christ as the
J ^ , fulfiller of the law and the prophets.
Then, as the heathen religions had been hopelessly undermined
by sceptical philosophy and popular infidelity, many earnest
Gentiles, especially multitudes of women, came over to Judaism
either wholly or in part. The thorough converts called " prose-
. ^ v lytes of righteousness,'" were commonly still more bigoted
> >^: < and fanatical than the native Jews. The half-converts, " pro-
selytes of the gate '"" or " fearers of God,'" who adopted only the
^ monotheism, the princij^al moral laws, and the Messianic hopes
•J -."i ^\ of the Jews, without being circumcised, api^ear in the New Tes-
tament as the most susceptible hearers of the gospel, and formed
the nucleus of many of the first Christian churches. Of this class
were the centurion of Capernaum, Cornelius of Cesarea, Lydia of
\'' Philippi, Timothy, and many other prominent disciples.
^^^ 2. On the other hand, tlie Grseco-Eoman heathenism, through
\r >v^^, ^ \ its language, philosophy, and literature, exerted no inconsiderable
"" influence to soften the fanatical bigotry of the higher and more
cultivated classes of the Jews. Generally the Jews of the dis-
persion, who spoke the Greek language, the Ilellemsts, as they
were called, were much more liberal than the proper Hebrews,
or Palestinian Jews, who kept their mother tongue. This is evi-
dent in the Gentile missionaries, Barnabas of Cyprus and Paul
of Tarsus, and in the whole church of Antioch, in contrast with
that at Jerusalem. The Hellenistic Jewish form of Christianity
was the natural bridge to the Gentile.
The most remarkable example of a transitional, though very
'^ ny'in "^712 Ex. xx. 10, Deut V. 14.
3 0( ivacStU, ol (p-^PovfiCfoi Tuy Sctfr, Acts X. 2, xiii. IC, &c.. aud Josephus.
§ 14. JUDAISM AND HEATHEXISil IN CONTACT. 51
fantastic and Gnostic-like combination of Jewisli and heathen
elements meets us in the educated circles of the Egyptian metro-
polis, Alexandria, and in the system of Philo, who was contem- /i
porary with the founding of the Christian church, though he
never came in contact with it. This Jewish divine sought to
harmonize the religion of Moses with the philosophy of Plato by
the help of an ingenious but arbitrary allegorical interpretation of
the Old Testament; and from the books of Proverbs and of
Wisdom he deduced a doctrine of the Logos so strikingly like
that of John's Gospel, that many expositors think it necessary to
impute to the apostle an acquaintance with the writings, or at
least with the terminology of Philo. But Philo's speculation is
to the apostle's " Word made flesh," as a shadow to the body,
or a dream to the reality.
The Therapeutae, or Worshippers, a mystic, ascetic sect in
Egypt, akin to the Essenes in Judea, carried this Platonic \[-v^ o
Judaism into jDractical life ; but were, of course, equally unsuc- % 'x: -.
cessful in uniting the two religions in a vital and permanent '" "
way. Such a union could only be effected by a new religion
revealed from heaven.
Quite independent of the philosophical Judaism of Alexandria . ^
were the Samaritans, a mixed race, which also combined, though • ' "^l'
in a different way, the elements of Jewish and Gentile religion. ,:^ ^ ^
They held to the Pentateuch, to circumcision, and to carnal Mes ' **
sianic hopes ; but they had a temple of their own on Mount I"
Gerizim, and mortally hated the proper Jews. Among these \
Christianity, as would apjDcar from the interview of Jesus with ^ s 'x)
the woman of Samaria,^ and the preaching of Philip,^ found f ^ ^^'
ready access, but, as among the Essenes and Therapeutae, fell < ^ "^ ^
easily into a heretical form. Smion Magus, for example, and z^. \ ^ e
some other Samaritan arch-heretics, are represented by the early ->^ )k >" "
Christian writers as the principal originators of Gnosticism. , *- C' v*
3. Thus was the way for Christianity prepared on every side, '-' ^^-wj
positively and negatively, directly and indirectly, in theory and
in practice, by truth and by error, by false belief and by unbelief
' Jno. iv. * Acts viii
52 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
— tliosc hostile brotlicrs, wliicli yet cannot live apart — by Jewish
religion, by Grecian cultui'e, and by Eoman conquest ; by the
vainly attempted amalgamation of Jewish and heathen thought,
by the exposed impotence of natural civilization, philosophy,
art, and political power, by the decay of the old religions, by the
universal distraction and hopeless misery of the age, and by the
yearnings of all earnest and noble souls for the unknown God.
" In the fulness of time," when the fiiirest flowers of science and
art had withered, and the world was on the verge of despair, the
Virgin's Son was born to heal the infirmities of mankind. Christ
entered a dying world as the author of a new and imperishable
life.
§ 15. JESUS CHRIST. 53
CHAPTER II.
FOUNDING AND GROWTH OF THE CHURCH.
§ 15. Jesus Christ.
I. The four canonical Gospels and the other writings of the N. T. Jose-
PHUS : Antiquit. xviii. 3, 3. In the heathen authors occur only a few
passing notices of Christ and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. See
Tacitus : Annal. xv. 44. Suetonius : Vita Claudii, c. 25. Plinius jun. :
Epist. X. 97. LuciAN : De morte peregr. c. 11.
II, J. J. Hess: Lebensgeschichte Jesu. Ziir. 1781. 8th ed. 1823. 3 vols. F.
V. Eeinhard : Versuch iiber den Plan Jesu. 5th ed. by Heubner. Wit-
tenb. 1830. 0. Ullmann : Die Siindlosigkeit Jesu. Hamb. 1828. 6th ed.
1853. K. Hase : Das Leben Jesu. Leipz. 1829. 4th ed. 1854. Nean-
DER : Das Leben Jesu. Hamb. 1837. 5th ed. 1852. The same in Eng-
hsh by McClintock & Blumenthal, N. York, 1848. Sepp (R. C.) : Das
Leben Jesu Christi. Regensb. 1843 sqq. 4 vols. J. P. Lange : Das
Leben Jesu. Heidelb. 1847 sqq. 3 parts. A. Ebrard : Wissenschaftliche
Kritik der evangehschen Geschichte. 2d ed. Erl. 1850. J. Young : The
Christ of History. Lond. and New York, 1855. Lichtexstein : Lebens-
geschichte Jesu in chronolog. Uebersicht. Erl. 1856. Gess : Die Lehre
von der Person Christi entwickelt aus dem Selbst-bewusstsein Christi
und aus dem Zeugnisse der Apostel. Pas. 1856.
(The critical works of Paulus, D. F. Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and to some extent
those of Gfrorer, Weisse, and Hase, on the evangelical history, represent
the various phases of German rationalism and negative criticism, but
especially in the case of Strauss's Leben Jesu, which is translated also into
English, have called forth a copious apologetic literature, which we can-
not here cite in detaU. Comp. the full hterary apparatus in Hase's Leben
Jesu, p. 37 sqq.).
On the chronology of the Life of Jesus see K. Wieseler : Chronolog. Syn-
opse der 4 Evangelien. Hamb. 1843. Jarvis : A Chronological Introduc-
tion to the History of the Church. N. York, 1845. Seyffarth : Chrono-
logia s., Untersuchungen iiber das Geburtsjahr des Herrn. Leipzig, 1846.
F. Piper : Das Datum der Geburt Christi, in the " Evangel. Kalender "
for 1856. p. 41 sqq.
When the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his only-
54 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
begotten Son, " the Desire of all nations," to redeem tlie -^orld
from tlie curse of sin, and to establisli an everlasting kingdom of
truth, love, and peace for all who should believe on his name.
In Jesus Christ a preparatory history both divine and human
comes to its close. In him culminate all the previous revelations
of God to Jews and Gentiles ; and in him are fulfilled the deepest
desires and efforts of both Gentiles and Jews for redemption. In
his divine nature, as Logos, he is the eternal Son of the Father,
and the agent in the creation and preservation of the world, and
in all those preparatory manifestations of God, which were com-
pleted in the incarnation. In his human nature, as Jesus of
Nazareth, he is the ripe fruit of the religious growth of humanity^
with an earthly ancestry, which St. Matthew traces to Abraham,
the patriarch of the Jews, and St. Luke (the evangelist of the
Gentiles), to Adam, the father of all men. In him dwells all the
fulness of the Godhead bodily; and in him also is realized the
ideal of human virtue and piety. He is the eternal Truth, and
the divine Life itself, personally joined with our nature, our
Lord and our God; yet at the same time flesh of our flesh and
bone of our bone. In him is solved the problem of religion, the
reconciliation and fellowship of man with God; and we must
expect no clearer revelation of God, nor any higher religious
attainment of man, than is already guaranteed and substantially
given in his peison.
But as Jesus Christ thus closes all previous history, so, on the
other hand, he begins an endless future. He is the author of
a new creation, the second Adam, the father of regenerate human-
ity, the head of the church, " which is his body, the fulness of
him, that filleth all in all." lie is the pure and inexhaustible
fountain of that stream of light and life, which has since flowed
unbroken through nations and ages, and will continue to flow, till
the earth shall be full of his praise, and every tongue shall con-
fess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The
universal diffusion and absolute dominion of the spirit and life
of Christ will be also the completion of the human race, the end
of history, and the beginning of a glorious eternity.
§ 15. JESUS CHRIST. 55
Jesus Christ came into the world under Caesar Augustus, at
least four years before our Dionysian era ; for the year of Herod's
death was 750, not 754, after the founding of Eome. He was
born of the virgin Mary, the bride of the Holy Ghost, at
Bethlehem of Judea, in the royal line of David. The world
was at peace, and the gates of Janus were closed for only the
second time in the history of Rome. Angels from heaven pro-
claimed the glad tidings of his birth with songs of praise ; Jewish
shepherds from the fields, and heathen sages from the east,
greeted the new-born king in the manger with the adoration of
believing hearts. He grew up quietly and unnoticed in the
despised village of Nazareth in Galilee, under the care of poor
but godly parents, and with no source of instruction save the t
secret communion of the soul with God, and the religion of the ,'
ancient covenant. He began his public ministry in the thirtieth
year of his age, and chose from among the unlearned fishermen ^^
of Galilee twelve apostles for the Jews and seventy evangelists
for the Gentiles. Three years he went about in Palestine doing
good, speaking words of spirit and life, and working miracles of
compassion and love. He had no earthly possessions. A few
pious women from time to time filled his purse ; and this purse
was in the hands of a thief and traitor. He never courted the
favor of the great, but was the object of their hatred and persecu-
tion. He never flattered the prejudices of the age, but rebuked
sin and vice in all circles of societ3^ He was no scholar, in the
ordinary sense of the word, nor artist, nor orator ; yet was he
wiser than all earthly sages, he spake as never man spake, and he
made an impression on his own age and all ages after, such as no
man could ever make. He conquered sin and death on their own
ground, and thus redeemed and sanctified the nature of man.
He exhibited in his private life and public walk the purest and
deepest love to God and man ; a peaceful harmony of all the
powers and virtues of the soul ; an unexampled union of dignity
and humility, of earnestness and love, of strength and meekness,
of energy and mildness, of self-control and submission, of great-
ness and simplicity ; in short, the ideal of moral perfection. At
6Q FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
last lie completed his active obedience by the passive obedience
of suffering in perfect re'signation to the holy ^^^ll of God ; and
before ho had reached the j^rime of manhood — the Saviour of the
"world a youth! — he died, condemned by the Jewish courts,
rejected by the people, denied by Peter, betrayed by Judas, but
surrounded by his weeping mother and faithful disciples; he
died the shameful death of the cross, the just for the unjust, the
innocent for the guilty, a free self-sacrifice of infinite love, to
reconcile the world unto God. The third day he rose from the
grave the conqueror of death and hell, the j^rince of life and
resurrection ; he appeared to his disciples ; he took possession of
his heavenly throne, and by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost
he established the church, which he has ever since protected,
nourished, and comforted, and with which he has promised to abide,
till he shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead.
But a human pen can no more do justice to the life of Jesus'
than one, to use the words of the genial and pious Lavater, could
" paint the glory of the rising sun with charcoal." The w^hole
history of the church, with its countless fruits of the divine life of
truth and love, is an imperfect commentary on the sketch drawn by
the evangelists with childlike simplicity, yet unfathomable depth,
and with such general and lasting effect as could not be produced
by the highest arts of historical composition. The complete cata-
logue of virtues could give no adequate view of the great pecu-
liarity in the character of Jesus, the absolute symmetry of all
moral faculties, the perfect inward harmony, unruffled by the
slightest passion or selfishness, never a moment withdrawn from
the closest communion with the Father in heaven, or from
unreserved devotion to the welfare of mankind. Ilerc is truly
the fountain of life and peace. Here is the highest union of
piety and virtue, of love to God and love to man, ever seen uj)on
earth. Here is the " holy of holies" of humanity, before which
infidelity itself feels an irresistible awe. Even a Eousscau
exclaimed : " Socrates lived and died like a sage, but Jesua
Christ lived and died like a God !"
' Conip. Jno. xxi. 25.
§ 15. JESUS CHRIST. 57
The divinity of Christ, and his whole mission as Redeemer, is
an article of faith, and, as such, above logical or mathematical
demonstration. Yet it forces itself irresistibly upon the thinking
mind.
It appears, in the first place, in his own express testimony
respecting himself. This must be either true, or else fearfully
presumptuous, and indeed downright blasphemy. But how can
the latter supposition stand a moment before the moral purity
and dignity of Jesus, revealed in his every word and work, and
acknowledged by the general voice even of Unitarians and Ration-
Jilists ? The concession of the human perfection of Jesus involves
the truth of his testimony respecting his own divinity, and of
all those expressions in which he claims divine names, attributes,
and worship. Self-deception, in a matter so momentous, and
with a mind in other respects so clear and so sound, is of course
equally oat of the question. Thu.s we are shut up to the divinity
of Christ ; and reason itself must at last bow in silent awe before
the tremendous word ; "I and the Father are one ! " and resjiond
witlj sceptical St. Thomas : " My Lord and my God ! "
To the same purpose are the immense efiects of the manifesta-
tion of Jesus, lying far beyond all human power ; the history of
the last eighteen hundred years, which testifies on every page
the moral glory and irresistible attraction of his holy name ; and
the faith of the church, which is at this day as lively and power-
ful as ever, and more widely spread than ever before. The
rationalistic and mythical methods of explaining the gospels,
really explain nothing at all ; they only substitute for the super-
rational and supernatural miracle in which they will not believe,
an irrational and unnatural wonder ; they make the great fact
of the universal Christian church a stream without a source, a
house without a foundation, an effect without a cause, a pure
absurdity. Against these we may quote with full right a re
markable testimony uttered by Napoleon on the rock of St.
Helena, in full view of his own unrivalled career of victoiy and
defeat. " I know men," said he to General Bertrand ; " and I
tell you, Christ was not a man. * * * Everything about Christ
58 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
astonislies me. His spirit overwlielms and confounds me. There
is no comparison between him and any other being. He stands
single and alone. Alexander, Ctesar, Charlemagne, and I, have
founded empires. But on what rest the creations of our genius ?
On force. Jesus alone founded his kingdom on love; and at
this hour millions of men would die for him."
Yes; millions of the most enlightened, the noblest and the
best of men, have freely died, and millions are now ready to die
for the name of Jesus, while hardly one would lay down his life
for Alexander or Caesar or Napoleon, for Socrates or Plato. In
this single thought lies an unanswerable argument for the divinity
of Christ.
Besides the artless, but for this reason all the more trustworthy
and impressive portrait in the gospels, we have from outside the
church a striking testimony concerning Christ from the mouth
of the learned Jewish historian, Josephus, towards the end of the
first century. This testimony, first cited by Eusebius, is so strong,
that several critics since the seventeenth century have declared
it either in whole or in part an interpolation. But it is found in
all the manuscripts of Josephus, who, though no Christian, yet,
as the historian of his nation and age, could not have passed over
Christ in utter silence ; the less, since he mentions also John the
Baptist. The. internal difficulty, that with such a persuasion of
the ]\Iessiahship of Jesus he could not have remained a Jew, may
possibly be solved by the consideration of his eclecticism and his
acknowledged want of consistency and strong character. We
here give his testimony, marking in notes the passages most
liable to suspicion, from his Antiquities of the Jews, composed
about the year 90 : —
"jSTow there rose about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be
law fid to call him a man ; for he was a doer of wonderful works,^
a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He
carried away wdth him many of the Jews and also many of the
Greeks. He was the Christ.^ And after Pilate, at the sugges-
' irapaSd^cov cpyu)v TTOiijrfis. " o X/iioroj ouruj t)ii.
§ 16. MIRACLE OF PENTECOST, BIRTH-DAY OF THE CHURCH, 59
tion of the principal men among ns, had condemned him to the
cross, his first adherents did not forsake him. For he appeared
to them ahve again the third day •,^ the divine prophets having
foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concern-
ing him. And the tribe of those called Christians, after him, is
not extinct to this day."
§ 16. The Miracle of Pentecost^ and the Birth-day of the Church.
• A.D. 30.
Compare the commentaries on Acts ii. and 1 Cor. xii. and xiv. ; and several
treatises on the speaking with tongues, by Herder, Bleek, Schnecken-
BURGER, WiESELER, Baur, Rossteuscher, Hilgenfeld, and others.
The Jewish Pentecost, the feast of the first-fruits, and of the
giving of the law on Sinai, prefiguring the first spiritual harvest
and the establishment of the covenant of gTace, as the passover
prefigured the atoning death and the resurrection of Christ, re-
ceived in the year of Christ's death (30) an unmeasurable signifi-
cance, as the birth-day pfthe Christian church and the beginning "^
of the third era in the revelation of the triune God. On this day / "fL^piyv
the Holy Spirit, who had hitherto wrought only sporadically and - tj^X^
transiently, took up his permanent abode in mankind as the
Spirit of truth and holiness, with the whole fulness of saving
grace, to apply that grace thenceforth to believers by means of
the word and the sacraments, and to reveal and glorify Christ in
them, as Christ had revealed and glorified the Father.
While the apostles and disciples, a hundred and twenty (ten
times twelve) in number, were assembled in or near the temple
for the morning devotions of the festal day, and were waiting in
prayer for the fulfilment of the promise, the exalted Saviour
poured down from his heavenly throne the fulness of the Holy
Ghost upon them, and founded his church upon earth. Extra-
ordinary signs from heaven, symbols of the purifying and quick-
ening power of the divine Spirit, attended this new creation, and
' i(paiir! yhp airot; Tpirrjv s^wv rijitpav fuv.
60 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
filled tlic multitude of Jews and their companions, who had come
up to the feast from all quarters of the Roman emj^ire, with won-
der and fear. By the baptism of the Spirit and of fire, the apos-
tles were now formally ordained from on high to the work, to
which they had already been called and trained by the Lord.
The Holy Ghost gave them a clear and full view of the person
and work of Christ, and so took possession of their minds, that
they thenceforth proclaimed the gospel by tongue and pen, out of
the fulness of the Spirit and with divine authority, and became
the pillars of the church. This was the original act of inspiration.
It not only enlightened the apostles in knowledge, but trans-
jDorted them into the element of a new, supernatural life, into the
centre of the Christian truth and salvation, and qualified and
solemnly consecrated them to be infallible witnesses of Jesus.
The torrent of the new-creating Spirit and life broke through
the confines of nature and of everyday speech, and burst forth
at first in an act of prayer and self-edification. In an ecstatic
■\' elevation, and in new^ kinds of language corresponding thereto,
the disciples praised the wonderful works of divine love. Tliis
"speaking with tongues," therefore, concerned primarily only
the inspired ones themselves. It was the praise and thanksgiv-
ing of their enraptured souls for the gift received, and was intel-
■^ ligible only to hearers similarly wrought upon by the power from
on high, w^hile the unbelievers scofiingly ascribed the wonderful
effect of the Holy Ghost to excess of wine.
But this speaking with tongues was followed by the intcrpre-
i^tation of tongues ; the rapturous language of the soul in converse
with God, by the sober words of ordinary self-possession for the
benefit of the people.
"While the assembled multitude wondered at this miracle with
widely various emotions, St. Peter, the rock-man, appeared in
the name of all the disciples, and in a clear, simple, and most
suitable address ex|)laincd the supernatural phenomenon as the
work of that Jesus of Nazareth, whom the Jews had crucified,
but who was, by word and deed, by his resurrection from the
dead, his exaltation to the right hand of God, and this effusion
§ 17. ST. PETER AND THE CHURCH AMOXG THE JEWS, 61
of tlie Holy Ghost, accredited as tlie promised Messiah, according
to the express prediction of the Scripture. He at the same time
called upon his hearers to repent and be baptized in the name
of Jesus as the founder and head of the heavenly kingdom, that
even they, though they had crucified the Lord of glory, might
receive forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost whose
wonderful workings they saw in the disciples.
This was the first independent testimony of the apostles, the
first Christian sermon. It resulted in the conversion and baptism
of three thousand persons, gathered as first-fruits into the garners
of the church.
In these first-fruits of the glorified Eedeemer, and in this found-
ing of the new economy of Spirit and gospel, instead of the old
theocracy of letter and law, the typical meaning of the Jewish
Pentecost was gloriously fulfilled. But this birth-day of the
Christian church is in its turn only the beginning, the type and
pledge, of a still greater spiritual harvest and a universal feast
of thanksgiving, when, in the full sense of the prophecy, the
Holy Ghost shall be poured out on all flesh, all the sons and
daughters of men shall walk in its light, and God shall be praised
with new tongues of fire for the completion of his wonderful
work of redeemino; love.
§ 17. jSL Peter and the Church among the Jeios.
Compare the corresponding portions of the works on the Apostolic age men-
tioned in § 8, and the commentaries on Acts iii.-xii. Also Thiersch :
De Stephani protomartyris oratione commentatio exegetica. Marb. 1849.
Meterhoff: Einleitung in die Petrinischen Schriften. Hamb. 1835.
WiNDiscHMANN (R. C.) : Vindiciac Petrinae. Piatisb. 1836. Stexglein
(R. C.) : Ueber den 25 jahrigen Aufenthalt des heil. Petrus in Rom
(Tiibinger Theol. Quartalschrift, 1840). Weiss: Der Petrinische Lehr-
__^.-, begriff. Berl. 1856.^ — Schaff: Jakobus Alphai uncnTakobus der Bruder
des Herrn. BerC 1842! ^"^
The church at Jerusalem became the mother of Jewish Chris-
tianity, and thus of all Christendom. It grew both inwardly
and outwardly under the personal direction of the apostles;
62 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
chiefly of Peter, to whom the Lord had early assigned a j^ecu-
liar prominence in the work of building his church on the immov-
able foundation of " God manifest in the flesh."^ The aj^ostles
were assisted by a number of presbyters, and seven deacons or
persons appointed to care for the poor and the sick. But the
Spirit moved in the whole congregation ; bound to no particular
office. The preaching of the gosjDel, the working of miracles in
the name of Jesus, and the attractive power of a holy walk in
faith and love, were the instruments of progress. The number
of the Christians, or, as they at first called themselves, disciples,
believers, brethren, saints, soon rose to five thousand, who con-
tinued steadfastly under the instruction and in the fellowship of
the apostles, in the daily worship of God and celebration of the
holy Supper with their agajoae or love-feasts. They felt them-
selves to be one family of God, members of one body under one
head, Jesus Christ ; and this fraternal unity expressed itself even
in a community of goods and in love-feasts, — an anticipation, as
it were, of an ideal state at the end of history.
Yet even in this primitive apostolic communitj^ inward cor-
ruption early appeared, and with it also the severity of disci-
pline and self-purification, in the terrible sentence of Peter on
the hypocritical Ananias and Sapphira.
At first Christianity found fiivor with the people. Soon, how-
ever, it had to encounter the same persecution as its divine
founder had undergone, but only, as before, to transform it into
a blessing and to grow thereby.
The persecution was begun by the sceptical sect of the Sad-
ducces, who took offence at the doctrine of the resurrection of
Christ, the centre of all the apostolic j^reaching.
When Stephen, one of the seven deacons of the church at
Jerusalem, a man full of faith and zeal, the forerunner of the apostle
Paul, boldly assailed the perverse and obstinate spirit of Judaism,
and declared the approaching downfall of the Mosaic economy,
the Pharisees also made common cause with the Sadducees against
» Comp. ilatt. xvi. 10-19.
§ 17. ST. PETER AND THE CHURCH AMOXG THE JEWS. 63
the gospel. Thus began the emancij^ation of Christianity from the
temple-worship of Judaism, with which it had till then remained
at least outwardly connected. Stephen himself was fidsely
accused of blaspheming Moses, and after a remarkable address in
his own defence, he was stoned by a mob (a.d. 37), and thus
became the worthy leader of the sacred host of martyrs, whose
blood was thenceforth to fertilize the soil of the church. Frt>m
the blood of his martyrdom soon sprang the great apostle of the
Gentiles, now his bitterest persecutor, and an eye-witness of his
heroism and of the glory of Christ in his dying face.
The stoning of Stephen was the signal for a general persecution,
and thus at the same time for the spread of Christianity over all
Palestine and the region around. And it was soon followed by
the conversion of Cornelius of Cesarea, which opened the door
for the mission to the Gentiles.
After some seven years of rejDOse the church at Jerusalem
suffered a new persecution under king Herod Agrippa (a.d. -i-i).
James the elder, the brother of John, was beheaded. Peter was
imprisoned and condemned to the same fate ; but he was mira-
culously liberated, and then forsook Jerusalem, leaving the
church to the care of James the " brother of the Lord." Euse-
bius supposed that he went at that early period to Eome. But
the book of Acts (xii. 17) says only: "He departed, and went
into another place."
Afterwards we find this apostle again in Jerusalem at the
apostolic council;' then at Antioch, where he came into tempo-
rary collision with Paul ;* then upon missionary tours;' perhaps
among the dispersed Jews in Asia Minor, to whom he addressed
his epistles.* Of a residence of Peter in Eome the New Testa-
ment contains no certain trace, unless, as the church fathers and
many of the best modern expositors think, Eome is intended by
the Babylon mentioned in 1 Pet. v. 13. The entire silence of the
Acts of the Apostles, c. 28, respecting Peter, of the epistle of
Paul to the Eomans, and the epistles written by that apostle from.
' A.D. 50: Acts xv. ^ Gal. ii. 11 sqq. ^ 1 Cor. ix. 5. " 1 Pet. i. U
64 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
Eorae during his imprisonment tliere, in "whicli Peter is not once
named in the salutations, is decisive proof that Peter was not in
that city during most of the time between the years 57 and 63.
But the uniform tradition of the eastern and western churches
is, that he preached the gospel in Eome, and suffered martyrdom
there in the Neronian persecution (a.d. 64 ; according to others,
67 or 68). So say Ignatius of Antioch, Dionysius of Corinth,
Irenaeus of Lyons, Caius of Rome, in the second century ;
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Hippolytus, Tertullian, in the
third ; Lactantius, Eusebius, Jerome, and others in the fourth.
However these testimonies from various men and countries may
differ in particular circumstances, they can only be accounted for
on the supposition of some fact at the bottom ; for they were pre-
vious to any use or abuse of this tradition for hierarchical pur-
poses. But the time of Peter's arrival in Rome, and the length
of his residence there, cannot possibly be ascertained. The
above-mentioned dates of the Acts and of Paul's epistles allow
him only ji^ short period of labor there ; and the subsequent state-
ment of Eusebius and Jerome respecting a twenty or twenty -five
years' episcopate of Peter in Rome, rests unquestionably on a
great chronological mistake.
The cruel persecution, in which Peter was crucified (head down-
wards, according to tradition), and Paul was beheaded, broke out
soon after the terrible conflagration, which in July, 64, accord-
ing to Tacitus, laid half of Rome in ashes. Nero, branded in his-
tory as a moral monster, most probably himself produced this
horrible spectacle, for his own entertainment, to represent the
burning of Troy ; but he charged the incendiarism on the liated
Christians, and so freely exposed them to the popular fury, that
according to the description of the same heathen historian, some
were crucified, others were sewed uji in the skins of wild beasts and
thrown to dogs, and others were smeared Avith ])itcli and burnt
for torches in the garden of the emperor on the Vatican hill !
The infernal tragedy wound uj^ with a grand military procession,
in which Nero fissured as charioteer.
After Peter, James, called the brother of the Lonl, also the
§ 17. ST. PETER AND THE CHURCH AMONG THE JEWS. 65
Just, stands most prominent in the cliurcli of the circumcision.
After the flight of Peter (a.d. 44), he presided as bishop over the
chiirch at Jerusalem until his martyrdom. He was a still more
strict Jewish Christian than his predecessor, who, after the con-
version of Cornehus and the apostoHc council, leaned towards
the Gentile Christian views, and stood between James and Paul.
James is described by Hegesippus as the ideal of a Jewish saint,
xmiting the most scrupulous observance of the ceremonial and
moral law with a decided faith in Christ, " the Lord of glory."
Of all the apostles and first disciples, he was best fitted to con-
nect the Jewish economy with the Christian in that critical time
of the approaching judgment of the holy city, and to lead the
disciples of Moses to Christ. But the Pharisees finally threw
him down from the pinnacle of the temple and stoned him, after
he had prayed, like his Master on the cross : "I pray the Lord,
God, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
According to Hegesippus, he died shortly before the destruction
of the temple; but according to Josephus, some years earlier,.
A.D. 62.
Symeon, a cousin of Jesus, was elected successor of James
after the destruction of the holy city, and died as a martyr under
Trajan, at the great age of a hundred and twenty years. The
next thirteen bishops of Jerusalem, who came, however, in rajDid
succession, were likewise of Jewish descent. Throughout this
period the church at Jerusalem preserved its strongly Israelit-
ish type, but joined with it "the genuine knowledge of Christ,"
and stood in communion with the catholic church, from which
the Ebionites, as heretical Jewish Christians, were excluded.
After the line of the fifteen circumcised bishops had run out,
and Jerusalem was a second time laid waste under Adrian, the
mass of the Jewish Christians gradually merged in the Greek
church.
Most of the twelve apostles, respecting whose lives and for-
tunes the book of Acts is silent, labored at first in Palestine, and
afterwards probably among the Jews of the dispersion to the
utmost limits of the Eoman empire. Thus tradition assigns to
5
66 FIEST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
Thaddeus Edessa, as the field of liis missionary work and martyr-
dom ; to Thomas, Parthia ; to Andrew, Scythia ; to Bartholo-
mew, India. It is certain that the ancient churches in Syria and
Kurdistan, in Egypt and Ethiopia, bear to this day rather the
Jewish-Christian stamp, than the Gentile-Christian or Pauline.
St. Mark, the evangelist and companion of Peter, is made by
a credible tradition the founder of the church of Alexandria, the
centre of the christianization of Egypt,
§ 18. Preparation for the Mission to the Gentiles.
The planting of the church among the Gentiles is mainly the
work of Paul ; but Providence prepared the way for it by
several steps, before this apostle entered upon his sublime mis-
sion.
1. By the conversion of those half-Gentiles and bitter enemies
of the Jews, the Samaritans, under the preaching and baptism
of Philip the evangelist, one of the seven deacons of Jerusalem,
and under the confirming instruction of the apostles Peter and
John,^ the gospel found ready entrance into Samaria, as had
been prophetically hinted by the Lord in the conversation at
Jacob's well.^ But there we meet also the first heretical perver-
sion of Christianity by Simon Magus, whose hypocrisy and
attempt to degrade the gift of the Holy Ghost received from
Peter a terrible rebuke. (Hence the term simony for sordid
traffic in church offices and dignities.) This encounter of the
prince of the apostles with the arch-heretic was regarded in the
ancient church, and fancifully represented, as typifying the rela-
tion of ecclesiastical orthodoxy to deceptive heresy.
2. Somewhat later (between 37 and 40), occurred the conver-
sion of the centurion, Cornelius of Caesarea, a pious proselyte of
the gate, whom Peter, in consequence of a special revelation,
received into the communion of the Christian church directly by
baptism, without circumcision. This bold step the apostle had
to vindicate to the strict Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, who
thought circumcision a condition of salvation, and Judaism the
* Acts viii. ' John iv
§ 19. ST. PAUL AND THE CHURCH AMONG THE GENTILES. 67
only way to Cliristianity.^ Thus Peter laid tlie foundation also
of tlie Grentile-Cliristian cliurcli.
3. Still more important was the rise at about the same time of
the church at Antioch, the capital of Syria. This congregation,
formed under the influence of the Hellenist Barnabas of Cyprus
and Paul of Tarsus, seems to have consisted from the first of con-
verted heathens and Jews. It thus became the mother of Gentile
Christendom, as Jerusalem was the mother and centre of Jewish.
In Antioch, too, the name " Christian " first appeared,^ which
was soon everywhere adopted by the disciples, as well denoting
their nature and mission as the followers of Christ, the divine-
human prophet, priest, and king.
§ 19. St. Paul and the CJiurch among the Gentiles.
I. The second part of the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of Paul
II. Pearson: Annales Paulini. Lond. 1688. Palet: Horae PauUnae, or, The
Truth of the Scripture History of Paul evinced by a comparison of
the Epistles, which bear his name, with the Acts of the Apostles and
with one another. Lond. 1790 (and frequently since). Lord Lyttle-
ton: Conversion of St. Paul. Lond. 1790. Hemsen: Der Apostel
Paulus. Grott. 1830. Usteri : Entwicklung des PauUnischen LehrbegriflFs.
Ziir. 6th ed. 1851. Baur: Paulus. Tiib. 1847. Wieseler: Chrono-
logic des Apostol. Zeitalters. Gott. 1848. Contbeare & Howson:
The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. Lond. 1853. 2 vols., and N. York,
1854. 2nd ed. Lond. 1856. Ad. Morton: Der Apostel Paulus (five
D'scourses from the French). Elberf. 1854. H. Ewald: Die Send-
schreiben des Apostels Paulus iibersetzt und erklart. G-ott. 1857.
Comp. also the Commentaries on the several Epistles of Paul, especially
those of Tholuch, Olsliausen, Fritzschej Be Wette, Meyer, Alforcl, Hodge,
the Commentaries on the second part of Acts by Baumgarten, Alexander,
Hachett, etc., and the relevant parts of Neander, Thiersch, Lange, Schaff,
on the Apost. Age.
St. Paul, the great Apostle of the Grentiles, who decided the
victory of Christianity as a universal religion, and who labored
more, both in word and deed, than all his colleagues, was of
strictly Jewish parentage, but was born a Eoman citizen in the
renowned Grecian commercial and literary city of Tarsus, in the
' Acts X. and xL ' Acts xi. 26.
6S FIKST TERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
province of Cilicia. lie received a learned Jewish education in
the school of the Pharisean Rabbi, Gamaliel ; not remaining an
entire stranger to Greek literature, as his style, his dialectic method,
his allusions to heathen religion and philosophy, and his occa-
sional quotations from heathen poets show. Thus, a "Hebrew
of the Ilebrews'" yet at the same time a native Hellenist, and a
Roman citizen, he combined in himself, so to speak, the three
great nationalities of the ancient world, and was endowed with
all the natural qualifications for a universal apostleship. He
could argue with the Pharisees as a son of Abraham, of
the tribe of Benjamin, as a disciple of the renowned Gamaliel,
surnamed " the Glory of the Law," and as one of the straitest of
their sect. He could address the Greeks in their own beautiful
tongue, and with the force of their strong logic. Clothed with
the dignity and majesty of the Roman people, he could travel
safely over the whole empire with the watchword : Civis Romanus
sum.
By his extraordinary talents and energy of character Saul of
Tarsus soon rose to eminence among the Jewish divines; put
himself at the head of the persecution against the Christians,
whom he hated as apostates from the divine religion of the Old
Testament; and labored in honest and ignorant zeal, yet not
without heavy guilt, to root out their name from the earth.
But when, not content with the martyrdom of Stephen, he
had obtained full power from the Sanhedrim, and " breathing out
threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of Jesus," had
started for the Syrian city of Damascus, he was suddenly arrested
by the hand of divine grace, and brought out of darkness into
the marvellous light of the gosjjel (a.d. 37). That Jesus, whom,
in the persons of the disciples, he fanatically persecuted, appeared
from his heavenly glory, and transformed the raging Saul into
the praying Paul, the self-righteous Pharisee into the humble
Christian, the most dangerous enemy of the church into her most
zealous friend. He yielded in true repentance to this over-
whelming proof of the Messiahship of Jesus, and in childlike
' Phil, ill 5.
§ 19. ST. PAUL AND THE CHUECH AMONG THE GENTILES. 69
faith in Mm lie found forgiveness, peace, and tlie power of holi-
ness, which he had vainly sought in the way of the law. The
divine-human person and the atoning work of Christ became to
him " wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemp-
tion." Henceforth he devoted his fruitful mind, his zealous
heart, and his energetic will wholly to the service of Christ, and
in that service he found his freedom, his happiness, and his
glory.
The conversion of Paul was also his call to the apostolic office ;
and the suddenness of his change, the greatness of the divine
mercy to him, the bold contrast between his new life and his old,
all eminently fitted him to preach the unmerited grace of Grod
and justification by faith, and to take the lead in the conversion
of the Gentiles.
But he did not enter fully on his apostolic work, until, seven
years later, he received a still clearer revelation in the temple at
Jerusalem.' The intervening time, after a brief intercourse with
Ananias and other Christians of Damascus, he spent partl}^ in
retired prejjaration in the Arabian desert, partly in subordmate
labors as evangelist and assistant to his senior Barnabas in build-
ing up the church at Antioch. The Jewish apostles seem to
have suspected at first the genuineness of his conversion,'' and not
to have put full confidence in him till the fruits of his labors
among the heathen placed his divine call and his peculiar mis-
sion beyond all doubt.
Glance a moment at the general character of his grand labors
for the propagation of Christianity. Though endowed with the
authority of the Holy Ghost, he still took from the church at
Antioch a solemn commission to preach to the Gentiles.^ He
made this mother-church of Gentile Christendom the centre of
his missionary tours. He followed in general the current of
history, of commerce, and of civilization, from east to west, from
Syria to Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. In the larger and more
influential cities,' Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, he resided a
considerable time. From these salient points he sent the gospel
' Acts xxii. 17-21 " Actsix. 26. ■" Acts xiii. 2, 3.
70 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
bv liis pupils and fellow-laborers into the surrounding towns and
villages. Wliere there was a synagogue, be always addressed
bimself first to tbe Jews and proselytes, taking up the regular
lessons of tbe Old Testament scriptures, and demonstrating
tbeir fulfilment in Jesus of Nazaretb. But almost uniformly be
found tbe balf-Jews, or proselytes of tbe gate, and tbe beatben,
more open to tbe gospel tban bis own bretbren ; and bis congre-
gations were generally a mixture of botb Jews and Gentiles. In
noble self-denial be earned bis subsistence witb bis own bands,
as a tent-maker, tbat be migbt not be burdensome to bis congre-
gations (composed mostly of tbe poorer classes), tbat be migbt
preserve bis independence, stop tbe moutbs of bis enemies, and
testify bis gratitude to tbe infinite mercy of tbe Lord, wbo bad
called bim from bis beadlong, fanatical career of persecution to
tbe office of an apostle of free grace. Only as an exception did
be receive gifts from tbe Christians at Pbilipj^i, wbo were pecu-
liarly dear to bim ; tbougb be repeatedly enjoins upon tbe
cburcbes to care for tbe temporal support of tbeir teachers wbo
break to them tbe bread of eternal life. Of tbe innumerable
difficulties and dangers and sufferings, which be encountered
witb Jews, heathens, and false brethren,^ we can hardly form an
adequate idea ; for the book of Acts is only a summary record.
But by the grace of God, which was sufficient for bim, be more
than conquered them, and laid all tbe glory at the foot of the
cross.
Luke, his faithful companion, mentions three great missionary
journeys of tbe Gentile apostle. But Paul must have made
many excursions besides ; for he preached tbe gospel in all tbe
countries between Jerusalem and Illyria on the coast of the
Adriatic, everywhere seeking new fields of labor, where Christ
was not yet known, tbat be migbt not build on any other man's
foundation."
1. On his first great tour tbe apostle set out, with Barnabas
and Mark, in tbe year 45, by tbe special direction of tbe Holy
Ghost through the prophets of tbe congregation at Antiocb. He
' Conip. 1 Cor. xi. 23 sqq. ' Rom. xv. 19, 20.
§ 19. ST. PAUL AND THE CHURCH AMONG THE GENTILES. 71
traversed tlie island of Cyprus and several provinces of Asia
Minor. The conversion of the Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus,
at Paphos ; the rebuke and punishment of the Jewish sorcerer,
Elymas ; the marked success of the gos|)el in Pisidia, and the
bitter opposition of the unbelieving Jews ; the miraculous heal-
ing of a cripple at Lystra; the idolatrous worship there offered
to Paul and Barnabas by the superstitious heathens, and its sud-
den change into hatred against them as enemies of the gods ; the
stoning of the missionaries, their escape from death, and their
successful return to Antioch, are the leading incidents of this tour.
2. After the apostolic council at Jerusalem and the temporary
adjustment of the difference between the Jewish and Grentile
branches of the church, Paul undertook, in the year 51, a second
great journey, which decided the Christianization of Europe.
He took Silas for his companion. Having first visited his old
churches, he proceeded, with the help of Silas and the young
convert Timothy, to establish new ones through the pro^dnces
of Phrygia and Galatia, till, in answer to the Macedonian cry :
"Come over and help us!" he crossed from Troas into Greece.
In Greece he preached the gospel with great success, first in
Philippi, where he converted the purple-dealer, Lydia, and the
jailor, and was imprisoned with Silas, but miraculously deli-
vered and honorably released; then in Thessalonica, where he
was persecuted by the Jews, but left a flourishing church; in
Beroea, where the converts show^ed exemplary zeal in searching
the Scriptures; in Athens, where he reasoned with the Stoic
and Epicurean pliilosophers, and declared on the Areopagus
"the unknown God;" and lastly in Corinth. In this city, the
commercial centre between east and west, a flourishing seat of
wealth and culture, but of corruption too, the apostle spent
eighteen months, and under almost insurmountable difficulties
he built up a church, which exhibited all the virtues and all the
faults of the Grecian character under the influence of the gospel,
and which he honored with two of his most important epistles.
In the spring of 54 he returned by way of Ephesus, Caesarea, and
Jerusalem to Antioch.
72 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
3. Towards the close of the same year Paul went to Ephesus,
and in this renowned capital of proconsular Asia and of the wor-
ship of Diana, he fixed for three years the centre of his missionary
work ; then visited his churches in Macedonia and Achaia, and
remained three months more in Corinth and the vicinity. Dur-
ing this period he wrote the epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians,
and Romans.
4. In the spring of 58 he journeyed, for the fifth and last time, to
Jerusalem, by way of Philippi, Troas, Miletus (where he deli-
vered his affecting valedictory to the Ephesian elders). Tyre, and
Caesarea, to carry to the poor brethren in Judaea a contribution
from the Cliristians of Greece, and by this token of gratitude and
love to cement the two branches of the apostolic church more
firmly together. But some fanatical Jews, who bitterly hated
him as an apostate and a demagogue, raised an uproar against
him at Pentecost ; charged him with profaning the temple, be-
cause he had taken into it the Greek, Trophimus; dragged him
out of the sanctuary, lest they should defile it with blood ; and
would undoubtedly have killed him, had not Claudius Lysias,
the Eoman tribune, who lived near by, come promptly with his
soldiers to the spot. This officer rescued Paul from the mob,
set him the next day before the Sanhedrim, and after a tumultu-
ous and fruitless session of the council, and the discovery of a
plot against his life, sent him, with a strong military guard and
a certificate of innocence, to the procurator Felix, in Caesarea.
Here the apostle was confined two whole years (58-60), await-
ing his trial before the Sanhedrim, uncondemned, occasionally
speaking before Felix, apparently treated with comparative
mildness, visited by the Christians, and in some way not known
to us promoting the kingdom of God.
After the accession of the new and better procurator, Festus,
Paul, as a Iloman citizen, a])pcaled to the tribunal of Caesar, and
thus opened the way to the fulfilment of his long-cherished de-
sire to preach the Saviour of the world in the world's metropolis.
Ilaving once more testified his innocence, and spoken for Christ
in a masterly defence before Festus, King Ilerod Agrippa II., his
§ 19. ST. PAUL AND THE CHURCH AMONG THE GENTILES. 73
guests, and tlie most distingiiislied men of Caesarea, he was
sent in the autumn of the year 60 to the emperor. After a stormy
voyage and a shipwreck, which detained the vessel over winter
at Malta, the apostle, with a few faithful companions, reached
Rome in the spring of the following year.
Here he spent at least two years in easy confinement, awaiting
the decision of his case, and surrounded by friends and fellow-
laborers. He preached the gospel to the soldiers of the imperial
body-guard, who attended him ; wrote letters to his distant
churches in Asia Minor and Greece; watched over all their
s|3iritual affairs ; and completed in bonds and imprisonment his
apostolic fidehty to the church.
5. With the second year of Paul's imprisonment in Rome the
account of the Acts breaks off. As to the result of the trial and
the close of the apostle's life we are in the dark. A subsequent
but not sufficiently clear and reliable tradition says, that he was
acquitted on the charge of the Sanhedrim, and after travelling
again in the East, and also into Spain, was a second time im-
prisoned in Rome. This account would relieve many difficulties
in his pastoral epistles ; but is on other grounds very improbable.
Thus much, however, the unanimous testimony of antiquity
makes certain : that Paul suffered martyrdom in Rome (during
the Neronian persecution, or shortly before), and that, as a
Roman citizen, he was put to death by the sword, not, like Peter,
by the cross. His readiness for this sealing act of devotion to
Christ he himself expresses in his last epistle^ in the triumphant
words : " I have fought the good fight ; I have finished my course ;
I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the
crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge,
shall give me at that day ; and not to me only, but to all them
also, that love his appearing."
Thus ended the earthly course of this great teacher of nations,
this apostle of justifying faith and of evangehcal freedom. But
he yet speaks in his wonderful epistles, which far exceed in value
all the classical literature put together, and are to this day, as
» 2Tim.iv. T, 8.
74 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
they have been for eigliteen centuries past, an inexhaustible source
of instruction and comfort, the richest mine of the doctrines of
free grace, an armory against lifeless formalism and mechanical
obedience to the letter, and the mightiest lever of evangelical
reform and progress in the church.
§ 20. Collision and Reconciliation of Jewish and Gentile
Christianity.
All the Christians of the first generation were converts from
Judaism or heathenism. It could not be expected that they
should suddenly lose the influences of opposite kinds of train-
ing and the differences of their religious views, and blend at
once in unity. It must take an intercommunion of several gene-
rations to accomplish such a union. Hence the difference be-
tween Jewish and Gentile Christianity throughout the apostolic
age, more or less visible in all departments of ecclesiastical life,
in missions, doctrine, worship, and government. At the head
of the one division stood Peter, the apostle of the circumcision ;
at the head of the other, Paul, to whom was intrusted the apos-
tleship of the uncircumcision.^ In another form the same
difference even yet appears between the different branches of
Christendom. The Catholic church is Jewish-Christian or Petrine
in its character ; the evangelical is equally Gentile or Pauline.
And the individual members of these bodies lean to one or the
other of these leading types.
The relation between these two fundamental forms of apostolic
Christi^anity is in general that of authority and freedom, law and
gospel, the conservative and the progressive, the objective and
the subjective. These antithetic elements are not of necessity
mutually exclusive. They are mutually complemental, and for
perfect life they must exist in union. But in reality they often
run to extremes, and then of course fall into irreconcilable con-
tradiction. Exclusive Jewish Christianity sinks into Ebionism ;
exclusive Gentile Christianity into Gnosticism.
The Jewish converts at first very naturally adhered as closely
' Gal. il 7-9.
§ 20. JEWISH AND GENTILE CHRISTIANITY. 75
as possible to tlie sacred traditions of their fathers. They could
not believe that the rehgion of the Old Testament, revealed by
God himself, should pass away. They indeed regarded Jesus as
the Saviour of Gentiles as well as Jews ; but they thought Juda-
ism the necessary introduction to Christianity, circumcision and
the observance of the whole Mosaic law the sole condition of an
interest in the Messianic salvation. And, offensive as Judaism
was, rather than attractive, to the heathen, tliis principle would
have utterly precluded the conversion of the mass of the Gentile
world. The apostles themselves were at. first trammelled by this
Judaistic prejudice, till taught better by the special revelation to
Peter before the conversion of Cornelijis.^
But even after the baptism of the uncircumcised centurion, and
Peter's defence of it before the church of Jerusalem,^ the old
leaven still wrought in many Jewish Christians, especially such
as had belonged to the bigoted sect of the Pharisees. These in-
sisted on the observance of the whole ceremonial law as necessary
to salvation ; while the more liberal Jewish converts, with the
Gentile, considered living faith in Jesus Christ sufiicient. This
difference of opinion produced a feeling between the two leading
churches of Jerusalem and Antioch, which became the more
dangerous as the conversion of the Gentiles advanced under
Paul, and threatened to cast Jewish Christendom into the shade.
Envy and jealousy united with religious prejudice, and the infant
church was threatened, in only the second decennary of its exist-
ence, with a division into two hostile parties.
To avert this calamity, the apostles, elders, and brethren held
in Jerusalem, in the year 50, a council, which succeeded in har-
monizing the conflicting views.^ At this first ecclesiastical synod,
the point in controversy, the import of the Mosaic law, or, in a
more general view, the relation of Christianity to Judaism and
heathenism, was privately and publicly discussed by the repre-
sentatives of both parties in the church. The Jewish apostles,
Peter and James, and the Gentile apostles, Paul and Barnabas,
agreed that faith in Christ is the sole condition of salvation ;
' Acts X. 9-16. ' Acts xi. ^ Acts xv. and Gal. ii.
76 FIRST PERIOD, A.D. 1-100,
acknowledged, cacli party to the other, the peculiar grace and
mission intrusted to it by the common Lord; and exchanged
the hand of fraternal fellowship. The uncircumcised Gentile
Christians, on the motion of James, who, as head of the church
of Jerusalem, probably presided in the council, were recognised
as full members of tlie Christian church, but on condition of
their abstaining from certain practices particularly offensive to
pious Jews, from every form of carnal uncleanness, from eating
meat offered to idols, and from tasting blood or strangled ani-
mals. These three prohibitions occur among the so-called Koa-
chian precepts, and were also laid on the proselytes of the gate.
The council at the same time published this compromise in a
pastoral letter to the churches, composed probably by James ;^
and thus, by moderation and mutual concession m the spirit of
peace and brotherly love, the first great controversy of the Chris-
tian church was happily settled.
Still it must not be supposed, that the difference between the
two great divisions of the apostolic church thenceforth entirely
disappeared. On the contrary, there was yet a host of Judaizing
teachers, who, appealing chiefly, though without sufficient cause,
to the authority of James of Jerusalem, continued to overvalue
the formal observance of the law, could never rise to the idea of
evangelical freedom, hated Paul as a dangerous apostate and
revolutionist, and incessantly endeavored to undermine his
authority and undo his work in almost all his churches. Nearly
every one of his epistles bears witness to this fact, especially the
epistles to the Galatians and the Corinthians. Against no errorists
does he so often and so earnestly contend, as against these narrow-
minded pharisaic Christians, these intolerant slaves of the letter,
these "false brethren" of the circumcision.
The temporary inconsistency even of Peter at Antioch, which
occurred after the apostolic council, and for which he was so
severely reproved by Paul before the assembled congregation,^
shows how hard it was, under certain circumstances, even for ar
* Comp. tlio form of salutation {x<iipc^if) Acts xv. 2:5 with James L 1.
» Gal. ii. 11-21.
n\.
§ 20. JEWISH AND GENTILE CHRISTIANITY. 77
apostle, to maintain his more liberal views in tlie face of tlie
scrupulous Jewish. Christians. But the fault he committed on that
occasion being only one of practice, not of theory, only a weak-
ness of character, not an error in doctrine, ]m)ves nothing against
his inspiration and infallibilit}-. This collision, too, was of course
only momentary, and could not long interrupt the harmonious
cooperation of the apostles. Paul mentions the infirmity of Peter
to humble and encourage us ; and Peter, who here seems to sub-
mit with rare humility to be corrected by a later-called and pro-
bably younger colleague, afterwards^ refers with touching self-
denial to the epistles of his "beloved brother Paul," in one of 1 / ,^
which his own Jblunder is recorded. ,', J
The conflict of Jewish and Gentile, or, if any please, Petrine / J"^^^
and Pauline Christianity, continued to agitate the churches, more y^riA^i*'^
or less, till the death of the two leading apostles ; since the churches /^-^-t^-sLif^
were composed mostly of a mixture of circumcised and uncir-
cumcised converts. . , ^
Then came the terrible judgment on stiff-necked, unbelieving
Judaism, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple (a.d. 70),
according to the express prediction of Christ.*^ This blasted for
the present all hope of converting the Jewish nation in a mass,
and could not but tell effectively on the complete emancipation
of the Christian Church from the Jewish economy thus rejected
now by God himself.
Meanwhile also a new native Christian generation arose ; and
thus the greatest national and religious antagonism of the old
world disappeared in the unity of the one catholic church of
Christ.
This third and last stadium of the apostolic period occupied
the last thirty years of the first century, and is represented by
the apostle John, who outlived all his colleagues, and accom-
panied the church to the threshold of the second century. It
may therefore be distinguished from the Petrine and Pauline, the
Jewish-Christian and Gentile-Christian sTadia, as the Johannean ,
or, so to speak, the purely Christian age.
' 2 Pet. iii. 15. " Matt, xxiv., etc.
78 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
§ 21. St. John, and the Last Stadium of the Apostolic Period.
I. The Gospel, Epistles, and Revelation of John. — Irenaeus : Adv. haer. II.
22. III. 3. V. 30. Clemens Alex. : Quis dives salvus, c. 42. Tertul-
LiAN : De praescr. c. 36. Eusebius : H. E. III. 18-23. V. 24. Jerome :
Ad GraL 6. De vir. ill. c. 9. Augustine : Tract. 224 in Evang. Joann.
II. Besides the relevant parts of the works on the Apostolic church mentioned
in § 8, see the Commentaries on the writings of John by Calvin, Lampe,
Liicke, Olshausen, Tholuek, Luthardt, Diisterdieck, Meyer, De Wette-
Briickner, Bloomfield, Alford, &c. ; and the works on the Johannean
type of doctrine by Frommann, Leipz. 1839, Kostlin, Berl. 1843, Recss,
Strassb. 1847, and Schmid, Stuttg. 1853. (See Lit. in § 22.^
Jolin, the beloved disciple and bosom friend of Jesus, the
great evangelist and seer of the new covenant, the son of thun-
der and the apostle of love, contemplative, reflective, mystic in
spirit, was, during the first stadium of the apostolic church, cast
into the shade by the practical, versatile, organizing genius of
Peter, but walked by his side in mysterious silence, as if destined
for some great work which none of his colleagues could perform.
If Peter was appointed by the Lord to lay the foundation of the
apostolic church, and Paul to build the main structure thereon,
John, the apostle of completion, was to erect the dome, whose
top should lose itself in the glory of the new heaven.
His great work was not accomplished till the Lord had called
his older colleagues away from the earthly stage of action, and
had condemned the obstinate Jewish nation in the destruction of
their holy city. After the martyrdom of Paul, John entered
into the labors of that apostle in Asia Minor, and made Ephesus
the centre of his later ministry, from the Neronian persecution
to the end of the first century. During the second Koman per-
secution under the tyrannical and suspicious Domitian, he was
banished in the year 95 to the lonely island of Patmos ; and here
received and recorded the revelation of the struggles and vic-
tories of the church of Christ, down to the new heavens and
new earth.
After the accession of Nerva, A.D. 96, the apostle whom Jesus
loved, returned to Ephesus, and continued to superintend the
§ 21. THE LAST STADIUil OF THE APOSTOLIC PERIOD. 79
congregcations of Asia Minor, to combat false teachers, to rescue
tlie lost, and to hold all the churches together in harmony and
love. When too weak to deliver long discourses, the venerable
patriarch had himself carried to the place of worship, and preached
the sum of all Christianity in the old yet ever new command-
ment : " Little children, love one another." Love was the centre
of his theology, and the theme of his life. The love of God in
Christ is with him the root of all doctrine ; the love of the re-
deemed for God and one another, the root of all morality. This
last representative of j^rimitive Christianity died not by violence,
like most of the other apostles, but in the reign of Trajan (98-
117) he fell asleep in the arms of his disciples. A misapprehen-
sion of the Saviour's mysterious words : " If I will, that he tarry
till I come, what is that to thee?"^ gave rise to the significant
legend, that John did not die at all, but is only slumbering,
moving the. grave-mound with his breath, till the final return of
the Lord.
Asia Minor was at that time the principal field on which the
Christianity of Peter and Paul was develoiDing itself against perse-
cution without and incipient corruption within ; especially against
heresy, now clothed in the Judaistic garb of a stifi", narrow legal-
ism and ritualism, now in the wild heathen dress of antinomian-
ism and spiritualism. St. John, originally an apostle of the
Jews and the intimate colleague of Peter, afterwards the successor
of the Gentile apostle Paul, but surviving both, and contempo-
rary with the third native Christian generation, was admirably
qualified to sum up the results of the previous labors, to reconcile
the Jewish and Gentile Christianity both in theory and in prac-
tice, to give to the church the unity of truth and love, and to
secure it thus against all enemies without or within. Through
his intimacy with the Lord, his religious depth and fervor, and
his large experience, he was best fitted also to complete the litera-
ture of the New Testament, and especially to lead the church, by
the purest and loftiest exhibition of the life of the incarnate Son
of God, to the highest grade of knowledge ; and thus at the same
' John xxi. 22.
80 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
time to furnisli the most effectual positive refutation of the rising
Ebionistic and Gnostic errors concerning the person and work
of Christ, which, like the shades of night, must fly before the sun
of truth.
The vigorous life of the Asiatic church in the second century
bore witness to this consummating efficiency of John. But the
abiding and indestructible monuments of his labors are his writ-
ings, in which truth and love, earnestness and mildness, power
and meekness, religious depth and childlike simj^licity, the bold-
ness of the eagle and the gentleness of the dove, are wonderfully
blended, and through which the Christian world enters daily into
the inmost sanctuary of the apostolic theology and religion.
§ 22. UNITY OF THE APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE. 81
CHAPTER III.
THE APOSTOLIC THEOLOGY AND LITERATURE.
Christ. Friedr. Schmid : Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Stuttg.
1853. 2 vols. E. Reuss : Histoire de la theologie chretienne au siecle
apostolique. Strassb. 1852. 2 vols. Ldtterbeck (R. C.) : Die jST. T.
lichen Lehrbegriffe, oder Untersuchungen iiber das Zeitalter der Reli-
gionswende. Mainz. 1852. 2 vols. Meissner: Die Lehre der AposteL
Leipz. 1856. Gr. V. Lechler : Das apostolische und nachapost. Zeitalter
mit Riicksicht auf Unterschied und Einheit in Lehre und Leben. 2Aufl.
Stuttg. 1857. Comp. also Neander, Thiersch^ Schaff, Lange, on the
Apostolic Age.
§ 22. Unit!/ of the Apostolic Doctrine.
Christianity is primarily not merely doctrine, but life, a new
divine creation, a saving fact, first personally embodied in Jesus
Christ, the incarnate Word, the God-man, to spread from him
and embrace gradually the whole body of the race, and bring it
into saving fellowship with God. The same is true of Christianity
as it exists subjectively in single individuals. It begins not with
religious views and notions ; though it includes these, at least in
embryo. It comes as a new life ; as regeneration, conversion,
and sanctification ; as a creative fact in experience, taking up
the whole man with all his faculties and capacities, releasing him
from the guilt and the power of sin, and reconciling him with
God, restoring harmony arid peace to the soul, and at last glori-
fying the body itself Thus the life of Christ is mirrored in his
people, rising gradually, through the use of the means of grace
and the continued exercise of faith and love, to its maturity in
the resurrection.
But the new life necessarily contains the element of doctrine,
or knowledge of the truth. Christ calls himself " the way, the
6
S2 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
trutli, and tlie life." He is himself the personal revelation of
saving truth, or of the normal relation of man to God. Yet this
element of doctrine itself appears in the New Testament, not in
the form of an abstract theory, the product of speculation, a
scientific system of ideas subject to logical and mathematical
demonstration; but as the fresh, immediate utterance of the
supernatural, divine life, a life-giving power, equally practical
and theoretical, coming with divine authority to the heart, the
will, and the conscience, as well as to the mind, and irresistibly
drawing them to itself The knowledge of God in Christ, as
it meets us here, is at the same time eternal life.^
The Bible, therefore, is not only, nor principally, a book for
the learned, but a book of life for every one, an epistle written
by the Holy Ghost to mankind. In the words of Christ and his
apostles there breathes the highest and holiest spiritual power,
the vivifying breath of God, piercing bone and marrow, thrilling
through the heart and conscience, and quickening the dead. The
life, the eternal life, which was from the beginning with the
Father, and is manifested to ns, there comes upon us, as it were,
sensibly, now as the mighty tornado, now as the gentle zephyr ;
now overwhelming and casting us down in the dust of humility
and penitence, now reviving and raising us to the joy of faith
and peace ; but always bringing forth a new creature, like the
word of power, which said at the first creation, "Let there be
light!" Here verily is hol}^ ground. Ilere is the door of eter-
nity, the true ladder to heaven, on which the angels of God are
ascending and descending in unbroken line; No number of sys-
tems of Christian faith and morals, therefore, indispensable as
they are to the scientific purposes of the church and of theology,
can ever fill the place of the Bible, whose words are spirit and
life.
When we say, the New Testament is no logically arranged
system of doctrines and precepts, we are far from meaning that
it has no internal order and consistency. On tlic contrary, it
exhibits the most beautiful harmony, like the external crca-
' John xvii. 3.
§ 22. UNITY OF THE APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE. 83
tion, and like a true work of art. It is tlie very task of the his-
torian, and especially of the theologian, to bring this hidden liv-
ing order to view, and present it in logical and scientific forms.
For this work Paul, the only one of the apostles who received a
learned education, himself furnishes the first fruitful suggestions,
especially in his epistle to the Romans. This epistle follows a
logical arrangement even in form, and approaches as nearly to a
scientific treatise as it could consistently with the fervent, direct,
practical, popular spirit and style essential to the Holy Scrip-
tures and inseparable from their great mission for all Christen-
dom.
The substance of all the apostohc teaching is the witness of
Christ, the gospel, and the free message of that divine love and
salvation, which appeared in the person of Christ, were secured
to mankind by his work, are gradually reahzed in the kingdom
of God on earth, and will end with the second coming of Christ
in glory. This salvation also comes in close connexion with
Judaism, as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, the
substance of all the Old Testament types and shadows. The
several doctrines entering essentially into this apostolic preach-
ing are most beautifully and simply arranged and presented in
what is called the Apostles' Creed, which, though not in its pre-
cise form, yet as regards its matter, certainly dates from the primi-
tive age of Christianity. On all the leading points, the person
of Jesus as the promised Messiah, his holy life, his atoning death,
his triumphant resurrection and exaltation at the right hand of
God, and his second coming to judge the world, the establish-
ment of the church as a divine institution, the communion of
believers, the word of God, and the sacraments of baptism and
the Lord's supper, the work of the Holy Ghost, the necessity of
repentance and conversion, of regeneration and sanctification, the
final completion of salvation io. the day of Jesus Christ, the
resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, — on all these
points the apostles are perfectly unanimous, so far as their writ-
ings have come down to us.
The apostles all drew their doctrine in common from personal
84 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
contact with the divine-human history of the crucified and risen
Saviour, and from the inward ilkimination of the Holy Ghost,
revealing the person and the work of Christ in them, and open-
ing to them his discourses and acts. This divine enlighten-
ment is inspiration, governing not only the composition of the
sacred writings, but also the oral instructions of their authors ;
not merely an act, but a permanent state. The apostles lived
and moved continually in the element of truth. They spoke,
wrote, and acted from the spirit of truth ; and this, not as passive
instruments, but as conscious and free organs. For the Holy
Ghost does not supersede the gifts and peculiarities of nature,
ordained, by the Lord ; it sanctifies them to the service of the
kingdom of God. Inspiration, however, is concerned only with
moral and religious truths, and the communication of what is
necessary to salvation. Incidental matters of geography, his-
tory, archaeology, and of mere j)ersonal interest, can be regarded
as directed by inspiration only so far as they really affect religious
truth.
§ 23. Different Types of the Apostolic Doctrine.
But with all this harmony, the Christian doctrine appears in
the Scriptures in different forms according to the peculiar charac-
ter, education, and sphere of the several sacred writers. The truth
of the gospel, in itself infinite, can adapt itself to every class, to
every temperament, every order of talent, and every habit of
thought. Like the light of the sun, it breaks into various colors
according to the nature of the bodies on which it falls ; like the
jewel, it emits a new radiance at every turn.
The antithesis of Jewish and Gentile Christianity, which wc
have already observed in the ])rovincc of missions, runs through
the entire history of the apostolic period. It rests on the great
religious division in the ante-Christian world, and to some extent
affects even the doctrine, the polity, the worship, and the practi-
cal life of the church. The Jewish converts took the Christian
fiiith into intimate association with the divinely revealed religion
of the old covenant, and adhered as far as possible to their sacred
§ 23. DIFFERENT TYPES OF THE APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE. 85
institutions and rites; wliile tliejieatlien converts, not having
known tlie law of Moses, passed at once from tlie state of nature
to the state of grace. The former represented the historical,
traditional, conservative principle; the latter, the principle of
freedom, independence, and progress.
Accordingly we have two classes of inspired teachers : apos-
tles of the Jews or of the circumcision, and apostles of the Gen-
tiles or of the uncircumcision. That this distinction extends
further than the mere missionarj- field, and in its wide sense enters
into all the doctrinal views and jDractical life of the parties, we
see from the accounts of the apostolic council in Acts xv. and
GaL ii., which was held for the express purpose of adjusting the
difference respecting the authority of the Mosaic law.
But the opposition was only relative, though it caused colli-
sions at times, and even temporary alienation, as between Paul
and Peter at Antioch.^ As the two forms of Christianity had
a common root in the full life of Christ, the Saviour of both
Gentiles and Jews, so they gradually grew together into the unity
of the catholic church. And as Peter represents the Jewish
church, and Paul the Gentile, so John, at the close of the apos-
tolic age, embodies the higher union of the two.
With this are connected subordinate differences, as of tempera-
ment, style, &c. James has been distinguished as the apostle of
the law ; Peter, as the apostle of hope ; Paul, as the apostle of
faith ; and John, as the apostle of love. To the first has been ,
assigned the phlegmatic (?) temperament, in its sanctified Chris-
tian state, to the second the sanguine, to the third the choleric, j
and to the fourth the melancholic ; a distribution, however, only [
admissible in a very limited sense. The four gospels also pre-
sent similar differences; the first having close affinity to the
position of James, the second to that of Peter, the third to that
of Paul, and the fourth representing in its doctrinal element the
spirit of John.
We may therefore distinguish three types of doctrine, under
which all the books of the New Testament may be arranged :
> Gal. u. 11 sqq. ,^ ^'^/^^
86 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
1. The Jewish- CJiristian type, embracing the epistles of Peter,
James, and Judo, the gosjjels of Mattliew and Mark, and to some
extent the Revelation of John; for John is ^^laced by Paul^
among the "pillars" of the church of the circumcision, though
in his later writings he took an independent position above the
distinction of Jew and Gentile. In these books, originally de-
signed mainly, though not exclusively, for Jewish-Christian
readers, Christianity is exhibited in its unity with the Old Testa-
ment, as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets.
James, looking particularly at its element of law, conceives it
as the " perfect law of liberty," thus plainly enough distinguish-
ing it, at the same time, from the imperfect law of bondage. He
accordingly lays great stress on good works, presupposing, how-
ever, faith and the new birth.
Peter brings out more fully the prophetic and christological
character of the gosjDcl, and forms the transition from James to
Paul. Christianity is, in his view, the fulfilment indeed of all
Messianic prophecies, but at the same time itself a prophecy,
cherishing the j^atient and joyful hope of the glorious return of
the Lord and the appearance of the new heavens and new earth.
This prophetic element comes out most freely in the Apocalypsej__
2. The Gentile- Christian theology of Paul, the great apostle of
the Gentiles ; including, with his own writings, the third gospel
and the book of Acts by his disciple Luke, and the anonymous
epistle to the Hebrews. Here Christianity is apprehended in its
absolute and universal character, as a new creation, as life and
freedom, as justification and saving fellowship of faith and love
with the heavenly Father; though without prejudice to the
divine character of Judaism as a needful preparatory dispensa-
tion. This theology especially lays down the doctrine of justi-
fication by faith as its corner-stone, in opposition to the legal
righteousness and self-complacency of Jews and Judaizcrs. Justi-
fication Paul regards as a free act of divine grace, whereby the
sinner, for the sake of the merits of Christ, and on condition of
a living faith, which apprehends and appropriates Christ, is
« Gal. ii.
§ 24. HERETICAL PERVERSIONS OF THE APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE. 87
acquitted of all guilt, received to tlie place of a cliild, and trans-
formed into a new creature, so that liencefortli, being dead to
sin, he lives in Christ and Christ in him, to the giorj of God.
This creative power of free grace the apostle had so wonderfully
experienced in his own sudden conversion, that he made it ever
after the great burden of his preaching.
3. The perfect unity of Jewish and Oeniih Christianity meets
us in the writings of John, in his doctrines of the absolute love
of God in the incarnation of the eternal Logos, and of brotherly
love, resting on this divine foundation. This theology, though
in principle the most profound and ideal, is far less developed,
logically and dialectically, than that of Paul. John speaks from
immediate intuition, and testifies of that which his own eyes
have seen, his ears heard, and his hands handled ; of the glory
of the only-begotten of the Father, which shone, full of grace
and truth, through the veil of his humanity. He deals in few
but colossal ideas and antitheses, as light and darkness, love and
hatred, life and death ; which he sets before us in simple, childlike
style, artless, but sublime. He looks out over the great conflict
of Christ and antichrist to the eternal victory of the truth and
love of him who is the way, the truth, and the life, the beginning
and the end. His knowledge and his representation of Christ
anticipate that " seeing face to face," into which, according to
St. Paul, our partial knowledge, and faith itself, must finally
pass.
These three types of doctrine together exhibit Christianity in
the whole fulness of its life ; and they form the theme for the
variations of the succeeding ages of the church. But Christ is
the key-note, harmonizing all the discords and resolving all the
mysteries of the history of his kingdom.
§ 2-i. Heretical Perversions of the Apostolic Doctrine.
This heavenly body of apostolic truth is confronted with the
ghost of heresy, as were the divine miracles of Moses with the
Satanic juggleries of the Egyptians. The more mightily the spirit
of truth rises, the more active becomes the sj^irit of falsehood.
88 , FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
But in tlic hands of Providence all errors in the history of the
church must redound to the unfolding and the glorious victory
of the truth. Thus they are in history relatively necessary and
negatively justifiable ; though the teachers of them are, of course,
not therefore guiltless. "It must needs be, that offences come;
but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh."
The heresies of the apostolic age are, respectively, the carica-
tures of the several types of the true doctrine. Accordingly we
distinguish three fundamental forms of heresy, which reappear,
with various modifications, in almost every subsequent period.
In this respect, as in others, the apostolic period stands as the
type of the whole future ; and the exhortations and warnings of
the Now Testament against false doctrine have force for every
age.
1. The JuDAiziNG tendency, the heretical counterpart of
Jewish Christianity, so insists on the unity of Christianity with
Judaism, as to sink the former to the level of the latter, and
make the gospel merely a perfected law. It regards Christ also
as a mere prophet, a second Moses ; and denies, or at least wholly
overlooks, his priestly and kingly ofi&ces, and his diyine nature
in general. The Judaizers were Jews in reality, and Christians
only in appearance and in name. They held circumcision and
the whole moral and ceremonial law of Moses to be still binding,
and the observance of them necessary to salvation. Of Chris-
tianity as a new, free, and universal religion, they had no con-
ception. Hence they hated Paul, the liberal apostle of the
Gentiles, as a dangerous ajiostate and revolutionist, impugned
his motives, and everywhere, especially in Galatia and Corinth,
labored to undermine his authority in the churches. The epistles
of Paul, especially that to the Galatians, can never be properly
understood, unless their opposition to this false Jewish Chris-
tianity be continually kept in view.
The same heresy, more fully developed, appears in the second
century under the name oi Ehionism.
2. The opposite extreme is a flilse Gentile Christianity, which
may be called the Paganizing or Gnostic heresy. This cxagge-
§ 24. HERETICAL PERVERSIONS OF THE APOSTOLIC DOCTRINE. 89
rates the Pauline view of the distinction of Christianity from Juda-
ism, sunders Christianity from its historical basis, resolves the real
humanity of the Saviour into a Docetistic illusion, and perverts
the freedom of the gospel into antinomian licentiousness. The
author of this baptized heathenism, according to the uniform
testimony of Christian antiquity, is Simon Magus, ^ who unques-
tionably adulterated Christianity with pagan ideas and practices,
and gave himself out, in pantheistic stjde, for an emanation of
God. Plain traces of this error appear in the later ejDistles of
Paul (to the Colossians, to Timothy, and to Titus), the second
epistle of Peter, the first two epistles of John, the epistle of
Jude, and the messages of the Apocalypse to the seven churches.
This heresy, in the second century, spread over the whole
church, east and west, in the various schools of Onosticism.
3. As attempts had already been made, before Christ, by
Philo, by the Therapeutte and the Essenes, &c., to blend the
Jewish religion with heathen philosophy, especially that of
Pythagoras and Plato, so now, under the Christian name, there
appeared confused combinations of these opposite systems, form-
ing either a Paganizing Judaism, i. e. Gnostic Ebionism, or a
JuDAiziNG Paganism, i. e. Ebionistic Gnosticism, according as
the Jewish or the heathen eleme.nt prevailed. This Syncretis-
Tic heresy was the satanic caricature of John's theology, which
truly reconciled Jewish and Gentile Christianity in the highest
conception of the person and work of Christ. The errors com-
bated in the later books of the ISTew Testament are almost all
more or less of this mixed sort, and it is often doubtful whether
they come from Judaism or from heathenism.
Whatever their differences, however, all these three funda-
mental heresies amount at last to a more or less distinct denial
of the central mystery of the gospel — the incarnation of the Son
of God for the salvation of the world. They make Christ either
a mere man, or a mere superhuman phantom ; they allow, at all
events, no real and abiding union of the divine and human natures
in the person of the Eedeemer. This is just what John gives as
' Acts viii.
90 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
tlie mark of anticlirist/ which existed even in his day in various
forms. It plainly undermines the foundation of the church.
For if Christ be not God-man in the full sense, and that perma-
nently, neither is he mediator between God and men; Chris-
tianity sinks back into heathenism or Judaism, and our hope
fails. All turns at last on the answer to that fundamental ques-
tion : " What think ye of Christ ? " The true solution of this
question is the radical refutation of every error.
§ 25. Rise of the Apostolic Literature,
Comp. the historico-critical Introductions to the New Testament by Hro,
De Wette, Credner, Eeuss, Guericke, Horne, Davidson, Tregelles,
&c., and the above cited commentaries on the apostoHc writings. Also
TniERSCii : Versuch zur HersteUung des historischen Standpunl-ctes fiir
die Kritik der N. Tlichen Schriften. Erl. 1845. Ebrard: Wissenschaft-
liche Kritik der evang. Gesch. 2d ed. Erl. 1850.
Christ wrote nothing ; but is himself the book of life to be
read by all. His religion is not an outward letter of command,
like the law of Moses, but free, quickening spirit ; not a literary
production, but a moral creation ; not a new system of theology
or philosophy for the learned, but the communication of the
divine life to human nature for the redemption of the whole
world. Christ is the personal Word of God, the eternal Logos,
made flesh and dwelling upon earth as the true Shekinah, in
the veiled glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth. He spoke; and all tlic words of his mouth were,
and still are, spirit and life.^ The human heart craves not a
learned, letter-writing, literary Christ, but a wonder-working,
cross-bearing, atoning Redeemer, risen, enthroned in heaven, and
ruling the world ; yet furnishing, at the same time, to men and
angels an inexhaustible theme of holy thoughts, discourses, writ-
ings, and songs of praise.
So, too, the Lord chose none of his apostles, with the single
exception of Paul, from the ranks of the learned ; he did not
' 1 John ii. 22 ; iv. 1-3. ' Joliu vi. G3.
§ 25. RISE OF THE APOSTOLIC LITERATURE. 91
train them to literary autliorsliijD, nor give them, tlirougliout his
earthly life, a single express command to labor in that way.
Plain fishermen of Galilee, unskilled in the wisdom of this world,
but filled with the Holy Spirit of truth and the powers of the
world to come, were commissioned to preach the glad tidings of
salvation to all nations in the strength and in the name of their
glorified Master, who sits on the right hand of God the Father
Almighty, and has promised to be with them to the end of time.
The gospel, accordingly, was first propagated and the church
founded by the personal oral teaching and exhortation, the
"preaching," "testimony," "word," "tradition," of the apostles
and their disciples ; as, in fact, to this day the living word is the
indispensable means of promoting the Christian religion. Nearly
all the books of the New Testament were written between the
years 50 a,nd 70, at least twenty years after the resurrection of
Christ, and the founding of the church ; and the writings of
John still later.
As the apostles' field of labor expanded, it became too large
for their personal attention, and required epistolary correspon-
dence. The vital interests of Christianity, also, and the wants
of coming generations, demanded a faithful record of the life and
teachings of Christ by perfectly reliable witnesses. For oral
tradition, among fallible men, is subject to so many accidental
changes, that it loses in certainty and credibility as its distance
from the fountain-head increases, till at last it can no longer be
clearly distinguished from the additions and corruptions collected
upon it. There was danger, too, of a wilful distortion of the his-
tory and doctrine of Christianity by Judaizing and paganizing
errorists, who had already raised their heads during the lifetime
of the apostles. An authentic written record of the words and
acts of Jesus and his disciples was therefore absolutely indispensa-
ble, not indeed to originate the church, but to maintain it, and
to keep Christianity pure.
Hence seven and twenty books by apostles and apostolic
men, written under the special direction of the Holy Ghost, who
filled the authors from the day of Pentecost. These afford us a
92 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
trutliful and complete picture of the history, the faith, and the
practice of jDrimitive Christianity, "for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness."^
The collection of these writings into a canon, in distinction
both from apocr3^phal or pseudo-apostolic works, and from ortho-
dox yet merely human productions, was the business of the early
church ; and in performing it she was likewise guided by the
Spirit of God and by an unerring sense of truth. It was not fin-
ished to the satisfaction of all till the end of the fourth century,
down to which time seven New Testament books (the " Antile-
gomena" of Eusebius), the second epistle of Peter, the second and
third epistles of John, the anonymous epistle to the Hebrews, the
epistles of James and Jude, and in a certain sense also the Apoca-
lypse of John, were by some considered of questionable author-
ship or value. But the collection was no doubt begun, on the
model of the Old Testament canon, in the first century ;- and the
principal books, the Gospels, the Acts, the thirteen epistles of
Paul, the first epistle of Peter, and the first of John, in a body,
were in general use in the second century, and were read, either
entire or by sections, in public worship, after the manner of the
Jewish synagogue, for the edification of the people.
§ 26. Character of the New Testament.
In these inspired writings we have a true and constant substi-
tute for the personal presence and the oral instruction of Christ
and his apostles. The written word differs from the siDoken only
in form ; the substance is the same, and has therefore the same
authority and quickening power for us as it had for those who
heard it first. Although these books were called forth ajipa-
rently by special occasions, and were primarily addressed to par-
ticular circles of readers and adapted to particular circumstances,
yet, as they present the eternal and unchangeable truth in living
forms, they suit all circumstances and all times. Ilence they arc
to this day not only the sole reliable and pure fountain of primi-
> 2 Tim. iii. 16.
' Comp. 2 Pet. iii. IG, where a collection of Paul's epistles is implied.
§ 26. CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 93
tive Christianity, but also tlie infallible rule of Christian faith
and practice. From this fountain the church has drunk the
water ■ of life for more than fifty generations, and will drink it
till the end of time. In this rule she has a perpetual corrective
for all her faults, and a protective against all error. Theological
systems come and go, and draw from that inexhaustible treasury
their larger or smaller additions to the stock of our knowledge
of the truth ; but they can never equal that universal word of
God, which abideth for ever.
The New Testament evinces its catholic design in its very
style, which alone distinguishes it from all the literary productions
of earlier and later times. The language is the Hellenistic idiom ;
that is, the Macedonian Greek as spoken by the Jews of the dis-
persion in the time of Christ ; uniting, in a regenerated Christian
form, the two great antagonistic nationalities and religions of the
ancient world. The most beautiful language of heathendom and
the venerable language of the Jews are here combined, baptized
with the spirit of Christianity, and made the picture of silver for
the golden ap23le of the eternal truth of the gospel. And indeed
the style of the Bible in general is singularly adapted to men of
every class and grade of culture, affording the child the simple
nourishment for its religious wants, and the profoundest thiiiker
inexhaustible matter of study. The Bible is not simply a popu-
lar book, but a book of all nations and for all societies, classes,
and conditions of men.
The New Testament presents, in its way, the same union of
the divine and human natures, as the person of Christ. In this
sense also " the word is made flesh, and dwells among us." The
Bible is thoroughly human (though without error) in contents
and form, in the mode of its rise, its compilation, its preservation,
and transmission ; yet at the same time thoroughly divine both
in its thoughts and words, in its origin, vitality, energy, and
effect, and beneath the human servant-form of the letter the eye
of faith discerns the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth.^
> Comp. § 22.
94 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
The apostolic "writings are of three kinds : historical, didactic,
and prophetic. To the first class belong the Gospels and Acts ;
to the second, the Epistles ; to the third, the Revelation. They
are related to each other as regeneration, sanctification, and glori-
fication; as foundation, house, and dome. Jesus Christ is the
beginning, the middle, and the end of all. In the Gospels he
■walks in human form upon the earth, and accomplishes the work
of redemption. In the Acts and Epistles he founds the church,
and fills and guides it by his Spirit. And at last, in the visions
of the Apocalypse, he comes again in glory, and with his bride,
the church of the saints, reigns for ever upon the new earth and
in the city of God.
§ 27. The Gospels
The four canonical gospels, or more precisely, the four repre-
sentations of the one gospel,^ pretend not to be full biographies
of Jesus, but aim to give only a selection of the characteristic
features of his life and works, for the practical purpose of leading
their readers to living faith in him as the promised Messiah and
Saviour of the world.^ This they do in perfectly simple, un-
adorned, straightforward, and purely objective style. The authors,
in noble modesty and self-denial, entirely suppress their personal
views and feelings, retire in worshipful silence before their great
subject, and strive to set it forth in all its own power to subdue,
without human aid, every truth-loving and penitent heart.
The first and fourth gospels were composed by the apostles
Matthew and John ; the second and third, under the influence
of Peter and Paul, and by their immediate disciples, Mark and
Luke, so as to be likewise of apostolic origin and canonical
authority.
These works have their common source in the personal inter-
course of the authors with Christ, and in the oral tradition of the
apostles and other eye-witnesses. The tradition, being constantly
repeated in public worship and in private circles, assumed a
fixed, stereotyped form; the more readily, on account of the
' TCTpanop(pov cvayyiXiov, as Ircnaeus calls it ^ CoiiiD. John xx. 30, 31; xxi. 25.
§ 27. THE GOSPELS. 95
reverence of tlie first disciples for every 'word of their divine
Master. Hence the striking agreement of the first three, or
sjmoptical gospels, which, in matter and form, are only varia-
tions of the same theme. Luke used, besides the oral tradition,
written documents on certain parts of the life of Jesus,^ which
doubtless appeared early among the first disciples. It is not
improbable that the gospel of Mark, the confidant of Peter, is
not only a faithful copy of the gospel preached and otherwise
communicated by this apostle, but also rests on Hebrew records
which Peter may have made from time to time under the impres-
sion of the events themselves.
But with all their similarity in matter and style, each of the
Gospels, above all the foarth, has its peculiarities, answering to
the personal character of its author, its special design, and the
circumstances of its readers. The several evangelists present the
infinite fulness of the life and person of Jesus in different aspects
and different relations to mankind ; and they complete each other.
The symbolical poesy of the church compares them with the four
cherubic representatives of the creation, assigning the man to
Matthew, the lion to Marie, the ox to Luke, and the eagle to
John. The apparent contradictions of these narratives suffi-
ciently solve themselves on close examination, at least in all
essential points, and serve only to attest the honesty, impartiahty,
and credibility of the authors.
The Gospel of Matthew was written in Palestine, for Jewish-
Christian readers, and probably first in the Aramaic language.
It exhibits Christ as the last and greatest prophet and lawgiver,
the falfiller of the Old Testament, the Messiah and King of the true
Israel. It follows rather a topical than a chronological arrange-
ment, grouping together the kindred acts and discourses of Jesus ;
as in the sermon on the mount, ch. v. and vii., the parables of ch.
xiii., the discourses against the Pharisees, ch.xxiii., the prophecies
of the second coming, ch. xxiv. and xxv. It is not a mere narrative
of facts, but at the same time a historical argument for the Mes-
^ Luke i. 1-4.
96 FIEST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
siahsliip of Jesus of Nazareth ; and hence everywhere points out
the fulfihnent of the Old Testament prophecies in his life. It is
in some sense the fundamental Gos|)el, the giving of the perfect
law of the new covenant (comp. especially the sermon on the
mount), and thus the evangelical counterpart to the Pentateuch of
the Old Testament.
The Gospel of Mark, according to Eusebius, was composed
at Rome and for Roman readers. It omits the longer discourses
of Jesus, and sets him forth, in fresh and graphic sketches inter-
woven with many small but characteristic incidents, as the Son of
God, the mighty wonder-worker, and the victorious Lion of the tribe
of Judah. It forms the transition from the first or Jewish-Chris-
tian Gospel, to the third or Gentile-Christian ; as the Epistles of
Peter stand, in regard to doctrine, between those of James and
those of Paul.
The Gospel of Luke was plainly designed primarily and
mainly for Gentile-Christian readers, and everywhere betrays
the faithful disciple and comj^anion of Paul, at whose side, most
probably during liis imprisonment at Caesarea and in Rome, be-
tween 60 and 64, it was written. It carefully observes chrono-
logical order, and loves to give prominence to the universal cha-
racter of Christianity. It traces the genealogy of Jesus to Adam,
the father of all men. It makes mention of the seventy disci-
ples, who represent the heathen world, as the twelve apostles
represent the Jewish. It gives the story of the good Samaritan,
who shamed the priest and the Levite ; the parables of the lost
sheep, the prodigal son, the pharisee and publican ; all setting in
the clearest light the doctrine of free, unmerited grace, in o]iposi-
tion to the pride of the Jews in their law, and to the self-righteous-
ness of the Pharisees. Luke portrays Jesus as the ever ready
and able physician of body and soul ; the shepherd seeking the
wandering sheep ; the compassionate friend of all sinners, break-
ing down the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles.
The Gospel of John, the beloved disciple of the Lord, was
produced last of all, at Ephesus, probably not till after the des-
truction of Jerusalem. Its plan is altogether peculiar. It is at
§ 27. THE GOSPELS. 97
once a most welcome complemejit to tlie other Gospels, and an
independent organic whole. The synoptical evangelists present
chiefly the labors of Jesus in Galilee and among the common peo-
ple ; his miracles, his popular, practical, parabolic, and sententious
discourses on the new law and the kingdom of heaven. John
depicts Jesus in Judaea, among the Pharisees and Scribes ; passes
over most of his miraculous cures, but relates the greatest of the
miracles, the turning of water into wine and the raising of
Lazarus ; and communicates with special care the profound me-
taphysical discourses of the Lord on his person and his relation
to the Father, to his disciples, and to the world. He says nothing
of the outward form of the church ; the name does not once
occur in his writings. He omits even the institution of the sacra-
ments. But instead he unfolds to us the spiritual and eternal
essence of the church, the vital union of believers with Christ,.
and their consequent fellowship with one anotlier in brotherly
love ; and gives the discourses of Jesus on the spiritual baptism,
of regeneration,^ and on the inmost essence of the holy supper, the>
mystical, spiritual participation of his flesh and blood, his truly-
human life by a living faith.^ The synoptical evangelists set forth
the deified humanity, John the incarnate divinity, of the same
Saviour. The former ascend from the Son of Man to the Son of
God, and follow their hero from his birth in the stable at
Bethlehem, through his mighty works and fearful passion, to the
right hand of the Father, where, in reward of his labor, " all power
is given unto him in heaven and in earth." The latter begins
with the eternal Son of God, and traces him downwards through
the creation and the prej)aratory steps of his revelation to his
incarnation, nay, to his extreme humihation on the cross, whence
he again takes possession of the glory which he had with the
Father before the world was.
The Gospel of John is pre-eminently the spiritual and ideal;
though at the same time most truly real gospel, pervaded with
an irresistible charm both for the inquiring mind and for the
loving heart. It breathes the peaceful air of eternity, yet betrays
1 Ch. iii. ••' Ch. vi.
98 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
tlie power of the " son of thunder ;" it is sublime as a serapli and
simple as a child, bold as an eagle and gentle as a lamb ; high as
the heavens and deep as the sea. It unites in fairest harmony the
deepest knowledge and the purest love of Christ. It lifts the
A-eil from the holy of holies of the evangelical history, and shows
us the beating heart of the God-man, that we may exclaim with
Thomas in holy joy and adoration : "My Lord, and my God !"
Truly, such a life-picture could come only from the bosom
friend of Jesus, who had drunk deep from the fountain of eternal
truth and love.
§ 28. The Acts of the Apostles.
The book of Acts, though ])laced by the ancient ecclesiastical
division not in the " Gospel," but in the "Apostle," is a direct
continuation of the tliird Gospel, by the same author, and ad-
dressed to the same Theophilus, probably a distinguished Roman.
It presents the progress of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome;
the planting of the church among the Jews by Peter, and among
the Gentiles by Paul. It begins with the ascension of Christ, or
his accession to his throne, and the founding of his kingdom by
the outpouring of the Holy Ghost; it closes with the joyful
preaching of the apostle of the Gentiles in the capital of the then
known world ; the event which substantially decided the victory
of Christianity in the earth. To this objective representation
of the progress of the church, the subjective and biograjDhical
features of the work altogether yield. Before Peter, the hero of
the first or Jewish-Christian division, and Paul, the hero of the
second or Gentile-Christian part, the other apostles quite retire ;
and the lives of even these two appear in the history onh^ so far
as they are connected with the missionary work. In this view
the long-received title of the book, added by some other hand
than the author's, is not altogether correct.
Luke, the faithfid pupil and companion of Paul, was eminently
fitted to produce this first chureli histor}'. For the first part lie
had the aid not only of oral tradition, but also, no doubt, of
Palestinian documents, as in preparing his gospel. Of most of
§ 29. THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 99
the events in the second part he was eye-witness. Probably lie
began the work during the confinement of Paul in Caesarea, and
under his eye ; and finished it during the apostle's imprisonment
in Rome, a.d. 63 or 64. For with this last scene he suddenly
breaks ofi", without informing us of the subsequent fortunes of
Paul. Perhaps he intended to continue his history over the third
and last stadium of the missionary work of the apostolic church ;
but for this period we now have only the last epistles of Paul,
and the restored writings of John.
§ 29. The Catholic Epistles.
The seven catholic or general epistles, which in the old manu-
scripts immediately follow the Acts, are so named from their
encyclical character. Excepting the second and third epistles of
John, they are addressed, not to a single person or congregation,
but to a larger circle of readers, and are therefore much more
free from personal and especial references than the epistles of
Paul. The epistle to the Hebrews, also, is of the same sort,
though it is not reckoned among the Catholic epistles.
The Epistle of James the Just, the brother of Jesus (to be dis-
tinguished from James the Elder, the son of Zebedee, and proba-
bly also from James the Less, the son of Alpheus), was written,
no doubt, at Jerusalem, the metropolis of the ancient theocracy
and of Jewish Christianity, where the author labored and died
at the head of the Christian congregation. It was addressed to
the Jewish Christians of the dispersion, earnestly exhorting them
to practical Christianity and active faith, warning them against
dead orthodoxy, covetousness, pride, and worldliness, and com-
forting them in view of present and approaching trials and
persecutions from the unbelieving Jews. James's doctrine of
justification by faith and Christian works seems at first to con-
tradict Paul's doctrine of justification by free grace through faith
without the deeds of the law. But they only use terms on this
subject in somewhat different senses, as they present different
aspects of the same truth against opposite errors, and thus really
complete and guard each other.
100 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
The First Epistle of Peter, dated from Babylon,^ belongs to
tlie later life of the apostle, when his ardent natural temper was
deeply humbled, softened, and sanctified by the work of grace.
It was written to churches in several provinces of Asia Minor,
composed of Jewish and Gentile Christians together, and planted
mainly by Paul and his fellow-laborers ; and was sent by the
hands of Silvanus, a former companion of Paul. It consists of
precious consolations, and exhortations to a holy walk after the
example of Christ, to joyful hope of the heavenly inheritance, to
patience under the persecutions already raging or impending.
It attests also the essential agreement of Peter with the doctrine
of the Grentile apostle, in which the readers had been before
instructed.^
The Second Epistle of Peter was addressed, shortly before
the author's death, as a sort of last will and testament, to the
same churches as the first. It contains a renewed assurance of
his agreement with his "beloved brother Paul," to whose epistles
he most respectfully refers.^ As he himself receives in one of
those epistles of Paul a sharp reproof for inconsistency,* this
honorable allusion to them proves how thoroughly the Spirit of
Christ had through experience trained him to humility, meek-
ness, and self-denial. The epistle elsewhere earnestly warns the
Christians against antinomian and licentious false teachers, and
exhorts them to prepare for the final advent of the Lord. The
genuineness of this epistle is not so strongly and unequivocally
supported as that of the first ; and Eusebius counted it among
the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament. But it contains
nothing which Peter might not have written; it is rather a
worthy valedictory of the apostle awaiting his martyrdom, and
with its still valid warnings against internal dangers from false
Christianity, it forms a suitable complement to the first epistle,
which comforts the Christians amidst external dangers from hea-
then and Jewish persecutors
• Chap. V. 13, by which the ancient lathers understand heathen, persecuting Rome,
as in the Apocalypse.
" Chap. V. 12. 3 Chap. iii. 15, 16. * Gal. ii. 11 sqq.
§ 30. THE EPISTLES OF PAUL. 101
The short Epistle of Jude, a brother of James the Just, is very
much the same, in contents, with the second Epistle of Peter, and
seems to have been written to the same churches and against the
same Grnostic errorists. It belongs also among the Antilegomena.
The First Epistle of John betrays throughout, in thought
and style, the author of the fourth gospel. It is a circular letter
of the venerable apostle to his beloved children in Asia Minor,
exhorting them to a holy life of faith and love in Christ, and
earnestly warning them against the Gnostic " antichrists," already
existing or to come, who deny the mystery of the incarnation,
sunder rehgion from morality, and run into antinomian practices.
The Second and Third Epistles of John are, like the Epistle
of Paul to Philemon, short private letters, one to a Christian
woman by the name of Cyria, the other to one Gains, probably
an officer of a congregation in Asia Minor. Though they belong
to the Antilegomena, yet they have no internal marks of sjDuri-
ousness. On the contrarj^, the second epistle resembles the first,
almost to verbal repetition,^ and such repetition well agrees with
the flimiliar tradition of Jerome concerning the apostle of love,
ever exhorting the congregation, in his advanced age, to love
one another. The difference of opinion in the ancient church
respecting them may have risen partly from their private nature
and their brevity; and partly from the fact, that the author
styles himself, somewhat remarkably, the " elder," the " presby-
ter." This term, however, is probably to be taken, not in the
official sense, but in the original, signifying age and dignity;
for at that time John was in fact a venerable father in Christ,
and must have been revered and loved as a patriarch among his
"little children."
§ 30. The Einstles of Paul.
Compare the literature given at § 19.
In the field of Christian doctrine and literature, as well as else-
where, Paul has "labored more than all" the other apostles.
1 Comp. 2 John 4-7 with 1 John ii. 7, 8. iv. 2, 3.
102 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
From him we have thirteen epistles, some to congregations,
others to individuals, all together affording us at once a complete
view of the whole plan of redemption, and a clear insight into
the apostle's own inner life and the condition of his churches.
These epistles compress into a few jDages an amazing fund of
religious thought and feeling, which has already nourished the
Christian world for nearly two thousand years, and still yields
new treasures on every fresh examination. They are without a
parallel in the history of ancient or modern literature. We look
in vain for a similar series of epistles of the same compass and
significance. They reflect the deepest struggles and conflicts of
the writer and his age, and yet they rise far above them all in
the triumphant vigor of faith. They reveal a mind profoundly
agitated, and yet profoundly calm, clear, sound, and serene.
Paul's writings are all tracts of the times and for the times, and
yet for all times, yea for eternity. They gi'api)le with the con-
crete realities of his congregations, but in such a manner as to
make them the occasion for the discussion of the highest truths
and the solution of the deepest problems that challenge the atten-
tion of every age and congregation. They are all pastoral letters,
beginning with the apostolic salutation, and a thanksgiving to
God for his gracious deeds in the churches concerned, and clos-
ing with personal intelligence, greetings, benediction, and dox-
ology ; while the body of the letters consists of didactic expositions
and corresponding practical exhortations, warnings, and encou-
ragements. The style is original throughout, full of force and life,
and with its skilful arguments, bold antitheses, eloquent figures,
sudden turns, startling questions and exclamations, and even with
its occasional gi'ammatical harshness and irregularity, foithfully
represents the commanding power and overflowing fulness of the
apostle's mind and heart. His words are as many warriors rush-
ing on to victory. They strike like lightning, by their zigzag
impetuosity, every projecting point, and instantaneously attain
the goal. But the fiery zeal of the polemic is always under the
control of sober reflection, and the roar of battle is lost at times, as
in 1 Cor. xiii. in the celestial harmony of eternal love and peace.
§ 30. THE EPISTLES OF PAUL. 103
We notice the several Epistles in their most probable chrono-
logical order.
1. A.D. 53. The First Epistle to the Thessalonians was
written at Corinth shortly after Paul's first visit to the commer-
cial city of Thessalonica in Macedonia, and the planting of the
Christian congregation there. It was intended particularly to
meet certain misapprehensions of his preaching respecting the
glorious return of Christ.
2. A.D. 53 or 5-i. The Second Epistle to the Thessa-
lonians was sent from the same place on the same subject, with
further instruction respecting the appearing of Christ and pre-
ceding development of the " man of sin " and the " mystery of
"iniquity," and with suitable exhortations to sober, orderly, dili-
gent, and prayerful conduct. It is remarkable, that, in thes-e
very churches, where Christianity bloomed so beautifully in its
first love, the mystery of anti-Christian iniquity first appeared ;
not, however, to reach its maturity till the last times of the
church.
3. A.D. 57. The First Epistle to the Corinthians was
composed in Ephesus, shortly before Paul's departure, about
Easter, 57. It is more ethical and pastoral than dogmatic and
theological, and gives us a graphic picture of the lights and
shades of a Grecian church, rich in extraordinary gifts of grace,
but troubled by the spirit of sect and party, infected with the
desire for worldly wisdom, with scepticism, and with moral
levity, nay, to some extent polluted with gross vices, so that the
apostle in his absence found himself compelled to excommuni-
cate in form a particularly offensive member.
4. A.D. 57. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians was
written from Macedonia shortly before the author's intended per-
sonal visit to the metropolis of Achaia. It evidently comes from
a heart deeply agitated and anxious for the welfare of its spiritual
children, and opens to us very freely the personal character and
feelings, the official trials and joys, the noble pride and deep
humility, the holy earnestness and fervent love, of the great apos-
tle of the Gentiles.
104 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
5. A.D. 56-58. The Epistle to the Galatiaxs was written
after Paul's second visit to them, during or after his long residence
in Ephesus (54^57) ; and was occasioned by the machinations of
hostile Judaizers. In righteous indignation against these pseudo-
evangelists and troublers of the church, the apostle vindicates
first his apostolic dignity, and then his doctrines of justification
by grace through living faith, and of evangelical freedom in
Christ. This Epistle is thus an apology for the author himself
and for his cause, and forms a most decided protest against all
legalistic, ritualistic, and hierarchical errors within the Christian
church ; the exegetical bulwark, so to speak, of evangelical Pro-
testantism.
6. A.D. 58. A little while before his last journey to Jerusalem,
Paul sent from Corinth by the deaconess Phebe a letter to the
Christian congregation in the capital of the world. This church,
with which he was as yet personally unacquainted, but which he
hoped soon to visit, had been founded a considerable time before,
as it would seem, by disciples of Peter and Paul, and attained
afterwards, partly through its situation, partly through the per-
sonal labors and martyrdom of the two leading ajiostles there, a
vast importance and influence in western Christendom.
To this eminence of the congregation at Eome, the Epistle to
the KoMANS corresponds. It is unquestionably the most impor-
tant doctrinal book of the New Testament, and justly stands at
the head of the Epistles of Paul. It most comjjletely and clearly
unfolds the evangelical doctrines of sin and grace, of justification
and sanctification, of faith and good works, of peace and sonship
with God, and boldly, yet reverently unveils, in part, the mys-
teries of the predestination and -calling of Jews and Gentiles to
the Gospel salvation. It is remarkable, that this thoroughly
evangelical Epistle was written to the mother congregation of
that Koman church, which in her subsequent development has
wandered so far from its soteriological doctrines into Jewish
legalism and ritualistic form.
7-10. A.D. 61-G3, during his confinement at Rome, the venera
ble servant of Christ composed the four E2)istles to the CoLOS-
§ 30. THE EPISTLES OF PAUL. 105
STAG'S, Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon. The first
three are as important for the Christology and ecclesiology of
Paul, as the Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans for his
anthropology and soteriology. The short private letter to Phile-
mon exhibits his characteristic love and courtesy, and his posi-
tion towards the slavery of that day.
11-13. The three pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus
afford no such internal marks of their date as the ten epistles
thus far mentioned, and have left room for very different views
as to the year of their composition. If we accept the tradition
of a second imprisonment of Paul in Rome, we shall best put
the First Epistle to Timothy and the Epistle to Titus between
the first and second imprisonments, and shall thus seem to reach
the most natural solution of some difl&cult passages of these
epistles. But if we reject that tradition, we must take the year
56 or 57 as the most probable date of these two epistles ; since,
from the allusions in 2 Cor. xii. 13, 14, and xiii. 1. Paul
most probably, during his three years' residence in Ephesus-
54-57, made a second journey to Corinth, not noticed in tlie
Acts, meantime visiting Crete, and leaving Titus in charge of
the churches there. The Second Epistle to Timothy was evi-
dently written while Paul was in confinement in Rome, whether
the first time or a second, and was the last of all his epistles.
For the author is distinctly expecting the speedy close of his
good fight of faith, and the crown of righteousness from the hand
of his master.'
The three pastoral epistles are more personal and confidential
in their character than those addressed to churches ; and this fact
explains many of their peculiarities. They contain Paul's pas-
toral theology ; a practical introduction to the founding, training,
and care of congregations, and to the proper treatment of indivi-
dual souls, of old and young, of widows and virgins, of back-
sliders and heretics. They are, therefore, of special value for
their hints respecting the pastoral ofiice and the organization of
the church in the apostolic age.
' Comix 2 Tim. iv. 1, 8.
106 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
14. Finally, the Epistle to the Hebrews, composed unques-
tionably before the destruction of Jerusalem, probably between
the years 62 and 64, is also reckoned among the Pauline books.
It is anon^'mous, indeed ; its Greek is more pure and elegant
than that of Paul's epistles ; its mode of handling the Christian
doctrine is somewhat different ; and in ch. ii. 3, it seems to betray
the hand of a disciple of the apostles, rather than of an eye-wit-
ness of the life of Jesus. It is a settled fact, too, that the early
western church, after it became acquainted with this epistle, for
a considerable time attributed it not to Paul, but either to an
anonymous author, or, as Tertullian at least did, to Barnabas.
Yet, on the other hand, the epistle stands so completely on
Pauline ground, particularly in regard to the relation of Chris-
tianity to Judaism ; it is so uncommonly rich and full of the
unction of the spirit, and it teaches and exhorts with such a tone
of authority, that we cannot be satisfied to ascribe it even to a
disciple of Paul, like Luke, or Apollos, or Clement, without
allowing the great apostle of the Gentiles at least an .indirect
concern with its contents, though not with its literary form.
This view has firm support in the tradition of the eastern
church, for which the epistle was intended, and which has
honored it from the first as a genuine production of Paul ;
though the Alexandrian fathers allowed Luke a hand in the
style, or considered him the translator of a supposed Hebrew
original. At all events the epistle is plainly a genial product of
the Pauline spirit, and of the creative energy of primitive Chris-
tianity, and is therefore altogether worthy of its place in the
canon.
The Epistle to the Hebrews gives us the true conception of
the relation of the New Testament to the Old, and unfolds the
doctrine of the priestly ofiice and eternal sacrifice of Christ for
the reconciliation of the world. Its doctrinal expositions, how-
ever, are interwoven throughout with pathetic admonitions and
precious consolations. The antlK^r demonstrates to tlie Jewish
Christians of Palestine and the whole east the infinite superiority
of Christianity to Judaism, and thus warns them of the danger
§ 31. THE REVELATION OF JOHN. 107
of apostasy, to wliicli many were tempted in those times of per-
secution and distress. It presents the old Testament, the whole
Levitical priesthood and sacrificial system, as a symbol of the
" good things " of Christianity, a shadow, of which the gospel is
the substance. It refers to the Mosaic economy as still existing,
but in process of decay, and looks forward to the fearful judg-
ment, whicli a few years later destroyed the temple for ever.
This epistle, like those to the Colossians and Philippians, from its
eminently christological character, forms, theologically, a step-
ping-stone to the writings of John.
§ 31. The Revelation of John.
The revelation of Christ by his servant John respecting the
future trials and triumphs of his kingdom, forms the third or
prophetic j)art of the apostolic literature. It stands as a mj^ste-
rious seal at the close of the New Testament, which, without
such a book, would be as incomplete as the Old Testament with-
out the prophecies of Daniel. It links the apostolic beginning
of the kingdom of Christ with its glorious completion in the new
heavens and upon the new earth.
It was seen in the Spirit and recorded at the divine command
during the banishment of John on Patmos, towards the end of
the reign of Domitian, about the year 95 ; not under Nero or
Gralba, as many modern critics, merely on internal grounds,
assume, against the express testimony of Irenaeus and all ancient
tradition. It differs considerably from the other writings of
John in its strongly Hebraistic mode of thought and expression ;
though in other respects it strikingly resembles them. The dif-
ference arises partly from the nature of the subject, which required
something like the symbolical and figurative, antique and stately
language of a Zechariah, an Ezekiel, or a Daniel ; partly from
the ecstatic state of the writer,^ in which he wrote, as it were,
from dictation, with his own mind much more passive and recep-
tive, than in the composition of a historical or didactic book.
^ £i/ TzvtvjiaTi, in distinction from Iv voi, Rev. L 10; comp. 1 Cor. iv. 14 sqq.
108 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
The Apocalypse combines tlie deepest and highest tones of the
Hebrew prophecy in an overwhelming harmony, and surpasses
it in elevation, fulness, and unity of view, in progress of action,
and majesty of style, and, above all, in the direct relation of all
parts of the picture to the central figure of the crucified and now
glorified Christ, who rules the whole history of the world and the
church, and is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. In
a succession of visions and mysterious allegories it unfolds before
the reader the great epochs of the kingdom of God on earth to
the close of its earthly development. Its burden is the comfort-
ing truth, that the Lord comes, the Lord fights, the Lord con-
quers and leads his church through tribulation and persecution
to certain victory and eternal glory.
The value of this mysterious work is quite inde2:)endcnt of the
various learned and conflicting historical expositions and applica-
tions of its prophecies. The book was designed not to gratify idle
curiosity concerning the future, nor to start presumptuous specu-
lations and mathematical calculations, but for a practical religious
end. It encourages the seven churches of Asia, and through them
the whole church of all nations and times, to watchfulness,
patience, fidelity, and perseverance ; and comforts them in their
tribulations with the assurance of the coming of Christ, and his
final triumph over all his foes. Prophecy, in the nature of the
case, remains more or less obscure, until it is fulfilled. And, as
the Old Testament became clear only in the New, so the Revela-
tion of John can be perfectly understood only in the triumphant
and glorified church. Still, it has been a book of consolation and
hope to the church militant in every age, especially amidst her
great persecutions and struggles ; and it will remain so, till the
Lord come again in glory, and the New Jerusalem come down
from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. He, who can-
not lie, assures his people : " Lo, I come quickly. Amen." And
his people answer, with the holy longing of a bride for her spouse:
" Yea : come, Lord Jesus ! "
32. CHRISTIA2TITY AND INDIVIDUAL LIFE. 109
CHAPTER lY.
CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORSHIP.
Neander : Gesch. der apost. K I. p. 229-283. Schaff : § 109-123 and § 137-
145. Lange : II. 495-533. Schmid : Bibl. Tlieol. II. 9-30. Arnold :
Erste Liebe, d. i. wahre Abbildung der ersten Christen. Frkf. 1696.
Harnack : Der christliche Gemeindegottesdienst im apostolischen und
altkatholischen Zeitalter. Erl. 1854,
§ 32. Moral Power of Christianity over Individual Life.
Christianity sets forth tlie higliest standard of virtue and
piety ; and this not merely as an object of effort and hope, but
as a living fact in the person of Jesus Christ, whose life and
example have far greater influence than any maxims and pre-
cepts of morality. This j^erfect life, however, is not to remain
confined to Jesus, but is to enter more and more deeply into all
his followers, and to reveal itself more and more widely among
them. From the word and sj)irit of Christ, living and ruling in
the church, a constant stream of redeeming, sanctifying, and
glorifying power is to flow forth, till the world be transformed
into the kingdom of heaven, and Cod become all in all.
This power appears first in the lives of individuals. The
apostles and primitive Christians rose to a morality and piety far
above that of the heroes of heathen virtue and even that of the
Jewish saints. Their daily walk was a living union with Christ,
ever seeking the glory of God and the salvation of men. Many
of the cardinal virtues, humility, for example, and love for ene-
mies, were unknown before the Christian day.
Peter, Paul, and John represent the various leading forms or
types of Christian piety, as well as of theology. They were not
110 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
without defect, indeed ; yet they were as nearly perfect as It was
possible to be in a sinful world ; and the moral influence of their
lives and writings on all generations of the church is absolutely
immeasurable. Each exhibits the spirit and life of Christ in a
peculiar way. For the gospel does not destroy, but redeems and
sanctifies the natural talents and tempers of men. It consecrates
the fire of a Peter, the energy of a Paul, and the pensiveness of
a John to the same service of God. It most strikingly displays
its new-creating power in the sudden conversion of the apostle of
the Gentiles from a most dangerous foe to a most efiicient friend of
the church. Upon Paul the Spirit of God came as an overwhelm-
ing storm ; upon John, as the zephyr and the vernal sun. But
in all dwelt the same new, supernatural, divine principle of life.
All are living apologies for Christianity, whose force no truth-
lovino; heart can resist.
Notice, too, the moral effects of the gospel in the female cha-
racters of the New Testament. Christianity raises woman from
the sla^nsh j^osition which she held both in Judaism and in hea-
thendom, to her true moral dignity and importance ; makes her
an heir of the same salvation with man,^ and opens to her a field
for the noblest and loveliest virtues, without thrusting her, after
the manner of modern pseudo-philanthropic schemes of emanci-
pation, out of her appropriate sphere of private, domestic life,
and thus stripping her of her fairest ornament and peculiar
charm-.
The virgin Mary marks the turning-point in the history of the
female sex. As the mother of Christ, the second Adam, slie cor-
responds to Eve, and is, in a higher sense than she was, the
mother of all living.^ In her, the "blessed among women," the
curse, which had hung over the era of the fall, was removed, and
her whole sex was blessed. She was not, indeed, free from actual
and native sin, as is now taught, without the slightest ground
in scripture, by the Eoman church since the 8tli of December,
1854. On the contrary, as a daughter of Adam, she needed,
like all men, redemption and sanctification through Christ, the
' 1 Pet. iii. 1. Gal. iii. 28. ' Gen. iii. 20.
§ 32. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIETY. Ill
sole autlior of sinless holiness. But in the mother and educator
of the Saviour of the world we no doubt may and should revere,
though not worship, the model of female Christian virtue, of purity,
tenderness, simplicity, humility, perfect obedience to God, and un-
reserved surrender to Christ. Next to her we have a lovely group
of female disciples and friends around the Lord : Mary, the wife
of Cleophas ; Salome, the mother of James and John ; Mary of
Bethany, who sat at Jesus' feet ; her busy and hospitable sister,
Martha ; Mary of Magdala, whom the Lord healed of a demo-
niacal possession ; the sinner, who washed his feet with her tears of
penitence and wiped them with her hair ; and all the noble women,
who ministered to the Son of man in his earthly poverty with the
gifts of their love,^ lingered last around his cross,'^ and were the
first at his open sepulchre on the morning of the resurrection.^
Henceforth, we find woman no longer a mere slave of man
and tool of lust, but the pride and joy of her husband, the fond
mother training her children to virtue and godliness, the orna-
ment and treasure of the famil}^, the faithful sister, the zealous
servant of the congregation in every work of Christian charity,
the sister of mercy, the martyr with superhuman courage, the
guardian angel of peace, the example of purity, humility, gentle-
ness, patience, love, and fidelity unto death. Even the heathen
Libanius, the enthusiastic eulogist of old Grecian culture, must
exclaim, as he looked at the mother of Chrysostom : " What wo-
men the Christians have I"
§ 83. Influence of Christianity on Society.
See special literature sub § 86.
1. Thus raising the female sex to its true freedom and digmty,
Christianity transforms and sanctifies the entire family life. It
abolishes polygamy, and makes monogamy the proper form of
marriage ; presents the mutual duties of husband and wife, and
of parents and children, in their true light, and exhibits marriage
as a copy of the mystical union of Christ with his bride, the
' Luke viii. 3. "^ John xix. 15. ' Matt, xxviii. 1. John sx. 1.
112 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
clmrcli ; thus imparting to it a hoi j character and a heavenl}' end.'
Henceforth the family, though still rooted, as before, in the
soil of nature, in the mystery of sexual love, is spiritualized,
and becomes a nursery of the purest and noblest virtues, a
miniature church, where the father, as priest, daily leads his
household into the pastures of the divine word, and offers to the
Lord the sacrifice of their common petition, intercession, thanks-
giving, and praise.
With the married state, the single also, as an exception to the
rule, is consecrated by the gospel to the service of the kingdom
of God ; as we see in a Paul, a Barnabas, and a John," and in the
history of missions and of ascetic piety.
2. To Christianity also we owe the gradual extinction of
SLAVERY. This evil has rested as a curse on all nations, and at
the time of Christ the greater part of the existing race was bound
in beastly degradation ; even in civilized Greece and Rome the
slaves being far more numerous than the free-born and the freed.
The greatest philosophers of antiquity vindicated slavery as a
natural and necessary institution ; and Aristotle declared all bar-
barians to be slaves by birth, fit for nothing but obedience.
Judaism, indeed, stood on higher ground than this ; yet it tole-
rated slavery, though with wise precautions against maltreat-
ment, and with the significant ordinance, that in the year of
jubilee, which prefigured the renovation of the theocracy, all
slaves should go frec.^
This system of permanent oppression and moral degradation
the gospel opposes rather by its whole spirit, than by any special
law. It nowhere recommends outward violence and revolution-
ary measures, but provides an internal radical cure, which first
mitigates the evil, takes away its sting, and effects at last its
entire abolition. Christianity aims, first of all, to redeem man,
without regard to rank or condition, from that worse bondage,
the curse of sin, and to give him true spiritual freedom ; it con-
firms the original unity of all men in the image of God, and
' Comp. Eph. V. 22-33.
" Comp. Matt. xix. 10-12. 1 (!or. vii. 7 sqq. Rfv. xiv. -i. ' Lev. xxv. 10.
§ 33. CHKISTIANITY AND SOCIETY. 113
teacTies the common redemption and spiritual equality of all be-
fore God in Christ;^ it insists on love as the highest duty and
virtue, which itself inwardly levels social distinctions; and it
addresses the comfort and consolation of tlie gospel particularly
to all the poor, the persecuted, and the oppressed. Paul sent back
to his earthly master the fugitive slave, Onesimus, whom he had
converted to Christ and to his duty, but expressly charged Phile-
mon to receive and treat the servant hereafter as a beloved brother
in Christ, yea, as the apostle's own heart. It is impossible to
conceive of a more radical cure of the evil in those times and
within the limits of established laws and customs.
This Christian spirit of love, humanity, justice, and freedom,
as it pervades the whole New Testament, has also, in fact, gra-
dually abolished the institution of slavery in almost all civilized
nations, and will not rest till all the chains of sin and misery be
broken, till the personal and eternal dignity of man redeemed
by Christ be universally acknowledged, and the evangelical free-
dom and brotherhood of men be perfectly attained.
3. Christianity enters also with its leaven-like virtue the
whole CIVIL and social life of a people, and leads it on the path
of progress in all genuine civilization. It nowhere prescribes,
indeed, a particular form of government, and carefully abstains
from all improper interference with political and secular affairs.
It accommodates itself to monarchical and republican institutions,
and can flourish even under oppression and persecution from the
state, as the history of the first three centuries sufiiciently shows.
But it teaches the true nature and aim of all government ;. it pro-
motes the abolition of bad laws and institutions, and the esta-
blishment of good ; it is in principle opposed alike to despotism
and anarchy ; it tends, under every form of government, towards
order, propriety, justice, humanity, and peace ; it fills the ruler
with a sense of responsibility to the supreme king and judge, ^nd
the ruled with the spirit of virtue and piety.
4. Finally, the Gospel reforms the international relations by
breaking down the partition- walls of prejudice and hatred among
'Gal. ui. 28. Col. iiL IL
114 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
the dilFerent nations and races. It united in brotherly fellowship
and harmony even the Jews and the Gentiles, once so bitterly
sepjjLrate and hostile. The spirit of Christianity, truly catholic or
universal, rises above all national distinctions. Like the con-
gregation at Jerusalem,' the whole apostolic church was of " one
heart and of one soul." It had its occasional troubles, indeed,
temporary collisions 43etween a Peter and a Paul, between Jew-
ish and Gentile Christians ; but instead of wondering at these,
we must admire the constant victory of the spirit of harmony and
love over the remaining forces of the old nature and of a former
state of things. The poor Gentile Christians of Paul's churches
in Greece, sent their charities to the poor Jewish Christians in
Palestine, and thus proved their gratitude for the gospel and its
fellowship, which they received from that mother church.' The
Christians all felt themselves to be " brethren," were constantly
impressed with their common origin and their common destiny,^
and considered it their sacred duty to " keep the unity of the
spirit in the bond of peace."* Wliile the Jews, in their spiritual
pride and " odium generis humani," abhorred all Gentiles ; while
the Greeks despised all barbarians as only half men ; and while
the Romans, with all their might and policy, could bring their
conquered nations only into a mechanical conglomeration, a giant
body without a soul ; Christianity, without violence or money, by
purely moral means, has founded a universal spiritual empire and
a communion of saints, which stands unshaken to this day, and
will spread till it embrace all the nations of the earth as its living
members, and reconcile all to God.
§ 3-1. Tlie Spiritual Gifts.
Comp. the Commentaric-s on 1 Cor. 12-14, and Rom. xii. 3-9.
To aid it in this regeneration of individual and social life, the
apostolic church was endowed with all needful gifts of grace, a
splendid panoply against Jewish and Gentile opposition. These
» Acts iv. 32. 8 Gal. ii. 10; 2 Cor. ix. 12-15 ; Rom. xv. 25-27.
» GaL iiL 28. ■* Eph. iv. 3.
§ 34. THE SPIRITUAL GIFTS. 115
gifts or cliarisms,' are certain special energies and manifestations
of tlie Holy Grhost in believers for the common good.^ They are
supernatural, therefore, in their origin ; but in operation they fol-
low all the mental and moral faculties of the man, raising those
faculties to higher activity, and consecrating them to the service
of Christ
They may be divided into tliree classes : first, gifts of hnoiv-
hdge^ mainly theoretical in their character, and concerned
primarily with doctrine and theology ; secondly, gifts of feeling^
appearing chiefly in divine worship and for immediate edifica-
tion ; and thirdly, gifts of will, devoted to the practical organiza-
tion, government, and discipline of the church. They are not,
however, abstractly separate, but work together harmoniously for
the common purpose of edifjdng the body of Christ. In the
New Testament ten charisms are specially mentioned; the first
four have to do chiefly, though not exclusively, with doctrine,
the next two with worship, and the remaining four with govern-
ment and practical afiairs.
1. The gift of WISDOM and kxowledge,' or of deep insight into
the nature and system of the divine word and the doctrines of the
Christian salvation.
2. The gift of teaching," or of practically applying the gift of
knowledge ; the power of clearly expounding the Scriptures for
the instruction and edification of the people.
3. The gift of prophecy,'' akin to the two preceding, but ad-
dressed rather to pious feeling than to speculative reflection, and
employing commonly the language of higher inspiration, rather
than that of logical exposition and demonstration. It is by no
means confined to the prediction of future events, but consists in
disclosing in general the hidden counsel of God, the deeper sense
of the scriptures, the secret state of the heart, the abyss of sin,
and the glory of redeeming grace. It appears particularly in
creative periods, times of mighty revival ; while the gifi; ofteacli-
ing suits better a quiet state of natural growth in the church.
1 ■)^apiojiaTa, ' Comp. 1 Cor. sii. 1 ; siv. 12. ^ o-o^fa and yi/wo-ij.
116 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
Both act not only in the sphere of doctrine and theology, but
also in worship, and miglit in this view be reckoned also among
the gifts of feeling.
4. The gift of discerning spirits,' serving mainly as a guide
to the third gift, by discriminating between true prophets and
false, between divine inspiration and a merely human or satanic
enthusiasm. In a wider sense it is a deep discernment in se^Da-
rating truth and error, and in judging of moral and religious charac-
ter ; a holy criticism still ever necessary to the purity of Christian
doctrine and the administration of the discipline of the church.
5. The gift of tongues," or of an utterance proceeding from
a state of unconscious ecstasy in the speaker, and unintelligible
to the hearer unless interpreted — thus differing from prophecy,
which requires a highly elevated but self-conscious state of feel-
ing, serves directly to profit the congregation, and is therefore
preferred by Paul.^ The speaking with tongues is an involun-
tary psalm-like prayer or song, uttered from a spiritual trance,
and in a peculiar language inspired by the Iloly Ghost. The
soul is almost entirely passive, an instrument on which the Holy
Spirit plays his heavenly melodies. This gift has, therefore, pro-
perly, nothing to do with the spread of the church among foreign
peojoles and in foreign languages, but is purely an act of wor-
ship, for the edification primarily of the speaker himself, and
indirectly, through interpretation, for the hearers. It appeared
first, indeed, on the day of Pentecost, but hefore Peter's address
to the people, which was the proper mission-sermon ; and we
meet with it afterwards in the house of Cornelius and in the
Corinthian congregation, as a means of edification for believers,
and not, at least not directly, for unbelieving hearers, although
it served to them as a significant sign,* arresting their attention
to the supernatural power in the church.
6. The gift of interpretation,' the sujiplemcnt of the glosso-
lalia, making that gift profitable to the congregation by translat-
' i^aKpiaui TTfCMfidraJv.
' KdivaXi or Iripaii y'Suiacats XaXru', OF Simply, ■y'XtJaaais, SOmetioieS, yXtiaai; ^a\eTii,
3 1 Cor. xiv. 1-5. * oTj/itiji'. 1 Cor. xiv. 22. * Ipfinvein ) Xuacdv.
§ 34, THE SPIRITUAL GIFTS. 117
ing tlie prayers and songs from the language of the spirit and of
ecstasy' into that of the understanding and of sober self-conscious-
ness.* The preponderance of reflection here puts this gift as
properly in the first class, as in the second.
7. The gift of ministry and help,' that is, of special qualifi-
cation primarily for the office of deacon and deaconess, or for the
regular ecclesiastical care of the poor and the sick, and, in the
wide sense, for all labors of Christian charity and philanthropy.
8. The gift of church government and the care of souls,*
indispensable to all pastors and rulers of the church, above all
to the apostles and apostolic men, in proportion to the extent of
their respective fields of labor. Peter warns his co-presbyters
against the temptation to hierarchical arrogance and tyranny
over conscience, of which so many priests, bishops, patriarchs,
and popes have since been guilty; and points them to the
sublime example of the great Shepherd and Archbishop, who, in
infinite love, laid down his life for the sheep.*
9. The gift of miracles,' or the power possessed by the
apostles and apostolic men, like Stephen, to heal all sorts of
physical maladies, to cast out devils, to raise the dead, and per-
form other similar works, in virtue of an extraordinary energy
of faith, by word, prayer, and the laying on of hands in the
name of Jesus, and for his glory. These miracles were outward
credentials and seals of the divine mission of the apostles in a
time and among a people, which required such sensible helps to
faith;
10. Finally, the gift of love, the greatest, most precious, most
useful, and most needful of all, described and extolled by St.
Paul in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians with the pen of
an angel in the vision and enjoyment of the God of infinite love
himself. As faith lies at the bottom of all charisms, so love is
not properly a separate gift, but the soul of all the gifts, guard-
ing them from abuse for selfish and ambitious purposes, making
' Of the TTfcvficL, * Of the vovt. ^ Staicovia, di/Ti'Sriipcii.
* Kv/Sepfficet;, gubemationes. 5 i pet. v. 1-4.
'^apiiTjia lafiarioVj Siyajitg arijidotv kol repaTOiv,
118 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
ttem available for the common good, ruling, uniting, and com-
pleting them. It alone gives them their true value, and without
love even the speaking with tongues of angels, and a faith
which removes mountains, are nothing before God. As love is
the most needful of all the gifts on earth, so it will also outlast
all the others, and be the ornament and joy of the saints in
heaven. For love is the inmost essence, the heart, as it were, of
God, the ground of all his attributes, and the motive of all his
works. It is the beginning and the end of creation, redemption,
and sanctification — the link which unites us with the triune God,
the cardinal virtue of Christianity, the fulfilUng of the law, the
bond of perfcctness, and the fountain of bliss.
§ 35. Tlie Christian WorsJiij)^ and its Rtlation to the Jewish.
Christian worship, or cultus, is the public adoration of God in
the name of Christ ; the celebration of the communion of
believers as a congregation with their heavenly head, for the
jDromotion of the glory of the Lord, and for the growth and
enjoyment of spiritual life.
The disciples assembled at first in the temple, and followed as
closely as possible the venerable forms of the Jewish cultus,
which in truth were divinely ordained, and were an expressive
type of the Christian worship. So far as we know, the Jewish
Christians of the first generation, at least in Palestine, scrupu-
lously observed the Sabbath, the annual Jewish feasts, and the
whole Mosaic ritual, and celebrated, in addition to these, the
Christian Sunday, the death and the resurrection of the Lord,
and the holy supper. But this union, which they struggled to
maintain with the cultus of their fathers, was gradually weak-
ened by the stubborn opposition of the Jews, and was at last
entirely broken by the destruction of the temple.
In the Gentile-Christian congregations founded by Paul, the
worship took from the beginning a more independent form. The
essential elements of the Old Testament service were transferred,
indeed, but divested of their narrow legal character, and trans-
§ 36. THE SEVERAL PARTS OF WORSHIP. 119
formed by tlie spirit of tlie gospel. Thus tlie Jewisli Sabbatli
passed into tlie Christian Sunday ; the typical Passover and
Pentecost became feasts of the death and resurrection of Christ,
and of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost ; the bloody sacrifices
gave place to the thankful remembrance and appropriation of
the one, all-sufficient, and eternal sacrifice of Christ on the cross,
and to the personal offering of j)rayer, intercession, and entire
self-devotion to the service of the Eedeemer ; on the ruins of the
temple made without hands arose the never-ceasing worship of
the omnipresent God in spirit and in truth.
So early as the close of the apostolic period this more free and
spiritual cultus of Christianity had no doubt become well nigh
universal ; yet many Jewish elements, especially in the eastern
church, remain to this day.
§ 36. The Several Parts of WorshijJ-
The several parts of public worship in the time of the ajDOstles
were as follows :
1. The PREACHING of the gospel. This appears in the first
period mostly in the form of a missionary address to the uncon-
verted ; that is, a simple, living presentation of the main facts of
the life of Jesus, with practical exhortation to repentance and
conversion. Christ crucified and risen was the luminous centre,
whence a sanctifying light was shed on all the relations of life.
Gushing forth from a fall heart, this preaching went to the heart ;
and springing from an inward life, it kindled life, a new, divine
life, in the susceptible hearers. It was revival preaching in the
purest sense. Of this primitive Christian testimony several exam-
ples from Peter and Paul are preserved in the Acts of the
Apostles.
The epistles also may be regarded in the wider sense as ser-
mons, addressed, however, to behevers, and designed to nourish
the Christian life already planted.
' Comp. Jolm ii. 19 ; iv. 23 sqq.
120 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
2. The READING of portions of the Old Testament,^ witli prac-
tical exposition and application; transferred from the Je^^'isll
synagogue into the Cliristian churcli.^ Also lessons from the
New Testament; that is, from the canonical gospels and the
apostolic epistles, most of which were addressed to whole congre-
gations and originally intended for public use.^ After the death
of the apostles their writings became doubly important to the
church, as the substitute for their oral instruction and exhortation,
and were much more used in worship than the Old Testament.
3. Prayer, in its various forms of petition, intercession, and
thanksgiving. This descended likewise from Judaism, and in
fact belongs essentially even to all heathen religions ; but now
it began to be offered in childlike confidence to a reconciled
Father in the name of Jesus, and for all classes and conditions,
even for enemies and persecutors. The first Christians accom-
panied every important act of their public and private life with
this holy rite, and Paul requires his readers to " pray without
ceasing." On solemn occasions they joined fasting with prayer,
as a help to devotion, though it is nowhere directly enjoined in
the New Testament.'* That, besides free prayer according to
special wants and circumstances, of which we have an example
in the fourth chapter of Acts, they used also standing forms, may
be inferred with certainty from the Jewish usage, from the Lord's
direction respecting his model prayer,^ from the strong sense of
fellowsliip among the first Christians, and finally from the litur-
gical spirit of the ancient church, which could not have so
generally prevailed both in the east and the west without some
apostolic and post-apostolic precedent.
4. The SONG, a form of prayer, in the festive dress of poetry
and the elevated language of inspiration, raising the congi-egation
to the liighest pitch of devotion, and giving it a part in the hea-
venly harmonies of the saints. This jiassed immediately, with
the psalms of the Old Testament, those inexhaustible treasures
' The Paraschioth and ITaplitorotli, as tlicy were called.
» Comp. Acta xiiL 15; xv. '21. ' 1 The.ss. v. 27. Col. iv. 16.
* Comp. Matt Lx. 15. » Matt. vi. 9. Luke xi. 1, 2.
§ 36. THE SEVERAL PARTS OF WORSHIP. 121
of spiritual experience, edification, and comfort, from tlie temple
and the synagogue into the Christian church. The Lord liimself
inaugurated psalmody into the new covenant at the institution
of the Holy Supper,^ and Paul expressly enjoined the singing of
"psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," as a means of social
edification.^ But to this precious inheritance from the past,
whose full value was now for the first time understood in the
light of the New Testament revelation, the church, in the enthu-
siasm of her first love, added original, specifically Christian
psalms, hymns, doxologies, and benedictions, which afforded the
richest material for sacred poetry and music in succeeding cen-
turies ; the song of the heavenly hosts, for example, at the birth
of the Saviour f the " Nunc dimittis" of Simeon;* the " Magnifi-
cat" of the Virgin Mary;^ the "Benedictus" of Zacharias:^ the
thanksgiving of Peter after his miraculous deliverance f the
sj)eaking with tongues in the apostolic churches, which, whether
song or prayer, was always in the elevated language of enthu-
siasm ; the fragments of hymns scattered through Paul's epistles f
and the lyrical and liturgical passages, the doxologies and anti-
phonies of the Apocalypse.^
5. Confession of faith. All the above-mentioned acts of
worship are also acts of faith. The first express confession of
faith is the testimony of Peter, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son
of the living God. The next is the trinitarian baptismal formula.
Out of this gradually grew the so-called Apostles' Creed, which
is also trinitarian in structure, but gives the confession of Christ
the central and largest place. Though not traceable in its pre-
sent shape above the third century, and found in the second in
different longer or shorter forms, it is in substance altogether apos-
tolic, and exhibits an incomparable summary of the leading facts
in the revelation of the triune God from the creation of the world
to the resurrection of the body ; and that in a form intelligible
' Com. Matt. xxvi. 30. Mark xiv. 26. ' Eph. v. 19. Col. iii. 16.
^ The " Gloria," Luke ii. 14. ♦ Luke iL 29. * Luke i. 46 sqq.
^ Luke i. 68 sqq. » Acts iv. 24-30. Comp. Ps. ii.
" Eph. V. 14 1 Tim. iiL 16. 2 Tim. ii. 11, " L 4-8 ; v. 9-14 ; xL 15-19 etc.
122 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
to all, and admirably suited for public worship and catechetical
use.
6. Finally, the administration of the sacraments, or sacred
rites, by which, under appropriate symbols and visible signs,
spiritual gifts and invisible grace are represented, sealed, and
applied to the worthy participators.
The two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper, the
antitypes of circumcision and the passover under the Old Testa-
ment, were instituted by Christ as ef&cacious signs, pledges, and
means of the grace of the new covenant. They are related to
each other as regeneration and sanctification, or as the beginning
and the growth of the Christian life.
§ 37. Baptism.
Comp. the commeniaries on Matt, xxviii. 19 ; Mark xvi. IG ; John iii. 5 ;
Acts ii. 38, viii. 13, 16, 18, 37; Rom. vi. 4; Gal. iii. 27; Tit. iii. 5;
1 Pet. iii. 21.— F. Brenner (R. Oath.) : Geschichthche Darstellung der
Verrichtung der Taufe von Christus bis aui" unsere Zeiten. Bamb. 1818.
HoFLiNG (Lutheran): Das Sacrament der Taufe. Erl. 1846 and '48.
2 vols. Samuel Miller (Presbyterian) : Infant Baptism Scriptural and
Reasonable ; and Baptism by Sprinkling or Affusion, the most Suitable
and Edifying Mode. Philad. 1840. Alex. Carson (Baptist) : Baptism
in its Mode and Subjects. 5th Amer. ed. 1850. G. D. Armstrong
(Presbyt.) : The Doctrine of Baptisms. N. York, 1857.
Baptism in the name of the triune God was solemnly appointed
by Christ, shortly before his ascension, to be the sign and seal of
discijjleship under him, the rite of initiation into the covenant of
grace. It is the sacrament of repentance, of remission of sins,
and of the implanting of the Holy Ghost ; and, in the nature of
the case, to be received but once. It incorporates the penitent
sinner in the church, and entitles him to all the privileges, and
binds him to all the duties of this communion. Where this con-
dition of repentance and faith is wanting, the blessing, as in the
case of the supper and the preaching of the word, is turned into a
curse, and what God designs as a savor of life unto life, becomes,
through the abuse of man, a savor of death unto death.
The first administration of this sacrament in its full Christian
§ 37. BAPTis^r. 123
sense took place on the birtli-day.of tlie clinreb, after tlie first
independent preaching of the apostles. The baj)tism of John
was more of a negative sort, and only preparatory to -the baptism
with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Though in theory Chris-
tian baptism coincides with regeneration as the corresponding
act of inward cleansing and renewal, yet in the New Testament
we find, in Simon Magus, an example of the baptism of Water
without that of the Spirit, and in Cornelius, of the communica-
tion of the Spirit before the application of the water. In adults
the solemn ordinance was preceded by the preaching of the gos-
pel, or a brief instruction in its main facts, and then followed by
more thorough inculcation of the apostolic doctrine. Later,
when great caution became necessary in receiving proselytes, the
period of catechetical instruction and probation was considerably
lengthened.
The usual form of the act was immersion, as is plain from
the original meaning of the Greek ^aitTi^iiv and jSair-TKffX'jg ; from
the analogy of John's baptism in the Jordan ; from the apostles'
comparison of the sacred rite with the miraculous passage of the
Eed Sea, with the escape of the ark from the flood, with a
cleansing and refreshing bath, and with burial and resurrection ;
finally, from the custom of the ancient church, which prevails in
the east to this day. But sprinkling, also, or copious pouring,
was practised at an early day with sick and dying persons, and
probably with children and others, where total or partial immer-
sion was impracticable. Some writers suj)pose that this was the
case even in the first baptism of the three thousand on the day
of Pentecost ; since Jerusalem, especially in summer, was very
poorly supplied with water and private baths. Later Hellenis-
tic usage allows to the relevant expressions sometimes the wider
sense of washing and cleansing in general.' Unquestionably,
immersion expresses the idea of baptism more completely than
sj)ruikling; but it is a pedantic Jewish literalism to limit the
operation of the Holy Ghost by the quantity or the quality
' Comp. Lu. si. 38. Mk. vii. 4, 8. Heb. is. 10. Matt. iu. 11. 2 Ki. v. 14, 10
(LXX.).
124 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
of the water. Water is absolutely necessary to baptism, as an
appropriate symbol of the purifying and regenerating energy of
the Holy Ghost ; but whether the water be in large quantity or
small, cold or warm, fresh or salt, from river, cistern, or spring,
is relatively immaterial.
As to the subjects of baptism : The apostolic origin of infant
baptism is denied not only by the Baptists, but also by many
paedobaptist divines. The Baptists assert, that infant baptism is
contrary to the idea of the sacrament itself, and, accordingly, an
unscriptural corruption. For baptism, say they, necessarily pre-
supposes the preaching of the gospel on the part of the church,
and repentance and faith on the part of the candidate for the
ordinance ; and as infants can neither understand preaching, nor
repent and believe, they are not proper subjects of baptism. It
is true, the apostolic church was a missionary church, and had
first to establish a mother community, in the bosom of which
alone the grace of baptism can be improved by a Christian edu-
cation. So even under the old covenant circumcision was first
performed on the adult Abraham ; and so all Christian missionaries
in heathen lands now beg-in with preaching, and baptizing adults.
True, the New Testament contains no express command to bap-
tize infants; such a command would not agree with the free
spirit of the gospel. But still less does the New Testament for-
bid infant baptism ; as it might be expected to do in view of the
universal custom of the Jews, to admit their children by circum-
cision on the eighth day after their birth into the fellowship of
the old covenant.
On the contrary, we have positive arguments for the apostolic
origin and character of infant baptism, first, in the fact, that cir-
cumcision as truly prefigured baptism, as the passover the holy
supper ; then in the organic relation between Christian parents
and children ; in the nature of the new covenant, as even more
comprehensive than the old ; in the universal virtue of Christ, as
the Redeemer of all sexes, classes, and ages, and especially in the
Import of his own infjincy, which has redeemed and sanctified
the infantile age; in his express invitation to children, whom
§ 38. THE loed's supper. 125
lie assures of a title to the kingdom of heaven, and whom, there-
fore, he certainly would not leave without the way and means
of entering it ; in the words of institution, which plainly look to
the Christianizing, not merely of individuals, but of whole
nations, including, of course, the children ; in the express decla-
ration of Peter at the first administration of the ordinance, that
this promise of forgiveness of sins and of the Holy Ghost was
to the Jews and to their children ; in the five instances in the
New Testament of the baptism of whole families, where the pre-
sence of children in most of the cases is far more probable than
the absence of children in all ; and finally, in the universal prac-
tice of the early church, against which the isolated protest of
Tertullian proves no more, than his other eccentricities and Mon-
tanistic peculiarities.
Of course, however, infant baptism is unmeaning, and its prac-
tice a profanation, except under the guarantee of a Christian edu-
cation. And it needs to be completed by a subseqxient act like
confirmation, in which the child, after due instruction in the
gospel, intelligently and freely confesses Christ, devotes himself
to his service, and is thereupon solemnly admitted to the full
communion of the church and to the sacrament of the holy Sup-
per. The earliest traces of confirmation are supposed to be found
in the apostolic practice of laying on hands, or symbolically
imparting the Holy Ghost, after baptism.
§ 38. TJie Lord's Siq^'per.
Comp. the commentaries on Matt. xxvi. 26 sqq., and the parallels ; 1 Cor. x.
16, 17; xi. 23 sqq.; Jno. vi. 47-58. J. Bollinger : Die Lehre von
ler Eucharistie in den drei ersten Jalirhunderten. Mainz 1826. (Rom.
Dath.) Ebrard : Das Dogma vom heU. Abendmahl u. seine Geschichte.
Prankf. 1845. Vol. i. p. 1-231. (Reformed.) Nevin: The Mystical
Presence. A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the
Holy Eucharist. Philadel. 1846. p. 199-256. Kahkis: Die Lehre vom
heU. Abendmahl. Leipz. 1851. (Lutheran.) Rbt. Wilberforce : The
Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. Lond. 1853. (Anghcan, or rather
Tractarian and Romanizing.) L. Imm. Ruckert: Das Abendmahl. Sein
Wesenund seine Geschichte in der alten Kirche. Leipz. 1856. (Rationa-
listic.)
126 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
The sacicament of the holy Supper was instituted by Christ
under the most solemn circumstances, -when he was about to offer
himself a sacrifice for the salvation of the world. It is the feast
of the thankful remembrance and appropriation of his atoning
death, and of the living union of believers with him, and their com-
munion among themselves. As the passover kept in lively re-
membrance the miraculous deliverance from the land of bondage,
and at the same time pointed forward to the Lamb of God ; so
the eucharist represents, seals, and applies the now accomplished
redemption from sin and death until the end of time. Here the
deepest mystery of Christianity is embodied ever anew, and the
tragedy of the cross reproduced before us. Here Christ, who sits
at the right hand of God, and is yet truly present in his church to
the end of the world, gives his own body and blood, the life of
his divine-human person and the virtue of his atoning death, as
spiritual food, the true bread of hfe, to all, who, with due self-
examination, come hungering and thirsting to the heavenly feast
The communion has therefore been always regarded as the summit
and inmost sanctuary of the Christian worship, and as a foretaste
of the marriage-supper of the Lamb in heaven.
In the apostolic period the eucharist was celebrated daily in
connexion with a simple meal of brotherly love (agape), in which
the Christians, in communion with their common Redeemer, for-
got all distinctions of rank, wealth, and culture, and felt them-
selves to be members of one family of God. But this childlike
exhibition of brotherly unity became more and more difficult as
the church increased, and led to all sorts of abuses, such as we
find rebuked in the Corinthians by Paul. The lovc-fcasts, there-
fore, which indeed were no more enjoined by law, than the com-
munity of goods at Jerusalem, were gradually severed from the
eucharist, and in the course of the second and third centuries gra-
dually disappeared.
The apostle requires the Christians^ to prepare themselves for
the Lord's Supper by self-examination, or earnest inquiry whe-
ther they have repentance and faith, without which they cannot
* 1 Cor. si. 28.
§ 39. SACRED PLACES A2s'D TIMES. 127
receive the blessing from the sacrament, but rather provoke
judgment from God. This caution gave rise to the appropriate
custom of holding special preparatory exercises for the holy com-
munion.
§ 39. Sacred Places and Times.
Although, as the omnijDresent Spirit, God may be worshipped
in all places of the universe, which is his temple,^ yet our finite
sensuous nature, and the need of united devotion, require special
sanctuaries, exclusively consecrated to his worship. The first
Christians, after the example of the Lord, frequented the temple
at Jerusalem and the synagogues, so long as their relation to the
Mosaic economy allowed. But besides this, they assembled also
from the first in private houses, especially for the communion
and the love-feast.
The prominent members and first converts, as Lydia in Philippi,
Jason in Thessalonica, Justus in Corinth, Priscilla at Ephesus,
Philemon in Colosse, gladly opened their dwellings for social
worship. In larger cities, as in Eome, the Christian community
divided itself into several such assembhes at j^rivate houses,^
which, however, are alwaj'S addressed in the epistles as a
unit.
That the Christians in the apostolic age erected special houses
of worship is out of the question, even on account of their perse-
cution by Jews and GentUes, to say nothing of their general
poverty ; and the transition of a whole synagogue to the new
faith was no doubt very rare. As the Saviour of the world was
bom in a stable, and ascended to heaven from a mountain, so his
apostles and their successors down to the fomih century, preached
in the streets, the markets, on mountains, in ships, sepulchres,
caves, and deserts, and in the humblest private dwellings. But
how many thousands of costly churches and chapels have since
been built in all parts of the world to the honor of the crucified
Redeemer !
* Comp. Jno. iv. 24. ' w/cXr/uiai vot' oIkov, Rom. srri. 5. 1 Cor. xvi. 19.
128 FIBST PERIOD, A.D. 1-100.
The use of sacred times arises likewise from the necessity of
the earthly life of inan as well as from the nature of social wor-
ship, and has nothing inconsistent with the duty of scrvinsj God
at all times, and praying without ceasing. The apostolic church
here followed in general the Jewish usage, purged from all super-
stition and self-righteousness, and filled with the spirit of fliith
and evangelical freedom. Accordingly, the Christians observed,
first of all, besides table-prayer and private devotion, the Jewish
hours of prayer, j^articularly the times of the morning and even-
ing sacrifices.
As regards the observance of a particular day of the week,
the special divine injunction of a weekly Sabbath, whidi stands
in the Decalogue, and is rooted even in the creation, is, in
its essence, more than a merely nutiuual, temporary, and cere-
monial law. The apostolic congregations assembled, indeed, so
far as practicable, every day for social edification, at the sugges-
tion of the daily sacrifices in the temple;' but from the begin-
ning they held the first day of the week particularly sacred as
the "Lord's day," for the thankful celebration of his resurrec-
tion, and of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.* Sunday was
the day of the comjjletion of the new creation, and became the
Christian day of rest, at once answering the typical import of
the Jewish Sabbath, and itself forming in turn a type of the
eternal rest of the jjcople of God in the heavenly Canaan.' In
the gospel the Sabbath is not a legal, ceremonial observance, but
rather a precious gift of grace, a privilege, a holy rest in the
midst of the unrest of the world, a day of spiritual refreshing in
communion with God and in the fellowship of the saints, a fore-
taste and pledge of the final Sabbath of heaven. The due obser-
vance of it, in which the reformed churches of England, Scotland,
and America, to their incalculable advantage, excel the churches
of the European continent, is a real means of discipline anxl of
grace for the people, a safeguard of ^niblic morality and religion,
' Acts ii. 4G ; xix. 9.
' Comp. Jiio. XX. 19, 26. Acts xx. 7. 1 Cor. xvi. 2. Rev. i. 10.
» Corap. llcb. iv. 1-11. .Rev. iv. 13.
§ 39. SACRED PLACES AND TIMES. 129
a bulwark against infidelity, and a source of immeasurable bless-
ing to the church, the state, and the flimily. Besides the Chris-
tian Sunday, the Jewish Christians observed their ancient Sab-
bath also, till Jerusalem was destroyed.
As Sunday was devoted to the commemoration of the Saviour's
resurrection, and observed as a day of thanksgiving and joy, so,
at least as early as the second century, if not sooner, Friday
came to be observed as a day of rejoentance, with jorayer and
fasting, in commemoration of the sufferings and death of Christ.
As to annual festivals : it is most probable, from some hints
in the New Testament,' in connexion with the universal practice
of the church in the second century,^ that the annual celebration
of the death and the resurrection of Christ, and of the outpour-
ing of the Holy Ghost, answering to the Passover and Pentecost
of the Jews, was introduced in the apostolic age. In truth,
Christ crucified, risen, and living in the church, was the one
absorbing thought of the Christians ; and as this thought
expressed itself in the weekly observance of Sunday, so it
would very naturally transform also the two great typical
feasts of the Old Testament into the Christian Easter and
"Whitsunday. The Paschal controversies of the second cen-
tury related not to the fact, but to the time, of the Easter
festival, and, according to Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicet of
Rome, are to be traced to an unim23ortant difference in the-
practice of the apostles.
Of other annual festivals, such especially as those of the Virgin
Mary and the saints, the New Testament contains not the faintest
trace.
' 1 Cor. V. 7, 8 ; xvL 8. Acta xviii. 21; xx. 6, 16. ^ Comp. below, § 9&;
130 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
CHAPTER Y.
ORGANIZATION OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.
R. Rothe: Die Anfiinge der christlichen Kirclie u. ihrer Verfassung, I. Wit-
tenb. 1837. p. 141 sqq. Mohler (R. C.) : Die Einheit der Kirclie. Tiib.
1825. LoiiE (Luth.) : Die N. Tlichen Aemter u. ihr Yerhaltniss zur
Gemeinde. Niirnb. 1848. Essays on the Primitive Church Offices,
reprinted from the Princeton Review (Prosbyt). N. York, 1851. Bishop
Kaye (Episc.) : Account of the External Discipline and Government of the
Church of Christ in the First Three Centuries. Lond. 1855. Neander,
Thiersch, Lange, SchafF, in their works on the Apostolic Church.
§ 40. The Mirmiry^ and its Relation to the Community.
The ministerial office was instituted by the Lord before hi?
ascension, and solemnly inaugurated on the first Christian Pen-
tecost by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, to be the regular
organ of the kingly power of Christ on earth in founding, main-
taining, and extending the church. It appears in the New Tes-
tament under different names, descriptive of its various functions :
— the " ministry of the word," " of the Spirit," " of righteousness,"
" of reconciliation." It includes the preaching of the gospel, the
administration of the sacraments, and church discipline or the
power of the keys, the power to open and shut the gates of the
kingdom of heaven, in other words, to declare to the penitent the
forgiveness of sins, and to the unworthy excommunication in the
name and by the authority of Christ. The ministers of the gos-
pel are, in an eminent sense, servants of God, and, as such, ser-
vants of the churches in tlie noble spirit of self-denying love
according to the example of Christ, for the eternal salvation of
tlie souls intrusted to their charge. They are called the light of
the world, the salt of the earth, fellow- workers with God, stewards
§ 40. THE MINISTRY AKD THE COMMUNITY. 131
of tlie mysteries of God, ambassadors for Christ. And tliis un-
speakable dignity brings with it corresponding responsibility.
Even a Paul, contemplating the glory of an office, which is a savor
of life unto life to believers, and of death unto death to the impeni-
tent, exclaims ; " "Who is sufficient for these things ? "^ and ascribes
all his sufficiency and success to the unmerited grace of God.
The internal call to the sacred office and the moral qualifica-
tion for it must come from the Holy Ghost,'' but be recognised
and ratified by the church through her proper organs. The
apostles were called, indeed, immediately by Christ to the work
of founding the church ; but so soon as a community of believers
arose, the congregation took an active part also in all religious
affairs. The persons thus inwardly and outwardly designated
by the voice of Christ and his church, were solemnly set apart
and inducted into their ministerial fanctions by the symbolical
act of ordination ; that is, by prayer and the laying on of the
hands of the apostles or their representatives, conferring the
appropriate spiritual gifts.^
Yet, high as the sacred office is in its divine origin and import,
it was separated by no impassable chasm from the body of be-
lievers. The Jewish and later catholic antithesis of clergy and
laity has no place in the apostolic age. The ministers, on the
one part, are as sinful and dependent on redeeming grace as the
members of the congregations ; and those members, on the other,
share equally with the ministers in the blessings of the gospel,
enjoy equal freedom of access to the throne of grace, and are
called to the same direct communion with Christ, the head of the
whole body. The very mission of the church is, to reconcile all
men with God, and make them all true Christians, followers of
Christ, prophets, priests, and kings. And though this glorious
end can be attained only through a long process of history, yet
regeneration itself contains the germ and the pledge of the final
perfection. The New Testament, looking at the principle of the
new life and the high calling of the Christian, styles all believers
' 2 Cor. ii. 16. « Acts xx. 28.
' Acts vi. 6. 1 Tim. iv. U. v. 22. 2 Tim. i. 6.
182 FIRST PEEIOD. A.D. 1-100.
"brctliren," "saints," a "sj)iritual temple," a " peculiar people,"
a " holy and roval priesthood," It is remarkable, that Peter in
particular should present the idea of the ])riesthood as the destiny
of all,^ and apply the term clerus not to the ministerial order as
distinct from the laity, but to the community f thus regarding
every Christian congregation as a spiritual tribe of Levi, a pecu-
liar ])cople, holy to the Lord.
§ 41. Apostles^ Prophets^ Evangelists.
The ministry orig-inally coincided with the apostolate ; as the
church also was at first identical with the congregation of Jeru-
salem. But when the believers began to number thousands, the
apostles could not possibly perform all the functions of teaching,
conducting worship, and adifiinistering discipline ; they were
obliged to create new offices for the ordinary wants of the con-
gregations, while they devoted themselves to the general super-
vision. Thus arose gradually, out of the proper spirit of Chris-
tianity, though partly at the suggestion of the existing organization
of the Jewish synagogue, the various general and congregational
offices in the church. As these all have their common root in
the apostolate, so they partake also, in different degrees, of its
divine origin, authority, privileges, and responsibilities.
We notice first those offices, whose field was not limited to
any one congregation, but extended over the whole church, or at
least over a greater part of it. These are apostles, prophets, and
evangelists.
1. Apostles. These were originally twelve in number, answer-
ing to the twelve tribes of Israel. In place of the traitor, Judas,
Matthias was chosen by lot, between the ascension and Pente-
cost. After the outpouring of the Holy Ghost Paul was added
by tho direct call of the exalted Saviour. He was the indepen-
dent apostle of the Gentiles, and afterwards gathered several
subordinate, helpers around him. Besides these there were apos-
tolic men, like Barnabas, whose standing and influence were almost
• 1 Pet. ii. 5, 9. ' Ch. v. 3.
§ 42. PRESBYTERS, DEACONS, ANGELS. 133
equal to t"hat of the proper apostles. The apostles (excepting
Matthias, whose election has been, on this account, thought by
some to have been hasty and invalid) were called directly by
Christ, without human intervention, to be his representatives on
earth, the infallible organs of the Holy Grhost, the founders and
pillars of the whole church. Their office was universal, and
their inspired writings are to this day the unerring rule of faith
and practice for all Christendom. But they never exercised
their divine authority in arbitrary and despotic style. They
always paid tender regard to the rights, freedom, and dignity of
the immortal souls under their care. In every believer, even in
a poor slave like Onesimus, they recognised a member of the
same body with themselves, a partaker of their redemption, a
beloved brother in Christ. Their government of the church was
a labor of meekness and love, of self-denial and unreserved devo-
tion to the eternal welfare of the people.
2. Prophets. These were inspired teachers and enthusiastic
preachers of the mysteries of Grod. They appear to have had
special influence on the choice of ofl6.cers, designating the per-
sons, who were pointed out to them by the Spirit of God in
their prayer and fasting, as peculiarly fitted for missionary labor
or any other service in the church. Of the prophets the book
of Acts names Agabus,^ Barnabas, Symeon, Lucius, Manaen,
and Saul of Tarsus,^ Judas and Silas.^ The gift of prophecy
dwelt in all the apostles, pre-eminently in John, the seer of the
new covenant and author of the Revelation.
3. Evangelists, itinerant preachers, delegates and fellow-
laborers of the apostles; — such men as Mark, Luke, Timothy,
Titus, Silas, Epaphras, Trophimus, and ApoUos.
§ 42. Presbyters^ Deacons, and Deaconesses. The Angels of the
Churches of Asia Minor.
Besides these officers of the whole church, there were officers
' Ch. xi. 28 : xxi. 19. « ch. xiii. 1. ' Ch. xv. 32.
13-i FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
of local congregations, cliargcd witli carrying forward in particu-
lar places the work begun by tlie apostles.
1. Bishops^ or Presbyters.^ These two terms denote in the
New Testament the same office ; the first signifying its duties, the'
second its dignity.^ The presbyters were the regular overseers,
teachers, and pastors of the several congregations, intrusted with
the direction of public worship, the administration of discipline,
the care of souls, and the management of the church property.
"We find them always in the plural, a.s a college; at Jerusalem,^
at Ephesus,^ at Philippi," and at the ordination of Timoth}^'
As to the mutual relations of the members of the presbytery,
tlie division of labor among them, the nature and term of the
presidency, the New Testament gives us no information.
The distinction of teaching presbyters or ministers proper, and
ruling presbyters or lay elders, rests on a single passage,^ which
unquestionably admits a different interpretation ; especially since
Paul in the same epistle^ expressly mentions abilit}^ to teach
among the requisites for the episcopal or presbyterial office. The
members of the presbyterial college, however, very probably
distributed the various duties of their office among tliemselves
according to their res2:>ective talents, tastes, and outward circum-
stances. Possibly, too, the president, whether temporary or per-
manent, was styled distinctively the bishop ; and from this the
subsequent separation of the episcopate from the presbytery may
easily have arisen. However this may have been, the bishops
in the first century were limited in their jurisdiction either to one
congregation or to a small circle of congregations, while the gene-
ral government of the church was in the hands of the apostles.
2. Deacons, or helpers, appear first in the church of Jerusa-
lem, seven in number, apjDointcd in consequence of a complaint
of the Hellenistic Christians, that their widows were neglected
m favor of the Hebrew Christians.^'' The example of that church
' ImaKOTToi. " From QiapT elders.
' Comp. Acts XX. 17, 28. Tit. i. 5, 7. 1 Tim. iii. 1-7. Pliil. i. 1.
* Acts xi. 30 ; xv. 4, G, 23 ; xxi. 18. ° Ch. xx. 17, 28. * Pliil. i. 1.
" 1 Tim. iv. 14. " 1 Tim. v. 17. » Cli. iii. 2 '» Act.s vi.
§ 42. PRESBYTERS, DEACONS, ANGELS. 135
was followed in all the other congregations, though without par-
ticular regard to the number seven. The office of these deacons,
according to the narrative in Acts, was, to attend to the wants
of the poor and the sick. To this work a kind of pastoral care
of souls very naturally attached itself; since poverty and sick-
ness afford the best occasions and the most urgent demand for
edifying instruction and consolation. Hence living faith and exem-
plary conduct were necessary qualifications for the office of deacon.*
8. Deaconesses, or female helpers, had a similar charge of
the poor and sick in the female portion of the church. This
office was the more needful on account of the rigid separation of
the sexes at that day, especially among the Greeks. It opened
to pious women and virgins, and especially to widows, a most
suitable field for the regular official exercise of their peculiar
gifts of self-denying love and devotion to the welfare of the
church. Through it they could carry the light and comfort of
the gospel into the most private and delicate relations of domestic
life, without at all overstepping their natural sphere. Paul men-
tions Phebe as a deaconess of the church of Cenchrea, the port of
Corinth ; and it is more than probable, that Tryphena, Try-
phosa, and Persis, whom he commends for their labor in the
Lord,'' served in the same capacity at Eome.
4. Finally, towards the close of the a]30stolic age one more
class of congregational officers appears, — the Angels, to whom
the episttes of the Apocalypse are addressed. These probably
represent the whole corps of officers in the respective churches of
Asia Minor, as the responsible messengers of God to them. If
regarded as single persons, they cannot be mere members of a
presbytery, but must be somewhat like the bishops of the second
century, though still materially different from them in the extent
of their charges, and in their subordination to the still living
apostle John ; so as not to be successors of the apostles in the
later sense of that word. We might call them congregational
bishops as distinct from the apostles and from diocesan bishops of
later times.
' Acts vL 3. 1 Tim. iii. 8 sqq. ' Rom. xvii. 12.
136 FIRST PERIOD. A.I). 1-100.
§ 43. The Council at Jerusalem.
The most complete outward representation of tlic apostolic
church as a teaching and legislative body was the council con-
vened at Jerusalem in the year 50, to decide as to the authority
of the law of Moses, and adjust the difference between Jewish and
Gentile Christianity.' It consisted of the apostles, elders, and
brethren .2 This fact deserves special notice in view of the
exclusively hierarchical government wliich afterwards obtained
in the Eoman and Greek churches. The transactions were public,
before the congregation; the apostles and elders framed the
decree not without, but " with the whole church ;" and sent the
circular letter not in their own name only, bvit also in the name
of the brethren ; a plain proof of the right of Christian people to
take part in some way in the government of the church, as they
do in her worship.
The spirit and practice of the apostles thus favored a certain
kind of popular self-government, and the harmonious, fraternal
co-operation of the different elements of the church. It counte-
nanced no abstract distinction of clergy and laity. All believers
are called to the prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices in Christ.
The bearers of authority and discipline should therefore never
forget, that their great work is to train the governed to freedom
and independence, and by the various spiritual offices to form
gradually the whole body of believers to the unity of fliith and
knowledge, and to the perfect manhood of Christ.^
The council of Jerusalem, though not a binding precedent, is a
significant example, giving the apostolic sanction to the synodical
form of church government, in whicli all classes of the Christian
community are represented in the management of public affairs
and in settling controversies respecting faith and practice.
§ 4-1. Church Discipline.
Although holiness, like unity and catholicity, is an essential
mark of tlie church as the body of Jesus Christ, yet it has never
> Acts XV., and Giilaliaiis ii. " Acts xv. 12, 22, 23. » Kph. iv. 11-13.
§ 44. CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 137
thus far been fully realized in lier eartlily membersliip. The
church on earth is passing through a long process of sanctifica-
tion, which cannot be complete, till the second coming of the
Lord and the resurrection of the body.
Even the apostles, far as they tower above ordinary Christians,
and infallible as they are in giving all the instruction necessary
to salvation, never during their earthly life claimed sinless per-
fection of character, but felt themselves oppressed with manifold
infirmities, and in constant need of forgiveness and purification.^
Still less can we expect perfect moral purity in their churches.
In fiict, all the epistles of the New Testament contain exhorta-
tions to 2)rogress in virtue and piety, warnings against unfaith-
fulness and apostasy, and reproofs respecting corrupt practices
among the believers. The old leaven of Judaism and hea-
thenism could not be purged away at once, and to many of the
blackest sins the converts were for the first time fully exposed
after their regeneration by water and the Spirit. In the churches
of Galatia many fell back fro:n grace and from the freedom of
the gospel to the legal bondage of Judaism and the " rudiments
of the world." In the church of Corinth Paul had to rebuke the
carnal spirit of sect, the morbid desire for wisdom, participation
in the idolatrous feasts of the heathen, the tendency to unclean-
ness, and a scandalous profanation of the holy supper or the
love-feasts connected with it. Almost all the churches of Asia
Minor, according to the epistles of Paul and the Apocalypse,
were so infected with theoretical or practical error, as to call for
the earnest warnings and reproofs of the Holy Spirit through the
apostles.
These facts show how needful church discipline is, both for
the church herself and for the offenders. For the church it is a
process of self-purification and the assertion of the holiness and
moral dignity which essentially belong to her. To the offender
it is at once a merited punishment and a means of repentance
and reform. For the ultimate end of all the agency of Christ and
• PhU. iii. 12-14. 2 Cor. iv. 7 sqq., xii. 7. • 1 Cor. ix. 27. Jas. iil 2. 1 Jno. i. 8, 9.
Gal. ii. 11. Acts xv. 36-39, xxiii. 3 sqq.
138 FIEST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
his cliurcli is the salvation of souls ; and Paul styles the severest
form of church discipline the delivering of the backslider " to
Satan fur the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be
saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."^
The means of discipline are of various degrees of severity ;
first, private admonition, then public correction, and, finally,
when these prove fruitless, excommunication, or temporary exclu-
sion from all the means of grace and from Christian intercourse.^
Upon sincere repentance, the fallen one is restored to the com-
munion of the church. The act of discipline is that of the whole
congregation in the name of Christ ; and Paul himself, though
personally absent, excommunicated the fornicator at Corinth
with the concurrence of the congregation, and as being in spirit
united with it.
The two severest cases of discipline in the apostolic church were
the fearful punishment of Ananias and Sapphira by Peter for
fiilsehood and hypocrisy in the churcli of Jerusalem in the days
of her first love,^ and the excommunication of a member of the
Corinthian congregation by Paul for adultery and fornication.^
The latter case affords also an instance of restoration .°
§ 45. The Churchy the Body of Jesus Christ.
Thus the apostolic church appears as a free, independent, and
complete organism, asystem of supernatural, divine life in a human
body. It contains in itself all the ofiices and energies required for
its purposes. It produces the supply of its outward wants from
its own free spirit. Instead of receiving protection and support
from the secular power, it suffers deadly hatred and jjcrsecution.
It manages its own internal affairs •v\dth equal independence. Of
union with the state, either in the way of hierarchical supremacy
or of Erastian subordination, the first three centuries afford no
trace. The apostles honor the civil autliority as a divine insti-
tution, and, in tlie time of a Claudius and a Nero, enjoin strict
' 1 Cor. V. 5. « Comp. Matt, xviii. 15-18. Tit. iii. 10. 1 Cor. v. 5.
' Acts V. 1-10, " 1 Cor. V. 1 sqq. ' 2 Cor. ii. 5-10.
§ 45. THE CHURCH THE BODY OF CHRIST. 139
obedience to it in all civil concerns; as, indeed, their heavenly
Master himself submitted in temporal matters to Herod and to
Pilate, and rendered unto Caesar the things that were Caesar's.
But in their spiritual calling they allowed nothing to be pre-
scribed or forbidden to them by the state. Their principle was,
to " obey God rather than men." For this principle, for their
allegiance to the King of kings, they were always ready to suffer
imprisonment, insult, persecution, and death, but never to resort
to carnal weapons, or stir up rebellion and revolution. " The
weapons of our warfare," says Paul, " are not carnal, but mighty
through God." Martyrdom is a far nobler heroism than resist-
ance with fire and sword, and leads with greater certainty at
last to a thorough and permanent victory.
The apostolic church, as to its membership, was not free from
impurities, the after-workings of Judaism and heathenism and
the natural man. But in virtue of an inherent authority it
exercised rigid discipline, and thus steadily asserted its dignity
and holiness. It was not perfect ; but it earnestly strove after
the jDerfection of manhood in Christ, and longed and hoped for
the reappearance of the Lord in glory to the exaltation of his
people. It was as yet not actually universal, but a little flock
compared with the hostile hosts of the heathen and Jewish world;
yet it carried in itself the principle of true catholicity, the power
and pledge of its victory over all other religions, and its final
prevalence among all nations of the earth and in all classes of
society.
Paul defines the church as the body of Jesus Christ.^ He thus
represents it as an organic living system of various members,
powers, and functions, and at the same time as the abode of
Christ and the organ of his redeeming and sanctifying influence
upon the world. Christ is, in one view, the ruling head, in
another the invisible, all-pervading soul, of this body. Christ
without the church were a head without a body, a fountain with-
out a stream, a king without subjects, a captain without soldiers,
1 Rom. xii. 5. 1 Cor. vi. 15; x. 17; xii. 21. Eph. i. 23; iv. 12; v. 23, 30.
Col. i. 18, 24; ii. 17.
140 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100.
a bridegroom without a bride. The cburcli without Christ were a
body without soul or spirit, a lifeless corpse. The church lives
only as Christ lives and moves and works in her. At every
moment of her existence she is dependent on him, as the body
on the soul, or the branches on the vine. But on his part he per-
petually bestows upon her his heavenly gifts and supernatural
powers, continually reveals himself in her, and uses her as his
organ for the spread of his kingdom and the christianizing of the
world, till all principalities and powers yield free obedience to
him, and adore him as the eternal Projjhet, Priest, and King of
the regenerate race.
This work must be a gradual process of history. The idea of
a body, and of all organic life, includes that of development,
of expansion and consolidation. And hence the same Paul
speaks also of the growth and edification of the body of Christ,
" till we all come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge
of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the
stature of the fulness of Christ."^
' Eph. iv. 13.
SECOID PERIOD.
THE
CHURCH UNDER PERSECUTION:
FEOM THE
DEATH OF ST. JOHN TO CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
A. D. 100-311.
SECOND PERIOD.
FROM THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN TO CONSTANTINE THE GREAT.
A.D. 100—311.
SOURCES.
(1.) The writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, and all the ecclesias-
tical authors of the 2nd and 3rd, and to some extent of the 4th and oth
centuries; particularly Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, TertuUian,
Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, and
Theodoret. (2.) The writings of the numerous heretics, mostly extant
only in fragments. (3.) The works of the pagan opponents of Christianity,
as Celsus, Lucian, and Porphyry. (4.) The occasional notices of Chris-
tianity in the contemporary classical authors, Tacitus, Suetonius, the
younger Pliny, Dio Cassius.
The fragments of the earliest Christian writers, whose works are lost, may be
found collected in Grace : Spicilegium patrum ut et haereticorum saeculi
i. ii. etiii. Oxon. 1700 (newed. Oxf. 1714, 3 vols.); in Routh: Reliquiae
Sacrae, sive auctorum fere jam perditorum secundi, tertiique saecuh frag-
menta, quae supersunt. Oxon. 1814 sqq. 4 vols. (2nd ed. enlarged, 5 vols.
Oxf. 1846-48) ; and in Dom T. B. Pitra (0. S. B.) : Spicilegium Soles-
mense, complectens sanctorum patrum scriptorumque eccles. anecdota hac-
tenus opera, selecta e G-raecisOrientialibusque et Latinis codicibus. 1852-
55. vols. 3. Comp. also Bunsen : Christianity and Mankind, &c. Lond.
1854, vols. V. vi. and vii., which contain the Analecta Ante-Nicaena
(rehquiae literariae, canonicae, liturgicae). The heresiological writings
of antiquity are collected in Eranc. Oehler : Corpus haeresiologicum.
Berol. 1856 sqq.
LITERATURE.
Eusebius (t 340) : ''ExxXy;it.a'jT'txr; laropCa (from the Incarnation to 324), ed.
Valesius, Par. 1659, and in many other editions and translations. Mos-
HEiM : Commentarii de rebus Christianis ante Constantinum M. Helmst.
1753. The same in English by Vidal, 1813 sqq. 3 vols., and by Mur-
1-i-l SECOND TERIOD. A.T). 100-311.
DOCK, Now Haven, 1852, 2 vols. Cave : Primitive Christianitj'. 1698.
Cave : Lives of the Fathers of the first four Centuries. 1677-83. 2 vols.
(Oxon. 1841, in 3 vols.). Gibbon : The History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire. London. 1776-88. 6 vols. ; and frequently (ed
of Milman, -with his own, Guizot's, and Wenck's notes). Tzschiuner : Der
Fall des Heidenthums. Leipz. 1829. Burton: Lectures upon the Ec-
clesiastical History of the first three Centuries. Oxf. 1833, in 3 parts (in
1 vol. 1845). Milman: The History of Christianity from the Birth of
Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire. Lond. 1840. 3
vols. (N.York, 1844, 1 vol.). Kaye: Ecclesiastical History of the Second and
Third Centuries illustrated from the Writings of Tertullian. Lond. 1845.
Hinds: The Rise and Early Progress of Christianity. Lond. 1849.
Jeremie: Hist, of the Chr. Church in the 2nd and 3rd Cent. Lond. 1849.
Maurice : Lectures on the Eccles. Hist, of tlie 1st and 2nd Cent. Cambr.
1854. Ritschl: Die Entstehung der alt-katholischen Kirche. Bonn, 1850.
2nd ed. 1857. Baur: Das Christeuthum u. die Christliche Kiiclie der drei
ersten Jahrhunderte. Tubing. 1853. Hagenbach : Die christliche Kirche
der drei ersten Jahrhunderte. Leipz. 1853. (2nd ed. 1856.) Christianity in
the Three First Centuries. Lectures by Merle d'Aubigne, Bungener, etc.
Lond. 1858. Of the more general works on Church History, those of Tille-
mont (R. C.) and Neander, particularly should be noticed on this period,
§ 46. Liiroductory Vietu.
"We now descend from the primitive apostolic cliurcli to the
Graeco-Eoman ; from the scene of creation to the work of preser-
vation ; fr(5m the fountain of divine revelation to the stream of
Human development ; from the generation of demigods to that
of mortals ; from the inspirations of the apostles and prophets to
the productions of enlightened but fallible teachers. The hand
of God has drawn a bold line of demarcation between the century
of miracles and the succeeding ages, to show, by the abrupt transi-
tion and the striking contrast, the difference between the work of
God and the work of man, and to impress us the more deeply
with the supernatural origin of Christianity and the incomparable
value of the New Testament.
Still, notwithstanding the striking difference, the church of the
second and third centuries is a legitimate continuation of that of the
primitive age. "While far inferior in originality, purity, energy,
and freshness, it is distinguished for conscientious fidelity in pre-
serving and propagating the sacred writings and traditions of the
apostles, and for untiring zeal in imitating their holy lives amidst
the greatest difficulties and dangers.
§ -±6. INTRODUCTORY VIEW. 145
Tlie second period, from tlie deatli of the apostle Jolin to the
end of the persecutions, or to the accession of Constantine, the
first Christian emperor, is the classic age of the ecclesia pressa^ of
oppression and persecution, and of Christian martyrdom and
heroism, the cheerful sacrifice of possessions and of life for the
inheritance of heaven. It furnishes a continuous commentary on
the Saviour's word : " Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the
midst of wolves ;" "I came not to send peace on earth, but a
sword. "^ No merely human religion could have stood such an
ordeal of fire for three hundred years. The final victory of
Christianity over Judaism and heathenism, and the mightiest em-
pire of the ancient world, a victory gained without phj^sical force,
by the moral power of patience and perseverance, of faith and
love, is one of the sublimest spectacles of history, and one of the'
strongest evidences of the divinity and indestructible life of our
holy religion.
But equally sublime and significant are the intellectual and'
S23iritual victories of the church in this period over the science and'
art of heathenism, and over the assaults of Gnostic and Ebionistic
heresy, with the copious vindication and development of the
Christian truth, which the great mental conflict with those open
and secret enemies called forth.
The church of this period appears poor in earthly possessions
and honors, but rich in heavenly grace, in world -conquering
faith, love, and hope ; impojDular, even outlawed, hated, and per-
secuted, yet far more vigorous and expansive than the philosophies
of Greece or the empire of Rome ; composed chiefly of persons
of the lower social ranks, yet attracting the noblest and deepest
minds of the age, and bearing in her bosom the hope of the world ;.
conquering by apparent defeat, and growing on the blood of
her martyrs ; great in deeds, greater in sufferings, greatest in death
for the honor of Christ and the benefit of generations to come.^
^ Comp. Matt. x. 17-39.
" Isaac Taylor, in his " Ancient Christianity," which is expressly written against
a superstitious over-valuation of the patristic a^e, nevertheless admits (vol. i. p. 37) :
" Our brethren of the early church challenge our respect, as well as affection ; for
tlieirs was the fervor of a steady faith in things unseen and eternal; theirs, often, a
10
14:6 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
The condition and manners of the Christians in this age are
most beautifully described by the unknown author of the Epis-
tola ad Diognetum^ in the early part of the second century.
" The Christians," says he, " are not distinguished from other
men by country, by language, nor by civil institutions. For
they neither dwell in cities by themselves, nor use a peculiar
tongue, nor lead a singular mode of life. They dwell in the
Grecian or barbarian cities, as the case may be ; they follow the
usage of the country in dress, food, and the other aftairs of life.
Yet they present a wonderful and confessedly paradoxical con-
duct. They dwell in their own native lands, but as strangers.
They take part in all things, as citizens ; and they suffer all
things, as foreigners. Every foreign country is a fatherland to
them, and every native land is a foreign. They marry, like all
others ; they have children ; but they do not cast away their
offspring. They have the table in common, but not wives.
They live upon the earth, but are citizens of heaven. They
obey the existing laws, and cxcqI theja.\vsjby theirjives. They
love all, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown, and yet
they are condemned. They are killed and are made alive.
They are poor and make many rich. They lack all things, and
in all things abound. They are reproached, and glory in their
reproaches. They are calumniated, and are justified. They are
cursed, and they bless. They receive scorn, and they give
honor. They do good, and are punished as evildoers. When
punished, they rejoice, as being made alive. By the Jews they
are attacked as aliens, and by the Greeks persecuted ; and the
meek patience under the most grievous wrongs; theirs tlie courage to maintain a
good profession before the frowning face of philosophy, of secular t3-ranny, and of
splendid superstition ; theirs was abstractedness from the world and a painful self-
denial ; theirs the most arduous and costly labors of love ; theirs a muuiticcnce in
charity, altogether without example; theirs was a reverent and scrupulous care of the
sacred writings ; and this one merit, if they had no other, is of a superlative degree,
and should entitle them to the veneration and grateful regards of the modern church.
How little do many readers of the Bible, nowadays, think of what it cost the Chris-
tians of the second and tliird centuries, merely to rescue and hide llio s;icred trea-
sure from tlie rage of the heathen!"
' C. 5 and G (p. G9 sq. ed. Olio. Lip's. 1S52).
§ 46. INTRODUCTORY VIEW. 147
cause of tlie enmity their enemies cannot tell. In short, what the
soul is in the body, the Christians are in the world. The soul
is diffused through all the members of the body, and the Chris-
tians are spread through the cities of the world. The soul dwells
in the body, but it is not of the body ; so the Christians dwell in
the world, but are not of the world. The soul, invisible, keeps
watch in the visible body ; so also the Christians are seen to live
in the world, but their piety is invisible. The flesh hates and
wars against the soul, suffering no wrong from it, but because
it resists fleshly pleasures ; and the world hates the Christians
with no reason, but that they resist its pleasures. The soul loves
the flesh and members, by which it is hated ; so the Christians
love their haters. The soul is inclosed in the body, but holds
the body together ; so the Christians are detained in the world
as in a prison ; but they contain the world. Immortal, the soul
dwells in the mortal body; so the Christians dwell in the cor-
ruptible, but look for incorruption in heaven. The soul is the
better for restriction in food and drink; and the Christians
increase, though daily punished. This lot God has assigned to
the Christians in the world; and it cannot be taken from them."
The community of Christians thus from the first felt itself, in
distinction from Judaism and from heathenism, the salt of the
earth, the light of the world, the city of Grod set on a hill, the
immortal soul in a dying body ; and this its impression respect-
ing itself was no mere proud conceit, but truth and reality, act-
ing in life and in death, and opening the way through hatred
and persecution even to an outward victory over the world.
148 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
CHAPTER I.
SPREAD OF CHRISTIiVJ^ITY.
Comp. Le Qcien: Oriens Christianus. Par. 1740. 3 vols. fol. Mosheim:
Historical Commentaries, &c, (ed. Murdock) i. p. 259-290. Gibbon:
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Chap. xv. Neander :
History of the Christian Relig. and Ch. (ed. Torrey) i. p. G8-79.
WiLTSCH : Handbuch der kirchl. Geographic u. Statistik. BerL 1846. i. p.
32 sqq.
§ 47. Hindrances and Helps.
For the first three centanes the Lord placed Christianity in the
most unfavorable circumstances, that it might display its moral
power, and gain its victory over the world by spiritual weapons
alone. Until the reign of Constantine it had not even a legal
existence in the Roman empire, but was first ignored as a Jewish
sect, then slandered, proscribed, and persecuted, as a treasonable
innovation, and the adoption of it made pimishable with confisca-
tion and death. Besides, it offered not the slightest favor, as
Mohammedanism afterwards did, to the corrupt inclinations of the
heart, but 'against the current ideas of Jews and heathens it so
presented its inexorable demand of repentance and conversion,
renunciation of self and of the world, that more, according to
Tertullian, were kept out of the new sect by love of pleasure,
than by love of life. The Jewish origin of Christianitv also, and
the poverty and obscurity of a majority of its professors, parti-
cularly offended the pride of the Grreeks and Romans. Celsus
exaggerating this fact, and ignoring the many exceptions, scoff-
ingly remarked, tliat " weavers, cobblers, and fullers, the most
§ 47. HINDEANCES AND HELPS. 149
illiterate persons" preached the " irrational faith," and knew how
to commend it especially " to women and children,"
But in spite of these extraordinary difficulties Christianity
made a progress, which furnished striking evidence of its divi-
nity, and was employed as such by Irenaeus, Justin, Tertullian,
and other fathers of that day. Nay, the very hindrances became,
in the hands of Providence, helps. Persecution led to mar-
tyrdpm, and martyrdom had not terrors alone, but also
attractions, and not rarely S23read as by contagion. Everv
genuine martyr was a living proof of the truth and holiness of
the Christian religion. Tertullian can exclaim to the heathen :
" All your ingenious cruelties can accomplish nothing; they are
only a lure to this sect. Our number increases the more you
destroy us. The blood of the Christians is their seed." The
moral earnestness of the Christians contrasted powerfully with
the prevailing corruption of the age, and while it repelled the
frivolous and voluptuous, it could not fail to impress most
strongly the deepest and noblest minds. The predilection of the
poor and oppressed for the gospel attested its comforting and
redeeming power. But others also, from the higher and educated
classes, were from the first attracted to the new religion ; such
men as Nicodemus, the apostle Paul, the proconsul Sergius
Paulus, Dionj'sius of Athens, Erastus of Corinth, and some mem-
bers of the imperial household- Among the sufferers in Domi-
tian's ^persecution were his own near kinswoman Flavia Domi-
tilla and her husband Flavins Clemens. The senatorial and
equestrian orders furnished several converts open or concealed.
Pliny laments, that in Asia Minor men of every rank, omnis
ordinis, go over to the Christians. The numerous church
fathers from the middle of the second century, a Justin Martyr,
Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian,
excelled, or at least equalled in talent and culture, their most
eminent heathen contemj)oraries. Nor was this progress con-
fined to any particular localities. It extended alike over all
parts of the empire. "We are a people of yesterday," says Ter-
tullian in his Apology, "and yet we have filled every place
150 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
belonging to you — cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your
very camp, your tribes, comjDanies, palace, senate, forum ! We
fl ' leave you your temples only. We can count your armies ; our
^ '^ numbers in a single province will be greater." All these facts
' C expose the injustice of the odious charge of Celsus, repeated by a
\ ' modern sceptic, that the new sect was almost entirely composed
P of the dregs of the populace — of peasants and mechanics, of boys
' and women, of beggars and slaves.
The chief positive cause of the rapid spread of Christianity is
to be found in its own absolute intrinsic worth, as the only true,
divinely revealed, universal religion of redemption. Thus its
value could be seen in the truth and self-evidencing power of its
doctrines ; in the purity and elevation of its precepts ; in its rege-
nerating and sanctifying effects on heart and life ; in the faith,
the brotherly love, the beneficence, and the triumphant death of
its confessors; in its adaptation to all classes, conditions, and
relations among men. To this were added the powerful outward
proof of its divine origin in the prophecies and types of the Old
Testament, so strikingly fulfilled in the New ; and finally, the
/ testimony of the miracles, which, according to the express statement
! of Quadratus, of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and
j others, continued in this period to accompanj^ the preaching of
\ missionaries from time to time, for the conversion of the heathen.
Particularly favorable outward circumstances were the extent,
order, and unity of. the Eoman empire, and the prevalence of the
Grecian culture.
In addition to these positive causes, Christianity had a powerful
negative advantage in the hopeless condition of the Jewish and
heathen world. Since the fearful judgment of the destruction of
Jerusalem, Judaism had wandered restless and accursed, without
national existence. Heathenism outwardly held sway, but was
inwardly rotten and in process of inevitable decay. The popular
religion and public morality were undermined by a sceptical and
materialistic philosophy ; Grecian science and art had lost their
creative energy ; the Roman empire rested only on the power of
the sword and of temporal interests ; the moral bonds of society
§ 47. HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 151
were sundered ; unbounded avarice and vice of every kind,
even by the confession of a Tacitus and a Seneca, reigned in
Rome and in the provinces, from the throne to the hoveL No-
thing, that chissic antiquity in its fairest days had produced,
coukl heal the fatal wounds of the age, or even give transient
relief. The only star of hope in the gathering night was the
young, the fresh, the dauntless religion of Jesus, fearless of death,
strong in faith, glowing with love, and destined to commend itself
more and more to all reflecting minds as the only living religion
of the present and the future. " Christ appeared," says Augus-
tine, " to the men of the decrepit, decaying world, that while all
around them was withering away, they might through him receive
new, youthful life."
The gospel was propagated chiefly, of course, by the living
preaching of the gospel and by personal intercourse ; to a con-
siderable extent also through the sacred Scriptures, which were
early propagated and translated into various tongues, especially
the Latin and the Syriac. Communication among the different
parts of the Roman empire from Damascus to Britain was com-
paratively easy and safe. The highways built for commerce and /^
for the Roman legions, served also the messengers of peace and )
the silent conquests of the cross.
The particular mode, as well as the precise time, of the intro-
duction of Christianity into the several countries during this
period is for the most part uncertain, and we know juot much
more than the fact itself No doubt much more was done by the
apostles and their immediate disciples, than the New Testament
informs us of. But on the other hand the mediaeval tradition
assigns an apostolic origin to many national and local churches,
which cannot have arisen before the second or third century.
Besides the regular ministry, slaves and women particularly 7'"
appear to have performed missionary service, and to have intro-
duced the Christian life into all circles of society. 'Commerce,
too, at that time as well as now, was a powerful agency in carry-
ing the Gospel and the seeds of Christian civilization to the
remotest parts of the Roman empire.
152 SECOND PERIOD. A.D, lOO-oll.
§ 48. Clirisiicudtij in Asia and Africa.
Justin Martyr says, about the middle of the second cen-
tury : " There is no people, Greek or barbarian, or of any other
race, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distin-
guished, however ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they
dwell in tents or wander about in covered waggons — among whom
prayers and thanksgivings are not offered in the name of the cru-
cified Jesus to the Father and creator of all things." This, and
similar passages of Tertullian, Origen, and Arnobius, are evi-
dently rhetorical exaggerations. But it may be fairly asserted,
that about the end of the third century the name of Christ was
known, revered, and persecuted in every province and every
town of the empire. Maximin, in one of his edicts, says that
" almost all" had abandoned^ the worship of their ancestors for
the new sect. In the absence of all statistics, the number of the
Christians must be purely a matter of conjecture.^ In all proba-
bility it amounted at the time to about one-tenth of the subjects
of Kome ; and the fact, that these were a closely united body,
daily increasing, while the heathen were for the most part a
loose aggregation, daily diminishing with the increase of the
others, made the true prospective strength of the church much
greater.
The propagation of Christianity among the barbarians in the
provinces of Asia and the north-west of Europe beyond the
Koman empire, was at first, of course, too remote from the cur-
rent of history to be of any great immediate importance. But it
prej)ared the way for the civilization of those regions, and their
subsequent position in the world.
Asia was the cradle of Christianity, as it was of humanity and
civilization. The apostles themselves had spread the new reli-
gion over Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. According to the
younger Pliny, under Trajan, the temples of the gods in Asia
Minor were almost forsaken, and animals of sacrifice found hardly
' Gibbon estimates this number at the acceBsion of CoiisttuUine evidently too low
at one-twentieth, Matter and HoViertson too high at onclifth of his subjects.
§ 48. CHRISTIANITY IN ASIA AND AFRICA. 153
any purcliasers. In the second century Christianity pene-
trated to Edessa in Mesopotamia, and some distance into Persia,
Media, Bactria, and Parthia ; and in the third, into Armenia and
Arabia. Paul himself had, indeed, spent three years in Arabia, ') /
but probably in contemplative retirement, preparing for his apos-
tolic ministry .1 There is a legend, that the apostles Thomas and
Bartholomew carried the gospel to India. But a more credible
statement is, that the Christian teacher Pantaenus of Alexandria
journeyed to that country about 190, and that in the fourth cen-
tury churches were found there.
In Africa Christianity gained firm foothold first in Egypt, and
there probably as early as the apostolic age. According to un- ^nP^
contradicted tradition the evangelist Mark laid the foundation f frAQA
of the church of Alexandria, the metropolis of Egyptian com- ,'i 't^\
merce and of oriental Grecian culture. The first bishops of that , ^;J^
church are named by Eusebius as Annianos (62-85), Abilios-'", / "^
(to 98), and Kerdon (to 110). So early as the second century a ^
flourishing theological school existed there, in which Clement and
Origen taught. From Lower Egypt the gospel spread to Middle
and Upper Egypt and the adjacent provinces, perhaps as far as
Ethiopia and Abyssinia. At a council of Alexandria in the year
235, twenty bishops were present from the different parts of
Egypt.
In proconsular Africa and its capital, Carthage, Christianity
arrived in the second century, if not in the first, and probably
from Eome. In Tertullian that province became the birth-place
of Latin theolog}^ On the burning sands of Mauritania and
Numidia, about the middle of the third century, the Christians
were so numerous, that CyjDrian could assemble in 258 a synod
of eighty -seven bishops. In 308 the schismatical Donatists alone
held a council of two hundred and seventy bishops at Carthage.
Though at that period the dioceses were no doubt much smaller /
than in later times. ^
» Gal. L It.
/
15.1: SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
§ 49. Chisiiamtf/ in Europe.
The cliurcli of Rome was bj far the most important one for all
the west. According to Eusebius, it had in the middle of the
third century one bishop, forty-six j^resbyters, seven deacons with
as man}^ sub-deacons, forty-two acolyths, fifty readers, exorcists,
^nd door-keej^ers, and fifteen liundred widows and poor persons
under its care. From this we might estimate the number of mem-
bers at some fifty or sixty thousand, i.e. about one-twentieth of
the f)opulation of the city, which cannot be accurately determined
indeed, but must have exceeded one million during the reign of
the Caesars.^
From Rome the church spread to all the cities of Italy. The
first Roman provincial synod, of which we have information, num-
bered 12 bishops under the presidency of Telesphorus (142-154).
In the middle of the third century (255) Cornelius of Rome held
a council of sixty bishops.
The persecution of the year 177 shows the church already
planted in the south of Gaul in the second century. Christianity
came hither probably from the East ; for the churches of Lyons
and Vienne were intimately connected with those of Asia Minor,
to which they sent a report of the joersecution, and Irenaeus,
bishop of Lyons, was a disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna. Gre-
gory of Tours states, that in the middle of the third century
seven missionaries were sent from Rome to Gaul. One of these,
Dionysius, founded the first church of Paris, died a martyr at
Montmartre, and became the patron saint of France. Popular
superstition afterwards confounded him with Dionysius the Areo.*
pagite, who was converted by Paul at Athens.
Spain probably became acquainted with Christianity likewise
In the second century, though no clear traces of churches and
' Gibbon, in his thirty-first chnpter, and Milman estimate the popuhation of Rome
at 1,200,000; Hocck (on the basis of the Monumcntum Ancyranum), Zumpt and
Ilowson at two milhons; Bunsen somewiiat lower; while Dureau de la Malle
tries to reduce it to half a million on the ground that the walls of Scrvius Tullius
occupied an area only one fifth of that of Pans. But these walls no longer marked
the limits of the cit)' since its reconstruction after the conllagration under Nero, and
the suburbs stretched to an unlimited extent into the country.
§ 49. CHRISTIANITY IN EUEOPE. 155
bishops there meet us till the middle of the third. The council
of Eliberis in 305 numbered nineteen bishops. The apostle Paul
once formed the plan of a journey to Spaing but probably never
carried it out, unless the much disputed phrase, " limit of the
west," in a passage of Clement, mast mean this country. The
legend, that James the Elder, who was executed at Jerusalem in
44, brought the gosj)el to Spain, and now lies buried at Compos-
tella, the famous place of pilgrimage, where his bones were first
discovered under Alphonso IL, towards the close of the eighth
century, is absurd, and rests on a chronological impossibility.
When Irenaeus speaks of the preaching of the gospel among
the Germans and other barbarians, who, "without paper and ink,
have salvation written in their hearts by the Holy Ghost," he
can refer only to the parts of Germany belonging to the Eoman
empire, Germania cisrhenana.
According to Tertullian Britain also was brought under the
power of the cross towards the end of the second century. The
gospel came thither probably first from the East through south
Gaul, and afterwards from Italy also. The venerable Bede (f 735)
says, that the British king Lucius (about 167) applied to the
Koman bishop Eleutherus for missionaries. At the council of
Arelate in 314 three British bishops, of Eboracum (York), Lon-
dinum (London), and Colonia L'ondinensium^ (Lincoln), were
present.
' Rom. XV. 24.
" Which is supposed to be a mistake for Col. Lindensium,
156 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
CHAPTER 11.
PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM.
I. EusEBius : H. E., particularly Lib. viii. and ix. Lact antics : De mortibus
persecutorum. The Apologies of Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, Ter-
TCLLiAN, and Origen, and the Epistles of Cyprian. Tdeod. Ruinart:
Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta. Par. 1G89. 2nd ed. Am-
stel. 1713 (covering the first 4 cents.). Several biographies in the Acta
Sanctorum. Antw. 164.3 sqq. Les Acts des martyrs dcpuis I'origine de
Teglise Chretienne jusqu'u, nos temps. Traduits et publics par les R.R.
P.P. benedictins de la congreg. de France. Par. 1857 sqq.
II. J. Fox : Acts and Monuments of the Church (commonly called Book of
Martyrs), first publ. Lond. 1553, and very often since. Kortuoldt : De
pcrsecutionibus eccl. primaevae. Kiloni, 1629. Gibbon: chap. xvi.
Munter: Die Christin im heidnischen Hause vor Constantin. Copenh.
1828. ScnuMANN von Mansegg (R.C.) : Die Verfolgungen dor ersten
christlichen Kirche. Vienna, 1821. Ad. Schmidt: Geschichte der Denk-
u. Glaubensfreiheit in den ersten Jahrhunderten der Kaiserherrschaft.
Berl. 1847. Kritzler: Die Heldenzeiten des Christenthums. Yol. i.
Der Kampf mit dem Heidenthum. Leipz. 1856.
§ 50. Jewish Persecution.
Fr. Munter: Der Judische Krieg unter Trajan u. Hadrian. Altona and
Leipz. 1821. Deyling : Aeliae Capitol, origines et historiae. Lips. 1743.
The persecutions of tlic Christian church proceeded partly from
the Jews and partly from the Gentiles. The Jews had already
displayed their obstinate unbelief and bitter hatred of the gospel
in the crucifixion of Christ, the stoning of Stephen, the execution
of James the Elder, the repeated incarcerations of Peter and
John, the wild rage against Paul, and the murder of James the
Just. No wonder, that the fearful judgment of God at last visited
this ingratitude upon them in the destruction of the holy city and
the temple, from which the Christians found refuge in Pella.
§ 50. THE JEWISH PERSECUTION". 157
But tliis tragical fate could break only the national power of
tlie Jews, not their hatred of Christianity. They caused the
death of Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem (107); they were par-
ticularly active in the burning of Polycarp of Smyrna ; and they
inflamed the violence of the Gentiles by calumniating the sect of
the Nazarenes.
By severe oppression under Trajan and Hadrian, and the dese-
cration of Jerusalem with the idolatry of the pagans, the Jews
were provoked to a new insurrection (a.d. 132-135). A pseudo-
Messiah, Bar-Cochba (son of the stars, Num. xxiv. 17), after-
wards called Bar-Cosiba (son of falsehood), put himself at the
head of the rebels, and caused all the Christians who would not
join him, to be most cruelly murdered. But the false prophet
was defeated by Hadrian's general in 135, more than a half
million of Jews slaughtered after a desperate resistance, Pales-
tine entirely laid waste, Jerusalem again destroyed, and a Roman
colony, Aelia Capitolina, erected on its ruins with an image of
Jupiter and a temple of Yenus. The Jews were forbidden to
visit the holy spot upon pain of death ; only on the anniversary
of the destruction were they allowed to behold and bewail it from
a neighboring hill.
After this they had no opportunity for any further indepen-
dent persecution of the Christians. Yet they continued to cir-
culate horrible calumnies on Jesus and his followers. Their
learned schools at Tiberias and Babylon nourished this bitter
hostility. The Talmud, of which the first part (the Mishna) was
composed towards the end of the second century, and the second
part (the Gemara) in the fourth century, well represents the
Judaism of its day, stiff, traditional, stagnant, and anti-Christian.
Subsequently the Jerusalem Talmud was ecliiDsed by the Baby-
lonian (430-521), a still more distinct expression of Rabbinism.
The terrible imprecation on apostates (precatio haereticorum),
designed to deter Jews from going over to the Christian faith,,
comes from the second century, and is stated by the Talmud to
have been composed at Jafna, where the Sanhedrim at that time
had its S3at, by the younger Rabbi Gamaliel.
158 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
»
Unfortunately, tliis people, still remarkable even in its tragical
end, was in many ways cruelly oppressed and persecuted by the
Christians after Constantine, and thereby only confirmed in its
fanatical hatred of them. But through all changes of fortune
God has preserved it as a living monument of his justice and his
mercy ; and he will undoubtedly assign it an important part in
the consummation of his kingdom at the second coming of
Christ. "^ "^~
§ 51. Heathen Persecution. Its Causes and Effects.
See Liter, before § 50.
The policy of the Roman government, the fanaticism of the super-
stitious people, and the self-interest of the pagan pricgts conspired
for the persecution of a religion, which threatened to demolish
the tottering fabric of idolatry ; and they left no expedients of
legislation, of violence, of craft, and of wickedness untried, to
blot it from the earth.
Justin, Tertullian, and other early church teachers traced the
persecution of the Christians ultimately to Satan and the demons,
but ascribed to it at the same time an ethical character as a
punishment for past sins, a school of Christian virtue, or a means
of awakening faith. Some denied that martyrdom, or death in
general, was an evil, since it only brought Christians the sooner
to God, the goal of their hopes.
To glance first at the relation of the Roman state to the Chris-
tian religion. So long as Christianity was regarded b}" the
Romans as a mere sect of Judaism, it shared the "hatred and con-
tempt, indeed, but also the legal protection bestowed on that
ancient national religion. It was at first considered by the bet-
ter classes, even by the great historian Tacitus, as a vulgar super-
stition, hardly worthy of their notice. But it was for too
important a phenomenon, and made far too rapid progress to be
long thus ignored. So soon as it was understood in its true cha-
racter as a neio religion, and as, in fact, claiming universal validity
and acceptance, it was set down as unlawful and treasonal)le, a
ip?^^^7;^y ^^-r^ i^:^v''M'-^^
^^^/// ^j^^m"^ //":,
51. HEATHEN PERSECUTION". 159"
religio illicita ; and it was the constant reproacli of tlie Cliris- 'V^^
tians: you have no right to exist.^ ^ 'J;;'^
For with all its professed tolerance the Koman state was r'%- K
thoroughly interwoven' with heathen idolatry, and made religion s ^'^ ,.
a tool of its policy. The emperor was ex-officio ihe pontifex ^*\^
maximus ; the gods were national ; and the eagle of Jupiter Capi- •« 4 ^
tolinus moved as a good genius before the world-conquering X^.t^ "^
legions. Cicero lays down as a principle of legislation, that no
one should be allowed to worship foreign gods, unless they were ;■ , "
recognised by public statute.^ Maecenas counselled Augustus : ,::,^ * >■
" Honor the gods according to the custom of our ancestors, and Hs^" fe ^
compeP others to worship them. Hate and punish those whoV| ^ >
bring in strange gods." The ancient world generally was based ,v^ .
upon the absolutism of the state, which mercilessly trampled . . - •§ v%
under foot the individual rights of men. It is Christianity
which first taught and acknowledged them. The Christian apo-
logists first proclaimed, however imperfectly, the principle of
freedom of religion, and the sacred rights of conscience. Ter-
tuUian, in prophetic anticipation as it were of the modern Protes- I
tant theory, boldly tells the heathen that everybody had a ^
natural and inalienable right to worship God according to his con- l^
viction, that all compulsion in matters of conscience was con- .'
trary to the very nature of religion, and that no form of worship /
had any value whatever except as far as it was a free voluntary
homage of the heart.*
It is true the senate and emperor, by special edicts, usually
allowed conquered nations the free practice of their worship even
in Home ; not, however, from regard for the sacred rights of
conscience, but merely from policy, and with the express prohi-
bition of making proselytes from the state religion, hence severe
laws were published from time to time against transition to
Judaism.
' Noa licet esse vos.,,. * Nisi publice adscitos.
' di/ayxa^E, according to Dio Cassius.
^ See the remarkable passage ad Scapulam c. 2 : Tameu humani juris et naturalis , (^ '
2'>otestatis est unicuique quod putaverit colere, nee alii obest ant prodest alterius \, •
religio. Sed nee religionis est cogere religionera, quae sjMnie suscipi debeat, non vi,
-1^4
fvi
160 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
To Christianity, appearing not as a national religion, but claim-
ing ■ to be the only true universal one, and threatening in fact
the existence of the Roman state religion, even this limited tole-
ration could not apply. The same all-absorbing political interest
of Rome dictated here the opposite course, and Tertullian is hardly
just in charging the Romans with inconsistency for tolerating the
worship of all false gods, from wliom they had nothing to fear,
and prohibiting the worship of the only true God wlio is Lord
over all.^ Born under Augustus, and crucified under Tiberius at
the sentence of the Roman magistrate, Christ stood as the founder
of a spiritual universal empire at the head of the most important
epoch of the Roman power, a rival not to be endured. The
reign of Constantino subsequently showed that the free toleration
of Christianity was the death-blow to the Roman state religion.
Then, too, the conscientious refusal of the Christians to pay
divine honors to the emperor and his statue, and to take part in
any idolatrous ceremonies at public festivities, their aversion to
the imperial military service, their disregard for politics and
depreciation of all civil and temporal affairs as compared with the
spiritual and eternal interests of man, their close brotherly union
and frequent meetings, drew upon them the suspicion of hos-
tility to the Caesars and the Roman people,^ and the unpardon-
able crime of conspiracy against the state. •
The common people also, with their polytheistic ideas, abhorred
the believers in the one God as atheists and enemies of the gods.
They readily gave credit to the slanderous rumors of all sorts
of abominations, even incest and cannibalism, practised by the
cum et hostiao ab animo libonti expostulciitiir. Ila ctsi nos compulcritis ad sacrifi-
candum, niliil praestabitis diis vestris. Ab invitis enim sacriflcia non dcsiderabunt,
nisi si contentiosi sunt; contentiosus auicm deus non est. Conip. the similar passage
in Tert. Apolog. c. 24, wliero after enumerating the various forms of idolatry whicii
enjoyed free toleration in the empire ho continues: Yidete enim ne ct hoc ad irreli-
giositatis elogium concurrat, adimero libertatem religionis et interdiccre optionem
diviuitatis, ut non liceat mihi colore qucm velim sed cogar colere quern nolim. Nemo
se ab invito coli volet, ne homo quidcm.
' Apolog. c. 24 at the close: Apud vos quodvLs colcrc jus est praetcr Deum veruni,
quasi non hie magis omnium sit Deus cuius omnes sumus.
^ llcncc tlie reproachful designation, " llostcs Caesarum et populi Romani."
§ 51. HEATHEN rERSECUTIOX. 161
Cliristians at their religious assemblies and love-feasts, and regarded
the frequent public calamities of that age as punishments justly
inflicted by the angry gods for the disregard of their worship. In
North Africa arose the proverb : " If God does not send rain, lay
it to the Christians." At every inundation, or drought, or famine,
or pestilence, the fanatical j)opulace cried: "Away with the
atheists ! To the lions with the Christians ! "
Finally, persecutions were sometimes started by priests, jug-
glers, artificers, merchants, and others, who derived their support
from the idolatrous worship. These, like Demetrius at Ephesus,^
and the masters of the- sorceress at Philippi,^ kindled the fanati-
cism and indignation of the mob against the new religion for its
interference with their gains.
From the fourth century it has been customary, at the sugges-
tion of the ten plagues of Egypt taken as types,^ and the ten
horns making war with the Lamb in the Apocalypse,^ taken for
as many Roman emperors, to reckon ten great persecutions of
the Christians, under Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius,,
Septimius Severus, Maximinus, Decius, Yalerian, Aurelian, and
Diocletian, respectively. But this number is in any view incor-
rect ; too great for the general persecutions, and far too small for
the provincial and local. It is a remarkable fact, that some of "^
the best emperors, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Decius, and Diocle-
tian, were among the severest persecutors, because they were
really concerned about the laws of the state and the mainte-
nance of the ancient fabric ; while some of the most worthless,
Commodus, Caracalla, and Heliogabalus, were rather favorable
to the Christians, though of course not from principle, but only
from caprice. In Nero, Domitian, and Galerius, on the contrar}^,
the hatred of the Christians was coupled with the most unnatural
cruelty and the most shameless vice.
This long- continued and bloody war against that church which
was built upon a rock, utterly failed of its end. Aiming to exter-
minate, it only purified. It called forth the virtues of Christian
heroism, and resulted only in the confirmation and sj)read of the
\ ' Acts xix. 2i. ^ Acts xvi. 16. ' Exod. v.-x. ■■ Rev..xvii. 12 sqq.
11
162 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
new religion. The pliilosopliy of these persecutions is briefly
and well expressed by Tertullian, who lived in the midst of them,
in his well-known word : " The blood of the martyrs is the seed
*4i^ ^ ^'P of the church" — " Semen est sanguis Christianorum."
§ 52. Condition of the Church from Nero to Nerva.
SuETox. : Claud, c. 25. Nero, c. 16. Tacit. : Annal. XV. 44. Dio Cass. :
(Epit. Xiphil.) LXVII. 14. Euseb. : Chron. II. ad Olymp. 218. H.
Eccl. III. 13, 15.
The first persecutions by the Roman emperors fall in the apos-
tolic age, but may be briefly noticed here for the sake of the
connexion.
The tradition, that Tiberius (A.D. 14-37), frightened by Pilate's
account of the death and resurrection of the Redeemer, proposed
to the senate, without success, the enrolment of Christ among
the Roman deities, rests only on the questionable authority of
Tertullian. The edict of Claudius (42-54) in the year 53, ban-
ishing the Jews from Rome for sedition, fell also upon the Chris-
tians, but only through the mistake of the government, which
at that time confounded them with the Jews,
The succession of proper persecutors among the emperors
opens with Nero (54-68), who is branded in history as in other
respects a heartless tyrant, the murderer of his mother, of liis
wife, of his preceptors (Burrus and Seneca), and at last of him-
self. The awful persecution of the year 64, in which, soon after
the six days' conflagration of Rome, a great multitude of inno-
cent Christians were tortured to death with the most exquisite
cruelties, has already been mentioned in the first period in con-
nexion with the martyrdom of Peter and Paul.^ It was not
occasioned, indeed, directly by the religion of the sufferers, but
by the malicious imputation to them of the incendiarism, of which
the emperor himself was guilty. Yet it indicates a popular pre-
possession against the Christians ; and Tacitus, in fact, says, that
they were charged not with the incendiarism, but with misan-
thropy, and were suspected of other crimes.^ Thus this diaboli-
' g 17, p. G4. ^ Per flagitia iavisoa.
§ 53. FROM TRAJAN TO ANTONINUS PIUS. 163
cal movement was a general declaration of war against tlie new
religion. It became a common saying among tlie Christians, that
jSTero would reappear as antichrist.
During the rapidly succeeding reigns of Galba, Otho, Vitellius,
Yespasian, and Titus, the church, so far as we know, enjoyed
repose. But under Domitian (81-96), a suspicious and blasphe-
mous tyrant, accustomed to call himself and to be called " Lord
and God," a new persecution broke out. This emperor treated
the embracing of Christianity as a crime against the state, and
condemned to death many Christians, even his own cousin, the
consul Flavins Clemens, on the charge of atheism ; or confiscated
their property, and sent them, as in the case of the apostle John,
and of Domitilla, the wife of the Clemens just mentioned, into
exile. His jealousy also led him to destroy the surviving de-
scendants of David ; and he brought from Palestine to Kome two
kinsmen of Jesus, grandsons of Judas the " brother of the Lord,"
but seeing their poverty and rustic simplicity, and hearing their
explanation of the kingdom of Christ as not earthly, but hea-
venly, to be established by the Lord at the end of the world,
when he should come to judge the quick and the dead, he let
them go. Tradition assigns to the reign of Domitian the banish-
ment of St. John to Patmos (also his miraculous preservation
from martyrdom by boiling oil in Rome, which is attested, how-
ever, only by Tertullian), and the martyrdom of Andrew, Mark,
Onesimus, and Dionysius the Areopagite.
His humane and justice-loving successor, Nerva (96-98), re-
called the banished, and refused to treat the confession of Chris-
tianity as a political crime, though he did not recognise the new
religion as a religio licita.
§ 53. From Trajan to Antoninus Pius.
Plinius, jun. : Epist. X. 96 and 97 (al. 97 sq.). Euseb. : H. E. III. 11, 32, 26.
Acta Martyrii Ignatii, in Ruinart, p. 8 sqq. Justin : Apol. I. c. 68
Trajan (a.d. 98-117), one of the best and most praiseworthy
emperors, honored as the "father of his country," but, like his
164 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
friends, Tacitus and Pliny, wholly ignorant of the nature of
Christianity, wa? the iii'st to pronounce it in form a proscribed
religion, as it had been all along in fact. He revived the rigid
laws against all secret societies,^ and the provincial officers
applied them to the Christians, on account of their frequent
meetings for worship. The younger Pliny, for example, did
this in Bithynia, of which he was then governor. He saw in
Christianity only a " prava et immodica superstitio." In a re-
markable letter to the emperor he says, that this superstition
is constantly spreading not only in the cities, but also in the vil-
lages of Asia Minor, and captivates people of every age, rank,
and sex, so that the temples are almost forsaken and the sacri-
ficial victims find no sale. To stop this progress, he condemned
many Christians to death, and sent others, who were Roman
citizens, to the imperial tribunal. But he requested of the empe-
ror further instructions, whether, in these efforts, he should have
respect to age ; whether he should treat the mere bearing of the
Christian name as a crime, if there were no other offence, &c.
To these inquiries Trajan replied : " You have adopted the
right course, my friend, with regard to the Christians; for no
universal rule, to be applied to all cases, can be fixed in this
matter. They should not be searched for ; but when accused
and convicted, they should be punished ; yet if any one denies
that he has been a Christian, and proves it by action, namely,
by. worshipping our gods, he is to be pardoned upon his repent-
ance, even though suspicion may still cleave to him from his
antecedents. But anonymous accusations must not be admitted
in any criminal process ; it sets a bad example, and is contrary
to our age" (i. e. to the spirit of Trajan's government).
This decision was much milder than might have been expected
from a heathen em2:)eror of the old Roman stamp. Tertullian
charges it with self contradiction, as both cruel and lenient, for-
bidding searching for Christians and commanding their punish-
ment, thus declaring them innocent and guilty at the same time.
But the emperor cvidontl)' jiroccodixl on })(.)litical })rinciples, and
' 'crripiat.
§ 53. FROM TEAJAX TO AXTOXINUS PIUS. 165
tliouglit that a transient and contagious entliusiasm, as Chris-
tianity in his judgment was, could be suppressed sooner by leav-
ing it unnoticed, than by openly assailing it. Though every
day it forced itself more and more upon public attention, as it
spread with the irresistible power of truth.
This rescript might give occasion, according to the sentiment
of governors, for extreme severity towards Christianity as a secret
union and a religio illicita. Even the humane Pliny tells us that
he applied the rack to tender women. Syria and Palestine suffered
heavy persecutions in this reign. Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem,
and, like his predecessor James, a kinsman of Jesus, was accused
b}^ fanatical Jews, and crucified in the year 107, at the age of a
hundred and twenty years. In the same year, or according to
otliers in 115, the distinguished bishop Ignatius of Antioch, a
disciple of the apostles, was condemned by Trajan and suffered
martyrdom in Eome.'
Hadrian (117-138), though zealously devoted to the sacra
Romana^ was yet mild towards the Christians, and directed the
Asiatic j)roconsul to check the popular fury against them, and
to punish only those who should be, by an orderly judicial pro-
cess, convicted of transgression of the laws. Unquestionably,
however, he regarded the mere profession of Christianity as itself
such a transgression. The Christian apologies, which took their
rise under this emperor, indicate a very bitter public sentiment
against the Christians, and a critical condition of the church.
Antoninus Pius (138-161) protected the Christians still more
decidedly from the tumultuous violence which broke out against
them on account of the frequent public calamities. But the edict
ascribed to him, addressed to the deputies of the Asiatic cities,^
testifying to the innocence of the Christians, and holding them
up to the heathens as models of fidelity and zeal in the worship
of God, could hardly have come from an emperor, who bore the
honorable title of Pius for his conscientious adherence to the
religion of his fathers.
' Comp. below, § 119. ^ Koi^oi/ nlf 'Acrias.
166 SECOND PERIOD. A.D, 100-311.
§ 54. Persecutions under Marcus Aurelius.
Marc. Aurel. : np6j rnvtov XI. 3. The letter of the church of Smyrna to the
Christians of Pontus, in Euseb. : H. E. IV. 15, and published more fully
by Usher, 1647. The letter of the churches of Lyons and Vienne to the
Christians of Asia Minor, in Ecseb. : V. 1-3 and in Rourn, Reliqu.
s., I. 295-324. On the miracle of the legio fulminatrix, see ,Tertull. :
Apolog. 5. Euseb. : V. 5. Dio Cass. : Ixxi. 8.
Marcus Aurelius (161-180), though a well educated, just, and
noble-minded emperor, could still, as a Stoic philosopher and a
devotee of the old Eoman religion and morality, have no sym-
pathy with Christianity, but held it an absurd and fanatical
superstition ; and his reign was a stormy time for the church.
About the year 170 the apologist Melito wrote: "The race of
the worshippers of God in Asia is now persecuted by new edicts
as it never has been heretofore ; shameless, greedy sycophants^
finding occasion in the edicts, now plunder the innocent day and
night." The empire was visited at that time with a number of
conflagrations, a destructive flood of the Tiber, an earthquake,
insurrections, and particularly a pestilence, which spread from
Ethiopia to Gaul. This gave rise to two bloody persecutions, in
which government and people united against the enemies of the
gods and the supposed authors of these misfortunes. But at the
same time these persecutions, and the simultaneous literary assault
on Christianity by Cclsus and Lucian, show that the new rehgion
was constantly gaining importance in the empire.
The first of these great persecutions took place in Asia Minor
in the year 167. One of its victims was the venerable Poly carp,
bishop of Smyrna, a personal disciple and friend of the apostle
John. He steadfastly refused before the proconsul to deny his
King and Saviour, whom he had served six and eighty years,
and from whom he had experienced nothing but love and mercy;
and he joyfully went up to the stake, and amidst the flames
praised God for having deemed him worthy "to be numbered
among his martyrs, to drink of the cup of Christ's sufferings,
unto the eternal resurrection of the soul and the body in the in-
corruption of the Iloly Ghost." The somewhat fanciful account
§ 54. PERSECUTIONS UNDER MARCUS AURELIUS. 167
in the letter of the church of Smyrna states, that the flames
avoided the body of the saint, leaving it unharmed, like gold
tried in the fire ; also the Christian bystanders insisted, that they
perceived a sweet odor, as of incense. Then the executioner
thrust his sword into the body, and the stream of blood at once
extinguished the flame. The corpse was burned after the Roman
custom, but the bones were preserved by the church and held
more jjrecious than gold and diamonds. The death of this last
witness of the apostolic age checked the fury of the populace, and
the proconsul suspended the persecution.
Ten years after this, in 177, the churches of Lyons and Vienne
in the south of France underwent a trial equally severe. Hea-
then slaves were forced by the rack to declare, that their Chris-
tian masters practised all the unnatural vices which rumor
charged them with ; and this was made to justify the exquisite
tortures to which the Christians were subjected. But the suf-
ferers, " strengthened by the fountain of living water from the
heart of Christ," displaj^ed extraordinary faith and steadfastness,
and felt, that "nothing can be fearful, where the love of the
Father is, nothing painful, where shines the glory of Chi'ist."
The most distinguished victims of this Gallic persecution were
the bishop Pothinus, who, at the age of ninety years, and just
recovered from a sickness, was subjected to all sorts of abuse,
and then thrown into a dismal dungeon, where he died in two
days ; the virgin Blandina, a slave, who showed almost super-
human strength and constancy under the most cruel tortures,
and was at last thrown to a wild beast in a net ; Ponticus, a boy
of fifteen years, who could be deterred by no sort of cruelty from,
confessing his Saviour. The corpses of the martyrs, which cov-
ered the streets, were shamefully mutilated, then burned, and the
ashes cast into the Rhone, lest any remnants of the enemies of
the gods might desecrate the soil. At last the people grew
weary of slaughter, and a considerable number of Christians sur-
vived. The martyrs of Lyons distinguished themselves by true
humility, disclaiming in their prison that title of honor, as due
only, they said, to the faithful and true Witness, the First-born
168 SECOND PERIOD. A.D, 100-311.
from the dead, the Prince of life,' and to those of his followers
who had already sealed their fidelity to Christ with their blood.
About the same time a persecution of less extent appears to
have visited Autun (Augustodunum) near Lyons. Symphorinus,
a young man of good family, having refused to fall down before
the image of Cybele, and being condemned to be beheaded, on
his way to the place of execution his own mother called to him :
" My son, be firm and fear not that death, which so surely leads
to life. Look to Him who reigns in heaven. To-day is thy
earthly life not taken from thee, but transformed by a blessed
exchange into the life of heaven."
The story of the "thundering legion '"* rests on the fact of a
remarkable deliverance of the Eoman army in Hungary by a
sudden shower, which quenched their burning thirst and fright-
ened their barbarian enemies, A.D. 174. The heathens, however,
attributed this not to the ])rayers of the Christian soldiers, but to
their own gods. The emj)eror himself prayed to Jupiter : " This
hand, which has never yet shed human blood, I raise to thee."
That this event did not alter his views respecting the Chris-
tians, is })roved by the- persecution in South Gaul, which broke
out three years later.
Of isolated cases of martyrdom in this reign, we notice that of
Justin Martyr, at Rome, in the year 166.^
Marcus Aurelius was succeeded by his cruel and contemptible
son, Commodus (180-192), who, however, was accidcntalh' made
to favor the Christians by the influence of a concubine/ Marcia,
and accordingly did not disturb them. Yet under his reign a
Roman senator, Apollonius, was put to death for his faith.
§ 55. Condition of the Church from Sejytimius Severus to Philip
ike Arabian.
Clemens Alex. : Strom. 11. 414. Tkrti-ll. : Ad Scapulam, c. 4, 5. Apolog.
(a.d. 108), c. 7, 12, 30, 37, 49. Respecting the Alexandrian martyrs
' Rev. i. 5. * Legio fulminatrix, Kepawofdpoi.
' Comp. § 122. * (jiiX'JOeos TraWaxfi.
§ 55. FRO^iI SEVERUS TO PHILIP THE ARABIAX. 169
conip. EcsEB. : VI. 1 and 5. The Acts of the Carthaginian martyrs,
which contain their ipsissima verba from their diaries in the prisons, but
bear a somewhat Montanistic stamp, see in Ruinart : p. 90 sqq. Lam-
' PRiD. : Vita Alex. Severi, c. 22, 29, 49. On Philip the Arabian see
EusEB. : VI. 34, 36. Hieron. : Chron. ad ann. 24G.
Witli Septimius Severus (193-211), wlio was of Punic descent
and had a Syrian wife, a line of emperors (Caracalla, Heliogaba-
lus, Alexander Severus) came to the throne, who were rather
Oriental than Eoman in their spirit, and were therefore far less
concerned than the Antonines to maintain the old state religion.
Yet towards the close of the third century there was no lack of
local persecutions ; and Clement of Alexandria wrote of those
times : '' Many martyrs are daily burned, confined, or beheaded,
before our eyes."
In the beginning of the third century (202) Septimius Severus,
turned perhaps by Montanistic excesses, enacted a rigid law
against the further spread both of Christianity and of Judaism.
This occasioned violent persecutions in Egypt and in North
Africa, and produced some of the fairest flowers of martyrdom.
In Alexandria, in consequence of this law, Leonides, father of
the renowned Origen, was beheaded. Potamiaena, a virgin of
rare beauty of body and spirit, was threatened by beastly passion
with treatment worse than death, and, after cruel tortures, slowly
burned with her mother in boiling pitch. One of the execu-
tioners, Basilides, smitten with sympathy, shielded them some-
what from abuse, and soon after their death embraced Christianity,
and was beheaded. He declared that Potamiaena had appeared
to him in the night, interceded with Christ for him, and set uj)on
his head the martyr's crown.
In Carthage some catechumens, three' young men and two
young women, probably of the sect of the Montanists, showed
remarkable steadfastness and fidelity in the dungeon and at the
place of execution. Perpetua, a young woman of noble birth,
resisting, not without a violent struggle, both the entreaties of
her aged heathen father and the appeal of her helpless babe upon
her breast, sacrificed the deep and tender feelings of a daughter
170 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
and a mother to tlic Lord who died for her. Felicitas, a slave,
■when delivered of a child in the same dungeon, answered the
jailor, who reminded her of the still keener pains of martyrdom:
" Now / suffer, what I suffer; but then another will suffer for
me, because I shall suffer for him." All remaining firm, they
were cast to wild beasts at the next public festival, having first
interchanged the parting kiss in hope of a speedy reunion in
heaven.
The same state of things continued through the first years of
Caracalla (211-217), though this gloomy misanthrope passed no
laws against the Christians.
The abandoned youth, El-Gabal, or Heliogabalus (218-222),
who polluted the throne by the blackest vices and follies, tole-
rated all religions in hope of at last merging them in his favorite
Syrian worship of the sun, with its abominable excesses. He
himself was a priest of the god of the sun, and thence took his
name.^
His far more worthy cousin and successor, Alexander Severus
(222-235), was addicted to a higher kind of religious eclecticism
and syncretism, a pantheistic hero-worship. He placed the busts
of Abraham and Christ in his domestic chapel with those of
Orpheus, Apollonius of Tyana, and the better Roman emperors,
and had the gospel rule, "As ye would that men should do to
you, do ye even so to them," engraven on the walls of his palace
and on public monuments. His mother, Julia Mammaea, was a
patroness of Origen.
His assassin, Maximus the Thracian (235-238), first a herds-
man, afterwards a soldier, fell again to persecution out of mere
opposition to his predecessor, and gave free course to the popu-
lar fury against the enemies of the gods, which was at that time
excited anew by an earthquake.
Tlie legendary poesy of the tenth century assigns to his reigTi
the fabulous martyrdom of St. Ursula, a British princess, and her
company of eleven thousand (according to others, ten thousand)
'Unless we slioukl prefer to derive it from Vj^ and ^23 "mountain of God."
§ 56. PERSECUTIONS UNDER DECIUS AND VALERIAN. 171
virgins, who, on their return from a pilgrimage to Rome, were
murdered by heathens in the neighborhood of Cologne. This
incredible number has probably arisen from the misinterpreta-
tion of an inscription, like "Ursula et Undecimilla" (which
occurs in an old missal of the Sorbonne), or " Ursula et XI M. V.,"
i. e. Martyres Yirgines, which, by substituting millia for martj^^res,
was increased from eleven martyrs to eleven thousand virgins.
Some historians place the fact, which seems to form the basis of
this legend, in connexion with the retreat o& the Huns after the
battle of Chalons, 451.
Grordianus (238-2-14) left the church undisturbed. Philip the
Arabian (244-249) was even supposed by some to be a Christian,
and was termed by Jerome "primus omnium ex Eomanis impera-
toribus Christianus." It is certain that Origen wrote letters to
him and to his wife, Severa.
This season of repose, however, cooled the moral zeal and
brotherly love of the Christians ; and the mighty storm under
the following reign served well to restore the purity of the
church.
§ 56. Persecutions under Decius and Valerian.
DioNYS. Alex., in Euseb. VI. 40-42. VII. 10, 11. Cyprian: De lapsis, and
particularly his Epistles of this period. On Cyprian's martyrdom see the
Proconsular Acts, and Pontius : Vita Cypr.
Decius Trajan (249-251), an earnest and energetic emperor, in
whom the old Roman spirit once more awoke, resolved to root
out the church as an atheistic and seditious sect, and in the year
250 published an edict to all the governors of the provinces,
enjoining return to the pagan state religion under the heaviest
penalties. This was the signal for a persecution which, in extent,
consistency, and cruelty, exceeded all before it. In truth it was
properly the first which covered the whole empire, and accord-
ingly produced a far greater number of martyrs than any former
persecution. In the execution of the imperial decree confisca-
tion, exile, torture, promises and threats of all kinds, were em-
ployed to move the Christians to apostasy. Multitudes of nominal
172 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Christians/ especially at the beginning, sacrificed to the gods
(sacrificati, thurificati), or procured from the magistrate a false
certificate that they had done so (libellatici), and were then
excommunicated as apostates (lapsi); while hundreds rushed
with unpetuous zeal to the prisons and the tribunals, to obtain
the confessor's or martyr's crown. The confessors of Eome wrote
from prison to their brethren of Africa : " What more glorious
and blessed lot can fall to man by the grace of God, than to con-
fess God the Lord amidst tortures and in the face of death itself;
to confess Christ the Son of God with lacerated body and with a
spirit departing, yet free ; and to become fellow-sufferers with
Christ in the name of Christ? Though we have not yet shed our
blood, we are ready to do so. Pray for us, then, dear Cyprian,
that the Lord, the best captain, would daily strengthen each one
of us more and more, and at last lead us to the field as faithful
soldiers, armed with those divine weapons^ which can never be
conquered."
The authorities were specially severe with the bishops and offi-
cers of the churches. Fabianus of Rome perished in the begin-
ning of the persecution. Others withdrew to places of conceal-
ment ; some from cowardice ; some from Christian prudence, in
hope of allaying by their absence the fury of the pagans against
their flocks, and of saving their own lives for the good of the
church in better times. Among the latter was Cyprian, bishop of
Carthage, who incurred much censure by his course, but fully
vindicated himself by his pastoral industry during his absence,
and by his subsequent martyrdom. He says concerning the mat-
ter : " Our Lord commanded us in times of persecution to yield
and to fly. He taught this, and he practised it himself. For
since the martyr's crown comes by the grace of God, and cannot
be gained before the appointed hour, he who retires for a time,
and remains true to Christ, does not deny his faith, but only
abides his time,"
The poetical legend of the seven brothers at Ephesus, who fell
asleep in a cave, whither they had fled, and awoke two hundred
* '' Maximus IValruin uuiiktus," says Cyiirian. " Eph. vi. 2.
§ 56. PERSECUTIONS UNDER DECIUS AND VALERIAN, 173
years afterwards, under Tlieodosius II. (-l-IT), astonished to see the
once despised and hated cross now ruling over city and country,
dates itself internally from the time of Decius, but is not men-
tioned before Gregory of Tours in the sixth century.
Under Gallus (251-253) the joersecution received a fresh
impulse through the incursions of the Goths, and the prevalence
of a pestilence, drought, and famine. Under this reign the Roman
bishops Cornelius and Lucius were banished, and then condemned
to death.
Valerian (253-260) was at first mild towards the Christians ;
but in 257 he changed his course, and made an effort to check
the progress of their religion without bloodshed, by the banish-
ment of ministers and prominent laymen, the confiscation of their
property, and the prohibition of religious assemblies. These
measures, however, joroving fruitless, he brought the death
penalty again into play.
The most distinguished martyrs of this persecution under
Valerian are the bishops Sixtus II. of Rome and Cyprian of
Carthage. When Cyprian received his sentence of death, repre-
senting him as an enemy of the Roman gods and laws, he calmly
answered : " Deo gratias !" Then, attended by a vast multitude
to the scaffold, he prayed once more, undressed himself, covered
his eyes, requested a presbyter to bind his hands, and to pay the
executioner, who tremblingly drew the sword, twenty-five pieces
of gold, and won the incorruptible crown (Sept. 14, 258). Ilis
faithful friends caught the blood in handkerchiefs, and buried the
body of their sainted pastor with great solemnity.
The much lauded martyrdom of the deacon St, Laurentius of
Rome, who pointed the avaricious magistrates to the poor and sick
of the congregation as the richest treasure of the church, and is said
to have been slowly roasted to death (Aug. 10, 258), is scarcely
reliable in its details, being first mentioned by Ambrose, a century
later, and then glorified by the poet Prudentius. A Basilica on
the Via Tiburtina celebrates the memory of this saint, who occu-
pies the same position among the martyrs of the church of Rome
as Stephen among those of Jerusalem,
17-i SECOND TERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Gallienus (260-268) gave peace to the churcli once more, and
even acknowledged Christianity as a religio licita. And this
calm continued forty years ; for the edict of persecution, issued
by the energetic and warlike Aurelian (270-275), was rendered
void by his assassination, and the six emperors who rapidly fol-
lowed, from 275 to 28-4, let the Christians alone.
§ 57. T/ie Diochsian Persecution^ and the Edict of Toleration.
Euseb. 1. viii.-x. Lactant. : De Mortibus persec. c. 7 sqq. Comp. Burkil\rdt :
Die Zeit Constantins des Gr. Bas. 1853. p. 325 sqq. ; and Keim : Die
romischen Toleranzedicte fiir das Christenthum (311-313), in the "Tiib.
Theol. Jahrb." 1852.
This forty years' repose, which considerably enlarged the num-
ber and influence of the Christians indeed, but also abated their
earnestness and zeal and favored their conformity to the world,
was followed by the last and most violent persecution of the
Roman empire, a struggle of life and death.
Dioclesian (28-4-305), one of the most judicious and able em-
perors, who, with four co-regents in a trying period, preserved
the sinking state from dissolution, long respected the toleration
edict of Gallienus ; especially as his own wife Prisca, his daughter
Valeria, and most of his eunuchs and court officers, besides many
of the most prominent public functionaries, were Christians, or at
least favorable to the Christian religion. But in his old age he
was prevailed on by the urgency of his co-regent and son-in-law,
Galerius, a cruel and fanatical pagan, to authorize the persecu-
tion which gave his glorious reign a disgraceful end. In 308
and 304 he issued in rapid succession four edicts, each more
severe than its predecessor. Christian churches were to be
destroyed ; all copies of the Bible were to be burned ; all Chris-
tians were to be deprived of public office and civil rights ; and
at last all, without exception, were to sacrifice to the gods upon
pain of death. Pretext for this severity was affi^rded by the
occurrence of fire twice in the palace of Nicomedia in Bithynia,
where Dioclesian resided, and by the tearing down of the first
§ 57. THE DIOCLESIAN PEESECUTIOlSr. 175
edict by an imprudent Christian (celebrated in the Greek church
under the name of John), who vented in that way his abhor-
rence of such " godless and tyrannical rulers." But the opinion^
that the edicts were occasioned by a conspiracy of the Christians,
who, feeling their rising power, were for putting the government
at once into Christian hands, by a stroke of state, is without any
foundation in history.
The persecution began with the destruction of the magnificent
church in Nicomedia, and soon spread over the whole Eoman
empire, except Graul, Britain, and Spain, where the co-regent
Constantius Chlorus, and especially his son, Constantine the
Great (from 306), were disposed as far as possible to spare the
Christians. It raged most fiercely in the East, where the bar-
barous Maximinus ruled, who in 308 enacted the law, that all
provisions in the markets should be sprinkled with sacrificial
wine, that the Christians might have no alternative but apostasy
or starvation. All the pains, which iron and steel, fire and
sword, rack and cross, wild beasts and beastly men could inflict,
were employed to gain the useless end. Even the wild beasts,
says Eusebius, at last refused to attack the Christians, as if they
had assumed the part of men in place of the heathen Eomans.
The swords, says the same historian, contemporary, yet not free
from rhetorical exaggeration, at last became dull and shattered ;
the executioners became weary, and had to relieve each other ;
but the Christians sang hymns of praise and thanksgiving in
honor of Almighty God, even to their latest breath.
Here again the number of apostates, who preferred the earthly
life to the heavenly, was very great. To these was now added
also the new class of the traditores, who delivered the holy Scrip-
tures to the heathen authorities, to be burned. But as the perse-
cution raged, the zeal and fidelity of the Christians increased, and
martyrdom spread as b}^ contagion. Even boys and girls showed
amazing firmness. In many the heroism of faith degenerated to
a fanatical courting of death ; confessors were almost worshipped,
' Recently expressed by Burkliardt in the work quoted.
176 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
wMle yet alive ; and the hatred towards apostates distracted many
congregations, and produced the Meletiau and Donatist schisms.
The niartyrologics date from this period several legends, the
germs of which, however, cannot now be clearly sifted from the
additions of later poesy. The story of the destruction of the
legio Thebaica is probably an exaggeration of the martyrdom of
St. Mauritius, who was executed in Syria, as tribunus militum,
with seventy soldiers, at the order of Maximinus. St. Agnes,
whose memory the Latin church has celebrated ever since the
fourth century, was, according to tradition, brought in chains
before the judgment-seat in Rome, a girl of thirteen years; was
publicly exposed, and ujton her steadfast confession j)ut to the
sword ; but afterwards appeared to her grieving parents at her
grave with a white lamb and a host of shining virgins from
heaven, and said : " Mourn me no longer as dead, for ye see that
I live. Rejoice with me, that I am for ever united in heaven with
the Saviour, whom on earth I loved with all my heart." Hence
the lamb in the paintings of this saint; and hence the consecration
of lambs in her church at Rome at her festival (Jan. 21), from
whose wool the pallium of the archbishop is made. So Agri-
cola and Vitalis at Bologna, Gervasius and Protasius at Milan,
whose bones were discovered in the time of Ambrose, are said
to have attained martyrdom under Dioclesian.
This persecution was the last desperate struggle of Roman
heathenism for its life. It was the crisis of utter extinction or
absolute supremacy for each of the two religions. At the close
of the contest the old Roman state religion lay dead. Dioclesian
retired into private life in 305, under the curse of the Christians;
and in 313, when all the achievements of his reign were destroyed,
he destroyed himself.
Galerius, the real author of the persecution, brought to reflec-
tion by a terrible disease, put an end to the slaughter shortly
before his death by a remarkable edict of toleration, which he
issued from Nicomedia in 311, in connexion with Constantino and
Licinius, In that document he declared, that the purpose of
rcclaimin": the Christians from their wilful innovation and the
§ 58. CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM. 177
inaltitude of tlieir sects to the laws and discipline of the Roman
state, was not accomplished ; and that he would now grant them
permission to hold their religious assemblies, provided they dis-
turbed not the order of the state. To this he added in conclusion
theTcmarkable instruction that the Christians, " after this manifes-
tation of grace, should pray to their God for the welfare of the em-
perors, of the state, and of themselves, that the state might prosper
in every respect, and that they might live quietly in their homes."
This edict brings the period of persecution in the Roman em-
pire to a close. Maximinus, it is true, continued in every way to
oppress and vex the church in the East, and the cruel pagan
Maxentius did the same in Italy. But Constantine had already
in 306 become emperor of Gaul, Spain, and Britain ; in 312 he
conquered Maxentius, and with Licinius, issued two new edicts;
of toleration (312 and 313) ; and to these Maxentius also, shortly
before his suicide (313), was compelled to give his consent.
"With Constantine, therefore, a new period begins, in whichi
the church ascends the throne of the Caesars, and gives new
vigor and lustre to the hoary empire of Rome.
§ 58. Christian Martyrdom.
I. Tertull. : Ad martyres. Orig. : Exhortatio ad martyrium. Cyph. :
Ep. 11 ad mart. Prudentius: Ilf^t at^pdviov hymni XIV.
II. Sagittarius : De mart, cruciatibus. 1696. H. Dodwell : De paucitate
martyrum, in his Dissertationes Cyprianicae. Lond. 1684; and the coun-
terpart, RuiNART (R. C.) : Praefatio generahs in Acta Martyrum.
(Chateaubriand : Les martyrs ou le triomphe de la rel. chret. 2 vols., has
no critical nor historical value, but merely poetical.) Comp. in part
Mrs. Jameson : Sacred and Legendary Art. Lond. 1848. 2 vols.
To these protracted and cruel persecutions the church opposed
no revolutionary violence, no carnal resistance, but the moral
heroism of suffering and dying for the truth. But this very
heroism was her fairest ornament and stanchest weapon. In this
very heroism she proved herself worthy of her divine founder,
who submitted to the death of the cross for the salvation of the
world, and even prayed that his murderers might be forgiven.
12
178 SECOXD PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
The patriotic virtues of Greek and Eoman antiquity reproduced
themselves here in exalted form, in self-denial for the sake of a
heavenly country, and for a crown that fadeth not away. Even
boys and girls became heroes, and rushed with a holy enthusiasm
to death. In those hard times men had to make earnest of the
words of the Lord : " Whosoever doth not bear his cross and
come after me, cannot be my disciple." " He, that loveth father
and mother more than me, is not worthy of me." But then also
the j)romise daily proved itself true: "Blessed are they, who are
persecuted for righteousness' sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven." "He, thatloseth his life for my sake, shall find it ;" and
that not only to the martyrs themselves, who exchanged the
troubled life of earth for the blessedness of heaven, but also to the
church as a whole, which came forth purer and stronger from every
persecution, and thus attested her indestructible phenix-like nature.
Unquestionably there were also during this period, especially
after considerable seasons of quiet, many suj^erficial or hj-po-
critical confessors, who, the moment the storm of persecution
broke forth, flew like chaff from the wheat, and cither sacrificed to
the gods (thurificati, sacrificati), or procured false witness of their
return to paganism (libellatici, from libellum), or gave up the sacred
books (traditores). Tertullian relates with righteous indignation
that whole congregations, with the clergy at the head, would at
times resort to dishonorable bribes in order to avert the perscu-
tion of heathen magistrates.' But these were certainly cases of
rare exception. Generally speaking the three sorts of apostates
(lapsi) were at once excommunicated, and in many churches,
through excessive rigor, were even refused restoration.
Those who cheerfully confessed Christ before the heathen
magistrate at the peril of life, but were not executed, were honored
as confessors? Those who suffered abuse of all kind and death,
for their faith, were called martyrs or blood-witnesses.^
Among these confessors and martyrs were not wanting those
' Defuga in porsec. c. 13: Massalitcr totao ccclesiae tributum sibi irrogavcrunt.
2 'OfioUyhrat, confessores, Matt. x. 32, 1 Tim. vi. 12.
' Miiprvpti, Acts xxii. 20, lieb. xii. 1, Rov. xvii. 6.
§ 58. CHRISTIAN MARTYEDOM. 179
in wliom the pure, quiet flame of entliusiasm rose into tlic wild
rage of fanaticism, and whose zeal was corrupted with impatient
haste, heaven-tempting presumption, and sordid ambition; to
whom that word could be applied : " Though I give my body
to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing."
.They delivered themselves up to the heathen of&cers, and in
every way sought the martyr's crown, that they might merit
heaven and be venerated on earth as saints. Thus Tertullian
tells of a company of Christians in Ephesus, who begged martyr-
dom from the heathen governor, but after a few had been exe-
cuted, the rest were sent away by him with the words : "Miserable
creatures, if you really wish to die, you have precipices and
halters enough." Though this error was far less discreditable
than the opposite extreme of the cowardly fear of man, yet it was
contrary to the instruction and the example of Christ and the
apostles,' and to the spirit of true martyrdom, which consists in
the perfect union of humility and power, and possesses divine
strength in the very consciousness of human weakness.^ And
accordingly intelligent church teachers censured this stormy, mor-
bid zeal. The church of Smyrna speaks thus: "We do not
commend those who expose themselves ; for the gospel teaches
not so." Clement of Alexandria says: " The Lord himself has
commanded us to flee to another city when we are persecuted ;
not as if the persecution were an evil ; not as if we feared death ;
but that we may not lead or help any to evil doing." In Ter-
tullian's view martyrdom perfects itself in divine patience ; and
with Cyprian it is a gift of divine grace, which one cannot hastily
grasp, but must patiently wait for.
But after all due allowance for such adulteration and dege-
neracy, the martyrdom of the first three centuries still remains
one of the gTandest phenomena of history, and a mighty evi-
dence of the indestructible, divine nature of Christianity. Scep-
tical writers have endeavored to diminish its moral effect by
pointing to the awful scenes of the papal crusade against the
' Comp. Matt. x. 23 ; xxiv. 15-20. Phil. i. 20-25. 2 Tim. iv. 6-8. ' 1 Cor. xii. 10.
180 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Albigenses and Waldenses, the Parisian massacre of the Hugue-
nots, the Spanish Inquisition, and other persecutions of more recent
date. Dodwell expressed the opinion, which has been recently
confirmed by the high authority of the learned and impartial
Niebuhr, that the Dioclesian persecution was a mere shadow as
compared with the persecution of the Protestants in the Nether-,
lands by the Duke of Alva in the service of Spanish bigotry and
despotism. Gibbon goes even further, and boldly asserts that
" the number of Protestants who were executed by the Spaniards
in a single province and a single reign, ^ far exceeded that of the
primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries, and of the
Pioman empire." But Christianity is no more responsible for all
the crimes and cruelties perpetrated in its name by unworthy pro-
fessors and under the sanction of an unholy alliance of politics and
religion, than the Bible for all the nonsense men have put into it,
or God for the abuse daily and hourly practised with his best gifts.
The want of particular statements by contemporary writers
leaves it impossible, however, to ascertain, even approximately,
the number of the martyrs. Dodwell and Gibbon have certainly
underrated it, as far as Eusebius, the popular tradition since
Constantine, and the legendary poesy of the middle age, have
erred the other way. Origen, it is true, wrote in the middle of
the third century, that the number of the earher martyrs was
small and easy to be coimted." But, in the first place, this lan-
guage must be understood as merely relative, comparing the
former persecutions with the more general ones in the age of
Decius. And in the second place, it is even thus inaccurate, and
is overborne by the equally valid testimony of Origen's teacher,
Clement of Alexandria, and the still older Irenaeus, who says
expressly,' that the church, for her love to God, " sends in all
* According to Grotius over 100,000 ; according to P. Sarpi, tlic R. Cath. historian,
50.000.
' 'OXiyoi Kai a(p6Spa evapiO^nrot TcOvi'iKaiTi. Adv. Ccls. III. S. Tlic oldcr testimony of Me-
lito of Sardis, in the well known fragment from his Apology preserved by Eusebius lY.
26, refers merely to the small nnmbcr o^ imperial persecutors before Marcus Aurelius.
' Adv. haer. IV. c. 33, § 9 : Ecclesia omni in loco ob eam, quam habet crga Deum
dilectionem, multitudincm martyrum in omni tempore pracmittit ad Patrem.
§ 59. RISE OF THE WORSHIP OF MARTYRS AND RELICS. 181
places and at all times a multitude of martyrs to the Fatlier."
Even the heathen Tacitus speaks of an "ingens multitude " of
Christians, who were murdered in the city of Rome alone during
the JSTeronian persecution. But finall}', the sufierings of the
church during this period are of course not to be measured
merely by the number of actual executions, but by the far more
numerous insults, slanders, vexations, and tortures, which the
cruelty of heartless heathens and barbarians could devise, or anj
sort of instrument could inflict on the human body, which were
in a Ijhousand cases worse than death.
Dr. Arnold, who had no leaning whatever to superstitious and
idolatrous saint- worship, in speaking of a visit to the church of
San Stefano at Eome, justly remarks: "No doubt many of the
particular stories thus painted will bear no critical examination ;
it is likely enough, too, that Gibbon has truly accused the gene-
ral statements of exaggeration. But this is a thankless labor.
Divide the sum total of the reported martyrs by twenty — b}'
fifty, if you will ; after all you have a number of persons of al]
ages and sexes suffering cruel torments and death for conscience'
sake, and for Christ's ; and by their sufferings manifestly with
God's blessing ensuring the triumph of Christ's gospel. Neither
do I think that we consider the excellence of this martyr spirit
half enough. I do not think that pleasure is a sin ; but though
pleasure is not a sin, yet surely the contemplation of suffering
for Christ's sake is a thing most needful for us in our days, from
whom in our daily life suffering seems so far removed. And as
God's grace enabled rich and delicate persons, women and even
children, to endure all extremities of pain and reproach, in times
past ; so there is the same grace no less mighty now ; and if we
do not close ourselves against it, it might be in us no less glori
fied in a time of trial."
§ 59. Hise of the Worship of Martyrs and Relics.
I. In addition to the works quoted in § 58, comp. Euseb. : H. E. IV. 15; De mart.
Palaest. c. 7. Clem. Alex. : Strom. IV. p. 596. Orig. : Exhort, ad mart.
182 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
c. 30 and 50. In Num. hom. X. 2. Tertull. : De cor. mil. c. 3. De resurr.
earn. c. 43. Cypr. : De lapsis, c. 17. Epist. 34 and 57. Const. Apost. 1. 8.
n. C. Sagittarius : De natalitiis mart. Jen. 1G9G. Schwabe : De insigni
veneratione, quae obtinuit erga mar tyres in primit, eccL Altd. 1748.
In thankful remembrance of the fidelity of this countless host
of witnesses, in recognition of the unbroken communion of saints,
and in prospect of the resurrection of the body, the church
paid to the martyrs, and even to their mortal remains, a venera-
tion, which was in itself well deserved and altogether natural,
Ijut which early exceeded the scriptural limit, and afterwards
degenerated into the worship of saints and relics.
In the church of Siliyrna, according to its letter of the year
167, we find this veneration still in its innocent, childlike form :
"They (the heathens) know not, that we can neither ever forsake
Christ, who has suffered for the salvation of the whole world of
the redeemed, nor worship another. We adore him (TrpoTxvvoZfcsy)
as the Son of God ; and the martyrs we love as they deserve
(i'/xTSfiev «^/««), for their surpassing love to their King and Master,
as we wish also to be their companions and fellow-discij)lcs."
The day of the death of a martyr was called his heavcnl}^ birth-
day,' and was celebrated annually at his grave (mostly in a cave
or catacomb), by prayer, reading of a history of his suffering and
victory, oblations, and celebration of the holy supper.
But the early church did not stop with this. Martyrdom was
taken, after the end of the second century, not only as a higher
grade of Christian virtue, but at the same time as a baptism of
fire and blood," an ample substitution for the baptism of water,
as purifjnng from sin, and as securing an entrance into heaven.
Origen even went so far as to ascribe to the sufferings of the
martyrs an atoning virtue for others, an efficacy like that of the
sufferings of Christ, on the authority of such passages as 2 Cor.
xii. 15, 2 Tim. iv. 6, Acts vi. 9 sq. According to Tertullian the
' 'H//cicia ytrtOXiof, yo'tOXtn, natales, natalitia martyrum.
* Lavacrum sanguinis, /?dTri(r/iu Jii rrupoj, comp. Matt. xx. 22. Luke xii. .50. Mark-
X. 39..
§ 59. RISE OF THE WORSHIP OF MARTYRS AND RELICS. 183
martyrs entered immediately into tlie blessedness of heaven, and
were not required, like ordinary Christians, to pass through the
intermediate state. Thus was applied the benediction on those
who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, Matt. v. 10-12. Hence,
according to Origen and Cyprian, their prayers before the throne
of God came to be thought peculiarly efficacious for the church
militant on earth, and, according to an example related by Euse-
bius, their future intercessions were bespoken shortly lefore their
death. Yet we find in this period no trace of any direct address
to departed saints.
The veneration thus shown for the persons of the martyrs was
transferred in smaller measure to their remains. The church of
Smyrna counted the bones of Polycarp more precious than gold
or diamonds. The remains of Ignatius were held in equal vene-
ration by the Christians at Antioch. The friends of Cyprian
gathered his blood in handkerchiefs, and built a chapel over his
tomb.
A veneration frequently excessive was paid not only to the
deceased martyrs, but also the surviving confessors. It was made
the special duty of the deacons to visit and minister to them in
prison. The heathen Lucian in his satire, " De morte Peregrini,"
describes the unwearied care of the Christians for their imprisoned
brethren ; the heaps of presents brought to them ; and the testi-
monies of sympathy even, by messengers from great distances ;
but all, of course, in Lucian's view, out of mere good-natured
enthusiasm. Tertullian the Montanist censures the excessive
attention of the Catholics to their confessors. The libelli pacis,
as they were called — intercessions of the confessors for the fallen
— commonly procured restoration to the fellowship of the church.
Their voice had peculiar weight in the choice of bishops, and
their sanction not rarely overbalanced the authority of the clergy.
Cyprian is nowhere more eloquent than in the praise of their
heroism. His letters to the imprisoned confessors in Carthage
are full of glorification, in a style somewhat offensive to our
evangelical ideas. Yet after all, he protests against the abuse
of their privileges, from which he had himself to suffer, and
184 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
earnestly exhorts them to a holy walk; that the honor they
have gained may not prove a snare to them, and through pride
and carelessness be lost. He always represents the crown of the
confessor and the martyr as a free gift of the grace of God, and
sees the real essence of it rather in the inward disposition than
in the outward act. Commodian conceived the whole idea of mar-
tyrdom in its true breadth, when he extended it to all those who,
without shedding their blood, endured to the end in love, humi-
lity, and patience, and in all Christian virtue.
CHAPTER III.
LITEKARY CONTEST OF CHRISTIANITY WITH JUDAISM AND
HEATHENISM.
§ 60. Oi:>][)onenis of Christianity. Tacitus^ Cekus, Lucian.
I. Tacitus : Annal. XV. 44 (comp. his picture of the Jews, Hist. V. 1-5).
Plinius : Ep. X. 96, 97. Celsus : ''Axrfirii -koyoi (preserved in fragments in
Origen's Refutation). Lucian: Ilfpt f-/jj XlsptyptVov iiXivtrii^ c. 11-16;
and ''AXridrii latopta, I. 22. 30. II. 4. 11.
II. Mosheim: Introduction to his Germ, transl. of Origen against Celsus.
Hamb. 1745. Bindemann : Celsus und seine Schriften gegen die Christen
(in Illgen's " Zeitschr. fiir hist. Theol." Leipz. 1842. N. 2). Ad. Planck :
Lukian u. das Christenthum (in the " Studien u, Kritiken," 1851. N. 4>
translated in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, 1852). Baur: Das
Christenthum der 3 ersten Jahrh. Tiib, 1853. p. 357-415.
Besides the external conflict, wliich we have had before us in
the preceding chapter, Christianity was called to pass through
an equally important intellectual and literary struggle with the
ancient world ; and from this also she came forth victorious, and
conscious that she was the perfect religion for man. "We shall
see in this chapter, tKat most of the objections of modern infidelity
against Christianity were anticipated by its earliest literary oppo-
nents, and ably and successfully refuted by the ancient apologists.
The church found as little favor with the representatives of
literature and art in this age, as with princes and statesmen. In
this" point of view also she was not of the world, and was com-
pelled to force her way through the greatest difficulties ; yet she
proved at last the mother of an intellectual and moral culture far
in advance of the Graeco-Eoman, capable of endless progress, and
full of the vigor of perpetual youth.
186 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
The liostility of the Jewisli Scribes and Pharisees to the gospel
is familiar from the New Testament. Josephus mentions Jesus
once in his Archaeology, but in terms so favorable as to agree ill
with his Jewish position, and thus to be, at least in their present
formj open to critical suspicion. The attacks of the later Jews
upon Christianity are essentially mere repetitions of those recorded
in the gospels ; denial of the Messiahship of Jesus, and horrible
vituperation of his confessors. We learn their character best
from the diologue of Justin with the Jew Trypho. The u.\ri\oyU
nxnia-Kov xcci 'itia-moi, which has been once unjustly attributed to the
Jewish-Christian Aristo, is lost.
The Gra3CO-Eoman writers of the first century, and some of the
second, as Seneca, the elder Pliny, and even the mild and noble
Plutarch, either from ignorance or contempt, never allude to
Christianity at all. Tacitus and tlie younger Plin}-, contempo-
raries and friends of the emperor Trajan, are the first to notice it;
and they speak of it only incidentally and with stoical disdain
and antipathy as an " exitiabilis superstitio," "prava et immodica
superstitio," " inflexibilis obstinatio." These celebrated and in their
way altogether estimable Roman authors thus, from manifest igno-
rance, saw in the Christians nothing but superstitious fanatics,
and put them on a level with the hated Jews ; Tacitus, in fact,
reproaching them also with the "odium generis humani." This
will afford some idea of the immense obstacles which the new
religion encountered in public opinion, especially in the culti-
vated circles of the Roman empire. The Christian apologies of
the second century also show, that the most malicious and gra-
tuitous slanders against the Christians were circulated among the
common people, even charges of incest and cannibalism,' which
may have arisen in part from a misapprehension of the intimate
brotlierly love of the Christians, and their nightly celebration of
the holy supper.
The direct assault upon Christianity, by works devoted to the
purpose, began about the middle of the second centurj', and was
' OiSiJT6chiot I'^cts, iucc3ti concubitus; and ^maTcTa hXnta, Tliycstese epulis.
§ 60. OPPONENTS OF CPIRISTIANITY, TACITUS, CELSUS, LUCIAN. 187
very ably conducted by a Grecian pliilosopher, Celsus, otlierwise
unknown; according to Origen, an Epicurean and a friend of
Lucian.
Celsus, with all his affected or real contempt for the new
religion, considered it important enough to be opposed by an
extended work entitled "A True Discourse," of which Origen
has preserved considerable fragments in his Eefutation. These
represent their author as an eclectic philosopher of varied culture,
skilled in dialectics, and somewhat read in the writings of the
apostles and even in the Old Testament. He speaks now in the
frivolous style of an Epicurean, now in the earnest and dignified ,
tone of a Platonist. At one time he advocates the popular
heathen religion, as, for instance, its doctrine of demons ; at
another time he rises above the polytheistic notions to a panthe-
istic or sceptical view. He employs all the aids which the cul-
ture of his age afforded, all the weapons of learning, common
sense, wit, sarcasm, and dramatic animation of style, to disprove
Christianity ; and he anticipates most of the arguments and
sophisms of the deists and natiiralists of later times. Still his
book is on the whole a very superficial, loose, and light-minded
work, and gives striking proof of the inability of the natural
reason to understand the Christian truth. It has no savor of
humility, no sense of the corruption of human nature, and man's
need of redemption ; and it could therefore not in the shghtest
degree appreciate the glory of the Eedeemer and of his work.
Celsus first introduces a Jew, who accuses the mother of Jesus
of adultery with a soldier named Panthera;' adduces the denial
of Peter, the treachery of Judas, and the death of Jesus as con-
tradictions of his pretended divinity ; and makes the resurrection
an imposture. Then Celsus himself begins the attack, and begins
it by combating the whole idea of the sujDernatural, which forms
the common foundation of Judaism and Christianity. The con-
troversy between Jews and Christians appears to him as foolish
' Uii-^np, panihera, here, and in the Tahiiud, where Jesus is hkewise called
til'inSS 13 'fl'i;'^ is used, hke the Latin lupa, as a type of ravenous lust, hence as a
L^'mbolical name for fioi^sia.
188 SECOND rERIOP, A.D. 100-311.
as the strife about the shadow of an ass. The Jews believed, as
well as the Christians, in the prophecies of a Redeemer of the
world, and thus differed from them only in that they still
expected the Messiah's coming. But then, to what purpose
should God come down to earth at all, or send another down ?
lie knows beforehand what is going on among men. And such
a descent involves a change, a transition from the good to the
evil, from the lovely to the hateful, from the happy to the mise-
rable ; which is undesirable, and indeed impossible, for the divine
nature. In another place he says, God troubles himself no more
about men, than about monkeys and flics. Celsus thus denies
the whole idea of revelation, now in ^pantheistic style, now in the
levity of Epicurean deism ; and thereby at the same time aban-
dons the ground of the popular heathen religion. In his view
Christianity has no rational foundation at all, but is supported
by the imaginary terrors of future punishment. Particularly
offensive to him are the promises of the gospel to the ^^oor and
miserable, and the doctrines of forgiveness of sins and regenera-
tion,, and of the resurrection of the body. This last he scoffingly
calls a hope of worms, but not of rational souls. The appeal to
the omnipotence of God, he thinks, does not help the matter,
because God can do nothing improj^er and unnatural. He
reproaches the Christians with ignorance, obstinacy, agitation,
innovation, division, and sectarianism, which they inherited
mostly from their fathers, the Jews. They are all uncultivated,
mean, superstitious people, mechanics, slaves, women, and chil-
dren. The great mass of them he regarded as unquestionably
deceived. But where there are deceived, there must be also
deceivers ; and this leads us to the last result of this polemical
sophistry. Celsus declared the first disciples of Jesus to be
deceivers of the worst kind ; a band of sorcerers, who fiibricated
and circulated the miraculous stories of the Gospels, particularly
that of the resurrection of Jesus ; but bctra3-ed themselves by
contradictions. The originator of the imposture, however, is
Jesus himself, who learned that magical art in Egypt, and after-
wards made a great noise with it in his native country. But
§ 60. OPPONENTS OF CHRISTIANITY, TACITUS, CELSUS, LUCIAN. ISO
liere, this pliilosopliical and critical sopliistry virtually acknow-
ledges its bankruptcy. The hypothesis of deception is the very
last one to offer in explanation of a phenomenon so important
as Christianity was even in that day. The greater and more
permanent the deception, the more mysterious and unaccountable
it must appear to reason.
About the same period the rhetorician, Lucian (born at Samo-
sata in Syria in 180, died in Egypt or Greece about 200),_tlig^
Voltaire of Grecian literature, attacked the Christian religion
with the same light weajDons of wit and ridicule, with which, in
his numerous elegantly written works, he assailed the old popular
faith and worship, the mystic fanaticism imported from the East,
the vulgar life of the Stoics and Cynics of that day, and most of
the existing manners and customs of the distracted period of the
empire. An Epicurean, worldling, and infidel, as he was, could
see in Christianity only one of the many vagaries and follies of ,
mankind ; in the miracles, only jugglery ; in the belief of immor-
tality, an empty dream ; and in the contempt of death and the
brotherly love of the Christians, to which he was constrained to
testify, a silly enthusiasm.
Thus he represents the matter in a historical romance on the
life and death of Peregrinus Proteus, a contemporary Cynic
philosopher, whom he makes the basis of a satire upon Chris-
tianity, and especially upon Cynicism. Peregrinus is here pre-
sented as a perfectly contemptible man, who, after the meanest
and grossest crimes, adultery, sodomy, and parricide, joins the
credulous Christians in Palestine, cunningly imposes on them,
soon rises to the highest repute among them, and, becoming one
of the confessors in prison, is loaded with jDresents by them, in
fact almost worshipped as a god, but is afterwards excommuni-
cated for eating some forbidden food (probably meat of the idola-
trous sacrifices) ; then casts himself into the arms of the Cynics,
travels about everywhere, in the filthiest style of that sect ; and
at last about the year 165, in frantic thirst for fame, plunges
into the flames of a funeral pile before the assembled populace
of the town of Olympia, for the triumph of philosophy. Perhaps
190 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
tliis fiction of the self-burning was- meant for a parody on the
Christian martyrdom, possibly of Polycarp, who about that time
suffered death by fire at Smyrna.
Lucian treated the Christians rather with a compassionate
smile, than with hatred. He nowhere urges persecution. He
never calls Christ an impostor, as Celsus does, but a " crucified
sophist ;" a term which he uses as often in a good sense as in the
l3ad. But then, in the end, both the Christian and the heathen
religions amount, in his view, to imposture ; only, in his Epicu-
rean indifierentism, he considers it not worth the trouble to trace
such phenomena to their ultimate ground, and attempt a philoso-
phical explanation.
The mercl}^ negative position of this clever mocker of all reli-
gions injured heathenism more than Christianity, but could not
be long maintained against either ; the religious element is far
too deeply seated in the essence of human nature. Epicureanism
and scepticism made way, in their turns, for Platonism, and for
faith or superstition. Heathenism made a vigorous effort to
regenerate itself, in order to hold its ground against the steady
advance of Christianity. But the old religion itself could not
help feeling more and more the silent influence of the new.
§ 61. Neo- Platonism. Porphyry and Hierodes.
I. Plotinus : Opera Omnia (ed. Oxf. 1835. ed KirclihoCf, Lips. 1S5G. ed. Didot,
Par. 185G.) PoRrnvRius ; Kara Xpiai-iavwi' Xoyot, (fragments collected in
Holstein: Dissert, de vita et scriptis Porphyr. Rom. 1630). Hierocles:
Aoyoi i})aoX>;^Etj rfpoj Xpicmavovj (fragments in Euseb. : Contra Hierocl. lib.).
II. Vogt: Neoplatonismus u. Christentlium. Berl. 1836. Ritter: Gesch. der
Philos. vol. 4th, 1834 (in English by Morrison, Oxf. 1838). Neanper:
Ueber das neunte Buch in der zweiten Enneade des Plotinus. 1843
(vid. Neander's Wissenschaftl. Abhandlungen, published by Jacobi,
Berl. 1851, p. 22 sqq.). Kirchner : Die Philosophie des Plotin. Halle,
1832. Ullmann : Einflus des Christenthums auf Porphyrins in " Stud.
u. Krit." 1854. Baur: Apollonius von Tyana u. Christus. Tiib.
1832. John II. Newman: Apollonius Tyana;us. Lond. 1849 (Encycl.
MetropoL Vol. X. p. 619-644).
More earnest and dignified, but for this very reason more last-
ing and dangerous, was the opposition which proceeded directly
§ 61. XEO-PLATONISM. PORPHYRY AND HIEROCLES. 191
and indirectly from Neo-Platonism. This system presents the
last phase, the evening red, so to speak, of the Grecian philoso-
phy ; a fruitless effort of dying heathenism to revive itself against
the irresistible progress of Christianity in its freshness and vigor.
It was a pantheistic eclecticism and a philosophico-religious sj'n-
cretism, which sought to reconcile Platonic and Aristotelian
philosophy with Oriental religion and theosophy, polytheism
with monotheism, superstition with culture, and to hold, as with
convulsive grasp, the old popular faith in a refined and idealized
form. Some scattered Christian ideas also were unconsciously
let in ; Christianity already filled the atmosphere of the age too
much, to be wholly shut out. As might be expected, this com-
pound of philosophy and religion was an extravagant, fantastic,
heterogeneous affair, like its contemporary. Gnosticism, which dif-
fered from it by formally recognising Christianity in its syncre-
tism. ]\Iost of the ISTeo-Platonists, Jamblichus in particular, were
as much hierophants and theurgists as philosophers, devoted
themselves to divination and magic, and boasted of divine inspi-
rations and visions. Their literature is not an original, healthy
natural product, but an abnormal after-growth.
In a time of inward distraction and dissolution the human
mind hunts up old and obsolete systems and notions, or resorts to
magical and theurgic arts. Superstition follows on the heels of
unbelief, and atheism often stands closely connected with the fear
of ghosts and the worship of demons. The enlightened emperor
Augustus was 'troubled, if he put on his left shoe first in the
morning, instead of the right ; and the accomplished elder Pliny
wore amulets as protection from thunder and lightning. In their
day the long forgotten Pythagoreanism was conjured from the
grave and idealized. Sorcerers like Simon Magus, Eljnnas,
Alexander of Abonoteichos, and Apollonius of Tyana (f A.D. 86),
found great favor even with the higher classes, who laughed at the
fables of the gods.. Men turned wishfully to the past, especially
to the mysterious East, the land of primitive wisdom and religion.
The Syrian cultus was sought out ; and all sorts of religions, all
the sense and all the nonsense of antiquity, found a rendezvous
V
192 SECOND TERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
in Eome. Even a succession of Eoman emperors, from Septi-
mius Severus, at the close of the second century, to Alexander
Severus, embraced this religious syncretism, which, instead of
supporting the old Eoman state religion, helped to under-
mine it.
After the beginning of the third century this tendency found
philosophical expression and took a reformatory turn in Neo-
Platonism. The magic power, which was thought able to reani-
mate all these various elements and reduce them to harmony, and
to put deep meaning into the old mythology, was the philosophy
of the divine Plato ; which in truth possessed essentially a mys-
tical character, and was used also by learned Jews, like Philo,
and by Christians, like Origen, in their idealizing efforts and
their arbitrary allegorical expositions of offensive passages of the
Bible. In this view we may find among heathen writers a sort of
forerunner of the Neo-Platonists in the' pious and noble-minded
Platonist, Plutarch of Boeotia (f 129), who likewise saw a deeper
sense in the myths of the popular polytheistic faith, and in
general, in his comparative biographies and his admirable moral
treatises, looks at the fairest and noblest side of the Graeco-Eoman
antiquity, but often wanders off into the trackless regions of
fancy.
The proper founder of JSTeo-Platonism was Ammonius Saccas,
of Alexandria, who was born of Christian parents, but apostatized,
and died in the year 2-43. Ilis more distinguished pupil, Plotinus,
also an Egyptian (j- 270), developed the Nco-Pktonic ideas in
systematic form, and gave them firm foothold and wide currency,
particularly in Eome, where he taught philosojihy. The system
was propagated by his pupil Porphyry of Tyre (f 30-4), who
likewise taught in Eome, by Jamblichus of Chalcis in Coelo-Syria
(f 333), and by Proclus of Constantinople (f 485). It supplanted
the popular religion among the educated classes of later heathen-
dom, and held its ground until the end of the fifth century, when
it perished of its own internal falsehood and contradictions.
From its affinity for the ideal, the supernatural, and the mystical,
this system, like the original Platonism, might become for many
§ 61. NEO-PLATONISM. PORPHYRY AND niEROCLES. 193
pliilosopliical minds a bridge to faith ; and so it was even to
Augustine, wliom it delivered from the bondage of scepticism,
and filled with a burning thirst for truth and wisdom. But it
could also work against Christianity. Neo-Platonism was, in
fact, a direct attempt of the more intelligent and earnest heathen-
ism to rally all its nobler energies, especially the forces of Hellenic
philosophy and Oriental mysticism, and to found a universal
religion, a pagan counterpart to the Christian. Plotinus, in his
opposition to Gnosticism, assailed also, though not expressly, the
Christian element it contained. On their syncretistic principles
the Neo-Platonists could indeed reverence Christ as a great sage
and a hero of virtue, but not as the Son of God. They ranked the
wise men of heathendom with him. The emperor Alexander
Severus gave Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana a place in his
lararium by the side of the bust of Jesus ; and the rhetorician,
Philostratus, about the year 230, idealized the life of the pagan
magician and soothsayer Apollonius, and made him out a reli-
gious reformer and worker of miracles. With the same secret
polemical aim Porphyry and Jamblichus embellished the life
of Pythagoras, and set him forth as the highest model of wisdom,
even a divine being incarnate, a Christ of heathenism.
One of the Neo-Platonists, however, made also a direct attack
upon Christianity, and was, in the eyes of the church fathers, its
bitterest and most dangerous enemy. Towards the end of the
third century Porphyry wrote an extended work against the
Christians, in fifteen books, which called forth numerous refuta-
tions from the most eminent church teachers of the time, parti-
cularly from Methodius of Tyre, Eusebius of Caesarea^, and
Apollinaris of Laodicea. In 435 all the copies were burned by
order of the emperor, and we know the work now only from
fragments in the fathers. According to these specimens, Pov-
phyry attacked esj^ecially the sacred books of the Christians,
with more knowledge than Celsus. He endeavored,, with keen
criticism, to point out the contradictions between the Old Testa-
ment and the New, and among the apostles themselves; and
thus to refute the divinity of their writings. He represented the
13
19-4 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
propHecies of Daniel as vaticinia post eventum, and censured the
allegorical interpretation of Origen, by which transcendental
mysteries were foisted into the writings of Moses, contrary to
their clear sense. He took advantage, above all, of the collision
between Paul and Peter at Antioch,' to reproach the former with
a contentious spirit, the latter with error, and to infer from the
whole, that the doctrine of such apostles must rest on lies and
frauds. Even Jesus himself he charged with equivocation and
inconsistency, on account of his conduct in John vii. 8 compared
with verse 1-i.
Still Porphyry would not wholly reject Christianity. Like
ma,ny rationalists of more recent times, he distinguished the
original pure doctrine of Jesus from the second-handed, adulte-
rated doctrine of the apostles. In another work'' he says, we
must not calumniate Christ, but only pity those who worship
him as God. "That pious soul, exalted to heaven, is become,
by a sort of fate, an occasion of delusion to those souls from
whom fortune withholds the gifts of the gods and the knowledge
of the eternal Zeus." Still more remarkable in this view is a
letter to his wife Marcella, which A. Mai published at Milan in
1816, in the unfounded opinion that Marcella was a Christian.
In the course of this letter Porphyry remarks, tliat what is born
of the flesh is flesh ; that by faith, love, and hope we raise our-
selves to the Deity ; that evil is the fault of man ; that God is
holy ; that the most acceptable sacrifice to him is a pure heart ;
that the wise man is at once a temple of God and a priest in that
temple. For these and other such evidently Christian ideas and
phrases he no doubt had a sense of his own, which materially
differed from their proper scriptural meaning. But such things
fhow how Christianity in that day exerted, even upon its oppo-
nents, a power, to wliich heathenism was forced to yield an
unwilling assent.
The last literary antagonist of Christianity in our period is
Ilierocles, who, while governor of Bithynia and afterwards of
Alexandria under Dioclesian, persecuted that religion also with
' Gal. ii. 11 sqq. ' Jlcpl t/Jj « Xoyicji/ ^iXoo-o^i'uf.
§ 02. SUMMARY OF THE OBJECTIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. 195
the sword, and exposed Christian maidens to a worse fate than
death. His " Truth-loving Words to the Christians" has been
destroyed, like Porphyry's work, by the mistaken zeal of the
later emperors, and is known to us only through the answer of
Eusebius of Caesarea. It appears to have merely repeated the
objections of Celsus and Porphyry, and to have drawn a
comparison between Christ and Apollonius of Tyana, which
resulted in favor of the latter. The Christians, says he, consider
Jesus a God, on account of some insignificant miracles falsely
colored up by his apostles ; but the heathens far more justly
declare the greater wonder-worker Apollonius, as well as an
Aristeas and a Pythagoras, simply a favorite of the gods and a
benefactor of men.
§ 62. Summary of the Objections to Christianity.
In general the leading arguments of the Judaism and hea-
thenism of this period against the new religion are the following :
1. Against Christ : his illegitimate birth ; his association with
poor, unlettered fishermen, and rude publicans; his form of a
servant, and his ignominious death. But the opposition to him
gradually ceased. While Celsus called him a downright impos-
tor, the Syncretists and Neo-Platonists were disposed to regard
him as at least a distinguished sage.
2. Against Christianity : its novelty ; its barbarian origin ; its
want of a national basis ; the alleged absurdity of some of its facts
and doctrines, particularly of regeneration and the resurrection ;
contradictions between the Old and New Testaments, among the
gospels, and between Paul and Peter ; the demand for a blind,
irrational faith.
3. Against the Christians : atheism, or hatred of the gods ; the
worship of a crucified malefactor ; poverty, and want of culture
and standing ; desire of innovation ; division and sectarianism ;
want of patriotism ; gloomy seriousness ; superstition and fana-
ticism ; and sometimes even unnatural crimes, like those related
in the pagan mythology, of Oedipus and his mother Jocaste
(concubitus Oedipodei), and of Thyestes and Atreus (epulae
196 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-811.
Thyesteae). Perhaps some Gnostic sects ran into scandalous
excesses ; but as against the Christians in general this last charge
was so clearly unfounded, that it is not noticed even by Celsus
and Lucian. The senseless accusation, that they worshipped an
ass's head, may have arisen, as Tertullian already intimates,*
from a story of Tacitus, respecting some Jews, who were once
directed by a wild ass to fresh water, and thus relieved from the
torture of thirst ; and it is worth mentioning, only to show how
passionate and blind was the opposition with which Christianity
in this period of persecution had to contend,
§ 63. The Christian Ajpologeiic Literature.
I. The sources are all the writings of the Apologists of the second and third
centuries ; particularly Justin M. : Apologia I. and II. ; Tertcll. : Apo-
logeticus; Minucics Felix: Octavius; Origen: Contra Celsum (xara
KtMov) libr. VIII. Complete editions of the Apologists : Apologg. Christ.
0pp. ed. Prud. Maranus, Par. 1742 ; Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum
saeculi secundi, ed. Otto, Lips. 1847 sqq. (not yet finished).
II. Fabricius : Delectus argumentorum et syllabus scriptorum, qui veritatem
rel. Christ, asseruerunt. Hamb. 1725. Tzscuirner: Geschichte der
Apologetik. Lpz. 1805 (unfinished). Gr. H. van Saxden: Gesch. der
Apol. 1831, translated from Dutch into German by Quack and Binder,
Stuttg. 184G. 2 vols. Semisch : Justin der Miirt. Bresl. 1840. II. 56-
225. W. B. CoLTON : The Evidences of Christianity as exhibited in the
writings of its Apologists down to Augustine (Hulseau Prize Essay, 1852),
republ. at Boston, 1854. (Comp. also "Woodiiam's Introduction to Ter-
tull.'s Apologeticus, and Kate's illustrations from the works of Justin,
Tertulhan, and Clemens, in his monographs on these fathers.)
These assaults of argument and calumny called forth in the
second century the Christian apologetic literature, the vindica-
tion of Christianity by the pen against the Jewish zealot, the
Grecian philosopher, and the Koman statesman. The Christians
were indeed from the first " ready always to give an answer to
every man that asked them a reason of the hope that was in
them." But when heathenism took the field against them not
only with fire and sword, but with argument and slander besides,
' Apol. c. IG: Soimiiastis caput asininum esse deum uostruui. llauc Corueliua
Tacitus su.spicioiicni ejusiiiodi dei iuseruit, &f.
§ 63. THE CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC LITERATURE. 197
tliey had to add to their simple practical testimony a theoretical
self-defence. The Christian apology against non-Christian oppo-
nents, and the controversial efforts against Christian errorists,
are the two oldest branches of theological science.
The apologetic literature began to appear under the reign of
Hadrian, and continued to grow till the end of our period. Most
of the church teachers took j^art in this labor of their day. The
first apologies, by Quadratus, Aristides, and Aristo, addressed to
the emperor Hadrian, and the later works of Melito of Sardis,
Claudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis, and Miltiades, who lived
under Marcus Aurelius, are either entirely lost, or preserved only
in fragments. But the valuable apologetical works of the Greek
philosopher and martyr, Justin (f 166), we possess. After him
come, in the Grreek church, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus of
Antioch, and Hermias in the last half of the second century, and
Origen, the ablest of all, in the first half of the third. The most
important Latin apologists are Tertullian (f about 220), Minucius
Felix (f between 220 and 230; according to some, between 161
and 180), and the later Arnobius ; all of North Africa.
Here at once appears the characteristic difference between the
Greek and the Latin minds. The Greek apologies are more
learned and philosophical, the Latin more practical and juridical
in their matter and style. The former labor to prove the truth
of Christianity and its adaptedness to the intellectual wants of
man; the latter plead for its legal right to exist, and exhibit
mainly its moral excellency and salutary efiect upon society.
The Latin also are in general more rigidly opposed to heathen-
ism, while the Greek recognise in the Gi'ecian philosophy a
certain affinity to the Christian rehgion.
The apologies were addressed in some cases to the emperors
(Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius) and the provincial
governors; in others, to the intelligent public. Their first object
was to soften the temper of the authorities and people towards
Christianity and its professors by refuting the false charges
against them. It may be doubted whether they ever reached
the hands of the emperors; at all events the persecution con-
198 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
tinned.' Conversion commonly proceeds from the heart and
■will, not from the nnderstanding and from knowledge. No
doubt, however, these writings contributed to dissipate pre-
judice among honest and susceptible heathens, to spread more
favorable views of the new religion, and to infuse a spirit of hu-
manity into the spirit of the age, the systems of moral philoso-
phy and the legislation of the Antonines.
Yet the chief service of this literature was, to strengthen belie-
vers and advance theological knowledge. It brought the church
to a deeper and clearer sense of the pecuHar nature of the Chris-
tian religion, and prepared her thenceforth to vindicate it before
the tribunal of reason and philosophy ; whilst Judaism and
heathenism proved themselves powerless in the combat, and were
driven to the weapons of falsehood and vituperation. The
sophisms and mockeries of a Celsus and a Lucian have none but
a historical interest ; the apologies of Justin and the Apologeticus
of Tertullian, rich with indestructible truth and glowing piety,
are read with pleasure and edification to this day.
The apologists do not confine themselves to the defensive, but
carry the war aggressively into the territory of Judaism and
heathenism. They complete their work by positively demon-
strating that Christianity is the divine religion, and the only true
religion for all mankind.
§ 6-1. The Argument against Judaism.
In regard to the controversy with Judaism, we have two prin-
ci]iHl sources: the. Dialogue of Justin Martyr with the Jew
Trypho," based, it appears, on real interviews of Justin with
Trypho ; and Tertullian's work against the Jews.'
1. The defensive apology answered the Jewish objections
thus :
(a) Against the charge, that Christianity is an apostasy from
' Oro3ius, however, relates in his Hist. vii. 14, that Justiu M., by his Apology,
mnde the emperor Antoninus Pius "benignuni crga Christianos."
^iiWnyni Trp6( Tpi^toi'a 'lovJoioi'.
° Advcrsus Judacos. Also Cyprian's Te?tinionia adv. Judaeos.
§ 64. THE ARGUMENT AGAINST JUDAISM. 199
tlie Mosaic law, it was held, that the Mosaic law was onl}- a tem-
porary institution for the Jewish nation, and the Old Testament
itself points to its own dissolution and the establishment of a
new covenant;' that Abraham was justified before he was cir-
cumcised, and women, who could not be circumcised, were yet
saved.
(b) Against the assertion, that the servant-form of Jesus of
Nazareth, and his death by the cross, contradicted the Old Testa-
ment idea of the Messiah, it was urged, that the appearance of
the Messiah is to be regarded as twofold, iirst, in the form of a
servant, afterwards in glorj^ ; and that the brazen serpent in the
wilderness, and the projDhecies of David in Psalm xxii., and of
Isaiah in ch. liii., themselves point to the sufferings of Christ as
his way to glory.
(c) To the objection, that the divinity of Jesus contradicts the
unity of God and is blasphemy, it was replied, that the Chris-
tians believe likewise in only one God; that the Old Testament
itself makes a distinction in the divine nature ; that the plural
expression: "Let us make man, "^ the appearance of the three
men at Mamre,' of whom one was confessedly God,* yet distinct
from the Creator,^ indicate this ; and that all theophanies (which
in Justin's view are all christophanies), and the Messianic Psalms,"
which ascribe divine dignity to the Messiah, show the same.
2. The aggressive apology or polemic theology urges as evi-
dence against Judaism:
(a) First and mainly that the prophecies and types of the Old
Testament are fulfilled in Jesus Christ and his church. Justin
finds all the outlines of the gospel history predicted in the Old
Testament ; the Davidic descent of Jesus, for example, in Is, xi.
1 : the birth from a virgin in vii. 1-4 ; the birth at Bethlehem
in Micah v. 1 ; the flight into Egj'pt in Hosea xi. 1 (rather than
Ps. xxii. 10?); the appearance of the Baptist in Is. xl. 1-17;
Mai. iv. 5 ; the heavenly voice at the baptism of Jesus in Ps. ii. 7 ;
* Is. li. 4 sq. Iv. 3 sqq. Jer. xxxi. 31 sqq. * Gen. i. 26, comp. iii. 22.
3 Gen. xviii. 1 sqq. * xxi. 12. s ^ix. 24.
8 Ps. ex. 1 sqq. xlv. 7 sqq. Ixxh. 2-19, and others.
200 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
the temptation in the wilderness under the type of Jacob's wres-
tling in Gen. xxxii. 24 sqq. ; the miracles of our Lord in Is.
XXXV. 5 ; his sufferings and the several circumstances of his
crucifixion in Is. liii. and Ps. xxii. In this effort, however, Justin
wanders also, according to the taste of his uncritical age, into
arbitrary fancies and allegorical conceits ; as when he makes the
two goats, of which one carried away the sms into the wilderness,
and the other was sacrificed, types of the first and second advents
of Christ ; and sees in the twelve bells on the robe of the high
priest a type of the twelve apostles, whose sound goes forth into
all the world. ^
(b) The destruction of Jerusalem, in which Judaism, accord-
ing to the express prediction of Jesus, was condemned by God
himself, and Christianity was gloriously vindicated.
§ 65. The Defence against Heathenism.
1. The various objections and accusations of the heathens,
which we have collected in § 62, were founded for the most part
on ignorance or hatred, and in many cases contradicted them-
selves ; so that we need to notice here but a few.
(a) The attack upon the miraculous in the evangelical history
the apologists could meet by pointing to the similar element in the
heathen mythology; of course proposing this merely in the way
of argumentum ad hominem, to deprive the opposition of the right
to object. For the credibility of the miraculous accounts in the
gospels, particularly that of the resurrection of Jesus, Origen
appealed to the integrity and piety of the narrators, to the pub-
licity of the death of Jesus, and to the effects of that event.
(b) The novelty and late appearance of Christianity were justi-
fied by the need of historical preparation in which the human
race should be divinely trained for Christ ; but more frequently
it was urged also, that Christianity existed in the counsel of God
from eternity, and had its unconscious votaries, especially among
the pious Jews, long before tlic advent of Christ. By claiming
' Ps. xix. 4, comp. Rom. x. 18.
§ 65. THE DEFENCE AGAINST HEATHENISM. 201
tlie Mosaic records, tlie apologists liad greatly tlie advantage as
regards antiquity over any form of paganism, and could carry
their religion, in its preparatory state, even beyond the flood and
up to the very gates of paradise. Justin and Tatian make great
account of the fact that Moses is much older than the Greek phi-
losophers, poets, and legislators. Athenagoras turns the tables,
and shows that the very names of the heathen gods are modern,
and their statues creations of yesterday. Clement of Alexandria
calls the Greek philosophers thieves and robbers, because they
stole certain portions of truth from the Hebrew prophets and
adulterated them. Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and others raise
the same charge of plagiarism.
(c) The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, so peculiarly
offensive to the heathen and Gnostic understanding, was supported,
as to its possibility, by reference to the omnipotence of God, and
to the creation of the world and of man ; and its proj^riety and
reasonableness were argued from the divine image in man, from
the high destiny of the body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost,
and from its intimate connexion with the soul, as well as from
the righteousness and goodness of God. The argument from ana-
logy was also very generally used, but often without proper dis-
crimination. Thus, Theophilus alludes to the decline and return of
the seasons, the alternations of day and night, the renewal of the
waning and waxing moon, the growth of seeds and fruits. Ter-
tullian expresses his surprise, that anybody should deny the pos-
sibility and probability of the resurrection in view of the mystery
of our birth and the daily occurrences of surrounding nature.
" All things," he says, " are preserved by dissolution, renewed
by perishing ; and shall man .... the lord of all this universe of
creatures, which die and rise again, himself die only to perish for
ever ?"^
(d) The charge of immoral conduct and secret vice the apolo-
gists might repel with just indignation, since the New Testament
' Apolog. c. xliii. Comp. his special tract De resurredione carnis, c. 12, where
he defends the doctrine more fully against the Gnostics and tlieir radical misconcep-
tion of the nature and import of the body.
202 SECOND PERIOD. A.D, 100-311.
contains tlie purest and noblest morality, and the general conduct
of the Christians compared most favorably with that of the
heathens. "Shame! shame!" they justly cried; " to roll upon
the innocent what you are openly guilty of, and what belongs to
you and your gods !" Origen says in the preface to the first
book against Celsus : " When false witness was brought against
our blessed Saviour, the spotless Jesus, he held his peace, and
when he was accused, returned no answer, being fully persuaded
that the tenor of his life and conversation among the Jews was
the best apology that could possibly be made in his behalf ....
And even now he preserves the same silence, and makes no
other answer than the unblemished lives of his sincere followers ;
they are his most cheerful and successful advocates, and have so
loud a voice, that they drown the clamors of the most zealous and
bigoted adversaries."
2. To their defence the Christians, with the rising consciousness
of victory, added direct arguments against heathenism, which were
practically sustained by its dissolution in the following period.
(a) The popular religion of the heathens, particularly the doc-
trine of the gods, is unworthy, contradictory, absurd, immoral, and
pernicious. The apologists and most of the early church teachers
looked upon the heathen gods not as mere imaginations or per-
sonified powers of nature, and deifications of distinguished men,
but as demons or fallen angels. They took this view from the
Septuagint version of Ps. xcvi. 5,^ and from the immorality of
those deities, which was charged to demons (even sexual intercourse
with fair daughters of men, according to Gen. vi. 2). " What
sad fates," says Minucius Felix, " what lies, ridiculous things,
and weaknesses we read of the pretended gods! Even their
form, how pitiable it is ! Vulcan limps ; Mercury has wings to
his feet ; Pan is hoofed ; Saturn in fetters ; and Janus has two
faces, as if he walked backwards Sometimes Hercules is a
hostler, Apollo a cowherd, and Neptune, Laomedon's mason,
cheated of his wages. There we have the thunder of Jove and
§ 65. THE DEFENCE AGAINST HEATHENISM. 203
the arms of Aeneas forged on the same anvil (as if tlie lieavens
and the thunder and Hghtning did not exist before Jove was born
in Crete) ; the adultery of Mars and Yenus ; the lewdness of Jupiter
with Ganymede, all of which were invented for the gods to author-
ize men in their wickedness." "Which of the poets," asks Ter-
tullian, " does not calumniate your gods? One sets Apollo to
keep sheep ; another hires out Neptune to build a wall ; Pindar
declares JEsculapius was deservedly scathed for his avarice in
exercising the art of medicine to a bad purpose ; whilst the wri-
ters of tragedy and comedy alike, take for their subjects the crimes
or the miseries of the deities. Nor are the philosophers behind-
hand in this respect. Out of pure contempt, they would swear
by an oak, a goat, a dog. Diogenes turned Hercules into ridi-
cule ; and the Eoman Cynic Varro introduces three hundred Joves
without heads." From the stage abuses the sarcastic African father
selects, partly from his own former observation, those of Diana
being flogged, the reading of Jupiter's will after his decease, and
the three half starved Herculeses ! Justin brings up the infanticide
of Saturn, the parricide, the anger, and the adultery of Jupiter,
the drunkenness of Bacchus, the vohiptuousness of Yenus, and
appeals to the judgment of the better heathens, who were ashamed
of these scandalous histories of the gods ; to Plato, for example,
who for this reason banishes Homer from his ideal State. Those
myths, which had some resemblance to the Old Testament pro-
phecies or the gospel history, Justin regards as caricatures of the
truth, framed by demons by abuse of Scripture. The story
of Bacchus, for instance, rests, in his fanciful view, on Gen. xlix.
10 sq. ; the myth of the birth of Perseus from a virgin, on Is.
vii. 14 ; that of the wandering of Hercules, on Ps. xix. 6 ; the
fiction of the miracles of iEsculapius on Is, xxxv. 1 sqq. Ori-
gen asks Celsus, why it is that he can discover profound mys-
teries in those strange and senseless accidents, which have
befallen his gods and goddesses, showing them to be polluted with
crimes and doing many shameful things ; whilst Moses, who says
nothing derogatory to the character of God, angel, or man, is
treated as an impostor. He challenges any one to compare
204 SECOND TERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Moses and his la^YS with the best Greek writers ; and yet Moses
was as fiir inferior to Christ, as he was superior to the greatest
of heathen sages and legislators.
(b) The Greek philosophy, which rises above the popular
belief, is not suited to the masses, cannot meet the religious
wants, and confutes itself by its manifold contradictions. Socrates,
the wisest of all the philosophers, himself acknowledged that he
knew nothing. On divine and human things Justin finds the
philosophers at variance among themselves ; with Thales water
is the ultimate principle of all things ; with Anaximander, air ;
with Ileraclitus, fire; with Pythagoras, number. Even Plato
not seldom contradicts himself; now supposing three fundamental
causes (God, matter, and ideas), now four (adding the world-soul) ;
now he considers matter as unbegotten, now as begotten; at
one time he ascribes substantiality to ideas, at another makes
them mere forms of thought, &c. Who, then, he concludes,
would intrust to the philosophers the salvation of his soul ?
(c) But, on the other hand, the Greek apologists recognised also
elements of truth in the Hellenic literature, especially in the
Platonic and Stoic philosophy, and saw in them, as in the law
and the prophecies of Judaism, a preparation of the way for Chris-
tianity. Justin attributes all the good in heathenism to the
divine Logos, who, even before his incarnation, scattered the
seeds of truth, and incited susceptible spirits to a holy walk.
Thus there were Christians before Christianity ; and among these
he expressly reckons Socrates and Heraclitus. Besides, he sup-
posed that Pythagoras, Plato, and other educated Greeks, in
their journeys to the East, became acquainted with the Old Testa-
ment writings, and drew from them the doctrine of the unity of
God, and other like truths, though they in various ways misun-
derstood them, and adulterated them with pagan errors. This
view of a certain affinity between the Grecian philosophy and
Christianity, as an argument in favor of the new religion, was
afterwards further developed by the Alexandrian fathers Clement
and Origen.
§ 66. TnE POSITIVE APOLOGY. 205
§ 66. The Positive Apology.
The Christian apology completed itself in the positive demon-
stration of the divinity of the new religion ; which was at the
same time the best refutation of both the old ones. As early as
this period the strongest historical and philosophical arguments
for Christianity were brought forward, or at least indicated,
though in connexion with many untenable adjuncts.
1. The great argument, not only with Jews, but with heathens
also, was the prophecies ; since the knowledge of future events
can come only from God. The first appeal of the apologists was,
of course, to the prophetic writings of the Old Testament. But
even a Clement of Alexandria, and, with more caution, an Origen,
a Eusebius, and St. Augustine, employed also, without hesitation,
apocryphal projjhecies, especially the Sibylline oracles, a medley
of ancient heathen, Jewish, and in part Christian fictions, about a
golden age, the coming of Christ, the fortunes of Eome, and the
end of the world.' And indeed, this was not all error and pious
fraud. Through all heathenism there runs, in truth, a dim,
unconscious presentiment and longing hojDC of Christianity,
Think of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, with its predictions of
the " virgo" and "nova progenies" from heaven, and the "puer,"
with whom, after the blotting out of sin and the killing of the
serjDent, a golden age of peace was to begin.
2. The types. These, too, were found not in the Old Testa-
ment onl}^, but in the whole range of nature. Justin saw every-
where, in the tree of life in Eden, in Jacob's ladder, in the rods
of Moses and Aaron, nay, in every sailing ship, in the wave-
cutting oar, in the plough, in the human countenance, in the
human form with outstretched arms, in banners and trophies —
the sacred form of the cross, and thus a prefiguration of the
mystery of redemption through the crucifixion of the Lord.
3. The miracles of Jesus and the apostles, with those which
' Comp. Dr. Friedlieb : Die Sibyllinischen Weissagungen voUstandig gesamraelt,
mit kritischem Commentare und metrischer Uebersetzung. Leipz. 1852. We have
at present twelve books of xp/jirf/ot ai0v\\iaKoi in Greek hexameters, and some frag-
ments.
206 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
continued to be wrought in the name of Jesus, according to the
express testimony of the fathers, by their contemporaries. But as
the heathens also appealed to miraculous deeds and appearances
in favor of their religion, Justin, Arnobius, and particularly
Origen, fixed certain criteria, such as the moral purity of the
worker, and his intention to glorify God and benefit man, for
distinguishing the true miracles from satanic juggleries. " There
might have been some ground," says Origen, " for the comparison
which Celsus makes between Jesus and certain wandering magi-
cians, if there had appeared in the latter the slightest tendency
to beget in persons a true fear of God, and so to regulate their
actions in prospect of the day of judgment. But they attempt
nothing of the sort. Yea, they themselves arc guilty of the most
grievous crimes ; whereas the Saviour would have his hearers to
be convinced by the native beauty of religion and the holy lives
of its teachers, rather than by even the miracles they wrought."
The subject of ^ws^apostolic miracles is surrounded by much
greater difficulties in the absence of insjiired testimony, and in
most cases even of ordinary immediate witnesses. There is an
antecedent probability that the power of working miracles was
not suddenly and abruptly, but gradually withdrawn, as the
necessity of such outward and extraordinary attestation of the
divine origin of Christianity diminished and gave way to the
natural operation of truth and moral suasion. Hence Augustine,
in the fourth century, says: "Since the establishment of the
church God does not wish to perpetuate miracles even to our
day, lest the mind should put its trust in visible signs, or grow
cold at the sight of common marvels." But it is impossible to
fix the precise termination, either at the death of the apostles, or
their immediate disciples, or the conversion of the Roman empire,
or the extinction of the Arian heresy, or any subsequent era, and
to sift carefully in each particular case the truth from legendary
fiction. It is remarkable that the genuine writings of the ante-
Nicene church are more free from miraculous and superstitious
elements than the annals of the middle ages, and especially of
monasticism. Most of the statements of the apologists are couched
§ 66. THE POSITIVE APOLOGY. 207
in general terms, and refer to extraordinary cures from demonia-
cal possession (wliich probably includes, in tlie language of that
age, cases of madness, deep melancholy, and epilepsy) and other
diseases, by the invocation of the name of Jesus. _^ Justin Martyr
speaks of such cures as a frequent occurrence in Eome and all over
the world, and Origen appeals to his own personal observation,
but speaks in another place of the growing scarcity of miracles, so
as to suggest the gradual cessation theory as held by Dr. Neander,
Bishop Kaye, and others. Tertullian attributes many if not most
of the conversions of his day to supernatural dreams and visions,
as does also Origen, although with more caution. But in such
psychological phenomena it is exceedingly difficult to draw the
line of demarcation between natural and supernatural causes, and
between providential interpositions and miracles proper. The
strongest passage on this subject is found in Irenaeus, who, in
contending against the heretics, mentions, besides prophecies and
miraculous cures of demoniacs, even the raising of the dead
among contemporary events taking place in the catholic church ;*
but he specifies no particular case or name; and it should be
remembered, also, that his youth still bordered almost on the
Johannean age.
4. The moral effect of Christianity upon the heart and life of
its professors. The Christian religion has not only taught the
purest and sublimest code of morals ever known among men, but
actually exhibited it in the life, sufferings, and death of its foun-
der and true followers. All the apologists, from the author of
the epistle to Diognetus down to Origen, Cyprian, and Augustine,
bring out in strong colors the infinite superiority of Christian
ethics over the heathen, and their testimony is fully corroborated
by the practical fruits of the church, as we shall have occasion
more fully to show in the fifth chapter. " They think us sense-
less," sa3^s Justin, " because we worship this Christ, who was
cnicifled under Pontius Pilate, as God next to the Father. But
' Adv. haer. II. 31, § 2, and II. 32, §4;'HJ/) St «■«; vSKpoi nyi-p^ricrav Knl Traphxtivov
iT')v rifiTv UafoTs '^rcai. These two passages can hardly be explained, with Heumann
and Neander, as referring merely to cases of apparent death.
208 SECOND PEKIOD. A.D. 100-311.
they would not say so, if they knew the mystery of the cross.
By its fruits they may know it. We, who once lived in debauch-
ery, now study chastity ; we, who dealt in sorceries, have conse-
crated ourselves to the good, the increate God; we, who loved
money and possessions above all things else, now devote our
property freely to the general good, and give to every needy one ;
we, who fought and killed each other, now pray for our enemies ;
those who persecute us in hatred, we kindly try to aj)pease, in
the hope that they may share the same blessings which we
enjoy.'"
0. The rapid spread of Christianity by purely moral means,
and in spite of the greatest external obstacles, yea, the bitter
persecution of Jews and Gentiles. Origen makes good use of
this argument against Celsus, and thinks that so great a success
as Christianity met among Greeks and barbarians, learned and
unlearned persons, in so short a time, without any force or other
worldly means, and in view of the united opposition of emperors,
senate, governors, generals, priests, and people, can only be
rationally accounted for on the ground of an extraordinary pro-
vidence of God and the divine nature of Christ.
6. The reasonableness of Christianity, and its agreement with
all the true and the beautiful in the Greek philosophy and poesy.
All who had lived rationally before Christ, were really, though
unconsciously, already Christians. Thus all that is Christian is
rational, and all that is truly rational is Christian. Yet, on the
other hand, of course, Christianity is supra-rational (not irra-
tional).
7. The adaptation of Christianity to the deepest needs of human
nature, which it alone can meet. Ilere belongs Tertullian's appeal
to the "testimonium animac naturalitcr Christianae ; " his pro-
found thought, that the human soul is, in its inmost essence and
instinct, predestined for Christianity, and can find rest and peace
in that alone. The soul, says he, though confined in the prison
of the body, though perverted by bad training, though weakened
' Apol. I. c 1:4 aud 11 ([). 35 sq. ed. Otto).
§ 66. THE POSITIVE APOLOGY. 209
by lusts and passions, tliongh. given to the service of false gods,
still no sooner awakes from its intoxication and its dreams, and
recovers its health, than it calls upon God by the one name due
to him : " Great God ! good God ! " — and then looks, not to the
capitol, but to heaven ; for it knows the abode of the living God,
from whom it proceeds.' This deep longing of the human soul
for the living God in Christ, Augustine, in whom TertuUian's
spirit returned purified and enriched, afterwards expressed in the
grand sentence : " Thou, 0 God, hast made us for thee, and our
heart is restless, till it rests in thee.'"'
* Tert. Apolog. c, 17, Comp. the beautiful passage in De tesiim. animae, c. 2: Si
enim anima aut divina aut a Deo data est, sine dubio datorem suum novit, et si novit,
utique et timet ... 0 testimonium veritatis, quae apud ipsa daemonia testem efficit
Cliristianorura.
8 Aug. Confess, I. 1 : Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donee re-
quiescat in Te.
14
210 SECOND TERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
CHAPTER lY.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHURCH DOCTRINE IN CONFLICT WITH
HERESY.
§ 67. Judaism and Heathenism as Heresy loitliin the Cliurch.
Having thus noticed tlie moral and intellectual victory of the
church over avowed and consistent Judaism and heathenism, we
must now look at her deep and mighty struggle with those ene-
mies in a hidden and more dangerous form ; with Judaism and
heathenism concealed in the garb of Christianity and threatening
to Judaize and paganize the church. The patristic theology and
literature can never be thoroughly understood without a know-
ledge of the heresies of the patristic age.
Judaism, with its religion and its sacred writings, and Graeco-
Eoman heathenism, with its secular culture, its science, and its
art, w^ere designed to pass into Christianity, the perfect religion,
to be transformed and sanctified. But even in the apostolic age
there were many Jews and Gentiles, who were baptized only
with water, not with the Holy Ghost and fire of the gospel, and
who smuggled their old religious notions and practices into the
church. Hence the heretical tendencies, which are combated in
the New Testament, especially in the Pauline and Catholic
Epistles.'
The same heresies meet us at the beginning of the second cen-
tury, and thenceforth in more mature form and in greater extent
in almost all parts of Christendom. They evince, on the one
hand, the universal import of the Christian religion in history,
» Comp. § 24.
§ 67. JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM AS HERESY. 211
and its irresistible power over all tlie more profound and earnest
minds of the age. Christianity threw all the religious ideas of
antiquity into confusion and wonderful agitation. Thousands
were so struck with the truth, beauty, and vigor of the new reli-
gion, that they could no longer rest either in Judaism or in
heathenism, who yet were unable or unwilling to forsake
inwardly their old religious and philosophical position. Hence
strange medleys of Christian and unchristian elements in chaotic
ferment. The old religions did not die without a last desperate
effort to save themselves by appropriating Christian ideas. And
this, on the other hand, exposed the specific truth of Christianity
to the greatest danger, and obliged the church to defend herself
against misrepresentation, and to secure herself against relapse
to the Jewish or the heathen level.
As Christianity was met at its entrance into the world by two
other religions, the one relatively true, and the other essentially
false, heresy appeared likewise in the two leading forms of Ebion-
ism and Gnosticism, the germs of which, as already observed,
attracted the notice of the apostles. The remark of Hegesippus,
that the church preserved a virginal purity of doctrine to the
time of Hadrian, must be understood as made only in view of
the open advance of Gnosticism in the second century, and there-
fore as only relatively true. The very same writer expressly
observes, that heresy had been already secretly working from
the days of Simon Magus. Ebionism is a Judaizing, pseudo-
Petrine Christianity, or, as it may equally well be called, a
Christianizing Judaism ; Gnosticism is a paganizing or pseudo-
Pauline Christianity, or a pseudo-Christian heathenism.
These two great types of heresy are properly opposite poles.
Ebionism is a particularistic contraction of the Christian religion ;
Gnosticism, a vague expansion of it. The one is a gross realism
and literalism ; the other, a fantastic idealism and spiritualism.
In the former the spirit is bound in outward forms ; in the latter
it revels in licentious freedom. Ebionism makes salvation depend
on observance of the law ; Gnosticism, on speculative knowledge.
Under the influence of Judaistic legalism, Christianity must
212 SECOXD PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
stiffen and petrify ; under the influence of Gnostic speculation it
must dissolve into empty notions and fancies. Ebionism denies
the divinity of Christ, and sees in the gospel only a new law ;
Gnosticism denies the true humanity of the Redeemer, and makes
his person and his work a mere phantom, a docetistic illusion.
The two extremes, however, meet ; both tendencies from oppo-
site directions reach the same result — the denial of the incarna-
tion, of the true and abiding union of the divine and the human
in Christ and his kingdom ; and thus they fall together under
St. John's criterion of the antichristian sjiirit of error.' In both
Christ ceases to be mediator and reconciler, and his religion
makes no specific advance upon the Jewish and the heathen,
which place God and man in abstract dualism, or allow them
none but a transient and illusory union.
Hence, there were also some forms of error, in which Ebion-
istic and Gnostic elements were combined. We have a Gnostic
or theosophic Ebionism (the pseudo-Clementine), and a Judaizing
Gnosticism (in Cerinthus and others). These mixed forms also
we find combated in the apostolic age. Indeed similar forms of
rehgious syncretism we meet with even before the time and
beyond the field of Christianity, in the Essenes, the Thera-
peutae, and the Platonizing Jewish philosopher, Pidlo.
§ 68. Ebionism.
I. Irenaecs : Adv. haer. I. 26. Hippol. : Refut. omnium haer. 1. IX. 13-17.
Epipiian. : Haer. 29, 30, 53. Scattered notices in Justin M. ; Tertull.,
Orig., Heges., Eus., and Jerome.
n. Gieseler: Nazaraer u. Ebioniten (in the fourth vol of Staudlin's and
Tzschirner's Archiv). Schliemann : Die Clementinen u. der Ebionitismus,
Ilamb. 1844, p. 3G2-552. Ritschl : Ueber die Secte der Elkesailen (in
Niedner's " Zeitsclir. fiir hist. Theol." 1853, No. 4. Uhluorh : Art.
"Ebioniten" in Herzog's Theol. Real-EncykL Vol III. C21 sqq. (1855);
and " Elkesaiten," ibid. p. 771 sqq.
The Jewish Christianity, represented in the apostolic church
by Peter and James, combined with the Gentile Christianity of
• 1 Jno. iv. 1-3.
§ 68. EBiONisii. 213
Paul, to form a Christian cliurch, in wliicli neither circumcision
availetli anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature in
Christ. A portion of the Jewish Christians, however, adhered
even after the destruction of Jerusalem, to the national customs
of their fathers, and propagated themselves in some churches of
Syria down to the end of the fourth century, under the name of
Nazarenes ; a name perhaps originally given in contempt by
the Jews to all Christians as followers of Jesus of Nazareth.*
They united the observance of the Mosaic ritual law with their
belief in the Messiahship and divinity of Jesus, used the Gospel
of Matthew in Hebrew, deeply mourned the unbelief of their
brethren, and hoped for their future conversion in a body, and for
a millennial reign of Christ on the earth. But they indulged no
antipathy to the apostle Paul, and never denounced the- Gentile
Christians as heretics for not observing the law. They were,
therefore, not heretics, but stunted separatist Christians of the
school of James ; they stopped at the obsolete position of a nar-
row and anxious Jewish Christianity; and shrank to an insigni-
ficant sect. Jerome says of them, that, wishing to be Jews and
Christians alike, they were neither one nor the other.
From these Nazarenes we must carefully distinguish the here-
tical Jewish Christians, or the Ebionites, who were more nume-
rous. Their name comes not, as Tertullian first intimated, fi'om
a supposed founder of the sect, Ebion, of whom we know nothing^
but from the Hebrew word, "\'i^':^Vi, jpoor. It may have been
originally, like Nazarene and Galilean, a contemptuous desig-
nation of all Christians, the majority of whom lived in needy
circumstances, but it was afterwards confined to this sect ;
whether in reproach, to denote the poverty of their doctrine of
Christ and of the law, as Origen more ingeniously than correctly
explains it; or, more probably, in konor, since the Ebionites
regarded themselves as the genuine followers of the poor Christ
and his poor disciples, and applied to themselves alone the bene-
diction on the poor in spirit. According to Epiphanius, Ebion
' Comp. Acts xxiv. 5.
214 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
spread his error first in the company of Christians whicli fled
to Pella after the destruction of Jerusalem ; according to Ilege-
sippus in Eusebius, one Thebutis, after the death of the bishop
Sjmeon of Jerusalem, about 107, made schism among the Jewish
Christians, and led many of them to apostatize, because he him-
self was not elected to the bishopric.
"\Ye find the sect of the Ebionites in Palestine and the sur-
rounding regions, on the island of Cyprus, in Asia Minor, and
even in Rome. Though it consisted mostly of Jews, Gentile
Christians also sometimes attached themselves to it. It continued
into the fourth century, but at the time of Theodoret was entirely
extinct. It used a Hebrew gospel, now lost, which was probably
a corruption of the gospel of Matthew.
The characteristic marks of Ebionism in all its forms are :
degradation of Christianity to the level of Judaism ; the principle
of the universal and perpetual validity of the Mosaic law ; and
enmity to the apostle Paul. But, as there were different sects in
Judaism itself, we have also to distinguish at least two branches
of Ebionism, related to each other as Pharisaism and Essenism,
or, to use a modem illustration, as the older deistic and the
speculative pantheistic rationalism in Germany, or the two
schools of unitarianism in England and America.
1. The common Ebionites, who were by far the more numerous,
embodied the Pharisaic legal spirit, and were the proper succes-
sors of the Judaizcrs opposed in the Epistle to the Galatians.
Their doctrine may be reduced to the following propositions : (a)
Jesus is, indeed, the promised Messiah, the son of David, and
the supreme lawgiver, yet a mere man, like Moses and David,
sprung by natural generation from Joseph and Mary. The sense
of his Messianic calling first arose in him at his baptism by John,
when a higher spirit joined itself to him. Hence, Origen com-
pared this sect to the blind man in the gospel, who called to the
Lord, without seeing him : " Thou son of David, have mercy on
me." (b) Circumcision and the observance of the whole ritual
law of Moses are necessary to salvation for all men. (c) Paul is
an apostate and heretic, and all his epistles are to be discarded.
§ 69. THE PSEUDO-CLEMENTIjSTE EBIONISil. 215
The sect considered him a native heathen, who came over to
Judaism in later life from impure motives, (d) Christ is soon
to come again, to introduce the glorious millennial reign of the
Messiah, with the earthly Jerusalem for its seat.
2. The second class of Ebionites, starting with Essenic notions,
gave their Judaism a speculative or theosophic stamp, like the
errorists of the Epistle to the Colossians, They form the step-
ping-stone to Gnosticism. Among these belong the Elkesaites.^
They are supposed to have arisen at the beginning of the second
century in the regions around the Dead Sea, where the Essenes
lived. Their name is derived from their founder, Elxai, and is
interpreted, " hidden power."^ Probably this was not originally
the name of a person, but the title of a book, pretending, like the
book of Mormon, to be revealed by an angel, and held in the
highest esteem by the sect. This secret writing, according to
the fragments in Origen, and in the lately discovered Philo-
sophoumena of Hippolytus, contains the groundwork of the
remarkable pseudo-Clementine system, which we proceed in the
next section to consider.
§ 69. The Pseudo- Clementine Elionism.
I. Ta 'KXrifitv'tia., or more accurately, KXrunvtoi tuiv nir'pov trti^TjficCjv xtjpvyfAdtuv
Erti-f OjUjj, first published (without tlie twentieth homily) by Coielier in his
Patres Apost. Par. 1672 ; then again by Schivegkr, Stuttg. 1847 ; and
now first entire, from a new codex, by A. Dressel (with Latin transl. and
notes), under the title : Clementis Romani quae feruntur Homiliae
ViGiNTi nunc primum integrae. Gott. 1853. — Clementis Rom. Recog-
NiTioNES (tti'ayi'copK?;Uoi,'), extant only in the Latin translation of Rufinus ;
first published in Basel, 1526 ; then better by Coielier, OaUandi, and by
Qersdorf in his " Bibl. Patr. Lat." Lips. 1838. Vol. 1. — Clementis
Epitome de gestis Petri (Kx^ju. hrciax. 'Pw^jjj rtspt iZiv rtpa^fwi' STiihr^^LLZjv
I's xal xt^pvyixdifuv ITtVpov trtir'ofijj), first at Par. 1555; then critically
edited by CoteUer, 1. c. (The Epitome is only a summary of the Homilies.)
TI. Neander & Baur in their works on Gnosticism (vid. the following §).
Schliemann : Die Clementinen nebst den verwandten Schriften, u. der
* 'EXwiraroi, also called in Epiphanius, LaixipaXot, from '^';i2'.-5 s^^n-
216 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Ebionitismus. Hamb. 1844. IIilgen'feld : Die Clementinischcn Recog-
nitionen u. Homilien nach ihrem Ursprung u. Inhalt. Jena, 1848. Die
Apost. Vater. Halle, 1853. p. 287-302. Uhlhorn: Die Homilien u.
Eecognitionen des Clemens Romanus. Gott. 1854. Comp. the same
author's article " Clementinen," in Herzog's Encykl. Vol. II., 744 sqq.
Ritschl: Die Entstehung der altkath. Kirche. 1857 (2d ed. p. 206-270).
The system of the pseudo-Clementine Homilies exhibits Ebion-
ism at once in its thcosophic perfection, and in its internal dis-
solution. It represents rather an individual opinion, than a
sect, but holds probably some connexion, not definitely ascer-
tained, with the Elkesaites, who, as appears from the " Philo-
sophoumena," branched out even to Eome. It is genuinely
Ebionistic or Judaistic in its monotheistic basis, its concealed
antagonism to Paul, and its assertion of the essential identity of
Christianity and Judaism, while it expressly rejects the Gnostic
fundamental doctrine of the demiurge. It cannot, therefore,
properly be classed, as it is by Baur and others, among the
Gnostic schools.
The twenty Clementine Homilies bear the celebrated name
of the Roman bishop) Clement, mentioned in Phil. iv. 3, as a
helper of Paul, but evidently confounded in the pseudo-Clemen-
tine literature with Flavins Clement, kinsman of the emperor
Domitian. They really come from an unknown, philosopliically
educated author, probably a Jewish-Christian, of the second
half of the second century. They are a philosophico-religious,
romance, based on some historical traditions, which it is now
impossible to separate from apocryphal accretions. They are
prefaced by a letter of Peter to James, bishop of Jerusalem, in
which he sends him his sermons, and begs him to keep them
strictly secret; and by a letter of the pseudo-Clement to the
same James, in which he relates how Peter, shortly before his
death, appointed him (Clement) his successor in Rome, and
enjoined upon him to send to James a work composed at the
instance of Peter, oititled " Clementis Epitome praedicationuni
Petri in peregrinationibus."^ By these epistles it was evidently
§ 69. THE PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE EBIONISM. 217
designed to impart to the pretended extract from the itinerant
sermons and the disputations of Peter, the highest apostolical autho-
rity, and at the same time to explain the long concealment of them.
The substance of the Homilies themselves is briefly this :
Clement, an educated Roman, of the imperial family, not satisfied
with heathenism, and thirsting for truth, goes to Judaea, having
heard, under the reign of Tiberius, that Jesus had appeared
there. In Caesarea he meets the apostle Peter, and being
instructed and converted by him, accompanies him on his mis-
sionary journeys in Palestine, to Tyre, Tripolis, Laodicea, and
Antioch. He attends upon the sermons of Peter and his long
repeated disputations with Simon Magus, and, at the request
of the apostle, commits the substance of them to writing, Simon
Peter is thus the proper hero of the romance, and appears
throughout as the representative of pure, primitive Christianity,,
in opposition to Simon Magus, who is portrayed as a " man.
full of enmity " and a " deceiver," the author of all anti-Jewish,
heresies, especially of the Marcionite Gnosticism. Indeed, it is
probably the apostle Paul, nowhere named in the work, whom,,
under the mask of the magician, the writer combats as the first
corrupter of Christianity. The author was acquainted with the
four canonical gospels, and used them, Matthew most, John
least ; and with them another work of the same sort, probably
of the Ebionistic stamp, but now unknown.
The doctrine which pseudo-Clement puts into the mouth of
Peter, and very skilfully interweaves with his narrative, is a con-
ftised mixture of Ebionistic and Gnostic, ethical and metaphysi-
cal ideas and fancies. He sees in Christianity only the restora-
tion of the pure primordial religion, which God revealed in the
creation, but which, on account of the obscuring power of sin
and the seductive influence of demons, must be from time to time
renewed. The representatives of this religion are the seven pil-
lars of the world, ^ Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Moses, and Christ. These are in reality only different incarna-
* Comp. Prov. ix. 1.
218 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
tions of the same Adam or primal man, the true prophet of God,
who is omniscient and infallible. What is recorded unfavorable
to these holy men, the drunkenness of Noah, the polygamy of
the patriarchs, the homicide of Moses, and especially the blas-
phemous history of the fall of Adam, as well as all unworthy
anthropopathical passages concerning God, were foisted into the
Old Testament by the devil and demons. Thus, where Philo and
Origen resorted to allegorical interpretation, to remove what
seems offensive in Scripture, pseudo-Clement adopts the still
more arbitrary hypothesis of diabolical interpolations. Among
the true prophets of God, again, he gives Adam, Moses, and
Christ peculiar eminence, and places Christ above all, though
without raising him essentially above a prophet and lawgiver.
The history of religion, therefore, is not one of progress, but only
of return to the primitive revelation. Christianity and Mosaism
are identical, and both coincide with the religion of Adam.
Whether a man believe in Moses or in Christ, it is all the same,
provided he blaspheme neither. But to know both, and find in
both the same doctrine, is to be rich in God, to recognise the new
as old, and the old as become new. Christianity is an advance
only in its extension of the gospel to the Gentiles, and its conse-
quent universal character.
As the fundamental principle of this pure religion our author
lays down the doctrine of one God, the creator of the world. This
is thoroughly Ebionistic, and directly opposed to the dualism of
the demiurgic doctrine of the Gnostics. But then he makes tlie
whole stream of created life flow forth from God in a long succes-
sion of sexual and ethical antitheses and syzygies, and return into
him as its absolute rest ;' here plainly touching the pantheistic ema-
nation theory of Gnosticism. God himself, one from the begin-
ning, has divided everything into counterparts, into right and left,
heaven and earth, day and night, light and darkness, life and
death. The monad thus becomes the dyad. The better came
first, the worse followed ; but from man onward the order was
' Aidiravffi?.
§ 69. THE PSEUDO-CLEMENTINE EBIONISM. 219
reversed. Adara, created in the image of God, is tlie true pro-
phet ; liis wife, Eve, represents false prophecy. They were fol-
lowed, first, by wicked Cain, and then by righteous Abel. So
Peter appeared after Simon Magus, as light after darkness, health
after sickness. So, at the last, will antichrist ]3recede the advent
of Christ. And finally, the whole present order of things loses
itself in the future ; the pious pass into eternal life ; the ungodly,
since the soul becomes mortal by the corruption of the divine
image, are annihilated after suffering a punishment, which is
described as a purifying fire.' When the author speaks of eternal
punishment, he merely accommodates himself to the popular
notion. The fulfilling of the law, in the Ebionistic sense, and
knowledge, on a half-Gnostic principle, are the two parts of the
way of salvation. The former includes frequent fasts, ablutions,
abstinence from animal food, and voluntary poverty \ while early
marriage is enjoined, to prevent licentiousness. In declaring
baptism to be absolutely necessary to the forgiveness of sin, the
author approaches the catholic system. He likewise adopts the
catholic principle involved, that salvation is to be found only in
the external church.
As regards ecclesiastical organization, he fully embraces the
episcopal monarchical view. The bishop holds the place of
Christ in the congregation, and has power to bind and loose.
Under him stand the presbyters and deacons. But singularly,
and again in true Ebionistic style, James, the brother of the
Lord, bishop of Jerusalem, which is the centre of Christendom,
is made the general vicar of Christ, the visible head of the whole
church, the bishop of bishops. Hence even Peter must give him
an account of his labors ; and hence too, according to the intro-
ductory epistles, the sermons of Peter and Clement's abstract of
them were sent to James for safe-keeping, with the statement,
that Clement had been named by Peter as his successor at Eome.
It is easy to see that this appeal to a pseudo-Petrine primitive-
Christianity was made by the author of the Homilies with a view
* riujJ Ka^apaiov.
220 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
to reconcile all the existing differences and divisions in Christen-
dom. In this effort he, of course, did not succeed, but rather
made way for the dissolution of the Ebionistic clement still exist-
ing in the orthodox catholic church.
Besides these Homilies, of which the Epitome is only a poor
abridgment, there are several other works, some printed, some
still unpublished, which are likewise forged upon Clement of
Rome, and based upon the same historical material, with unim-
portant deviations, but are in great measure free, as to doctrine,
from Judaistic and Gnostic ingredients, and come considerably
nearer the line of orthodoxy. The most important of these are
the Recognitions of Clement, in ten books, mentioned by Origen,
but now extant onl}- in a Latin translation. They take their
name from the narrative, in the last books, of the reunion of the
scattered members of the Clementine family, who all at last find
themselves together in Christianity, and are baptized by
Peter.
On the question of priority between these two works critics
are divided, some ' making the Recognitions an orthodox, or at
least more nearly orthodox, version of the Homilies; others*
regarding the homilies as a heretical corruj^tion of the Recogni-
tions. The former view has more in its favor. Perhaps some
more simple original pseudo-Petrine document lies at the bottom
of all these pseudo-Clementine works. As to their birth-place,
the Homilies probal)ly originated in East Syria, the Recognitions
in Rome.
In a literary point of view, these productions are remarkable,
as the first Christian works of romance. They far surpass, in
matter, and especially in moral earnestness and tender feeling,
the heathen romances of a Cliariton and an Achilles Tatios, of
the fourth or fifth centuries. The style, though somewhat tedious,
is fascinating in its wa}-, and betrays a real artist in its combina-
tion of the didactic and historical, the jDhilosophical and- the poetic.
1 Schliemann, Ublliorn, »fec. * Particularly Ililgenfeld aud Ritacbl.
§ 70. GNOSTICISM — ITS NAME, ORIGIN, AND HISTORY. 221
§ 70. Gnosticism. Its Name^ Origin, and Outward History.
I. The sources are almost all the ecclesiastical authors of the age ; particularly
Iren. : Adv. haereses. Hippol. : Refut. oranium haeresium. Tertull. :
De praescriptionibus haereticorum ; Adv. Valentin. ; Scorpiace ; Adv.
Mara Clem. Alex. ; Orig. ; Epiph. : Adv. haer. ; and Theodor. : Fabul.
haer. Also the work of the Neo-Platonist, Plotinus : IIpoj tovi yvuxitixovi
(or Ennead. II. 9). The lately published G-nostic work (of the Valen-
tinian school in the wider sense), Pistis Sophia ; Opus gnosticum e codice
Coptico descriptum lat. vertit M. Gr. Schwartze, ed. J. H. Petcrmann,
BerL 1851. (Comp. on this the article of Kostlin in the " Tiib. TheoL
Jahrbiicher," 1854.)
II. Massuet (R. C.) : Dissert, de Gnosticorum rebus, prefixed to his edition
of Irenaeus ; also in Stieren's edition of Iren. vol. ii. p. 54-180. Mosheim :
Comment, de rebus ante Const. M. p. 333 sqq. Neander: G-enet. Ent-
wicklung der gnost. Systeme. Berl. 1818 (comp. his more mature exposi-
tion in his General Ch. Hist.) Matter : Histoire critique du Gnosticisme.
Par. 1828 (1843), 2 vols. Burton : Bampton Lectures on the Heresies
of the Apost. Age. Oxf. 1830. Mouler (R. C): Der Ursprung des
Gnosticismus. Tiib. 1831 (in his Vermischte Schriften. I. p. 403 sqq.)
Baur: Die christhche Gnosis in ihrer geschichtl. Entwicklung. Tiib.
1835 (comp. his Christenthum der 3ersten Jahrh., p. 159 sqq.) H. Ros-
SEL : Gesch. der Untersuch. iiber den Gnostic, (in the TheoL Nachlass,
published by Neander. Berl. 1847, vol. 2nd, p. 179-250). TniERScn:
Kritik der N. Tlichen Schriften. Erl. 1845 (chap. 5, p. 231 sqq. and 268
sqq.) Jacobi : Art. " Gnosis" in Herzog's Encykl. vol. 5 (1856), p. 204
-218. Also a number of monographs and articles on individual Gnostics,
Basihdes, Valentinus, Marcion, &c. (See the special literature in Gieseler,
I. § 44-47; Hase, § 76-80 ; Niedner, p. 225 sqq., and Kurtz: Handbuch
der K. G. I. § 67-78.)
The Judaistic form of eiTor was substantially conquered in
the apostolic age. More important and more widely spread in
the second period was the paganizing heresy, known by the
name of Gnosticism.
As to this name itself: Gnosis denotes in general all more
profound philosophical or religious knowledge, in distinction
from superficial opinion or blind belief. The New Testament
itself, however, makes a plain distinction between true and fldse
gnosis. The true consists in a deep insight of the essence and
structure of the Christian truth, springs from faith, is accom-
panied by the cardinal virtues of love and humility, serves to
222 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
edify the church, and belongs among the spiritual gifts wrought;
by the Holy Ghost.^ The false gnosis,^ on the contrary, against
which Paul warns Timoth}^, and which he censures in the
Corinthians, is a morbid pride of wisdom, an arrogant, self-con-
ceited, ambitious knowledge, which puffs up, instead of edify-
ing,^ runs into idle subtleties and disputes, and verifies in its
course the apostle's word : " Professing themselves to be wise,
they became fools."*
In this bad sense the word applies to the error of which we
now speak, and which began to show itself at least as early as
the days of Paul and John. It rests on an over-valuation of
knowledge or gnosis, and a depreciation of faith or pistis.
The Gnostics contrasted themselves by this name "wdtli the
Pistics, or the mass of believing Christians. They regarded
Christianity as consisting essentially in knowledge alone; fancied
themselves the sole possessors of an esoteric, philosophical reli-
gion, which made them genuine spiritual men ; and looked down
with contempt upon the mere men of the soul and of the
body. They, moreover, adulterated Christianity with sundry
elements entirely foreign, and thus quite obscured the true
essence of the gospel.
We must next consider the origin of this heresy.
As to its substance, Gnosticism is chiefly of heathen descent.
It is a peculiar translation or transfusion of heathen philosophy
and religion into Christianity. This was perceived by the
church fathers in their day. Hippolytus particularly, in his
lately discovered " Philosophoumena," endeavors to trace the
Gnostic heresies to the various systems of Greek philosophy,
making Simon Magus, for example, dependent on Heraclitus,
Valentine on Pythagoras and Plato, Basilides on Aristotle,
Marcion on Empedocles ; and hence, in this work, he first
exhibits the doctrines of the Greek philosophy from Thales
down. Of all these systems, Platonism had the greatest influ-
ence, especially on the Alexandrian Gnostics; though not so
' Afl'yof yvaiacu's, X(5yo{ ooipiaf, 1 Cor. xii. 8. Comp. xiii. 2, 12. Juo. xvii. 3.
^'^Vcvidvviios yycutrif, 1 Tiui. vi. 20. ' 1 Cor. viii. ]. * Rom i. 22.
§ 70. GNOSTICISM — ITS NAME, ORIGIN, AND HISTORY. 223
mucli in its original Hellenic form, as in its later orientalized
eclectic and mystic cast, of whicli Neo-Platonism was another
fruit. The Platonic speculation yielded the germs of the Gnostic
doctrine of aeons, the conceptions of matter, of the antithesis of
an ideal and a real world, of an ante-mundane fall of souls from
the ideal world, of the origin of sin from matter, and of the
needed redemption of the soul from the fetters of the body. We
find also in the Gnostics traces of the Pythagorean symbolical
use of numbers, the Stoic physics and ethics, and some Aristo-
telian elements.
But this reference to Hellenic philosophy, with which Massuet
was content, is not enough. Since Beausobre and Mosheim the
east has been rightly joined with Greece, as the native home of
this heresy. This may be inferred from the mystic, flmtastic,
enigmatic form of the Gnostic speculation, and from the fact,
that most of its representatives sprang from Egypt and Syria.
The conquests of Alexandei^, the spread of the Greek language
and literature, and especially Christianity, produced a mighty
agitation in the eastern mind, which reacted on the west. Gnos-
ticism has accordingly been regarded as more or less parallel
with the heretical forms of Judaism, with Essenism, Therapeu-
tism, Philo's pliilosophico-religious system, and with the Cabbala,
the origin of which probably dates as far back as the first cen-
tury. The affinity of Gnosticism also with the Zoroastrian
dualism of a kingdom of light and a kingdom of darkness, is
unmistakable, especially in the Syrian Gnostics. Its alliance
with the pantheistic, docetistic, and ascetic elements of Buddhism,
which had advanced at the time of Christ to western Asia, is
equally plain. Parsic and Indian influence is most evident in
Manichaeism, while the Hellenic element there amounts to very
little.
Gnosticism, with its syncretistic tendency, is no isolated fact.
It struck its roots deep in the mighty revolution of ideas induced
by the fall of the old religions and the triumph of the new.
Philo, in his time, endeavored to combine the Jewish religion,
by allegorical exposition, or rather imposition, with Platonic
224 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
pliilosophy; and this system, according as it should be prose
cuted under the Christian or the heathen influence, might prepare
the way cither for the speculative theology of the Alexandrian
church fathers, or the heretical Gnosis. Still more nearly akin
to Gnosticism is Neo-Platonism, which arose a little later than
Philo's system, ignored Judaism, and in its stead employed the
more of eastern and western heathenism. The Gnostic syncre-
tism, however, differs materially from both the Philonic and the
Neo-Platonic by taking up Christianity, of which Philo was
wholly ignorant, and which the Neo-Platonists directly or indi-
rectly opposed. This the Gnostics regarded as the highest stage
of the development of religion, though they so corrupted it by
the admixture of foreign matter, as to destroy its identity.
Gnosticism is, therefore, the grandest and most comprehensive
form of speculative religious syncretism known to history. It
consists of Oriental mj^sticism, Greek philosophy, Alexandrian,
Philonic, and Cabbalistic Judaism, and Christian ideas of salva-
tion, not merely mechanically compiled, but, as it were, che-
mically combined. At least in its fairly developed form in the
Yalentinian system, it is, in its way, a wonderful structure of
speculative or rather intuitive thought, and at the same time an
artistic work of the creative fancy, a Christian mythological epic.
The old world here rallied all its energies, to make out of its
diverse elements some new thing, and to oppose to the real, sub-
stantial universalism of the catholic church an ideal, shadowy
universalism of speculation. But this fusion of all systems
served in the end only to hasten the dissolution of eastern and
western heathenism, while the Christian element came forth
purified and strengthened from the crucible.
To their speculative zeal the Gnostics, at least in some cases,
added a practical moral feeling, a sense of sin, stimulated by
Christianity, but overstrained, so as to lead them, in bold con-
trast with the pagan deification of nature, to ascribe nature to
the devil, to abhor the body as the seat of evil, and to practise,
therefore, extreme austerities upon themselves. This jiraetical
feature is made prominent by Mohler, the Eoman Catholic
§ 71. THE SYSTEM OF GNOSTICISM. 225
divine. But Moliler goes quite too far, when he derives the
whole phenomenon of Gnosticism (which he wrongly views as
a forerunner of Protestantism) directly and immediately from
Christianity. He represents it as a hyper-Christianity, an exag-
gerated contempt for the world, which, when seeking for itself
a speculative basis, gathered from older .philosophemes, theo-
sophies, and mythologies, all it could use for its purpose.
The flourishing period of the Gnostic schools was the second
century. In the sixth century only faint traces of them remained ;
3"et some Gnostic and especially Manichaean ideas continue to
appear in several heretical sects of the middle ages, such as the
Priscillianists, the Paulicians, the Bogomiles, and the Catharists ;
and even the history of modern theological and philosophical
speculation, at least in Germany, shows kindred tendencies.
The number of the Gnostics it is impossible to ascertain. We
find them in almost all portions of the ancient church ; chiefly
where Christianity came into close contact with Judaism and
heathenism, as in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor ; then in Eome,
the rendezvous of all forms of truth and falsehood; in Gaul,
where they were opposed by Irenaeus ; and in Africa, where they .
were attacked by TertuUian, and afterwards by Augustine, who
was himself a Manichaean for several years. They found most
iavor with the educated, and threatened to lead astray the teach-
ers of the church. But they could gain no foothold among the
people ; indeed, as esoterics, they stood aloof from the masses ;
and fheir philosophical societies were no doubt rarely as large as
the catholic congregations.
§ 71. The System of Gnosticism.
Gnosticism is a heretical philosophy of religion, or, more
exactly, a mythological theosophy, which reflects intellectually
the peculiar fermenting state of that remarkable age of transition
from the' heathen to the Christian order of things. If it were
merely an unintelligible congeries of puerile absurdities and
impious blasphemies, as it is grotesquely portrayed by older
15
226 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
historians, it would not have fascinated so many vigorous intel-
lects and produced such a long-continued agitation in the ancient
church. It is an attempt to solve some of the deepest metaphy-
sical and theological problems. It deals with the great antitheses
of God and world, spirit and matter, idea and phenomenon ; and
endeavors to unlock the mystery of the origin of evil,' and the
whole question of the rise, development, and end of the world.
In form and method it is, as already observed, more Oriental
than Grecian. The Gnostics, in their daring attempt to unfold
the mysteries of an upper world, disdained the trammels of reason
and resorted to direct spiritual intuition. Hence they speculate
not so much in logical and dialectic mode, as in an imaginative,
semi-poetic way, and they clothe their ideas not in the simple,
clear, and sober language of reflection, but in the many-colored,
fantastic, mythological dress of type, symbol, and allegory. Thus
monstrous nonsense and the most absurd conceits are chaotically
mingled up with profound thoughts and poetic intuitions.
The liighest source of knowledge, with these heretics, was a
secret tradition, in contrast with the open, popular tradition of the
catholic church. In this respect they differ from more recent
sects, which generally discard tradition altogether and appeal to
the Bible only, as understood by themselves. They appealed
also to apocryphal documents, which arose in the second century
in great numbers, under eminent names of apostolic or pre-Chris-
tian times. Epiphanius, in his 26th Ileresy, counts the apocrypha
of the Gnostics by thousands, and Irenaeus found amoirg the
Yalentinians alone a countless multitude of such writings." And
finally, when it suited their purpose, the Gnostics cmploj'cd single
portions of the Bible, without being able to agree cither as to the
extent or the interpretation of the same. The Old Testament
they generally rejected, either entirely, as in the case of the Mar-
cionitcs and the Manichacans, or at least in great part ; and in the
New Testament they preferred certain books or portions, such as
' riiiSci' TO KaKdv.
"^ Adv. haer. I. C 20. § 1 : 'A^iSjiroi/ TrX^lSoj aiTOK(ii<pt>}v kuI vd^uv ypatpMV, i"f airoi lirXa-
ciw, napciai^'ipovnv eii Karnn^jj^tn nuf dvot'iTooy Kai ra rrjy d^ij^ii'aj fih miora^ivwv ypti/i/iara.
§ 71. THE SYSTEM OF GNOSTICISM. 227
the Gospel of John, witli its profound spiritnal intuitions, and
either rejected the other books, or wrested them to suit their ideas,
Marcion, for example, thus mutilated the Gospel of Luke, and
received in addition to it only ten of Paul's Epistles, thus substi-
tuting an arbitrary canon of eleven books for the catholic Testa-
ment of twenty-seven. In interpretation they adopted, even with
far less moderation than Philo, the most arbitrary and extrava-
gant allegorical principles ; despising the letter as sensuous, and
the laws of language and exegesis as fetters of the mind. The
number 30 in the New Testament, for instance, particularly in
the life of Jesus, is made to denote the number of the Yalentinian
aeons ; and the lost sheep in the parable is Achamoth. Even to
heathen authors, to the poems of Homer, Aratus, Anacreon, they
applied this method, and discovered in these works the deepest
Gnostic mysteries.^ They gathered from the whole field of ancient
mythology, astronomy, physics, and magic, everything which
could serve in any way to support their fancies.
The common characteristics of all the Gnostic systems are (1)
Dualism ; the assumption of an eternal antagonism between God
and matter. (2) The demiurgic notion; the separation of the
creator of the world or the demiurgos from the proper God. (3)
Docetism ; the resolution of the human element in the person of
the Eedeemer into mere deceptive appearance.'
We will endeavor now to present a clear and connected view
of the theoretical and practical system of Gnosticism in general
as it comes before us in its more fully developed forms.
1. The Gnostic theology revolves about the conceptions of
God, matter, demiurge, and Christ.
It starts from absolute primal being. God is the unfathomable
abyss,' locked up within himself, without beginning, unnamable,
and incomprehensible ; on the one hand infinitely exalted above
every existence, yet on the other hand the original aeon, the sum
of all ideas and spiritual powers. Basilides would not ascribe
even existence to him, and thus, like Hegel, starts from absolute
nonentity.
' Hippol. Philos. rV. 46, V. 8, 13, 20. " A '.--;-,-, ciiiracr/m. « Bv^ds.
228 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
But tlie abyss opens ; God enters upon a process of develop-
ment, and sends forth from his bosom the several aeons ; that is,,
the attributes and unfolded powers of his nature, the ideas of the
eternal spirit-world, such as mind, reason, wisdom, power, truth,
life.' These emanate from the absolute in a certain order, accord-
ing to Valentine in pairs with sexual polarity. The further they
go from the great source, the poorer and weaker they become.
Besides the notion of emanation,'' the Gnostics employed also, to
illustrate the self-revelation of the absolute, the figure of the
evolution of numbers from an original unit, or of utterance in
tones gradually diminishing to the faint echo.' The cause of the
procession of the aeons is, with some, as with Valentine, the self-
limiting love of God ; with others, metaphysical necessity. The
whole body of aeons forms the ideal world, or light-world, or
si^iritual fulness, pleroma.*
Essentially different from this is the material visible world, in
•which the principle of evil reigns. This cannot proceed from
God ; else he were the author of evil. It must come from an
opposite principle. This is matter,^ which stands in eternal oppo-
sition to God and the ideal world. The Syrian Gnostics, and
still more the Manichaeans, agreed wnth Parsism in conceiving
matter as an intrinsically evil substance, the raging kingdom of
Satan, at irreconcilable warfare with the kingdom of light. The
Alexandrian Gnostics followed more the Platonic idea of the
liXy;, and conceived this as xsvw/xa, emptiness, in contrast with
the divine vital fulness or "TrXvjpwfj^a, or as the (X17 ov, related to
the divine being as shadow to light, and forming the dark limit,
beyond which the mind cannot pass. This matter is in itself
dead, biit becomes animated by a union with the plcroma, which
again is variously described. In the Manichaean system there
are powers of darkness, which seize by force some parts of the
kingdom of light. But usuall}^ the union is made to proceed
from above. The last link in the chain of divine aeons, either
' NuCf , XiJyof, <ro(fiin, ^Ci-a/jfj, dXij^tin, foji';, etC. ^Tlpo3o^fi.
^ Basilides and Satuniiiius use the former illustration; Marcus uses the latter.
* HXnptOjin, as opposed to Kivotjia. * 'YAt;.
§ 71. THE SYSTEM OF GNOSTICISM. 229
too weak to keep its liold on the ideal world, or seized witli a
sinful passion for the embrace of the infinite abyss, falls as a
spark of light into the dark chaos of matter, and imparts to it a
germ of divine life, but in this bondage feels a painful longing
after redemption, with which the whole world of aeons sympa-
thizes. This weakest aeon is called by Valentine the lower wis-
dom, or Achamoth,' and marks the extreme point, where sjoirit
must surrender itself to matter, where the infinite must enter into
the finite, and thus form a basis for the real world. The mj' th
of Achamoth is grounded in the thought, that the finite is incom-
patible with the absolute, yet in some sense demands it, to
account for itself.
Here now comes in the third principle of the Gnostic specula-
tion, namely, the world-maker, commonly called the Demiurge,*
termed by Basilides Archon or world-ruler, by the Ophites, Jal-
dabaoth, or gon of chaos. He is a creature of the fallen aeon,
formed of physical material, and thus standing between God and
matter. He makes out of matter the visible sensible world, and
rules over it. He has his throne in the planetary heavens, and
presides over time and over the sidereal spirits. Astrological
influences were generally ascribed to him. He is the God of
Judaism, the Jehovah, who imagines himself to be the supreme
and only God, But in the further development of this idea the
systems differ ; the anti- Jewish Gnostics, Marcion and the Ophites,
represent the Demiurge as an insolent being, resisting the pur-
poses of God, while the Judaizing Gnostics, Basilides and Valen-
tine, make him a restricted, unconscious instrument of God to
prepare the way for redemption.
Redemption itself, that is, the liberation of the light-spirit from
the chains of dark matter, is effected by Christ, the most perfect
aeon, who is the mediator of return from the sensible phenomenal
world to the supersensuous ideal world, just as the Demiurge is
the mediator of apostasy from the pleroma to the kenoma. This
1 'H KOTO} cTO(pio, JTi?2Sn 01" n^?a"'3S^ the Chaldaic form of the Hebrew n?2^n
: t1 ■ -5 T : T •
' Arjuiovpyos, a term used by Plato in a similar sense.
230 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
redeeming aeon, called by Yalentine o'wT-;;p or 'IriCoiJ.c, descends
througli the sphere of heaven, and assumes an ethereal appearance;
of a body ; according to another view, unites himself with the
man Jesus, or with the Jewish Messiah, at the baptism, and for-
sakes him again at the passion. At all events the redeemer,
however conceived in other respects, is allowed no actual contact
with sinful matter. His human birth, his sufierings and death,
are explained by Gnosticism after the manner of the Indian
mythology, as a deceptive appearance, a transient vision, a spec-
tral form, which he assumed only to reveal himself to the sen-
suous nature of man. Eeduced to a clear jDhilosophical definition,
the Gnostic Christ is really nothing more than the ideal spirit of
man himself, as in the " Leben Jesu " of Strauss. The Holy Ghost
is commonly conceived as a subordinate aeon. The central fact in
the work of Christ is the communication of the Gnosis to a small
circle of the initiated, prompting and enabling them to strive
with clear consciousness after the ideal world and the original
unity. According to Valentine the heavenly Soter brings
Achamoth after innumerable sufierings into the pleroma, and
unites himself with her — the most glorious aeon with the lowest
— in an eternal spirit marriage. With this all disturbance in the
heaven of aeons is allayed, and a blessed harmony and inexpres-
sible delight are restored, in which all spiritual (pneumatic) men,
or genuine Gnostics, share. Matter is at last entirely consumed
by a fire breaking out from its dark bosom.
2. The anthropology of the Gnostics corresponds with their
theology. They see in man a microcosm, consisting of spirit,
body, and soul, reflecting the three principles, God, matter, and
demiurge, though in very different degrees. They make three
classes of men : the spiritual,^ in whom the divine element, a
spark of light fi'om the ideal world, predominates ; the bodily,
carnal, or material,^ in whom matter, the gross sensuous princi-
ple, rules ; and the j^sychical,^ in whom the demiurgic, quasi-
divine principle, the mean between the two preceding, prevails.
§ 71. THE SYSTEM OF GNOSTICISM. 231
These three classes they frequently identified with the adherents
of the three religions respectively ; the spiritual with the Chris-
tians, the carnal with the heathens, the psj^chical with the Jews.
But they also made the same distinction among the professors of
any one religion, particularly among the Christians ; and they
regarded themselves as the genuine spiritual men in the full
sense of the word, while they looked upon the great mass of
Christians^ as only psychical, not able to rise from blind faith to
true knowledge, too weak for the good, and too tender for the
evil, longing for the divine, yet unable to attain it, and thus
hovering between the pleroma of the ideal world and the kenoma
of the sensual.
Ingenious as this thought is, it is just the basis of that unchris-
tian distinction of esoteric and exoteric religion, and that pride of
knowledge, in which Gnosticism runs directly counter to the
Christian principle of humility and love.
3. We pass to the ethics of Grnosticism. All these heretics
agree in disparaging the divinely created body and over-rating
the spirit, and in the pride naturally connected with such an error.
Beyond this we perceive among them two opposite tendencies :
a gloomy asceticism, and a frivolous antinomianism ; both ground-
ed, however, in the dualistic principle, in a false ascription of
evil to matter and of nature to the devil, and each extreme fre-
quently running into the other, as the Nicolaitan maxim in regard
to the abuse of the flesh^ was made to serve asceticism first and
then libertinism.
The more earnest Gnostics, like Marcion, Saturninus, and
Tatian, and the Manichaeans also, felt uncomfortable in the sen-
suous, corruptible, and perishing world, ruled by the demiurge
and by Satan ; they abhorred the body as formed from it, and for-
bade the use of certain kinds of food and all nuptial intercourse,
as an adulteration of themselves with sinful matter ; like the
errorists noticed by Paul in his pastoral Epistles.^ They thus
' Oi noWo!.
' Ad KaraxpHa^ai rij aapKi ; the flesh must be abused to be conquered.
* Comp. 1 Tim. iv. 3.
232 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
confounded sin with matter, and vainly imagined that, matter
being dropped, sin, its accident, would fall vnih it. Instead of
hating sin only, wliich God has not made, they hated the world,
which he had made.
The other class of Gnostics, as the Nicolaitans, the Ophites, the
Carpocratians, and the Antitactes, in a proud conceit of the exal-
tation of the spirit above matter, or even on the diabolical prin-
ciple, that sensuality must be overcome by indulging it, bade defi-
ance to all moral laws, and gave themselves up to the most shame-
less licentiousness. It is no great thing, said they, according to
Clement of Alexandria, to restrain lust ; but it is surely a great
thing not to be conquered by lust, when one indulges it. Accord-
ing to Epiphanius there were even Gnostic sects in Eg3^pt,
which starting from a filthy, naturalistic pantheism, and identi-
fying Christ with the generative powers of nature, practised
debauchery as a mode of worship, and after having, as they
thought, offered and collected all their strength, blasplicmously
exclaimed : I am Christ. From these pools of sensuahty and
Satanic pride arose the malaria of a whole hterature, of which,
however, fortunately, nothing more than a few names has come
down to us.
4. In cultus, the Gnostic docetism and hyper-spiritualism led
consistently to naked simplicity, as in Marcion ; sometimes to the
rejection of all sacraments and outward means of grace ; if not
even, as in the Prodicians, to blasphemous self-exaltation above
all that is called God and worship.^
But with this came also the opposite extreme of a symbolic
and mystic pomp, especially in the sect of the Marcosians.
These Marcosians held to a two-fold baptism, that applied to
the human Jesus, the Messiah of the psychical, and that admi-
nistered to the heavenly Christ, the Messiah of the spiritual ;
they decorated the baptistry like a banquet-hall ; and they first
introduced extreme unction. As early as the second century
the Basilidcans celebrated the feast of Epiphany. The Simonians
' Comp. 2 Thcsa. ii. 4.
§ 72. THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF GNOSTICISM. 233
and Carpocratians used images of Christ and of tlieir religious
heroes in their worship. The Valentinians and Ophites sang in
hymns the deep longing of Achamoth for redemption from the
bonds of matter. Bardesanes is known as the first Syrian hymn-
writer. Many Gnostics, following their patriarch, Simon, gave
themselves to magic, and introduced their arts into their worship ;
as the Marcosians did in the celebration of the Lord's supper.
6. Of the outward organization of the Gnostics (with the
exception of the Manichaeans, of whom we shall speak here-
after) we can say little. Their aim was to resolve Christianity
into a magnificent speculation ; the practical business of organi-
zation was foreign to their exclusively intellectual bent. Ter-
tullian charges them with an entire want of order and discipline.'
They formed, not so much a sect or party, as a multitude of phi-
losophical schools. Many were unwilling to separate at all from
the catholic church, but assumed in it, as theosophists, the
highest spiritual rank. Some were even clothed with ecclesias-
tical office, as we must no doubt infer from the fiftieth apostolic
canon, where it is said, "with evident reference to the gloomy,
perverse asceticism of the Gnostics : " If a bishop, a priest, or a
deacon, or any ecclesiastic abstain from marriage, from flesh, or
from wine, not for practice in self-denial, but from disgust,^ for-
getting that God made everything very good, that he made even
the male and the female, in fact, even blaspheming the creation f
he shall either retract his error, or be deposed and cast out of
the church. A layman also shall be treated in like manner."
Here we perceive the polemical attitude, which the catholic
church was compelled to assume even towards the better Gnos-
tics.
§ 72. The Several Schools of Gnosticism.
The arbitrary and unbalanced subjectivity of the Gnostic
speculation naturally 23roduced a multitude of schools. These
Gnostic schools have been variously classified.
1 De praescr. liaeret., C. 41. 2 BSsXvpia. ^ B^aafnjiiav Sia/3d\Xet rfiv 6flniovpyiav»
234: SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Geographically they may be reduced to two great families, the
Egyptian or Alexandrian, and the Syrian, which are also intrinsi-
cally dififerent. In the former (Basilides, Valentine, the Ophites),
Platonism and the emanation theory prevail, in the latter (Satur-
ninus, Bardesanes, Tatian), Parsism and dualism. Then, distinct
in many respects from both these is the school of Marcion, who
sprang neither from Egypt nor from Syria, but from Asia
Minor.
Examined further, with reference to its doctrinal character.
Gnosticism appears in three forms, distinguished by the prepon-
derance of the heathen, the Jewish, and the Christian elements
respectively in its syncretism. The Simonians, Nicolaitans,
Ophites, Carpocratians, Prodicians, Antitactes, and Manichaeans
belong to a paganizing class ; Cerinthus, Basilides, Valentine, and
Justin (as also the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, though these
are more properly Ebionistic), to a Judaizing ; Saturninus,
Tatian, Marcion, and the Encratites, to a Christianizing division.
But it must be remembered here, that this distinction is only
relative; all tlie Gnostic systems being, in fact, predominantly
heathen in their character, and essentially opposed alike to the
pure Judaism of the Old Testament and to the Christianity of the
New. The Judaism of the so-called Judaizing Gnostics is only
of an apocryphal sort, whether of the Alexandrian or the Cab-
balistic tinge.
The ethical point of view, from which the division might as
well be made, although it has not been done heretofore, would
give likewise three main branches : the speculative or theosophic
Gnostics (Basilides, Valentine), the practical and ascetic (Marcion,
Saturninus, Tatian), and the antinomian and libertine (Simo-
nians, Nicolaitans, Ophites, Carpocratians, Antitactes).
Having thus presented tlic general character of Gnosti-
cism, and pointed out its main branches, we shall follow, if
possible, the chronological order in describing the several
schools, beginning with those which date from the age of the
apostles.
1. SoroN and the SiMONlANS. That Simon Magus gave
§ 72. THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF GNOSTICISM. 235
himself out for a sort of emanation of deity/ made a great noise
among the half pagan, half Jewish Samaritans by his sorceries,
was baptized by Philip about the year 40, but terribly rebuked
by Peter for hypocrisy and abuse of holy things to sordid ends,
are historical facts settled by the Acts of the Apostles (ch. 8).
This man thus affords the first instance in church history of a con-
fused syncretism in union with magical arts ; and so far as this
goes, the church fathers are right in styling him the patriarch,
or, in the words of Irenaeus, the "magister" and "progenitor"
of all heretics, and of the Gnostics in particular. But his life and
his teachings, especially his interview with the apostle Peter in
Antioch and Eome, were fabulously garnished at an early day,
chiefly by the romantic works of pseudo-Clement.^ He is said
to have declared himself an incarnation of the creative world-
spirit, and his female companion Helena, the incarnation of the
receptive world-soul. Here we have the Grnostic conception of
the syzygy. A detailed analysis of his scattered and incoherent
ideas is given by the author of the oft-mentioned " Philo-
sophoumena." ^ Besides Simon, two other contemporaneous
Samaritans, Dositheus and Menander, bore the reputation of
heresiarchs.
The sect of the Simonians, which continued into the third
century, took its name, if not its rise, from Simon Magus, wor-
shijDped him as a redeeming genius, chose, like the Cainites, the
most infamous characters of the Old Testament for its heroes,
and was immoral in its princij)les. The name, however, is used
in a very indefinite sense, for various sorts of Gnostics.
2. The NicoLAiTANS, likewise antinomian, are derived from
the Nicolaitans of the times of St. John,* and more particularly
' 'H ivi/afttg Tov 5iov h jisydXri,
2 The report of Justin Martyr, Apol. I. 26 and 56, that Simon went to Rome
under Claudius, and received divine honors from his followers, who erected a statue
to Simo Sandus on the island of the Tiber, rests on a mistake. For this statue,
which was in fact found in 1574 in the place described, turned out to be a statue of
the Sabine-Roman divinity, Semo Sawus or Sangus, of whom the Greek Justin pro-
bably never heard.
3 From a work attributed to Simon, entitled: 'ArroAatrij ficyaAr/. ^ j^ev. ii. G, 15.
236 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
from Nicolas, one of the seven deacons of tlic cliurcli of Jeru-
salem/ who is supposed to have apostatized from the true faith,
and to have laid down the dangerous principle that the flesh
must be abused,^ that is, at least as understood by his disciples,
one must make the whole round of sensuality, to become its jDer-
fect master.
3. Cerinthus ^ appeared towards the close of the first centur}^,
in Asia Minor, and according to Irenaeus he was opposed by the
aged apostle John. In J^s view of the validity of the law and of
the millennial kingdom he was strongly Judaistic, so that he might
be counted among the Ebionites, did he not, in true Gnostic
style, separate the world-maker from God, and represent him as
a subordinate, intermediate being. In his Christology he sepa-
rates the earthly man Jesus, who was a son of Joseph and Mary,
from the heavenly Christ,* who descended upon the man Jesus
in the form of a dove at the baptism in the Jordan, imparted to
him the genuine knowledge of God and the power of miracles,
but forsook him in the passion, to rejoin him only at the commg
of the Messianic kingdom of glory. The early opponents of the
Apocalypse, like Caius of Eome, foolishly considered Cerinthus
the author of that book.
4. The origin of the Ophites,^ or, in Ilebrew, N.vassexes,^ i. e.
serpent-brethren, or serpent-worshippers, is unknown, and is
placed by Mosheim and others before the time of Christ. In
any case, their system is of purely heathen stamp. The sect
still existed as late as the sixth century ; for in 530 Justinian
passed laws against it. The accounts of their worship of the
serpent rest, indeed, on uncertain data; but their name itself
comes from their ascribing special import to the serpent as the
symbol of the higher wisdom. They regarded the fall of Adam
as the transition from the state of unconscious bondage to the
state of conscious judgment and freedom,'' therefore the necessary
entrance to the good, and a noble advance of the human spirit.
' Acts vi. 5. 2 ^jj- Kara^prjc^ai rg capKt. 3 KtipuSn?.
< 'O avo) Xpiarui, * 'O^iavoi. « From cn3. ^ Comp. Gen. L 26.
§ 72. THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF GNOSTICISM. 237
Witli this view is connected their violent opposition to the Old
Testament. Jaldabaoth/ as they termed the God of the Jews
and the creator of the world, they represented as a malicious,
misanthropic being. In other respects their doctrine strongly
resembles the Yalentinian system, except that it is much more
pantheistic, unchristian, and immoral, and far less developed.
The Ophites again branch out in several sects, such as the
Sethites, who considered the third son of Adam the first pneu-
matic man and the forerunner of Christ ; the Perates or Pera-
ticajsts, with whose views the " Philosophoumena " affords us
some slight acquaintance ; and the kindred Cainites, who pushed
the oppos'ition to sound doctrine to the extreme, making the fra-
tricide Cain their leader, and honoring all the notorious characters
of the Old Testament as genuine spiritual men and martyrs to
truth. Among the apostles they found the true gnosis in Judas
Iscariot alone, who betrayed the psychical Messiah with good
intent, to destroy the empire of the God of the Jews, Thus they
perverted the Christian history of salvation into the very oppo-
site. No wonder, tliat with such blasphemous travesty of the
Bible history, and with such predilection for the serj^ent and his
seed, the most unbridled antinomianism, which changed vice into
virtue, went hand in hand.
5. Basilides,^ teacher at Alexandria, about a.d. 125-140,
produced the first well developed system of Gnosis. His
system is very peculiar, especially according to the extended
and original exhibition of it in the Philosophoumena, which
deviates in many respects from the statements of Irenaeus, Cle-
ment of Alexandria, and Epiphanius. It is based on the Egyp-
tian astronomy and the Pythagorean numerical symbolism. It
betrays also the influence of Aristotle ; but Platonism, the
emanation theory, and dualism do not appear. Basilides starts
from the most abstract notion of the absolute, to which lie
denies even existence, thinking of it as infinitely above all that
can be imagined and conceived. This ineffable and unnamable
' fi^nSl i^'l^'i product of chaoa. 2 BaaiWiSm.
238 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
God,^ not only super-existent, but non-existent,^ first forms by
his creative word (not by emanation) the world-seed or world-
embryo,' that is, chaos, from which the world developes itself
according to arithmetical relations, in an unbroken order, like the
many-colored peacock from the egg. Everything created tends
upwards towards God, who, himself unmoved, moves all,'* and
by the charm of surpassing beauty attracts all to himself. In
the world-seed Basilides distinguishes three kinds of sonship,^
of the same essence with the non-existent God, but growing
wealvcr in the more remote gradations ; or three races of children
of God, a imeumatic, a psychic, and a hylic. The first sonship
liberates itself immediately from the world-seed, rises with the
lightning speed of thought to God, and remains there as the
blessed spirit- world, the pleroma. It embraces the seven highest
genii,^ which, in union with the great Father, form the first
ogdoad, the type of all the lower circles of creation. The
second, i^ioVrjcr, with the help of the Holy Ghost, whom it pro-
duces, and who bears it up, as the wing bears the bird, strives to
follow the first,'' but can only attain the impenetrable firmament,®
that is the limit of the pleroma, and could endure the higher
region no more than the fish the mountain air. The third son-
ship, finally, remains fixed in the world-seed, and in need of
purification and redemption, Next Basilides makes two archons
or world-rulers (demiurges) issue from the world-seed. The first
or great archon creates the ethereal world or the upper heaven,
the ogdoad, as it is called ; the second is the maker and ruler of
the lower planetary heaven below the moon, the hebdomad.
Basilides supposed in all three hundred and sixty-five heavens
or circles of creation,^ corresponding to the days of the year, and
designated them by the mystic name Abraxas,^" which, accorthng
to the numerical value of the Greek letters, is equal to 865.^^ This
' 'AjJliirroi, (iKarovrf/moTOf. ' 'O ovk wv Stdf. ' Hiwirrrcpiiia, — a Stoic idea.
* AfiV^rof KlvnTi'is. * Yi'iirijf rpificpi'ii,
* No{5{, Xdyof, (fp6vTtaii, oa(pia^ Sivajitf, !iKaioaivt}, and clprivii,
'' Hence it is called ^i/iF/n/cn. • Ertpfu^n.
" Kn'iTtij, dp^ni, ^urn/uit, l^ovaiat, " 'A/Joa^iif, Or 'A/Spao-iif.
" Thrice a = 3; 0=2; p=100; (r=200; {'=00.
§ 72. THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF GNOSTICISM. 239
name also denotes only the great arclion. It afterwards came to
be used as a magical formula, with, all sorts of strange figures,
the Abraxas gems.
Each of the two archons, however, according to a higher ordi-
nance, begets a son, who towers far above his father, communi-
cates to him the knowledge received from the Holy Ghost,
concerning the upper spirit- world and the plan of redemption,
and leads him to repentance. With this begins the process of
the redemption or return of the sighing children of Grod, that is,
the pneumatics, to the supra-mundane God. This is effected by
Christianity, and ends with the consummation, the apokatastasis,
of all things. Like Valentine, Basilides also properly held a
threefold Christ — the son of the first archon, the son of the second
archon, and the son of Mary. But all these are at bottom the
same principle, which reclaims the sj)iritual natures from the
world-seed to the original unity. The passion of Christ was
necessary to remove the corporeal and psychical elements, which
he brought with him from the a'^jy/^dxz apx"<'<i. His body returned,
after death, into a/xopqpia ; his soul rose from the grave, and stopped
in the hebdomad, or planetary heaven, where it belongs ; but his
spirit soared, perfectly purified, above all the spheres of creation,
to the blessed first uioVtjj and the fellowship of the non-existent or
hyper-existent God. In the same way with Jesus, the first-
fruits, all other pneumatic persons must rise purified to the place
where they by nature belong, and abide there. For all that con-
tinues in its 23lace, is imperishable ; but all that transgresses its
natural limits, is perishable. In the process of redemption Basi-
lides conceded to faith, pistis, more importance than most of the
Gnostics.
In his moral teaching he inculcated a moderate asceticism,
from which, however, his school soon departed. He used some
of Paul's Epistles and the canonical Gospels ; quoting, for
example, Jno. i. 9, to identify his idea of the world-seed with
John's doctrine of the Logos as the light of the world. This fact,
brought out unexpectedly by the newly discovered work ( f
Hippolytus, is a welcome testimony to the genuineness of John's
240 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Gospel, against the scepticism of the school of Baur. His other
authorities were chiefly the secret tradition of the apostle Mat
thias, and of a pretended interpreter of Peter, by the name of
Glaucias. He himself wrote twenty-four exegetical books. His
son Isidore, the chief of his disciples, composed a system of
ethics. The Basilideans, especially in the W'est, seem to have
been dualistic and docetistic in theory, and loose in practice.
The whole life of Christ was to them a mere sham. They held
it prudent to repudiate Christianity in times of persecution, and
practised various sorts of magic, in which the abraxas gems did
them service.
6. Contemporary with Basilides under Adrian, was Saturni-
NUS in Antioch, whose system is distinguished for its bold dualism
and its ascetic severity.
7. Carpocrates also lived under Adrian, probably at Alex-
andria, and founded a Gnostic sect, called by his own name,
which put Christ on a level with heathen philosophers, prided
itself on its elevation above all the popular religions, and sank
into unbridled immorality. His son Epiphanes, who died in
his youth, was worshipped by his adherents as a god. Here we
have the worship of genius in league with the emancipation of
the flesh, which has been revived in modern times by Strauss and
" Young Germany."
8. Valentine ; probably of Egyptian Jewish descent, and
Alexandrian education, who taught in Home about A.D. 140, and
died in Cyprus in the year 160, is the author of the most pro-
found and luxuriant of the Gnostic systems, and the one at the
same time most accurately known to us; the one, therefore,
which weighed most in our general view of Gnosticism in the pre-
vious section. In his theogonic and cosmogonic epic, as his sys-
tem may be styled, he starts from the eternal primal being,^ and
makes thirty aeons emanate from him in fifteen pairs,^ according
to the law of sexual polarity, in three gradations, the first called
the ogdoad, the second the decad, the third the dodccad. Some dis-
' BiSuf n-poTrdrup, 7rpoap;^i), airoTTurwp. i^i^vyot.
§ 72. THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF GNOSTICISM. 241
ciples of Valentine allowed even the universal Father a spouse or
a-o^'jyog, to wit, silence, or solitude,^ since from a male principle
alone nothing could spring. He begets first the masculine, j)ro-
ductive vouff or li-ovoysviis, with the feminine, receptive akrj6sia ; these
two then produce "Koyos and ^wrj, and these, avSpwcroj and ixxk'^(fia.
The influence of the fourth Gospel is unmistakable here, though
of course the terminology of John is used in a sense very differ-
ent from that of its author. These three syzygies are the primal
aeons, to whom iJ^ovoysvr,s and dXr,'hsia afterwards add a new pair,
the ccvcaj XpitfToff and the 'ifvsv^a aym^ and therewith complete the
number thirty. The weakest and most remote member of the
series of aeons (in number the twenty-eighth) is the female, lower
Sophia or Achamoth, who, feeling her loneliness and estrange-
ment from the great Father, wishes to unite herself immediately
with him ; and by this sinful passion brings disturbance into the-
pleroma, then wanders about outside of it, falls into matter, and'
there suffers with fear, anxiety, and despair. But she repents,
3^earns after redemption, is finally, after many tribulations,,
liberated by Soter emanating from the collected world of aeons,,
and brought back as a bride, together with all pneumatic natures,,
into the ideal world. The demiurge, as the friend of the bride-
groom,^ with the psychical Christians on the border of the
pleroma, remotely shares the joy of the festival, while matter
sinks back into nothing.
In Valentine's Christology we must distinguish properly three
redeeming beings: (1) the avw Xpirfrr'^ or heavenly Christ, who,
after the fall of Sophia, emanates from the aeonfAovo^svy;?, and stands
in conjunction with the female principle ^vsC/xa aym. He makes
the first announcement to the aeons of the plan of redemption,
whereupon they strike up anthems of praise and thanksgiving in
responsive choirs. (2) The CwT^jp or 'l-ndoZs produced by all the aeons
together, the star of the pleroma, who forms with the redeemed
Achamoth the last and highest syzygy. (3) The xwtw XpjtfT&V, the
psychical or Jewish Messiah, who is sent by the demiurge, passes
I Ziyfi. " John iii. 29.
16
242 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
through the body of Mary as water through a pipe, and is at
last crucified by the unsusceptible Jews, but, as he has merely
an apparent body, does not really suffer. ' With him Soter, the
proper redeemer, united himself in the baptism in Jordan, to an-
nounce his divine gnosis on earth for a year, and lead the pneu-
matic persons to perfection.
Of all the forms of Gnosticism the Valentinian was the most
pojDular and influential, more particularly in Rome. The school
divided, however, into two branches, an Oriental^ and an Italian.
The first in which Hippolytus reckons one AxiONiCOS, not other-
wise known, and Adresianes (Bardesanes ?), held the body of
Jesus to be pneumatic, because the Holy Ghost, i.e. Sophia,
and the demiurgic power of the Highest, came upon Mary. The
Italian school — embracing Heracleon of Alexandria, author of
a commentary on the Gospel of John known to us by fragments
in Origen, and Ptolemy, author of the Epistola ad Floram pre-
served in Epiphanius — taught, that the body of Jesus was psy-
chical, and that for this reason the Spirit descended upon him in
the baptism. The two persons last named came nearer the ortho-
dox view. Another disciple of Valentine, Marcos of Pales-
tine, likewise of the second half of the second century, blended a
Pythagorean and Cabbalistic numerical symbolism with the ideas
of his master, introduced a ritual abounding in ceremonies, and
sought to attract beautiful and wealthy women by magical arts.
His followers were called Marcosians.
Finally, in the Valentinian school is to be counted also Barde-
sanes, a distinguished Syrian scholar and poet, who about A.D.
170 lived at the court of the prince of Edessa ; but he accommo-
dated himself particularly in" his preaching to the psychical posi-
tion of the catholic church. So did his son Harmonius, a gifted
composer of hymns.
9. Justin probably lived about the same time, although we
know nothing about his origin and personal history. He propa-
gated his gnosis secretly, and bound liis disciples to silence by
§ 72. THE SEVERAL SCHOOLS OF GNOSTICISM. 2-i3
solemn oatlis. His system, wliicli, together witli his name, has
only recently become Jmown to ns,^ has a Judaizing cast, and is
mostly based upon a mystical interpretation of Genesis. He
made use also of the Greek mythology, especially the tradition of
the twelve conflicts of Hercules. He assumes tlu'ee original prin-
ciples, two male and one female. The last he identifies with
Eden, which marries Elohim, and becomes thus the mother of the
angels of the spirit- world. The tree of life in paradise represents
the good, the tree of knowledge the evil angels ; the four rivers
are symbols of the four divisions of angels. The Naas or the
serpent-spirit he made, unlike the Ophites, the bearer of the evil
principle ; he committed adultery with Eve, and a worse crime
with Adam ; he adulterated the laws of Moses and the oracles of
the prophets ; he nailed Jesus to the cross. But by this cruci-
fixion Jesus was emancipated from his material body, rose to the
good God to whom he committed his spirit in death, and thus
became the deliverer.
10. Contemporary with Yalentine was Marcion, an earnest,
energetic man, but restless, rough, and eccentric. In him the
Christian and practical element, but with it that of opposition to
Judaism, was much more prominent than in the other Gnostics.
He represents an extreme pseudo-Pauline tendency, and a magi-
cal supranaturalism, which, in fanatical zeal for a pure primitive
Christianity, nullifies all history, and turns the gospel into an
abrupt, unnatural, phantom-like appearance. He was the son of
the bishop of Sinope in Pontus, but was excommunicated for his
proud contempt of church authority and tradition,^ and betook
himself about the middle of the second century to Eome. There
he joined the Syrian Gnostic Cerdo, who gave him a speculative
foundation for his practical dualism. He disseminated liis doc-
trine by travels, but at last was about to apply for restoration to
the communion of the Church, when his death intervened. The
abhorrence of the Catholics for him is expressed in the report of
' Through the Philosophoumena, v. 22 and x. 15.
^ Tertullian and others say, also for seducing a consecrated virgin ; but this doe3
aot go well with his asceticism.
244 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Irenaeus, that Polycarp of Smyrna, meeting with Marcion in
Eome, and being asked by him : " Dost thou know me ?"
answered : "I know the first-born of Satan. "^
Marcion supposed three primal forces •} the good or gracious
God,^ whom Christ first made known ; the evil matter, ruled by
the deviV to which heathenism belongs ; and the righteous
world-maker," who is the finite, angry God of the Jews. He
did not go, however, into any further speculative analysis of
these jjrinciples ; he rejected the pagan emanation theory, the
secret tradition, and the allegorical interpretation of the Gnostics ;
and he gave faith a higher place than it generally had with
them. He was chiefly zealous for the consistent practical enforce-
ment of his dualism. He set the idea of goodness and the idea
of righteousness, the gospel and the law, Christianity and Juda-
ism, in direct antagonism ; and drew out this contrast at large in
a special work, entitled " Antitheses." He rejected all the books
of the Old Testament, and wrested Christ's word in Matt. v. 17
into the very opposite declaration : "I am come not to fulfil the
law and the prophets, but to destroy them." In his view, Chris-
tianity thus has no connexion whatever with the past, whether
of the Jewish or the heathen world, but has fallen abruptly and
magically, as it were, from heaven. Christ, too, was not born
at all, but suddenly descended into the city of Capernaum
in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, and appeared as
the revealer of the good God, who sent him. He has no con-
nexion with the Messiah, announced by the demiurge in the Old
Testament; though he called himself the Messiah by way of
accommodation. His body was a mere appearance, and his
death an illusion, though they had a real meaning. He cast the
demiurge into hades, secured redemption, and called the apostle
Paul to preach it. The other apostles are Judaizing corrupters
of pure Christianity, and their writings are to be rejected,
together with the catholic tradition.
' Iren. adv. haer. iiL C. 3, § 4: 'En-iyd'aio'/ftj row jrpurtfroA-iji' roC Laraul,
^ 'A.p^al. 3 Otdj dyudrff. *"YAi;. * Ai)/iioiipy(Sf SiKaiOf.
§ 72. THE SEYEEAL SCHOOLS OF GNOSTICISM. 245
Marcion formed a canon of bis own, wliicli consisted onl}- of
eleven books, an abridged and mutilated gospel of Luke, and
ten of Paul's epistles. The pastoral epistles, in wliicli the fore-
runners of Gnosticism are condemned, and the Epistle to the
Hebrews, he likewise rejected.
Notwithstanding his violent antinomianism, Marcion taught
and practised the strictest ascetic self-discipline, which revolted
not only from all pagan festivities, but even from marriage. He
could find the true God in nature no more than in history. He
admitted married persons to baptism only on a vow of abstinence
from all sexual intercourse.
In worship he repudiated the catholic ritual, and insisted on
the greatest simplicity.
His sect spread in Italy, Egypt, North Africa, and Syria, and
continued until the sixth century ; but it split into many
branches. The most noteworthy Marcionites are Maecus,
LucAXUS, and Apelles, who supplied the defects of their
master's system by other Gnostic sj^eculations, and in some
instances softened down its antipathy to heathenism and Juda-
ism.
11. T ATI AX, a rhetorician of S}Tia, who was converted to
Christianity by Justin Martyr in Eome, but afterwards strayed
into Gnosticism, and died about a.d. 170, resembles Marcion in
his anti-Jewish turn and his dismal austerity. Falsely interpret-
ing 1 Cor. vii. 5, he declared marriage to be a kind of licentious-
ness and a service of the devil. His followers, who kejDt the
system alive till the fourth century, were called, from their
ascetic life, Enceatites.^ This name, however, was applied
indiscriminately to all the ascetic sects of the Gnostics.
12. The name Antitactes, on the contrary,^ denotes the
licentious antinomian Gnostics, rather than the followers of any
single master, to whom the term can be traced.
13. Among these belong the Peodicians, so named from
' 'KyKparirat, the abstemious; or, from their prohibition of wine, and their use of
water in the Lord's Supper, 'YSpo-aoaaTarai, Aquarii.
^ From liurtraaacyS ii, to defy, rebel against, the law.
246 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
their founder, Prodicus. They considered themselves the royal
family/ and, in crazy self-conceit, thought themselves above the
law, the sabbath, and every form of worship, even above prayer
itself, which was becoming only to the ignorant mass.
14. IIermogenes, a painter of Carthage at the end of the
second century, who was attacked by Tertullian, is but remotely
connected with Gnosticism. lie proceeded on Platonic and
dualistic principles, and propounded a peculiar theory of crea-
tion, deriving the soul and the body of man from the form-
less, eternal matter, and explaining the ugly in the natural
world, as well as evil in the spiritual, by the resistance of matter
to the formative influence of God.
§ 73. Manichaeism.
I. Archelaus (bishop of Cascar about 278) : Acta disputationis cum Manete
(first composed in Syriac, but extant only in a Latin translation, and in
many respects unreliable), in Bouth's Eeliquiae sacrae. Vol. V. 3-206.
The Oriental accounts, of later date indeed (the 9th and 10th centuries),
but drawn from ancient sources, are collected in Hekbelot : Bibl. orient.
Par. 1679. s. v. Mani. Titus Bostrensis (about 360) : Kara Mai't;^aiior.
Epipran. : Ilaer. 66 (drawn from Archelaus). The anti-Manicliaean
works of Augustine (in the 8th vol. of the Bened. ed.).
II. I. DE Beausobre : Histoire crit. de Manichee et du Manichdisme. Amst.
1734 & '39. 2 vols. F. Chr. Bauu : Das Manichiiische Religionssystem
nach den Quellcn untersucht. Tiib. 1831.
1. Its external history. The origin of Manichaeism is matter
of obscure and confused tradition. The Oriental sources trace
it to Mani (Manes, Manichaeus), a celebrated Persian magian,
astronomer, and painter, of the second half of the third cen-
tury, who came over to Christianity, or rather introduced some
Christian elements into the Zoroastrian religion, and thus stirred
up an intellectual revolution among his former brethren in
faith. He is said to have been for some time a Presbyter,
but to have been excommunicated by the Christians. lie
proposed to purge Christianity of its alleged Jewish corrup-
1 Ei
vycicii.
§ 73. MANICHAEISM. 2-i7
/'
tions, to demonstrate its unity with Parsism, and tlicrcb}" to
present the perfect universal religion. He declared himself the
j^araclete promised by Christ, and began his " Epistola funda-
menti," in which he propounded his leading doctrines, with the
words : " Mani, the apostle of Jesus Christ, by the providence of
God the Father. These are the words of salvation from the eternal
and living source." At first he found favor at the court of the
Persian king Shapur (Saporcs), but was afterwards persecuted by
the Magians, and fled to East India, where he became acquainted
with Buddhism, and received it into his syncretistic religion.
Indeed, the name of Buddha is interwoven with the legendary
history of the Manichaean system. In the year 272 he returned
to Persia, and won many followers by his symbolic pictorial illus-
trations of the doctrines, which he pretended had been revealed
to him by God. But in a disputation with the magi, he was con-
victed of corrupting the old religion, and thereupon was flayed
alive by order of king Behram (Veranes) about 277 ; his skin
was stuffed and hung up, for a terror, at the gates of the city
Djondishapur.
Soon after Mani's cruel death his sect spread in Asia, Korth
Africa, Sicily, and Italy. The mysterioiLsness of its doctrine
and its show of ascetic holiness sometimes attracted even pro-
found and noble spirits, like Augustine, who was nine years a
member of it. But it was violently persecuted in the Roman
empire, first by Diocletian (a.d. 287), and afterwards by the
Christian emperors, till in the sixth century it yielded and dis-
appeared. Yet the system itself extended its influence through-
out the middle ages, re-appearing, under different modifications,
in the Priscillianists, Paulicians, Bogomiles, Catharists, and
other sects, which were therefore called New Manichaeans. In-
deed the leading features of Manichaeism, the dualistic separation
of soul and body, the ascription of nature to the devil, the pan-
theistic confusion of the moral and the physical, the hypocritical
symbolism, concealing heathen views under Christian phrases,
the haughty air of mystery, and the aristocratic distinction of
esoteric and exoteric, still live in various forms even in modern
218 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
systems of pliilosoplij and sects of religion. (The Mormons of
our day strongly bring to mind, in many respects, even in their
organization, the ancient Manichaeans.)
2. In its doctrine, ;N[anicliaeism, like the kindred Gnosticism,
is a compound of Christianity with paganism ; with the dualism
of the Persian religion and the pantheism of the Indian, The
foundation, |)roperly speaking, is the Zoroastrian doctrine in its
rigidly diuilistic form, as restored by the school of the Magusac-
ans under the reign of the Sassanides towards the middle of the
second century. On this basis some Gnostic Christian elements
are mechanically laid. The whole Old Testament is rejected,
and most of the New, to give way to the authority of the writ-
ings of ]Srani and some apocryphal Gospels and Acts.
The system begins with an eternal antagonism between the
kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. From a wild
assault of the latter upon the former results the present world,
which exhibits a mixture of the two elements, detached portions
of light imprisoned in darkness. Every individual man, even, is
at once a son of light and of darkness, has a good soul, and a
body substantially evil, with an evil soul corresponding to it.
The redemption of the light from the bonds of the darkness is
effected by Christ, identical with the sun spirit, and by the Holy
Ghost, who has his seat in the ether. These two beings attract
the light-forces out of the material world, while the evil demon,
or the prince of darkness, and the spirits imprisoned in the stars,
seek to keep them back. The sun and moon are the two light-
ships^ for conducting the imprisoned light into the eternal king-
dom of light. The full moon represents the ship laden with
light; the new moon, the vessel emptied of its cargo; and the
twelve signs 'of the zodiac also serve as buckets in this pumping
operation.
The Manichaean christology, like the Gnostic, is entirely
docetistic, and, by its perverted view of body and matter, wholly
excludes the idea of an incarnation of God. The teachings of
Christ were compiled and falsified by the apostles in the spirit
' Lucidae naves.
§ 73. MAXICHAEISM. 249
of Judaism. Mani, the promised paraclete, lias restored tliem.
Tlie goal of history is an entire separation of the light from the
darkness ; upon which the latter sinks into impotence.
Thus Christianity is here resolved into a fantastic, dualistico-
pantheistic philosophy of nature ; moral regeneration is identified
with a process of physical refinement ; and the whole mystery of
redemption is found in light, which was always worshipped in
the East as the symbol of deity. Unquestionably there pervades
the Manichaean system a kind of groaning of the creature for
redemption, and a deep sympathy with nature, that hieroglyphic
of spirit ; but all is distorted and confused. The suffering Jesus
on the cross, Jesus patibilis, is here a mere illusion, a symbol of
the w^orld-soul still enchained in matter, and is seen in every
plant which works upwards from the dark bosom of the earth
towards the light ; towards bloom and fruit, yearning after free-
dom. Hence the class of the " perfect" would not kill nor wound
a beast, pluck a flower, nor break a blade of grass. The system,
instead of being, as it pretends, a liberation of light from dark-
ness, is really a.turning of light into darkness.
3. The morality of the Manichaeans was severely ascetic, based
on the fundamental error of the intrinsic evil of matter and the
body ; the extreme opposite of the Pelagian view of the essential
moral purity of human nature. The great moral aim is, to
become entirely unworldly in the Buddhistic sense ; to renounce
and destroy corporeity ; to set the good soul free from the fetters
of matter. This is accomplished by the most rigid and gloomy
abstinence, which, however, is required only of the elect, not of
catechumens. There is a three-fold seal or preservative of per-
fection : (a) The signaculum oris ; that is, purity in words and
in diet, abstinence from all animal food and strong drink, even
in the holy supper, and restriction to vegetable diet, which was
furnished to the perfect by the "hearers," particularly olives, as
their oil is the food of light, (b) The signaculum manuum;
renunciation of earthly property, and of material and industrial
pursuits, even agriculture ; with a sacred reverence for the
divine light-life diffused through all nature, (c) The signaculum
250 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
sinus, or celibacy ; marriage, or rather j)rocreation, being a con-
tamination with corjDoreity, which is essentially evil. This unna-
tural holiness at the same time atoned for the unavoidable daily
sins of the catechiunens. It was accompanied, however, as in
the Gnostics, with an excessive pride of knowledge, and its fair
show not rarely concealed refined forms of vice.
4. Organization and cultus, Manichaeism differed from all
the Gnostic schools in having a fixed, and that a strictly hierar-
chical, organization. At the head of the sect stood twelve apos-
tles, or magistri, among whom Mani and his successors, like
Peter and the pope, held the chief place. Under them were
seventy-two bishops, answering to the seventy-two (strictly
seventy) disciples of Jesus ; and under these came presbyters,
deacons, and itinerant evangelists. In the congregation there
were two distinct classes, designed to correspond to the catechu-
mens and the faithful in the catholic church: the "hearers;"^
and the "perfect," the esoteric, the priestly caste,^ which represents
the last stage in the process of the liberation of the spirit and its
separation from the world, the transition from the kingdom of
matter into the kingdom of light, or, in Buddhistic terms, from
the world of Sansara into Nirwana.
The worship of the Manichaeans was, on the whole, very
simple. They observed Sunday, in honor of the sun, which was
with them the same with the redeemer ; and, contrary to the
custom of the catholic Christians, they made it a day of fasting.
They rejected the church festivals, but instead celebrated in
March with great pomp the day of the death of their divinely
appointed teacher, Mani.^ They repudiated baptism, considering
it useless; the perfect, it seems, partook of tlie holy supper,
sometimes even under disguise in catholic churches, but without
wine (because Christ had no blood), and regarding it perhaps
according to their pantheistic symbolism, as the commemoration
of the light-soul crucified in all nature. Their sign of recognition
' Auditores.
2 Electi, perfecti, rcXcwi ■ the sacfrdntalc genus, as Faustus terms it.
' The feast of " the chair," /3<;/ia, cathedra*
§ 74. THE CATHOLIC THEOLOGY. 251
was tlie extension of tlie right hand as a symbol of the common
deliverance from the kingdom of darkness by the redeeming
hand of the spirit of the sun.
§ 74. The Catholic Theology.
For the literature, see §§ 68 and 70.
By the wide-spread errors now described the church was
challenged to a mighty intellectual combat, from which she came
forth victorious, according to the promise of her Lord, that the
Holy Ghost should guide her into all truth. To the subjective,
baseless, and ever-changing speculations, dreams, and fictions of
the heretics, she opposed the substantial, solid realities of the
divine revelation. Christian theology grew, indeed, as by inward
necessity, from the demand of faith for knowledge. But heresy,
Grnosticism in particular, gave it a powerful impulse from with-
out, and came as a fertilizing thunder-storm upon the field. Of
course, the church possessed the truth from the beginning, iji the
experience of faith, and in the holy scriptures, which she handed
down with scrupulous fidelity from generation to generation.
But now came the task of developing the substance of the Chris-
tian truth in theoretical form,^ fortifying it on all sides, and
presenting it in clear light before the understanding. Thus the
Christian polemic and dogmatic theology, or the church's logical
apprehension of the doctrines of salvation, unfolded itself in this
conflict with heresy, as the apologetic literature and martyrdom
had arisen through Jewish and heathen persecution.
From this time forth the distinction between catholic and here-
tical, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the faith of the church and
private judgment, became steadily more prominent. Every
doctrine which agreed with the holy scriptures and the faith of
the church, was received as catholic; that is, universal, alone,
and exclusive.^ Whatever deviated materially from this stand-
' Aoyi/cwxeooi', as Eusebius has it.
" The term, cathoUc, is first appUed ecclesiasticallj by Ignatius.
252 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
ard, every arbitrary and personal opini(jn, framed by tliis or that
individual, every theoretical distortion or corruption of the
revealed doctrines of Christianity, every departure from the
public sentiment of the church, was considered heresy,'
Almost all the church fathers of the second and third centuries
came out against these fundamental heresies, either with argu-
ments from scripture, with the tradition of the church, or with
rational demonstration, proving them inwardly inconsistent and
absurd.
But in doing this, while they are one in sj^irit and purpose,
they pursue two very different courses, determined by the dif-
ferences between the Greek and Roman national characters, and
by peculiarities of mental organization and the appointment of
providence. The Greek theology, above all the Alexandrian,
represented by Clement and Origcn, is predominantly idealistic
and speculative, dealing with the objective doctrines of God, the
incarnation, the trinity, and christology ; endeavoring to supplant
the false Gnosis by a true knowledge, an orthodox philosophy,
resting on the Christian pistis. The Latin theology, particularly
the North African, whose most distinguished representatives are
Tcrtullian and Cyprian, is more realistic and practical, concerned
with the doctrines of human nature and of salvation, and more
directly hostile to Gnosticism and philosophy. With this is con-
nected the fact, that the Greek lathers were first philosophers ;
the Latin were mostly lawyers and statesmen ; the former reached
the Christian faith in the way of speculation, the latter in the
spirit of practical morality. Characteristically, too, the Greek
church built mainly upon the apostle John, pre-eminently the
contemplative "divine;" the Latin upon Peter, the practical
leader of the church. While Clement of Alexandria and Origen
often wander away into cloudy, almost Gnostic speculation, and
threaten to resolve into thin spiritualism the real substance of
the Christian ideas, Tertullian sets himself implacably against
Gnosticism and the heathen philosophy on which it rests : " What
• From a'pccri?, choice, caprice, error, also sect; comp. Tit. iii. 10. 2 Pet. iL 1.
1 Cor. xi. 19.
§ 7-i. THE CATHOLIC THEOLOGY. 253
fellowsliip," lie asks, "is there between Athens and Jerusalem,
the academy and the church, heretics and Christians ? " But this
difference is only relative. With all their spiritualism, the
Alexandrians still committed themselves to a striking literalism ;
while, in spite of his aversion to philosophy, Tertullian labors
with the profound speculative ideas which come to their full
birth in Augustine.
Irenaeus, who sprang from the Eastern church, and used the
Greek language, but labored in the West, holds a kind of medi-
ating position between the two branches of the church, and may
be taken as, on the whole, the most moderate and sound repre-
sentative of ecclesiastical orthodoxy in the period before us. He
is as decided against Gnosticism as Tertullian, without overlook-
ing the speculative want betrayed in that system. His refutation
of the Gnosis,' written between 177 and 192, is the leading polemic
work of the second century. In the first book of this work, Ire-
naeus gives a full account of the Yalentinian system of Gnosis ;
in the second book he begins his refutation in philosophical and
logical style ; in the third, he brings against the system the
catholic tradition and the holy scriptures, and vindicates the
orthodox doctrine of the unity of God, the creation of the world,
the incarnation of the Logos, against the docetistic denial of the
true humanity of Christ and the Ebionistic denial of his true
divinity ; in the fourth book he further fortifies the same doc-
trines, and, against the antinomianism of the school of Marcion,
demonstrates the unity of the Old and New Testaments ; in the
fifth and last book he presents his views on cschatology, particu-
larly on the resurrection of the body — so offensive to the Gnostic
spiritualism — and at the close treats of antichrist, the end of the
world, the intermediate state, and the millennium.
His disciple Hippolytus gives us, in the " Philosophoumena,"
a still fuller account, in many respects, of the early heresies, and
traces them up to their sources in the heathen systems of philo-
sophy, but goes not so deep into the exposition of the catholic
doctrines of the church.
25-i SECOND PERIOD. A.D. lOO-oll.
The leading effort in this polemic literature was, of course, to
clevelope and establish positively the Christian truth ; which is,
at the same time, to refute most effectually the opposite error.
The object was, particularly, to settle the doctrines of the rule
of faith, the incarnation of God, and the true divinity and true
humanity of Christ. In this effort the mind of the church, under
the constant guidance of the divine word and the apostolic tradi-
tion, steered with unerring instinct between the threatening cliffs.
Yet no little indcfiniteness and obscurity still prevailed in the
scientific apprehension and statement of these points. In this
stormy time, too, there were as yet no general councils to settle
doctrinal controversy by the voice of the whole church. The
dogmas of the trinity and the person of Christ, did not reach
maturity and final symbolical definition until the following period,
or the Nicene age.
§ 75. The Holy Scriptures and the Canon.
J, KiRcnnoFER : Quellensammlung zur Geschichte des N. Tlichen Kanons bis
auf Hieronymns. Ziir. 1844. Testimonia Ante-Nicaena pro auctoritate
Scripturae, in Rourn, Reliq. s., V. p. 336-354. Comp. the Introductions
to the N. T. by Hug, Credner, De Wette, Reuss, Guericke, Home,
Davidson, &c. J. A. Daniel : Theol. Controversen (the doctrine of the
Scriptures as the source of knowledge). Halle, 1843. J. J. Jacobi:
Die kirchl. Lehre von d. Tradition u. heil. Schrift in ilirer Entwickelung
dargestellt. Berl. I. 1847. A. Alexander : The Canon of the Old and
New Testaments ascertained. New ed. Phil. 1851.
The question of the source and rule of Christian knowledge
lies at the foundation of all theology. We tlicrcfore notice it
here before passing to the several doctrines of faith.
This source and this rule of knowledge are the holy scriptures
of the Old and New Testaments.^ Here at once arises the inquiry
as to the number and arrangement of the sacred writings, or the
canon, in distinction both from the productions of enlightened
but not inspired church teachers, and from the very numerous
and in some cases still extant apocryphal works (gospels, acts,
epistles, and apocalypses), which were composed chiefly in the
' Called simply // ypa'l>!i, al yp>^'l">'i, scriptura, scripturae.
§ 75. THE HOLY SCRIPTURES AND THE CAJSTON. 255
second and tliird centuries, in tlie interest of heresies, and sent
forth under the name of an apostle or other eminent person.
These apocryjDha, however, did not all originate with Ebionites
and Gnostics ; some were merely designed either to fill chasms
in the history of Jesus and the apostles by idle stories, or to
glorify Christianity by vaticinia post eventum, in the way of the
pia fraus at that time freely allowed.
The canon of the Old Testament descended to the church from
the Jews, with the sanction of Christ and the apostles. The New
Testament canon was gradually formed, on the model of the Old,
in the course of the first three centuries, under the guidance of
the same Spirit, through whose suggestion the several apostolic
books had been prepared. The first trace of it appears in the
second Epistle of Peter iii. 15, where a collection of Paul's epis-
tles ^ is presumed to exist, and is placed by the side of the other
sacred books.^ The apostolic fathers and the earlier apologists
commonly appeal, indeed, for the divinity of Christianity to the
Old Testament, to the oral preaching of the apostles, to the liv-
ing fiiith of the Christian churches, the triumphant death of the
martyrs, and the continued miracles. Yet their works contain
quotations, generally without the name of the author, from the
most important writings of the apostles, or at least allusions to
those writings, enough to place their high antiquity and ecclesi-
astical authority beyond all doubt. The heretical canon of the
Gnostic Marcion, of the middle of the second century, consisting
of a mutilated gospel of Luke and ten of Paul's epistles, certainly
implies the existence of an orthodox canon at this time, as heresy
always presupposes truth, of which it is a caricature. The prin-
cipal books of the New Testament, the four Gospels, the Acts,
the thirteen Epistles of Paul, the first Epistle of Peter, and the
first of John, which are designated by Eusebius as "homologou-
mena," were in general use in the church as early as the second
century, and acknowledged to be apostolic, inspired by the Spirit
of Christ, and therefore authoritative and canonical. This is
established by the testimony of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of
' 'Ej' n-.iaaif rati i.TTiaro'XaTs, * Taj Xouraj ypa(pai.
256 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Alexandria, and Origen, of tlie Peshito, and the Fragment of
Muratori — persons and documents which represent in this matter
the church in Asia Minor, Italy, Gaul, North Africa, Egypt,
Palestine, and Syria. We may therefore call these books the
original canon. Concerning the other seven books, the " antilego-
mena " of Eusebius, viz. the Epistle to the Hebrews,^ the Apoca-
lypse,- the second Epistle of Peter, the second and third Epistles
of John, the Epistle of James, and the Epistle of Jude, — the tra-
dition of the church in the time of Eusebius, the beginning of the
fourth century, still wavered between acceptance and rejection.
There was a second class of antilegomena, called by Eusebius vo6ct^
consisting of several post-apostolic writings, viz, the catholic
Epistle of Barnabas, the first Epistle of Clement of Rome to the
Corinthians, the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, the Shep-
herd of Hermas, and the lost Apocalypse of Peter and the Gos-
pel of the Hebrews ; which were read at least in some churches,
but were afterwards generally separated from the canon. The
first express definition of the New Testament canon, in the form
in which it has since been universally retained, comes from the
North African synod held in the year 393 at Hippo, the episco-
pal see of Augustine. By that time, at least, the whole church
must have already become entirely unanimous as to the number
of the canonical books ; so that there seemed to be no need even
of the sanction of a general council. The Eastern church, at
all events, was entirely independent of the North African in
the matter. The name Novum Testamentum,^ also Novum
Instrumentum (a juridical term conveying the idea of legal vali-
dity), occurs first in Tertullian. This canon was currently divided
into two parts, the Gospel and the Apostle ;* and the second part
into catholic or general epistles, and Pauline.
* "Which was regarded as canonical indeed, but not as genuine in the West.
2 Whicli has the strongest external testimony, that of Justin, Irenacus, &c., in its
favor, and caino into question only in the third century through some anti-chiliasts, on
dogmatical grounds.
3 AiaS/ivn, comp. Matt. xxvi. 28, where the Vulgate translates, " testamentum."
■* Tu cV(iyye}iiK(i Kai ru (i-irnarii'XiKii, to toiyytXioi/ xal b lirrdffryA.ii ; instrunientum CVaU-
gelicum, apostolicum, or evangeliuin, apostolus.
§ 75. THE HOLY SCRIPTUEES AND THE CANON. 257
As to the origin and character of the apostolic writings, the
church fathers adopted for the New Testament the theory of
inspiration applied by the Jews to the Okl ; regarding the seve-
ral books as composed with such extraordinary aid from the
Holy Ghost, as secured their freedom from errors (according to
Origen, even from faults of memory). Yet this was not regarded
as excluding the writer's own activity and individuality. Ire-
naeus, for example, sees in Paul a peculiar style, which he attri-
butes to the mighty flow of thought in his ardent mind. The
Alexandrians, however, enlarged the idea of inspiration to a
doubtful breadth. Clement of Alexandria calls the works of
Plato inspired, because they contain truth ; and he considers all
that is beautiful and good in history, a breath of the infinite, a
tone, which the divine Logos draws forth from the lyre of the'
human soul.
As a production of the Holy Ghost and his inspired organs,,
the sacred scriptures, without critical distinction between the
Old and New Testaments, were acknowledged and employed
against heretics as an infallible source of knowledge and an uner-
ring rule of Christian faith and practice. Irenaeus calls the
gospel a pillar and ground of the truth. Tertullian demands
scripture j)roof for every doctrine, and declares, that heretics
cannot stand on pure scriptural ground. In Origan's view,,
nothing deserves credit which cannot be confirmed by the testi-
mony of scripture.
The exposition of the Bible was at first purely practical, and
designed for direct edification. The controversy with the Gnostics
called for a more scientific method. Both the orthodox and
heretics, after the fashion of the rabbinical and Alexandrian
Judaism, made large use of allegorical and mystical interpreta-
tion, and not rarely lost themselves amid the merest fancies and
wildest vagaries.
But Origen was the first to lay down, in connexion with the
allegorical method of the Jewish Platonist, Philo, a formal theory
of interpretation, which he carried out in a long series of exege-
tical works. He considered the Bible a living organism, con-
17
258 . SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
sisting of three elements answering to the body, soul, and spirit of
man, after the PJ atonic psychology. Accordingly, he attributed
to the scriptures a threefold sense ; (1) a somatic, literal, or histo-
rical sense, furnished immediately by the meaning of the words,
but only serving as a veil for a higher idea ; (2) a psychical or
moral sense, animating the first, and serving for general edifica-
tion ; (3) a pneumatic or mystical and ideal sense, for those who
stand on the high ground of philosophical knowledge. In the
application of this theory he shows the same tendency as Philo,
to spiritualize away ihe letter of scripture, especially where the
plain historical sense seems unworthy, as in the history of David's
crimes: and instead of simply brijiging out the sense of the Bible,
he puts into it all sorts of foreign ideas and irrelevant fancies.
But this allegorizing suited the taste of the age, and, with his
fertile mind and imposing learning, Origen was the exegetical
oracle of the early chiirch, till his orthodoxy fell into dispute.
He is the pioneer, also, in the criticism oi the sacred text.
In spite of the numberless exegetical vagaries and differences
in detail, which confute the Roman idea of a " unanimis consen-
sus patrum," there is still a certain unanimity among the fathers
in tlieir way of drawing the most important articles of faith from
the scriptures. In their expositions they all follow one dogma-
tical principle, a kind of analogia fidei. This brings us to tradi-
tion.
§ 76. Tradition and (lie Aposihs^ Creed.
I. Iren. : Adv. haer. L I. c. 9, § 5 ; I. 10, 1 ; III. 3, 1, 2 ; III. 4, 2. Te'rtpll.
De praescriptionibus haereticorum ; especially c. 14, 17-19, 21, 35-3G, 40,
41. De Virgin, veland. c. 1. Adv. Prax. c. 2. On the other hand, Adv.
ITermog. c. 22. De came Christi, c. 7. De resurr. carnis, c. 3. Cvpr. :
De unitate eccl. ; and on the other hand, Epist. 74.
II. On the Apostles' Creed comp. Rufinus : Expos, in Symb. Apost Pear-
son : Exposition of the Creed, 1G59 (Oxf. 1847, New York, 1851). P.
I King: History of the Apostles' Creed, Lond. 1702. J. W. Nevin: The
Apostles' Creed, in the ^lerccrsburg Rev., 1849.
Besides appealing to the Scriptures, the flithers, particularly
§ 76. TRADITION AKD THE APOSTLES' CREED. 259
Irenaeiis and Tertullian, refer with equal confidence to the " rule
of faith ;"* that is, the common faith of the church, as orally
handed down in the unbroken succession of bishops from Christ
and his apostles to their day, and above all as still living in the
original apostolic churches, like those of Jerusalem, Antioch,
Ephesus, and Eome. Tradition is thus intimately connected with
the primitive episcopate. The latter was the vehicle of the
former, and both were looked upon as a bulwark against heresy.
Irenaeus confronts the secret tradition of the Gnostics with
the open and unadulterated tradition of the cathoHc church, and
points to all churches, but particularly to Eome as the visible
centre of the unity of doctrine. All who would know the truth,
says he, can see in the whole church the tradition of the apostles ;
and we can count the bishops, ordained by the apostles, and
their successors down to our time, who neither taught nor knew
any such heresies. Then, by way of example, he cites the first
twelve bishops of the Eoman church from Linus to Eleutherus,
as witnesses of the pure apostolic doctrine. He might conceive
of a Christianity without scripture; but he could not imagine a
Christianity without living tradition; and for this opinion he
refers to barbarian tribes, who have the gospel, " sine charta et
atramento," written in their hearts.
Tertullian thinks to have found a universal antidote for all
heresy in his celebrated prescription argument, which cuts off
heretics, at the outset, from every right of appeal to the holy
scriptures, on the ground, that the scriptures arose in the church
of Christ, were given to her, and only in her and by her can be
rightly understood. He calls attention also here to the tangible
succession, which distinguishes the church from the arbitrary and
ever-changing sects of heretics, and which in all the principal
congregations, especially in the original sees of the apostles,
reaches back without a break from bishop to bishop, to the apos-
tles themselves, from the apostles to Christ, and from Christ to
God. " Come now," says he, in his tract on Prescription, " if
rcgula fidei, lex fidei.
260 SECOXD PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
you would practise inquiry to more advantage in the matter of
your salvation, go tlirougli the apostolic churches, in which the
very chairs of the apostles still preside, in which their own
authentic letters are pubhcly read, uttering the voice and repre-
senting the face of every one. If Achaia is nearest, you have
Corinth. If you arc not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi,
you have Thessalonica. If you can go to Asia, you have Eplie-
sus. But if you live near Italy, you have Rome, whence also
we (the African church) derive our origin. How happy is that
church, to which the apostles poured out their whole doctrine
witli their blood," &c.
To estimate the weight of this argument, we must remember
that these fathers still stood comparatively very near the apos-
tolic age, and that the succession of bishops in the oldest churches
could be demonstrated by the living memory of two or three
generations. Irenacus, in fact, had been acquainted in his youth
with Polycarp, a disciple of St. John. But for this very reason
we must guard against overrating this testimony, and employing
it in behalf of traditions of. later origin, not gi'ounded in the
Scriptures.
Nor can we suppose that those fiithers ever thought of a blind,
slavish subjection of private judgment to ecclesiastical authority,
and to the decision of the bishops of the apostolic mother churches.
The same Irenacus frankly opposed the Roman bishop Victor.
Tertullian, though he continued essentially orthodox, contested
various points with the catholic church from his later Mon-
tanistic position, and laid down, though at first only in respect to
a conventional custom — the veiling of virgins — the genuine Pro-
testant principle, that the thing to be regarded, especially in
matters of religion, is not custom but truth.^ His pupil, Cyprian,
with whom biblical and catholic were almost interchangeable
terms, protested earnestly against the Roman theory and practice
of heretical baptism, and in this controversy declared, in exact
' Christus vcritatcin sc, iioii consuctudinoni cognominavit. . . . Ilacrcscs non tam
novitas quam Veritas rcviiicit. Quodcunque adversus veritatem sapit, hoc erit hae-
rcsis, etiaiu vctus consuctudo. Dc virg. vel, c. 1.
§ 76. TRADITION AND THE APOSTLES' CREED. 261
accordance with Tertullian, that custom without truth was only
time-honored error.^ The Alexandrians freely fostered all sorts
of peculiar views, which were afterwards rej ected as heretical ; and
though the ira^a.()o(iig difo(fToXixy} plays a prominent part with them,
yet this and similar expressions have in their language a different
sense, sometimes meaning simply the holy Scriptures. So, for
example, in the well known passage of Clement: "As if one
should be changed from a man to a beast after the manner of one
charmed by Circe ; so a man ceases to be God's and to continue
faithful to the Lord, when he sets himself up against the church
tradition, and flies off to positions of human caprice."
In the substance of its doctrine this apostolic tradition agrees
with the holy Scriptures, and though derived, as to its form, from
the oral preaching of the apostles, is really one and the same with
those apostolic writings. In this view the apparent contradictions
of the earlier fathers, in ascribing the highest authority to both
Scripture and tradition in matters of faith, resolve themselves.
It is one and the same gospel which the apostles preached with
their lips, and then laid down in their writings, and which the
, church faithfully hands down by word and writing fi'om one
generation to another.
But in the narrower sense, by apostolic tradition or the rule of
faith, xavwv Trig 'jri'rfTswf, regula fidei, was understood a summary of
Christianity, or a compend of the faith of the church. Such a
compend we have to this day in what is called the Ajjostles^ Creed,
the fundamental confession of all branches of Christendom. It
has been long since established, that as to form this venerable
document is later than the apostles, but in contents is truly apos-
tolic, and in harmony with the New Testament throughout. It
grew no doubt gradually out of the confession of Peter^ and the
trinitarian formula of baptism.^ It early became the basis for
the instruction of catechumens, and the form of confession for
candidates for baptism on their solemn entrance into the church.
Thus it became equivalent to a symbol um, that is, a sign of
' Consuetudo sine veritate vetustas erroris est. Ep. 74 (contra Stephanum), c. 9.
'■' Matt. xvi. 16; comp. Jno. vi. 68, 69. ^ Matt, xxviii. 19.
262 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
recognition among the orthodox Christians in distinction from
unbelievers and heretics. It took different forms, longer or
shorter, in different churches. Hence we have several such
apostolic regulae fidei in Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen,
Cyril of Jerusalem, Rufinus, &c. The Oriental versions are com-
monly longer, and differ more from one another, than the Latin.
In the earlier forms the article on the descent into hell, the pre-
dicate " catholic" before " church," the " communion of saints,"
and the " life everlasting," are wanting. But though these forms
differ so much in words and in extent, and thus cannot be lite-
rally the production of the apostles, as a legend first mentioned
by Rufinus (f 410) would make them, they yet agree in sub-
stance ; and Tertullian could justly say of the regula fidei, as he
does even in one of his Montanistic works, that it is "una
c)mnino, sola immobilis et irreformabilis." From the fourth cen-
tury the Roman form^ gradually came into general use and sup-
planted the others.
This oldest and shortest symbol of faith is also the most
catholic of all creeds, being employed to this day in catechetical
and liturgical service throughout the Christian world, and f )rm-
ing the bond of unity for the Greek, the Roman, and the Evan-
gelical branches of the church. Its great excellence, besides its
age, is its simple and scriptural character. It is better adapted
to catechetical and liturgical use than any other symbol, not even
excepting the Niccne, which most nearly resembles it, and is
really but an expansion of the Apostles' Creed in opposition to
the Arian denial of the divinity of Christ, It follows the his-
torical order of the revelation of the triune God, the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Ghost, and brings together, in the most
simple and intelligible language, the leading flicts of this reve-
lation from the creation of the world to tlie life everlasting, as so
many articles of faith and acts of confession, in a strand liturgical
epic for the edification of the church.
' Hence called also Symbolum RomanunL
§ 77. GOD AND THE CREATION" OF THE WORLD. 263
§ 77. God and the Creation of the World.
In exhibiting the several doctrines of the church, we must
ever bear in mind that Christianity entered the world, not as a
logical system but as a divine-human fact ; and that the New
Testament is not a theological text-book for scholars, but a book
of life for all believers. The doctrines of salvation, of course,
lie in these facts of salvation, but in a concrete, living, ever fresh,
and generally intelligible form. The logical, scientific deve-
lopment of those doctrines from the word of God and Christian
experience is left to the church. Hence we must not be sur-
prised to find in the period before us, even in the most eminent
church teachers, a very indefinite and defective knowledge, as
yet, of important articles of fiiith, whose practical force those
teachers felt in their own hearts and impressed on others, as
earnestly as their most orthodox successors. The centre of
Christianity is the divine-human person and the divine-human
work of Christ. From that centre a change passed through the
whole circle of existing religious ideas, in its first principles and
its last results, confirming what was true in the earlier religion,
and rejecting the false.
Almost all the creeds of the first centuries, especially the
Apostles' and the Nicene, begin with confession of faith in God,
the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of the visible
and the invisible. With the defence of this fundamental doc-
trine laid down in the very first chapter of the Bible, Irenaeus
opens his refutation of the Gnostic heresies ; saying, in the lan-
guage of Justin Martyr, that he would not have believed the
Lord himself, if he had announced any other God than the
Creator. He repudiates everything like an a priori construction
of the idea of God, and bases his knowledge wholly on revela-
tion and Christian experience.
"We begin with the general idea of God, which lies at the
bottom of all religion. This is refined, spiritualized, and invigo-
rated b}'- the manifestation in Christ. We perceive the advance
particularly in TertuUian's view of the irresistible leaning of
264 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
the human soul towards God, and towards the only true God.
"God will never be hidden," says he, "God will never fail
mankind ; he will always be recognised, always perceived, and
seen, when man wishes. God has made all that we are, and all
in which we are, a witness of himself Thus he proves himself
God, and the one God, by his being known to all ; since another
must first be proved. The sense of God is the original dowry
of the soul ; the same, and no other, in Egypt, in Syria, and in
Pontus ; for the God of the Jews all souls call their God." But
nature also testifies of God. It is the work of his hand, and in
itself good ; not as the Gnostics taught, a product of matter, and
intrinsically bad. Except as he reveals himself, God is, accord-
ing to Ircnaeus, absolutely hidden and incomprehensible. But
in creation and redemption he has communicated himself, and
can, therefore, not remain entirely concealed from any man. Of
the various arguments for the existence of God, we find in this
period the beginnings of the cosmological and physico-theological
methods. In the mode of conceiving the divine nature we observe
this difference ; while the Alexandrians try to avoid all anthro-
pomorphic and anthropopathic notions, and insist on the imma-
teriality and spirituality of God almost to abstraction, Tertullian
ascribes to him even corporeality ; though probably, as he con-
siders the non-existent alone absolutely incorporeal, he intends
by corporeality only to denote the substantiality and concrete
personality of the Supreme Being.^
The doctrine of the unity of God, as the eternal, almighty,
omnipresent, just, and holy creator and upholder of all things,
the Christian church inherited from Judaism, and vindicated
against the absurd polytheism of the pagans, and particularly
against the dualism of the Gnostics, which supposed matter
coeternal with God, and attributed the creation of the world to
the intermediate demiurge. This dualism was only another form
' Omne qviod est corpus est sui generis. Xiliil est incoqjorale, nisi quod non est.
Ilnhciite igitur anima invisibile corpus, etc. (De carne Christ!, c. 11.) Quis enlm
ne-p^iljit, Deuin corpus esse, etsi Deus spiritus est ? Spiritus enim corpus sui generis
in «ua effigie. (Adv. Prax. a 7.)
§ 77. GOD AND THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. 265
of polytheism, wliicli excludes absoluteness, and with it all proper
idea of God.
As to creation: Irenaeus and Tertullian most firmly rejected
the hylozoic and demiurgic views of paganism and Gnosticism,
and taught, according to the book of Genesis,^ that God made the
world, including matter, not, of course, out of any material, but
out of nothing, or, to express it positively, out of his free, almighty
will by his word. This free wil-1 of God, a will of love^ is the
supreme, absolutely unconditioned, and all-conditioning cause
and final reason of all existence, precluding every idea of physi-
cal force or of emanation. Every creature, since it proceeds
from the good and holy God, is in itself, as to its essence, good.^
Evil, therefore, is not an original and substantial entity, but a cor-
ruption of nature, and hence can be destroyed by the power of
redemption. Without a correct doctrine of creation there can be
no true doctrine of redemption, as all the Gnostic systems show.
Origen's view of an eternal creation is peculiar. His thought is
not so much that of an endless succession of new worlds, as that
of ever new metamorphoses of the original world, revealing from
the beginning the almighty power of God. "With this is con-
nected his Platonic view of the pre-existence of the soul.
Theological anthropology and soteriology remained altogether
undeveloped till the time of the Pelagian disputes. The cause
of the Christian faith demanded here the assertion both of man's
need of redemption, against Epicurean levity and Stoical self-
sufficiency, and man's capacity for redemption, against the Gnostic
and Manichaean idea of the intrinsic evil of nature, and against
every form of fatalism. The Greek fathers, especially the Alexan-
drian, are very strenuous for the freedom of the will, as the ground
of the accountability and the whole moral nature of man, and as
indispensable to the distinction of virtue and vice. In the case
of Origen this is the main pillar of his theological system. Ire-
naeus and Hippolytus cannot conceive of man without the two
inseparable predicates of intelligence and freedom. And Tertul-
1 Comp. Psalm xxxiii. 9 ; cxlviii. 5. John i. 3. 2 Qen. L 31.
266 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
lian asserts expressly, against Marcion and Ilermogenes, free will
as one of the innate properties of the soul/ like derivation from
God, immortality, instinct of dominion, and power of divination.^
On the other side, however, Irenaeus, by his Pauline doctrine
of the causal connexion of the original sin of Adam with the sin-
fulness of the whole human race, and especially Tertullian, by
his view of hereditary sin and its propagation by generation,^
bore towards the Augustinian system.
§ 78. The Logos, and the Incarnation.
Petavius (R. C.) : De theologicis dogmaticis. Par. 1644-50, in 4 vols. Later
ed. of Antw. 1700; Ven. 1721 and 1745, in 6 vols. (This thoroughly-
learned Jesuit, in his section de trinitate, has collected most of the passages
of the ante-Nicene fathers, and admits, I. 5, 7. 8, 2, a progressive develop-
ment of the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and of the trinity, for which
the Anglican, G. Bull, severely censures him.) G. Bull : Defensio fidei
Nicaenae de aeterna divinitate FiUi Dei, ex scriptis catholic, doctorum,
qui intra tria ecclesiae Christianae secula floruerunt. Oxf 1G85. (Lond.
1703 ; also in Bish. Bull's Complete Works, ed. by Burton, 184G, 8 vols.)
Against him CLf:RKE wrote three tracts : Brevis responsio ad Bulli defen-
sionem fidei Nicaenae. Lond. 1695. Martini : Gesch. des Dogmas von
der Gottheit Christi in den ersten 4 Jahrh. Post. 1809 (rationalistic).
MoHLER (R. C.) : Athanasius der Gr. J^Liinz, 1827 (Bk. 1. Der Glaube der
Kirche der drei ersten Jahrh. in Betreff der Trinittit, &c., p. 1-116). F. C.
Baur: Die christi. Lehre von der Dreieinigkeitu. Menschwerdung Gottes
in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Tiib. 1841-43. 3 vols. (I. p. 129-
341). G. A. Meier: Die Lehre von der Trinitiit in ihrer hist. Entwick-
lung. Hamb. 1844. 2 vols. (L p. 45-134). J. A. Dorxer: Entwick-
lungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi (1839), 2d ed. Stuttg.
u. BerL 1845-56. 2 vols. (I. p. 122-747). Robt. L Wilberkorce (first
Anglican, then, since 1854, R. C.) : The Doctrine of the Incarnation of
our Lord Jesus Christ, in its Relation to Mankind and to the Church
(more doctrinal than historical). 4th ed. Lond. 1852. (Ch. 5, p. 93-
' luesse nobis rd aire^oiawv naturalitcr, jam et Marcioni ostondimus ct Ilormogeni.
Do anima, c. 21. Comp. Adv. Marc. II. 5 sqq.
' Definimus animam Dei fiatu natam, imniortalera, corporalcm, effigiatam, substan-
tia simplicem, de suo stipicntem, varie procedentcm, liborara arbitrii, accidentiis obuox-
iara, per ingcnia mutabilom, rationalem, dommatrieem, divinatricem, ex una redun-
dantem. Do anima, c. 2'3.
* "Tradux aiiimao tradux peccati." Ilonce traduciauism in distinction from crea-
tianism, and the doctrine of pre-cxistcncc.
§ 78. THE LOGOS, AND THE INCARNATION. 267
147), also republ. Pliilad. 1849. P. Schaff : The Conflict of Trinitarian-
ism and Unitarianism in the ante-Nicene age, Bibl. Sacra, And. 1858,
Oct
The Messiahsliip and divine sonsliip of Jesus of Nazareth, first
confessed by Peter in the name of all the apostles and the eye-
witnesses of the divine glory of his person and his work, as the
most sacred and precious fact of their experience, and after the
resurrection adoringly acknowledged by the sceptical Thomas in
that exclamation, "My Lord, and my God!" — ^is the founda-
tion stone of the Christian church ; ^ and the denial of the mystery
of the incarnation is the mark of antichristian heresy.^ The
whole theological energy of the ante-Nicene period concentrated
itself, therefore, upon the doctrine of Christ as the God-man and
Redeemer of the world. This doctrine was the kernel of all the
creeds used in the initiatory sacrament of baptism, and was
stamped upon the entire life, constitution, and worship of the
early church. It was not only expressly asserted by the fathers
against heretics, but also professed by the church in her daily
worship, especially in the holy supper and the Easter festival,
and sealed by the sufferings and death of numberless confessors
and martyrs. Nay, life anticipated doctrine, and Christian expe-
rience contained more than divines could in clear words express.
The divinity of Christ, and with this the divinity of the Holy
Ghost, were from the first immovably fixed in the Christian
mind. But the complete definition of this divinity, and of its
relation to the Old Testament fundamental doctrine of the unity^
of the divine essence — in a word, the church dogma of the trinity
— was the work of three centuries, and was fairly accomplished
only in the Nicene age. In the first efforts of reason to grapple
with these unfathomable mysteries, we must expect mistakes and
inaccuracies of every kind. In the apostolic fathers we find for
the most part only the simple biblical statements of the deity
and humanity of Christ, in the practical form needed for general
edification. Of those fathers Ignatius is most deeply imbued
with the conviction, that the crucified Jesus is God incarnate,
' Matt. xvi. 16 sqq. '^ 1 John iv. 1-3. 3 Movapxta.
268 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
and indeed frequently calls bim, without qualification, God.
The development of Cbristology in the scientific doctrine of the
Logos begins with Justin and culminates in Origen. From him
then proceed two opposite modes of conception, the Athanasian
and the xVrian ; of which the former at last triumphs in the coun-
cil of Nice, A.D. 325, and confirms its victory in the council of
Constantinople, 381.
1. The dogma of the divinity of Christ is the centre of interest.
It comes into the foreground, not only against rationalistic Monar-
chiamsm and Ebionism, which degrade Christ to a second Moses,
but also against Gnosticism, which, though it holds him to be
superhuman, still puts him on a level with other aeons of the
ideal world, and thus, by endlessly multiphdng sons of God,
after the manner of the heathen mythology, pantheistically dilutes
and destroys all idea of a specific sonship. The development of
this dogma started from the Old Testament idea of the word and
the wisdom of God ; from the Jewish Platonism of Alexandria ;
above all, from the Cbristology of Paul, and from the Logos doc-
trine of John. This view of John gave a might}^ impulse to
Christian speculation, and furnished it ever fresh material. It
was the form under which all the Greek fathers conceived the
divine nature and divine dignity of Christ before his incarnation.
The term Logos was peculiarly serviceable here, from its well
known double meaning of "reason" and "word," ratio and
oratio ; though in John it is evidently used in the Jatter sense
alone.
Following the suggestion of this double meaning, and the
precedent of a similar distinction by Philo, Justin Martyr distin-
guishes in the Logos, that is, the divine being of Christ, two
elements : the immanent, or that which determines the revela-
tion of God to himself within himself; ^ and the transitive, in
virtue of which God reveals himself outwardly.^ The act of the
procession of the Logos from God^ he illustrates by the figure
of generation,^ without division or diminution of the divine sub-
§ 78. THE LOGOS, AND THE INCARNATION. 269
stance ; and in this view the Logos is tlie only and absolute Son
of Grod, the only -begotten. The generation, however, is not with
him an eternal act, grounded in metaphysical necessity, as with
Athanasius and in the later church doctrine. It took place at,
or properly immediately before, the creation of the world, and
proceeded from the free will of God. This begotten (but, it
would seem, not ante-mundane) Logos he conceives as a hyposta-
tical being, a person numerically distinct from the Father ; and
to the agency of this person before his incarnation ^ Justin attri-
butes the creation and support of the universe, all the theophanies
(christophanies) of the Old Testament, and all that is true and
rational in the heathen world. In his efforts to reconcile this
view with monotheism, he at one time asserts the moral unity
of the two divine persons, and at another decidedly subordinates
the Son to the Father. Justin thus combines hypostasianism, or
the theory of the independent, personal (h3q30statical) divinity of
Christ, with subordinatianism ; he is, therefore, as Semisch in his
monograph^ has conclusively proved, neither Arian nor Atha-
nasian ; but his whole theological tendency, in opposition to the
heresies, was evidently towards the orthodox system, and had
he lived later, he would have subscribed the Nicene creed. The
same may be said of Tertullian and of Origen.
The further development of the doctrine of the Logos we find
in the other apologists, in Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus of
Antioch, and especially in the Alexandrian school.
Clement of Alexandria S23eaks in the very highest terms of
the Logos, but leaves his independent personality obscure. He
makes the Logos the ultimate principle of all existence, without
beginning and timeless ; the revealer of the Father, the sum of
all intelligence and wisdom, the personal truth, the speaking as
well as the spoken word of creative power, the proper author of
the world, the source of light and life, the great educator of the
human race, at last becoming man, to draw us into fellowship
with him and make us partakers of his divine nature.
' Aoyos aaapKos. * Just. der Martjr. II. 289 sqq.
270 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-811.
Origen felt the whole weight of the christological and trini-
tarian question, but obscured it by his foreign speculations, and
wavered between the homoousian, or orthodox, and the subor-
dinatian theories, which afterwards came into sharp conflict with
each other in the Arian controversj. On the one hand he brings
the Son as near as possible to the essence of the Father ; not
only making him the absolute personal wisdom, truth, righteous-
ness, reason,^ but also expressly predicating eternity of him, and
propounding the church dogma of the eternal generation of the
Son. This generation he usually represents as proceeding from
the will of the Father ; but he also conceives it as proceeding
from his essence ; and hence, at least in one passage, in a frag-
ment on the Epistle to the Hebrews, he already applies the term
h[i.rjoj<iiog to the Son, thus declaring him coequal in substance with
the Father. This idea of eternal generation, however, has a pecu-
liar form in him, from its close connexion with his doctrine of an
eternal creation. He can no more think of the Father without the
Son, than of an almighty God without creation, or of light without
radiance.^ Hence he describes this generation not as a single,
instantaneous act, but, like creation, ever going on.^ But on the
other hand he distinguishes the essence of the Son from that of
the Father ; speaks of a difference of substance ; •* and makes the
Son decidedly inferior to the Father, calling him, with n^ference
to John i. 1, merely Srso^ without the article, that is, God in a
relative sense (Deus de Deo), also (Je^Tspog SsoV, but the Father God
in the absolute sense, o 'heog (Deus per se), or auro^so?, also the foun-
tain and root of the divinity .^ Hence he also taught, that the
Son should not be directly addressed in prayer, but the Father
through the Son in the Holy Ghost. This must be limited, no
' AiroiTo^iii, avT(>a\i)^cta^ airuSiziiocrvi'n, niToSivaiit;, oOr'SAuyof, etC.
" De princip. IV. 28 : Sicut lux nurnquam sine splendore esse potuit, ita nee Filius
quidera sine Patro intelligi potest.
3 I. 2, 4 : Est aoterna et sempiterna gencratio, sicut splendor generatur a luce.
Horn, iu Jerem, IX. 4: 'Ati' yeovd b YlaHip top Yi'iii'.
* ' E-cniiTni rrii oiiaiaf OF Tov moKcmtvov, which the advocates of his orthodoxy, pro-
bably without reason, take as merely opposing the Patripassiaa conception of the
Ojiovoia
* Unyh, 'pi^a Tils Ocdrrjroi,
§ 78. THE LOGOS, AND THE INCARNATION. 271
doubt, to absolute worship, for lie elsewhere recognises prayer
to the Son and to the Holj Ghost.^ Yet this subordination of
the Son formed a stepping-stone to Arianism, and some disciples
of Origen, particularly Dionysius of Alexandria, decidedly ap-
proached that heresy. Against this, however, the deeper Chris-
tian sentiment, even before the Arian controversy, put forth firm
protest, especially in the person of the Koman Dionysius, to whom
his Alexandrian namesake and colleague magnanimously yielded.
In a simpler way the western fathers, including here Irenaeus
and Hippolytus, who labored in the west, though they were of
Greek training, reached the position, that Christ must be one
with the Father, yet personally distinct from him. It is com-
monly supposed that they came nearer the homoousion than the
Greeks. This can be said of Irenaeus, but not of Tertullian.
And as to Cyprian, whose sphere was exclusively that of church
government and discipline, he had nothing peculiar in his specu-
lative doctrines.
Irenaeus, after Polycarj) the most faithful representative of the
Johannean school, keeps more within the limits of the simple
biblical statements, and ventures no such bold speculations as
the Alexandrians, but is more sound and much nearer the ISTicene
standard. He likewise uses the terms Logos and Son of God
interchangeably, and concedes the distinction, made also by the
Valentinians, between the inward and the uttered word,^ in
reference to man, but contests the application of it to God, who
is above all antitheses, absolutely simple and unchangeable, and
in whom before and after, thinking and speaking, coincide. He
repudiates also every speculative or a priori attempt to explain
the derivation of the Son from the Father ; this he holds to be an
incomprehensible mystery.^ He is content to define the actual
distinction between Father and Son, by saying that the former
1 For example, Ad. Rom. I. p. 472: Adorare alium quempiam praeter Patrem et
Filium et Spiritum sanctum, impietatis est crimen.
' The Xriyis ivfiia^STOi aud X. TTpofiipiKdf.
3 Adv. haer. II. 38, 6 : Si quis nobis dixerit : quomodo ergo Films prolatus a Patre
est? dicimus ei — nemo novit, nisi solus, qui generavit Pater et qui natus est Filius.
272 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
is God revealing liimself, the latter, God revealed ; the one is
the ground of revelation, the other is the actual, appearing reve-
lation itself. Hence he calls the Father the invisible of the Son,
and the Son the visible of the Father. He discriminates most
rigidl}'- the conceptions of generation and of creation. The Son,
though begotten of the Father, is still, like him, distinguished
from the created world, as increate, without beginning, and eter-
nal. Ail plainly showing, that Irenaeus is much nearer the
Nicene dogma of the substantial identity of the Son with the
Father, than Justin and the Alexandrians. If; as he does in
several passages, he still subordinates the Son to the Father, he
is certainly inconsistent ; and that for want of an accurate dis-
tinction between the eternal Logos and the actual Christ.^ Ex-
pressions like, " My Father is greater than I," which apply only
to the Christ of history, he refers also, like Justin and Origen, to
the eternal Word. On the other hand, he has been charged with
leaning in the opposite direction towards the Sabellian and Patri-
passian views, but unjustly .^ Apart from his frequent want of
precision in expression, he steers in general, with sure biblical
and churchly tact, equally clear of both extremes, and asserts
alike the essential unity and the eternal personal distinction of
the Father 'and the Son. The incarnation of the Logos he ably
discusses, viewing it both as a restoration and redemption from
sin and death, and as the completion of the revelation of God
and of the creation of man. In the latter view, as finisher,
Christ is the perfect Son of Man, in whom the likeness of man to
God, the similitudo Dei, regarded as moral duty, in distinction
from the imago Dei, as an essential property, becomes for
the first time fully real. According to this the incarnation
would be grounded in the original plan of God for the educa-
tion of mankind, and independent of the fall ; it would have
taken place even without the fall, though in some other
form. Yet Irenaeus does not expressly say this; speculation
' The \))"K '"'TdOKo? and the Xfyc £ t-iovic.
" As Dnnc'kcr in Ida monograph: Die Christologio des heil. Ircniius, p. 50sqq., has
unanswerably shown.
§ 78. THE LOGOS, AND THE INCARNATION. 273
on abstract possibilities was foreign to his realistic cast of
mind.
Tertullian cannot escape the charge of subordinatianism. He
bluntly calls the Father the whole divine substance, and the Son
a part of it ;^ illustrating their relation by the figures of the foun-
tain and the stream, the sun and the beam. He would not have
two suns, he says, but he might call Christ God, as Paul does in
Eom. ix. 5. The sunbeam, too, in itself considered, may be
called sun, but not the sun a beam. Sun and beam are two
distinct things (species) in one essence (substantia), as God and
the Word, as the Father and the Son. But we should not take
figurative language too strictly, and must remember that Tertul-
lian was specially interested to distinguish the Son from the
Father in opposition to the Patripassian Praxeas, In other'
respects he did the church Christology material service. He
propounds a three-fold hypostatical existence of the Son (filiatio) ::
(1) The pre-existent, eternal immanence of the Son in the Father;,
they being as inseparable as reason and word in man, who was
created in the image of God, and hence in a measure reflects his
being f (2) the coming forth of the Son with the Father for the
purpose of the creation ; (3) the manifestation of the Son in the
world by the incarnation.
With equal energy Hippolytus combated Patripassianism, and
insisted on the recognition of different hypostases with equal
claim to divine worship. Yet he, too, is somewhat trammelled
with the subordinatian view.
On the other hand, according to his representation in the
Homologoumena, the Roman bishops Zephyrinus and especially
Callistus favored Patripassianism. The later popes, however^,
were firm defenders of hypostasianism. One of them, DionysiuSj
A.D. 262, as we shall see more fully when speaking of the trinity,
* Adv Prax. c. 9 : Pater tota substantia est, Filius vero derivatio totius et portio,
sicut ipse profitetur: Quia Pater major Me est (John xiv. 28).
" Hence he says (Adv. Prax. c. 5), by way of illustration : Quodcunque cogita-
veris. sermo est ; quodcunque senseris atio est. Loquaris illud in animo necesse
est, et dum loqueris, conlocutorem pateris serraonem, in quo inest hacc ipsa ratio qua
cum eo cogitans loquaris, per quem loquens cogitas.
18
274 SECOND TERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
maintained at once the homoousion and eternal generation against
Dionysius of Alexandria, and the bypostatical distinction against
Sabellianism, and sketched in bold and clear outlines the Nicene
standard view.
§ 79. Christology^ continued.
2. Passing now to the doctrine of the Saviour's humanity^ we
find this asserted by Ignatius as clearly and forcibly as his divi-
nity. Of the Gnostic Docetists of his day, who made Christ a
spectre, he says, they are bodiless spectres themselves, whom we
should fear as wild beasts in human shape, because they tear
away the foundation of our hope.^ He attaches great importance
to the flesh, that is, the full reality of the human nature of Christ,
his true birth from the virgin, and his crucifixion under Pontius
Pilate ; he calls him God incarnate ;^ therefore is his death the
fountain of life.
Irenaeus refutes Docetism at length. Christ, he contends
against the Gnostics, must be man, like us, if he would redeem
us from corruption and make us perfect. As sin and death came
into the world by a man, so they could be blotted out legitimately
and to our advantage only by a man ; though of course not by one
who should be a mere descendant of Adam, and thus himself in
need of redemption, but by a second Adam, supernaturally
begotten, a new progenitor of our race, as divine as he is human.
A new birth unto life must take the place of the old birth unto
death. As the completer, also, Christ must enter into fellowship
with us, to be our teacher and pattern. He made himself equal
with man, that man, by his likeness to the Son, might become
precious in the Father's sight. Irenaeus conceived the humanity
of Christ not as mere corporeality, though he often contends for
this alone against the Gnostics, but as true humanity, embracing
body, soul, and spirit. Ho places Christ in the same relation to
the regenerate race, which Adam bears to the natural, and
' Ep. ad Smyrn. c. 2-5.
* 'El/ <r<io<( yfuJ/ztvof Stdf (ad Ephes. C. 7); also Ivwoii aapKos Ka'i rrj'ti'^arrf. Coiup.
R(im. L 3, 4, ix. 5 ; 1 John iv. 1-3.
§ 79. CHRISTOLOGY, CONTINUED. 275
regards him as the absolute, universal man, the prototype and
summing up^ of the whole race. Connected with this is his beau-
tiful thought, found also in Hippolytus in the tenth book of the
Philosophoumena, that Christ made the circuit of all the stages
of human life, to redeem and sanctify all. To apply this to
advanced age, he singularly extended the life of Jesus to fifty
years, and endeavored to prove his view from the gospels against
the Yalentinians. The full communion of Christ with men
involved his participation in all their evils and sufferings, his
death, and his descent into the abode of the dead.
TertuUian advocates the entire yet sinless humanity of Christ
against both the Docetistic Gnostics'^ and the Patripassians.^ He
accuses the former of making Christ, who is all truth, a half lie,
and by the denial of his flesh resolving all his work in the flesh,
his sufferings and his death, into an empty show, and subverting
the whole scheme of redemption. Against the Patripassians he
argues, that God the Father is incapable of suffering, and is
beyond the sphere of finiteness and change. In the humanity,
he expressly includes the soul ; and this, in his view, comprises
the reason also ; for he adopts not the trichotomic, but the dycho-
tomic division. The body of Christ, before the exaltation, he
conceived to have been even ugly. This singular view, quite
common in the early age of the church, and founded on a mis-
apprehension of Isa. liii. 2, where the Messiah is figuratively said
to have "no form nor comeliness," is connected with the aver-
sion of the ancient church to art and earthly splendor, and with
her servant-form in the period of persecution.
Clement of Alexandria likewise adopted the notion of the
uncomely personal appearance of Jesus, but compensated it with
the thought of the moral beauty of his soul. In his effort, how-
ever, to idealize the body of the Lord, and raise it above all
sensual desires and wants, he almost reaches Gnostic Docetism.
The Christology of Origen is more fully developed in this
• 'Ain<>-£(^aXaicoa-(f, recapitulatio, a term frequently used by Irenaeus. Comp. Rom.
xiii. 9 ; Eph. i. 10.
^ Adv. Marcionem, and De Carne Christi. ^ Adv. Praxeam.
276 SECOND PERIOD. A.D, 100-311.
part, as well as in the article of the divine nature, and peculiarly
modified by his Platonizing view of the pre-existence and pre-
Adamic fall of souls and their confinement in the prison of corpo-
reity; but it is likewise too idealistic, and inclined to substitute
the superhuman for the purely human. He conceives the incar-
nation as a gradual process, and distinguishes two stages in it —
the assumption of the soul, and the assumption of the body. The
Logos, before the creation of this world, nay, from the beginning,
took to himself a human soul, which had no part in the ante-
mundane apostasy, but clave to the Logos in perfect love, and
was warmed through by him, as iron by fire. Then this fair
soul, married to the Logos, took from the "Virgin Mary a true
body, yet without sin ; not by way of punishment, like the fallen
souls, but from love to men, to effect their redemption. Again,
Oriijen distinguished various forms of the manifestation of this
human nature, in which the Lord became all things to all men,
to gain all. To the great mass he appeared in the form of a ser-
vant ; to his confidential disciples and persons of culture, in a
radiance of the highest beauty and glory, such as, even before
the resurrection, broke forth from his miracles and in the trans-
figuration on Mount Tabor. In connexion with this comes
Origen's view of a gradual spiritualization and deification of the
body of Christ, even to the ubiquity which he ascribes to it in
its exalted state. On this insufficient ground his opponents
charged him with teaching a double Christ (answering to the
lower Jesus and the higher Soter of the Gnostics), and a merely
temporary validity in the corporeity of the Redeemer. He is the
first to apply to Christ the term God-man,^ which leads to the
true view of the relation of the two natures.
3. The doctrine of the mutucd relation of the divine and the
human in Christ did not come into special discussion nor reach
a definite settlement until the Christological controversies of the
fifth century. Yet Irenaeus, in several passages, throws out
important hints. He teaches unequivocally a true and indis-
soluble union of divinity and humanity in Christ, and repels the
' Qedi'Ofjomos.
§ 80. THE HOLY GHOST. 277
Gnostic idea of a mere external and transient connexion of tlie
divine Soter with, tlie human Jesus. The foundation for that
union he perceives in the creation of the world by the Logos,
and in man's original likeness to God and destination for per-
manent fellowship with Him. In the act of union, that is, in the
supernatural generation and birth, the divine is the active prin-
ciple, and the seat of personality ; the human, the passive or
receptive ; as, in general, man is absolutely dependent on God,
and is the vessel to receive the revelations of his wisdom and
love. The medium and bond of the union is the Holy Ghost,
who took the place of the masculine agent in the generation, and
overshadowed the virgin womb of Mary with the power of the
Highest. In this connexion he calls Mary the counterpart of
Eve, the "mother of all living" in a higher sense; who, by her
believing obedience, became tlie cause of salvation both to her-
self and to the whole human race,^ as Eve by her disobedience
induced the apostasy and death of mankind ; — a fruitful parallel,
which was afterwards frequently pushed too far, and turned, no
doubt, contrary to its original sense, to favor the idolatrous wor-
ship of the blessed Virgin. Irenaeus seems ^ to conceive the
incarnation as progressive, the two factors reaching absolute
communion (but neither absorbing the other) in the ascension ;
though before this, at every stage of life, Christ was a perfect
man, presenting the model of every age.
Origen, the author of the term " God-man," was also the first
to employ the figure, since become so classical, of an iron warmed
through by fire, to illustrate the pervasion of the human nature
(primarily the soul) by the divine in the person of Christ.
§ 80. The Holy Ghost.
Kahnis: Die Lehre vom heil. Geiste. Halle 1847. (Pt. I. p. 149—356. In-
complete.) The doctrine of Justin is treated with exhaustive thorough-
ness by Semisch, in his monograph, II. 305 — 332.
' Et sibi et universe generi humane causa facta est salutis. (Adv. haer. III. 22,
§4).
^ At least according to Dorner, Christology, I. 495.
278 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
The doctrine of the Holy Ghost was far less developed, and
until the middle of the fourth century was never a subject of
special controversy. So in the Apostles' creed, only one article '
is devoted to the third person of the holy Trinity, while the con- '
fession of the Son of God, in six or seven articles, forms the body
of the symbol. Logical knowledge appears to be here still fur-
ther removed than in Christology from the living substance of
faith. This period was still in immediate contact with the fresh
siDiritual life of the apostolic, still witnessed the lingering opera-
tions of the extraordinary gifts, and experienced in full measure
the regenerating, sanctifying, and comforting influences of the
divine Spirit in life, suffering, and death ; but, as to the theo-
logical definition of the nature and work of the Spirit, it remained
in many respects confused and wavering down to the Nicene age.
Yet rationalistic historians go quite too far when, among other
accusations, they charge the early church with making the Holy
Ghost identical with the Logos. To confound the functions, as in
attributing the inspiration of the prophets, for example, now to
the Holy Ghost, now to the Logos, is by no means to confound the
persons. On the contrary, the thorough investigations of recent
times show plainly that the ante-Nicene fathers, with the excep-
tion of the Monarchians and perhaps Lactantius, agreed in the
two fundamental points, that the Holy Ghost, tlie sole agent in
the application of redemption, is a supernatural divine being, and
that he is an independent person ; thus closely allied to the Father
and the Son, yet hypostatically different from them both. This
was the practical conception, as demanded even by the formula
of ba])tism. But instead of making the Holy Ghost strictfy co-
ordinate with the two other divine persons, as the Niccne doctrine
does, it commonly left him subordinate to the Father and the
Son.
So in Justin, the pioneer of scientific discovery in Pncumatology
as well as in Christology. He refutes the heathen charge of
atheism with the explanation, that the Christians worship the
Creator of the universe, in the second place the Son," in the third
' Credo in Spiritura Sanctum. ' 'Ei- h 'rina x"'<!"!-
§ 80. THE HOLY GHOST. 279
rank^ the proplietic Spirit ; placing the three divine hypostases
in a descending gradation as objects of worship. In another
passage, quite similar, he interposes the host of good angels
between the Son and the Spirit, and thus favors the inference,
that he regarded the Holy Grhost himself as akin to the angels,
and therefore a created being.^ But aside from the obscurity
and ambiguity of the words relating to the angelic host,^ the co-
ordination of the Holy Ghost with the angels is utterly precluded
by many other exj^ressions of Justin, in which he exalts the
Spirit far above the sphere of all created being, and challenges
for the members of the divine trinity a worship forbidden to
angels. The leading function of the Holy Ghost, with him, as
with the other apologists, is the inspiration of the Old Testament
prophets.^ In general the Spirit conducted the Jewish theocracy,
and qualified the theocratic officers. All his gifts concentrated
themselves finally in Christ ; and thence they pass to the faithful
in the church. It is a striking fact, however, that Justin in only
two passages refers the new moral life of the Christian to the
Spirit ; he commonly represents the Logos as its fountain. He
lacks all insight into the distinction df the Old Testament Spirit
and the New, and urges their identity in opposition to the
Gnostics.
In Clement of Alexandria we find very little progress beyond
this point. Yet he calls the Holy Ghost the third member of the
sacred triad, and requires thanksgivings to be addressed to him
as to the Son and the Father.^
1 'Ek rpiTTi Tii^ei, ApoL I. 13.
^ Apol. L 6 : 'Ekbivov tc (i. e. Qtov), koX tov Trap' aiiTuv Ylov eXSdvru itai SiSi^avra f}fiS.i
Tavra Kai Tuv tUv aXXiov nrojxiviiiv koX i^ofioiovjxlvoiti liya^iov ayyiXdiv aTpardv, Ylvevfid ts to
npotprjTlKOV acPoiitSa Kal TrpncKVvoviici'.
3 The questions arise, for example, whether ayytUi here is not to be taken in the
wider sense, in which Jilstin often uses it, and even apphes it to Christ ; and whe-
ther (jrpaTov depends on ac;36^ S ., and not rather on ii&a^avra, so as to be co-ordinate
with hfiai, or with ravTa, and not with Yio'i/ and Ilnma.
* Hence the frequent designation, to Tlvevjia T^po^pnTiKov, together with the other,
Hvnfia ayiov ; and hence also even in the Symb. Nic. Constantin. the definition :
Yivsvjia .... TO Xii'Siaiv fnii twv irpoipriToii',
S Paed. III. p. 311: 'Ev;^aptcrroCi'raf aineiv ru) ftofo) Ylarpl koi Yiw avv Kal ra uyitj
Ilvc'i an.
280 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Origcn vacillates in his Pneumatology still more than in his
Christology between orthodox and heterodox views. He
ascribes to the Holy Ghost eternal existence, exalts him, as he
does the Son, far above all creatures, and considers him the
source of all charisms,^ especially as the principle of all the illu-
mination and holiness of believers under the Old Covenant and
the New. But he places the Spirit in essence, dignity, and
efficiency below the Son, as far as he places the Son below the
Father ; and though he grants in one passage^ that the Bible
nowhere calls the Holy Ghost a creature, yet, according to ano-
ther somewhat obscure sentence, he himself inclines towards the
view, which, however, he does not avow, that the Holy Ghost
had a beginning (though, according to his system, not in time
but from eternity), and is the first and most excellent of all the
beings produced by the Logos.* In the same connexion he
adduces three opinions concerning the Holy Ghost ; one, regard-
ing him as not having an origin ; another, ascribing to him no
separate personality ; and a third, making him a being originated
by the Logos. The first of these opinions he rejects because the
Father alone is without origin (rxyimv^rog) ; the second he rejects
because in Matt. xii. 32 the Spirit is plainly distinguished from
the Father and the Son; the tliird he takes for the true and
scriptural view, because every thing was made by the Logos.*
Indeed, according to Matt. xii. 32, the Holy Ghost would seem to
stand above the Son ; but the sin against the Holy Ghost is more
heinous than that against the Son of Man, only because he who
has received the Holy Ghost stands higher than he who has
merely the reason from the Logos.
Here again Irenaeus comes nearer than the Alexandrians to
' Not as iiXn '■■""' x""^"!'^^""') ^^ NeanJer and others represent it, but aa n/r vXri" tmv
jfapiir//. TTdpcyor, as offering tlie substance and fulness of tho' spiritual gifts ; therefore
a.s the dpxn and irnyfi of them. In Joh. II. § 6.
" Do rrincip. I. 3, 3.
3 In Joh. torn. IT. § 6: Ti/tiwreoov — this comparative, by the way, should bo
noticed as possibly .saying more than the superlative, and perhaps designed to dis-
tinguish the Spirit from all creatures — navnav riv und roii Xlurpu; 6iu XpioroO ycvf'"!-
* According to John i. 3.
§ 81. THE HOLY TRINITY. 281
the dogma of the perfect substantial identity of the Spirit with
the Father and the Son ; though his repeated figurative (but for
this reason not so definite) designation of the Son and Spirit as
the "hands" of the Father, by which he made all things, implies
a certain subordination. He differs from most of the fathers in
referring tlie Wisdom of the book of Proverbs not to the Logos
but to the Spirit ; and hence must regard him as eternal. Yet he
was far from conceiving the Spirit as a mere power or attribute ;
he considered him an independent personality, like the Logos.
" With God," says he,^ " are ever the Word and the Wisdom, the
Son and the Spirit, through whom and in whom he fi^eely made
all things, to whom he said, ' Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness.' " But he speaks more of the operations than
of the nature of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit predicted in the
prophets the coming of Christ ; has been near to man in all divine
ordinances ; communicates the knowledge of the Father and the
Son ; gives believers the consciousness of sonship ; is fellowship
with Christ, the pledge of imperishable life, and the ladder on
which we ascend to God.
In the Montanistic system the Paraclete occupies a peculiarly
important place. He appears there as the principle of the highest
stage of revelation, or of the church of the consummation. Ter-
tullian made the Holy Spirit the ]3roper essence of the church,
bat subordinated him to the Son as he did the Son to the Father;
though elsewhere he asserts the " unitas substantiae." In his
■vdew the Spirit proceeds " a Patre per Filium," as the fruit from
the root through the stem. The view of the Trinity presented by
Sabellius contributed to the suppression of these subordinatian
ideas.
§ 81. The Holy Trinity.
Comp. the works quoted, § 78-80.
Here now we have the elements of the dogma of the Trinity;
that is, the doctrine of the living, only true God, Father, Son,
' Adv. haer. IT. 20, § 1.
282 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
and Spirit, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things.
This dogma has a peculiar, comprehensive, and definitive import
in the Christian system, as a brief summary of all the truths and
blessings of revealed religion. Ilence the baptismal formula in
Matt, xxviii. 19, which forms the basis of all the ancient creeds, is
trinitarian ; as is the apostolic benediction also, in 2 Cor. xiii. 14.
This doctrine meets us in the Scriptures, however, not so much
in direct statements and single expressions, of which the two
just mentioned are the clearest, as in gTeat living facts ; in the
history of a threefold revelation of the living God in the creation
and government, the reconciliation and redemption, and the sanc-
tification and consummation of the world — a history continued
in the experience of Christendom. In the article of the Trinity
the Christian conception of God completely defines itself, in dis-
tinction alike from the abstract monotheism of the Jewish reli-
gion, and from the polytheism and dualism of the heathen. It
has accordingly been looked upon in all ages as the sacred
symbol and the fundamental doctrine of the Christian church,
with the denial of which the divinity of Christ and the Iloly
Ghost, and the divine character of the work of redemption and
sanctification, fall to the ground.
On this scrijDtural basis the church dogma of the Trinity arose ;
and it directly or indirectly ruled even the ante-Nicene theology,
tliouiz;h it did not attain its fixed definition till in the Nicene a^e.
It is prin,iarily of a practically religious nature, and speculative
only in a secondary sense. It arose not from the field of meta-
physics, but from that of experience and worship ; and not as an
abstract, isolated dogma, but in inseparable connexion with the
study of Christ and of the Holy Ghost ; especially in connexion
with Christology, since all theology proceeds from "God in
Christ reconciling the world unto himself" Under the condition
of monotheism, this doctrine followed of necessity from the doc-
trine of the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Ghost. The unity
of God was already immovably fixed by the Old Testament as a
fundamental article of revealed religion in opposition to all forms
of idolatry. But the New Testament and the Christian con-
§ 81. THE HOLY TEINITY. 283
sciousness as firmly demanded faitli in the divinity of the Sou,
who effected redemption, and of the Holy Ghost, who founded
the church and dwells in believers ; and these apparently con-
tradictory interests could be reconciled only in the form of the
Trinity ;^ that is, by distinguishing in the one and indivisible
essence of God ^ three hypostases or persons;^ at the same time
allowing for the insufficiency of all human conceptions and words
to describe such an unfathomable mystery.
The Socinian and rationalistic opinion, that the church doc-
trine of the Trinity sprang from Platonism^ and Neo-Platonism^
is therefore radically false. The Indian Trimurti, altogether
pantheistic in spirit, is still further from the Christian Trinity.
Only thus much is true, that the Hellenic philosophy operated
from without, as a stimulating force, upon the form of the whole
patristic theology, the doctrines of the Logos and the Trinity
among the rest ; and that the deeper minds of heathen antiquity
discovered a presentiment of a threefold distinction in the divine
essence ; but only a remote and vague presentiment which, like
all the deeper instincts of the heathen mind, serves to strengthen
the Christian truth. Far clearer and more fruitful suggestions
presented themselves in the Old Testament, particularly in the
doctrines of the Messiah, of the Spirit, of the Word, and of the
Wisdom of God, and even in the system of symbolical numbers,
which rests on the sacredness of the numbers three (God), four
(the world), seven and twelve (the union of God and the world,
hence the covenant number). But the mystery of the Trinity
could be fully revealed only in the New Testament after the com-
pletion of the work of redemption and the outpouring of the
Holy Ghost.
^ Tpiuf , first in Theopliilus ; trinitas, first in Tertullian ; fi-om the fourth centurj'
more distinctly /jovorpiaj, liovdi h rpiait, triunitas.
^ Oixjia, (pi(Ttg, substantia; sometimes also, inaccurately, Woa-raais.
3 TpfTj iTTO<TTaast(, rpia 7rf)i5(7co7ra, personae.
* Comp. Plato, Ep. 2 and 6, which, however, are spurious or doubtful. Legg. lY.
p. 185 : 'O ^£.di OLfij^ijv re Kai Te^cvTtjv koI uc<ra rCiv otirion airavTuiv t')(^(i>v.
^ Plotinus in Enn.Y. 1, and Porphyry in Cyril. Alex, c. Jul., who, however, were
already unconsciously affected by Christian ideas, speak of rpsfj vnoaTaatu, but in
a sense alt02:ether different from that of the church.
284: SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Again, it was primarily the economic or transitive trinity,
which the church had in mind ; that is, the trinity of the reve-
lation of God in the threefold work of creation, redemption, and
sanctification ; the trinity presented in the apostolic writings as a
living fact. But from this, in agreement with both reason and
Scripture, the immanent or ontologic trinity was inferred; that
is, an eternal distinction in the essence of God itself, which
reflects itself in his revelation, and can be understood only so far
as it manifests itself in his works and words. The divine nature
thus came to be conceived, not as an abstract, blank unity, but
as an infinite fulness of life ; and the Christian idea of God (as
John of Damascus has remarked) in this respect combined Jewish
monotheism with the truth, which lay at the bottom of even the
heathen polytheism, though distorted and defaced there beyond
recognition.
Then for the more definite illustration of this trinity of essence,
speculative church teachers of subsequent times appealed to all
sorts of analogies in nature, particularly in the sphere of the finite
mind, which was made after the image of the divine, and thus to
a certain extent authorizes such a parallel. They found a sort
of tria(l in the universal law of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis;
in the elements of the syllogism ; in the three persons of gram-
mar ; in the combination of body, soul, and spirit in man ; in
the three leading fliculties of the soul ; in the nature of intel-
ligence and knowledge as involving a union of the thinldng sub
ject and the thought object ; and in the nature of love, as like-
wise a union between the loving and the loved.^ These specu-
lations began with Origen and Tertullian ; they were pursued by
Athanasius, Augustine, and by the scholastics and the m3"stics ;
and they are not yet exhausted. For the holy Trinity, though
the most evident, is yet the deepest of mj-steries, and can be ade-
quately explained by no analogies from finite and earthly things.
As the doctrines of the divinity of Christ and of the Holy
Ghost were but imperfectly developed in logical precision in the
' " Ubi amor, ibi trinitas," says St. Augustine.
§ 81. THE HOLY TRINITY. 285
ante-Nicene period, the doctrine of the Trinity, founded on them,
cannot be expected to be more clear. We find it first in the
most simple biblical and practical shape in all the creeds of the
first three centuries ; which, like the Apostles' and the Nicene-
Constantinopolitan, are based on the baptismal formula, and hence
arranged in trinitarian form. Then it appears in the trinitarian
doxologies used in the church from the first ; such as occur even
in the epistle of the church of Smyrna on the martyrdom of Poly-
carp.^ The sentiment, that we rise through the Holy Ghost to
the Son, through the Son to the Father, belongs likewise to the
age of the immediate disciples of the apostles.^ Thus far the
influence of philosophy upon this doctrine is, of course, beyond
supposition. It began with the apologists.
Justin Martyr repeatedly places Father, Son, and Spirit
together as objects of divine worship among the Christians
(though not as being altogether equal in dignity ^), and imputes
to Plato a presentiment of the doctrine of the Trinity. Athe-
nagoras confesses his faith in Father, Son, and Spirit, who are
one y-o.Ta ^Jvwjxiv, but whom he distinguishes as to ^afic, in subor-
dinatian style. Theophilus of Antioch is the first to denote the
relation of the three divine persons^ by the term Triad. ■
Origen conceives the Trinity as three concentric circles, of
which each succeeding one circumscribes a smaller area. God
the Father acts upon all created being ; the Logos only upon the
rational creation ; the Holy Ghost only upon the saints in the
church. But the sanctifj'-ing work of the Spirit leads back to the
Son, and the Son to the Father, who is consequently the ground
and end of all being, and stands highest in dignity as the compass
of his operation is the largest.
Irenaeus goes no further than the baptismal formula and the
' C. 14, where Polycarp concludes his prayer on the scaffold with the words,
MfS-' ov (L e. Christ) aoi (i. e. the Father) koi ni'ri/jun kyiw f] S6^a Kal vvn koI e!g T')Vi /if XA'Ji -
Tflj aiMvas. Comp. at the end of C. 22 : 'O Kvpioi 'Iijo-. XpiorSf . . . . Z v S6^a, oiv Uarpl
Kdi ay!<-y TIviVfjiaTt, Ei'5 rovi alijjvag tiov alwvwv,
" In Irenaeus : Adv. haer. Y. 36, 2.
' Comp. § 80 p. 278 sq.
* Gfdf, Aoyoj, and Ho-bia. By 2';)i ', like Irenaeus, he means the Holy Ghost.
286 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
trinity of revelation ; proceeding on tlie hypothesis of three suc-
cessive stages in the development of the kingdom of God on
earth, and of a progressive communication of God to the world.
He also represents the relation of the persons according to Eph.
iv. 6 ; the Father as above all, and the head of Christ ; the Son
as through all, and the head of the church ; the Spirit as in all,
and the fountain of the water of life.^ Of a supramundane trinity
of essence he betrays but faint indications.
TertuUian advances a step. He supposes a distinction in God
himself; and on the principle that the created image affords a
key to the uncreated original, he illustrates the distinction in the
divine nature by the, analogy of human thought ; the necessity of
a self-projection, or a making one's self objective in word, for
which he borrows from the Valentinians the term irpoiSoXr,^ or pro-
latio rei alterius ex altera,^ but without connecting with it the
sensuous emanation theory of the Gnostics. Otherwise he stands,
as already observed, on subordinatian ground, if his comparisons
of the trinitarian relation to that of root, stem, and fruit, or foun-
tain, flow, and brook, or sun, ray, and raypoint, be dogmatically
pressed.^ Yet he directly asserts also the essential unity of the
three persons.^ Tcrtullian was followed by the schismatic but
orthodox Novatian, the author of a special treatise De Trinitate,
drawn from the Creed, and fortified with Scripture proofs against
the two classes of Monarchians.
The Roman bishop Dionysius (a. d. 262) stood nearest the
Nicene doctrine. He maintained distinctly, in the controversy
with Dionysius of Alexandria, at once the unity of essence and
1 V. 18, 2. 2 Adv. Praxean, c. 8.
3 Tertius — says he, Adv. Prax. c 8— est Spiritus a Doo ct Filio, sicut tertius a
radice Tructiis ex frutice, et tertius a fonte rivus ex flumine, et tertius a sole apex ex
radio. Nihil tamcn a matrice alienatur, a qua proprietates suas ducit. Ita trinitas
(here this word appears for the first time, conip. c. 2: OUovonia quae uuitatem in
trinitatcra disponit) per consertos (al. consortes) et coiiucxos gradus a Patre decurrens
et monaroliiae niliil ol)9trepit et oUovoiiiai statum protegit.
< C. 2 : Tres autem non statu, sed gradu, nee substantia, sed forma, nee potestate,
scd specie, unius autem substantiae, et unius status, et unius potestatis, quia unua
Deus, ex quo et gradus isti et formac et species, in nomine Patris ct Fiiii ct Spiritus
Sancti deputantur.
§ 82. ANTITMNITARIANS, FIRST CLASS. 2S7
tlie real personal distinction of the tliree members of tlie divine
triad, and avoided tritlieism, Sabellianism, and subordinatianism
with the instinct of orthodoxy, and also with the art of anathe-
matizing already familiar to the popes. His view has come down
to ns in a fragment in Athanasius, where it is said : " Then I
must declare against those who annihilate the most sacred doc-
trine of the church by dividing and dissolving the unity of God
into three powers, separate hypostases, and three deities. This
notion (some tritheistic view, not further known to us) is just the
opposite of the opinion of Sabellius. For while the latter would
introduce the impious doctrine, that the Son is the same as the
Father, and the converse, the former teach in some sense three
Gods, by dividing the sacred unity into three fnlly separate
hypostases. But the divine Logos must be inseparably united
with the God of all, and in God also the Holy Ghost must dwell
so that the divine triad must be comprehended in one, viz. the
all-ruling God, as in a head."^ Then he condemns the doctrine,
that the Son is a creature, as "the height of blasphemy," and
concludes: " The divine adorable unity must not be thus cut up
into three deities ; no more may the transcendent dignity and
greatness of the Lord be lowered by saying, the Son is created ;
but we must believe in God the almighty Father, and in Jesus
Christ his Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and must consider the
Logos inseparably united with the God of all ; for he says, I and
my Father are one ; and I am in the Father and the Father in
me. In this way are both the divine triad and the sacred doc-
trine of the unity of the Godhead preserved inviolate."
§ 82. Antiirinitarians. First Class.
Besides the works cited at § 78, comp. Schleiermacher : Ueber den Gegen-
satz der sabellianisclien u. athanasianischen Vorstellung von der Trinitat.
Berl. 1822 (Works, at Theol. Vol. IL). Lobeg. Lange : Geschichte u.
Lehrbegriff der Unitarier vor der niciinischen Synode. Leipz. 1831.
That this goal was at last happily reached, was in great part
' Lriv ^tiav rpiioa ti'j eva iocrrrcp ti'j Kopvipfii/ rti/a (rov Si.'i/ tmi' oXwr, T>f iravToKpaTiipa
\iy(i)) avyKS<pa\atoia^ni tc Kai avfiyea^ai naaa diuyKri. Athan : De decr. Syn. Nic. 26
(Routh, Reliqu. iii. p. 384, ed. alt.).
288 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. lOO-oll.
due again to those controversies with the opponents of the cliurch
doctrine of the Trinity, which filled the whole third century.
These Antitrinitarians are commonly called Monarchians or
Unitarians on account of the stress they laid upon the unity,
fjLovap;;(iut, of God. But we must carefully distinguish among
them two opposite classes : the rationalistic or dynamic Monar-
chians, who denied the divinity of Christ, or explained it as a
mere power ;^ and the patripassian Monarchians, who identified
the Son with the Father, and admitted at most only a modal
trinity, a threefold mode of revelation. The first form of this
heresy, involved in the abstract Jewish monotheism, deistically
sundered the divine and the human, and rose little above Ebionism.
The second proceeded, at least in part, from j^antheistic precon-
ceptions, and approached the ground of Gnostic docetism. The
one prejudiced the dignity of the Son, the other the dignity of
the Father ; yet the latter was by far the more profound and
Christian, and accordingly met with the greater acceptance.
The Monarchians of the first class saw in Christ a mere man,
filled with divine power; but conceived this divine power as
operative in him, not from the baptism only, according to the
Ebionite view, but from the beginning ; and admitted his super-
natural generation by the Holy Ghost. To this class belong :
1. The Alogians -^ a heretical sect in Asia Minor about a. d.
170, of which very little is known. Epiphanius gave them this
name because in the Monarchian interest they rejected the Logos
doctrine and the Logos Gospel. In opposition to Montanism
they likewise rejected Chiliasm and the Apocalypse. They
attributed the writings of John to the Gnostic, Cerinthus.
2. The TiiEODOTiAXS ; so called from their founder, the
tanner Theodotus. He sprang from Byzantium ; denied Christ
in a persecution, with the apology that he only denied a man ;
but still held him to be the supernaturally begotten Messiah.
He gained followers in Eome, but was excommunicated by the
bishop Victor (192-202). After his death his sect chose the
' Aii.(/ii{. * From d and Xoyuj, unreasonable and opponents of the Logos.
§ 82. ANTITRINITARIANS. FIRST CLASS. 289
confessor ISTatalis bishop, who is said to have afterwards peni-
tently returned into the bosom of the Catholic church. A
younger Theodotus, the " money-changer," put Melchizedek as
mediator between God and the angels, above Christ, the medi-
ator between God and men ; and his followers were called Mel-
chizedekians.
3. The Artemonites, or adherents of Artemon, who came
out somewhat later at Eome with a similar opinion, declared the
doctrine of the divinity of Christ an innovation and a relapse to
heathen polytheism; and was excommunicated by Zephyrinus
(202-217). The Artemonites were charged with placing Euclid
and Aristotle above Christ, and esteeming mathematics and dia-
lectics higher than the gospel. This indicates a critical intel-
lectual turn, averse to mystery, and shows that Aristotle was
employed by some against the divinity of Christ, a% Plato was
engaged for it. Their assertion, that the true doctrine was-
obscured in the Eoman church only from the time of Zephy-
rinus^ is explained by the fact brought to light recently through
the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus, that Zephyrinus (and per-
haps his predecessor Victor), against the vehement opposition ol
a portion of the Roman church, favored Patripassianism, and
probably in behalf of this doctrine condemned the Artemonites.
4. Paul of Samosata, from 260 bishop of Antioch, and at
the same time a civil officer,^ denied the personality of the Logos
and of the Holy Ghost, and considered them merely powers- of
God, like reason and mind in man ; but granted that the Eogos
dwelt in Christ in larger measure than in any former messenger
of God, and taught, like the Sociniaus in later times, a gradual
elevation of Christ, determined by his own moral development,. to
divine dignity.^ To introduce his Christology into the mind of the
people, he undertook to alter the church hymns, but was shrewd
enough to accommodate himself to the orthodox formulas, calling
Christ, for example, " God of the Yirgin,"^ and ascribing to him
even homoousia with the Father, but of course in his own sense.
' Euseb. V. 28. 2 Ducenarius procurator.
3 A ■S-eoTroi'/jo-if £(c rrpoKoiriJs. * 0£of CK nap^efov,
19
290 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
The bishops under him in Syria accused him not only of heresy
but also of extreme vanity, arrogance, pompousness, avarice, and
undue concern with secular business ; and at a council in 269
they pronounced his deposition. But as he was favored by the
queen Zenobia of Palmyra, the deposition could not be executed
till after her subjection by the emperor Aurelius in 272, and
after consultation with the Italian bishops. His overthrow
decided the fall of the Monarchians ; though they still appear at
the end of the fourth century as condemned heretics, under the
name of Samosatenians, Paulianists, and Sabellians.
§ 83. Second Class of Antitrinitarians.
TMfe second class of Monarchians, called by Tertullian Patri-
passians (ae afterwards a branch of the Monophysites was called
Theopaschites), together with their unitarian zeal, felt the deeper
Christian impulse to hold fast the divinity of Christ ; but they
sacrificed to it his independent personality, which they merged
in the essence of the Father.
1. The first prominent advocate of the Patripassian heresy was
Praxeas of Asia Minor. He came to Rome under Marcus
Aurelius with the renown of a confessor ; procured there the
condemnation of Montanism; and propounded his Patripas-
sianism, to which he gained even the bishop Victor. But Ter-
tullian met him in vindication at once of Montanism and of
hypostasianism with crushing logic, and charged him with having
executed at Rome two commissions of the devil : having driven
away the Holy Ghost, and having crucified the Father.^ Ac-
cording to Tertullian, Praxeas, constantly appealing to Is. xlv.
5 ; Jno. X. 30 (" I and my Father are one"), and xiv. 9 sq. (" He
that hath seen me hath seen the Father"), as if the whole Bible
consisted of these three passages, taught that the Father himself
became man, hungered, thirsted, suffered, and died in Christ.
True, he would not be understood as speaking directly of a suf-
* " Paracletum fugavit ct Patrera crucifixit."
§ 83. SECOND CLASS OF ANTITRINITAEIAJSTS. 291
fering (pati) of tlie Father, but only of a sympathy (copati) of the
Father with the Son ; but in any case he lost the independent
personality of the Son. He conceived the relation of the Father
to the Son as like that of the spirit to the flesh. The same sub-
ject, as spirit, is the Father ; as flesh, the Son. He thought the
Catholic doctrine tritheistic.
2. NoETUS of Smyrna published the same view about A.D. 200,
appealing also to Rom. ix. 5, where Christ is called the one God
over all. When censured by a council he argued in vindication
of himself, that his doctrine enhanced the glory of Christ.^ The
author of the Philosophoumena places him in connexion with the
pantheistic philoso|)hy of Heraclitus, whoj as we here for the first
time learn, viewed nature as the harmony of all antitheses, and
called the universe at once dissoluble and indissoluble, originated
and unoriginated, mortal and immortal ; and thus Noetus sup-
posed that the same divine subject must be able to combine oppo-
site attributes in itself.
3. Callistus (pope Calixtus I.) adopted and advocated the
doctrine of Noetus, which Epigonus and Cleomenes, disciples of
Noetus,^ propagated in Rome under favor of pope Zephyrinus.
He declared the Son merely the manifestation of the Father in
human form ; the Father animating the Son, as the spirit ani-
mates the body,^ and suffering with him on the cross. " The
Father," says he, " who was in the Son, took flesh and made it
Grod, uniting it with himself and made it one. Father and Son
were therefore the name of the one God, and this one person *
cannot be. two ; thus the Father suffered with the Son." He
considered his opponents " ditheists," ^ and they in return called
his followers " Callistians."
These and other disclosures respecting the church at Rome
during the first quarter of the third century, we owe, as already
observed, to the ninth book of the Philosophoumena of Hip-
polytus, who was, however, it must be remembered, the leading
' Ti ovf KaKOV TTitM^ he asked, iu^ii^Mv rdv ^picrov;
2 Not his teachers, as was supposed by former historians, including Neander.
3 JnO. Xiv. 11. ^ riooacjTTJi'. * Ai^€oi.
292 SECOND PERIOD, A.D. 100-311.
opponent and rival of Callistus, and in bis own doctrine of the
Trinity inclined to the opposite subordinatian extreme. He calls
Callistus, evidently with passion, an " unreasonable and treach-
erous man, who brought together blasphemies from above and
below, only to speak against the truth, and was not ashamed to
fall now into the error of Sabellius, now into that of Theodotus"
(of which latter, however, he shows no trace). After the death
of Callistus, who occupied the papal chair between 218 and 223
or 224, Patripassianisra disappeared from the Roman church,
4, Beryllus of Bostra, in Arabia, From him we have only
a somewhat obscure and very variously interpreted passage pre-
served in Eusebius,^ He denied the personal pre-existence^ and
in general the independent divinity^ of Christ, but at the same
time asserted the indwelling of the divinity of the Father* in him
during his earthly life. He forms, in some sense, the stepping-
stone from simple Patripassianism to Sabellian modalism. At
an Arabian synod in 244, where the presbyter Origen, then him-
self accused of heresy, was called into consultation, Beryllus was
convinced of his error by that great teacher, and was persuaded
particularly of the existence of a human soul in Christ, in place
of which he had probably put his "jrarpixvg Sjott;;:, as Apollinaris
in a later period put the Xdyo?. He is said to have thanked
Origen afterwards for his instruction. Here we have one of the
very few theological disputations which have resulted in unity
instead of greater division.
5. Sabellius, we learn from the Philosophoumena, spent
some time in Rome in the beginning of the third cejitury, and
was first gained by Callistus to Patripassianism, but when the
latter became bishop, about 220, he was excommunicated.^ Af-
terwards we find him presbyter of Ptolemais in Egypt. There
his heresy, meantime modified, found so much favor, that Diony-
sius, bishop of Alexandria, excommunicated him at a council in
» H. E. VI. 33.
2 'IJj'a oiaiai ncpiyn^ifi'i, i. c. a circutnscribcd, limited, Separate existence.
3 'T«5iu ^cirns. * 'H narpiKfi dcdrrii.
6 Or was this possibly anotlicr Sabellius?
§ 83. SECOND CLASS OF ANTITRINITARIANS. 293
that city in 261, and, in vehement opposition to him, declared
in ahnost Arian terms for the hypostatical independence and
subordination of the Son in relation to the Father. This led
the Sabellians to complain of that bishop to Dionysius of Eome,
who held a council in 262, and in a special treatise controverted
Sabellianism, as well as subordinatianism and tritheism, with
nice orthodox tact.^ The bishop of Alexandria very cheerfully
yielded, and retracted his assertion of the creaturely inferiority
of the Son in favor of the orthodox o^oourfjo^. Thus the strife
was for a while allayed, to be renewed with still greater violence
by Arius half a century later.
Sabellius is by far the most original, ingenious, and profound
of the Monarchians. His system is known to us only from a
few fragments, and some of these not altogether consistent, in
Athanasius and other fathers. It was very fully developed,
and has been revived in modern times by Schleiermacher in a
peculiarly modified form.
While the other Monarchians confine their inquiry to the
relation of Father and Son, Sabelhus embraces the Holy Ghost
in his speculation, and reaches a trinity, not a simultaneous
trinity of essence, however, but only a successive trinity of reve-
lation. He starts from a distinction of the monad and the triad
in the divine nature. His fundamental thought is, that the
unity of God, without distinction in itself, unfolds or extends
itself^ in the course of the world's development in three different
forms and periods of revelation,^ and, after the completion of
redemption, returns into unity. The Father reveals himself in
the giving of the law or the Old Testament economy (not in the
creation also ; this in his view precedes the trinitarian revela-
tion) ; the Son, in the incarnation ; the Holy Ghost, in inspira-
tion. He illustrates the trinitarian relation by comparing the
Father to the disc of the sun, the Son to its enlightening power,
the Spirit to its warming influence. He is said also to have
' Comp, the close of § 81 above. "^ 'H jxuvaq TrXarw^iTaa yiyui/c rpids.
3 'Oi'Ofiara, TrpoVtoTrn, — not in the orthodox sense of the term, however, but in the
primary sense of mask, or part (in a play).
294 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
lilvened the Father to the body, the Son to the soul, the Holy
Ghost to the spirit of man ; but this is unworthy of his evident
speculative discrimination. Ilis view of the Logos/ too, is pecu-
liar. The Logos is not identical with the Son, but is the monad
itself in its transition to triad ; that is, God conceived as vital
motion and creating principle, the speaking God,^ in distinction
from the silent God.^ Each ■tfpoo'wTrov is another Siakiysd'hai, and
the three *porfw*a together are only successive evolutions of the
Logos or the worldward aspect of the divine nature. As the
Logos proceeded from God, so he returns at last into him, and
the process of trinitarian development* closes.
Athanasius traced the doctrine of Sabellius to the Stoic phi-
losophy. The common element is the pantheistic leading view
of an expansion and contraction^ of the divine nature immanent
in the world. In the Pythagorean system also, in the Gospel
of the Egyptians, and in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, there
are kindred ideas. But the originality of Sabellius cannot be
brought into question by these. His theory broke the way for
the Nicene church doctrine, by its full co-ordination of the three
persons. He differs from the orthodox standard mainly in de-
nying the ..trinity of essence and the permanence of the trinity
of manifestation ; making Father, Son, and Holy Ghost only
temporary phenomena, which falfil their mission and return
into the abstract monad.
§ 84. Redemption.
CoTTA : Histor. doctrinse de redemptione sanj^uine J. Clir. facta (in Gerhard :
Loci theol, vol. iv. p. 105-134). Ziegler : Hist, dop^matis de redemp-
tione. Gott. 1791 (rationalistic). K. Baehr: Die Lehre der Kirche vom
Tode Jesu in den drei ersten Jahrli., Sulzb. 1832 (against the orthodox
doctrine of the satisfadio vicaria). F. C. Baur : Die christl. Lehre von
der Versohnung in ihrer geschichtl. Entw. von der jiltesten Zeit bis auf
die neueste. Tiib. 1838 (p. 23-67; very learned and speculative but
resulting in Hegelian pantheism). L. Duncker: Des heil. Irenaeus
' Which has been for the tirst time duly brought out by Dr. Baur.
5 "ExruTts, or -Xnrv^jiiii. and o-yuroXi?.
§ 84. REDEMPTION. 295
Christologie. Gott. 1843 (p. 217 sqq. ; purely objective). Baumgarten
Cbusius : Compendium der christl. Dogmengeschichte. Leipz. 2d Eart,
1846, § 95 sqq. (p. 257 sqq.)
The work of the triune God, in his self-revelation, is the sal-
vation, or redemption and reconciliation of the world : nega-
tively, the emancipation of humanity from the guilt and power
of sin and death ; positively, the communication of the right-
eousness and life of fellowship with God. First, the discord
between the Creator and the creature must be adjusted ; and
then man can be carried onward to his destined perfection. Ee-
conciliation with God is the ultimate aim of every religion. In
heathenism it was only darkly guessed and felt after, and anti-
cipated in perverted, fleshly forms. In Judaism it was divinely
promised, typically foreshadowed, and historically prepared. In
Christianity it is revealed in objective reality, according to the
eternal counsel of the love and wisdom of God, through the life,
death, and resurrection of Christ, and is being continually ap-
plied subjectively to individuals in the church by the Holy
Ghost, through the means of grace, on condition of repentance
and faith. Christ is, exclusively and absolutely, the Saviour of
the world, and the Mediator between God and man.
The apostolic scriptures, in the fulness of their inspiration,
everywhere bear witness of this salvation wrought through
Christ, as a living fact of experience. But it required time for
the profound ideas of a Paul and a John to come up clearly to
the view of the church ; indeed, to this day they remain unfa-
thomed. Here again experience anticipated theology. The
church lived from the first on the atoning sacrifice of Christ.
The cross ruled all Christian thought and conduct, and fed the
spirit of martyrdom. But the primitive church teachers lived
more in the thankful enjoyment of redemption, than in logical
reflection upon it. We perceive in their exhibitions of this
blessed mystery the language rather of enthusiastic feeling, than
of careful definition and acute analysis. Moreover, this doctrine
was never, like Christology and the doctrine of the Trinity, a
subject of special controversy within the ancient church. The
296 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. lUU-oll.
oecumenical symbols touch it only in general terms. The Apos-
tles' Creed presents it in the article on the forgiveness of sins on
the ground of the divine-human life and passion of Christ. The
Nicene Creed says, a little more definitely, that Christ became
man for our salvation,^ and died for us, and rose again.
Nevertheless, all the essential elements of the later church
doctrine of redemption may be found, either expressed or im-
plied, before the close of the second century. The negative
part of the doctrine, the subjection of the devil, the prince
of the kingdom of sin and death, was naturally most dwelt on
in the patristic period, on account of the, existing conflict of
Christianity with heathenism, which was regarded as wholly
ruled by Satan and demons. Even in the New Testament, par-
ticularly in Col. ii. 15, Ileb. ii. 1-i, and 1 John iii. 8, the victory
over the devil is made an integral part of the work of Christ.
But this view was carried out in the early church in a very
peculiar and, to some extent, mythical way ; and in this form
continued current, until the satisfaction theory of Anselm gave
a new turn to the development of the dogma. The victory over
Satan was conceived now as a legal ransom of man from him by
the payment of a stipulated price, to wit, the death of Christ ;
now as a cheat upon him,^ either intentional and deserved, or
due to his own infatuation.
The theological development of the doctrine of the work of Chi'ist
began with the struggle against Jewish and heathen influences, and
at the same time with the development of the doctrine of the person
of Christ, which is inseparable from that of his work, and indeed
fundamental to it. Ebionism, with its deistic and legal spirit,
could not raise its view above the prophetic office of Christ to
the priestly and the kingly, but saw in him only a new teacher
and legislator. Gnosticism, from the naturalistic and pantheistic
position of heathendom, looked upon redemption as a physical
and intellectual process, liberating the spirit from the bonds of
matter, the supposed principle of evil ; reduced the human life
i ■> Ai'< r(> /(/itrtpuf ffurijpiuv. 2 1 Cor. ii. 8, misapprehended.
§ 84.. REDEMPTION. 297
and passion of Clirist to a vain show ; and could ascribe at best
only a symbolical virtue to his death. For this reason even
Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, in their opposition to doce-
tism, insist so earnestly on the reality of the humanity and death
of Jesus as the source of our reconciliation with God.^
In Justin Martyr and the Epistle to Diognetus appear traces
of the doctrine of satisfaction, though in very indefinite terms.
Irenaeus is the first of all the church teachers, to give a careful
analysis of the work of redemption, and his view is by far the
deepest and soundest we find in the first three centuries. Christ,
he teaches, as the second Adam, repeated in himself the entire
life of man, from birth to death and hades, from childhood to
manhood, and as it were summed up that life and brought it
under one head,^ with the double purpose of restoring humanity
from its fall and carrying it to perfection. Eedemption com-
prises the taking away of sin by the perfect obedience of Christ ;
the destruction of death by victory over the devil ; and the com-
munication of a new divine life to man. To accomplish this
work, the Redeemer must unite in himself the divine and human
natures; for only as God could he do what man could not,
and only as man could he do in a legitimate way, what man
should. By the voluntary disobedience of Adam the devil
gained a power over man, but in an unfair way, by fraud.^ By
the voluntary obedience of Christ that power was wrested from
him by lawful means.'' This took place first in the temptation,
in which Christ renewed or recapitulated the struggle of Adam
with Satan, but defeated the seducer, and thereby liberated man
from his thraldom. But then the whole life of Christ was a con-
tinuous victorious conflict with Satan, and a constant obedience
to God. This obedience completed itself in the suffering and
death on the tree of the cross, and thus blotted out the disobe-
dience which the first Adam had committed on the tree of know-
' Comp. § 79.
2 This, as already intimated in a former connexion, is the sense of bis frequent
expression: ' Ai'aicipiXatovi', diniKepaXaiuiaii, recapitulare, recapitulatio.
3 Dissuasio.
■* By suadela. persuasion, anuouneeraent of truth, not overreaching or deception.
298 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
ledge. This, however, is only the negative side. To this is
added, as already remarked, the communication of a new divine
princijDle of life, and the perfecting of the idea of humanity first
effected by Christ.
Origen differs from Irenaeus in considering man, in conse-
quence of sin, the lawful property of Satan, and in representing
the victory over Satan as an outwitting of tlie enemy, who had
no claim to the sinless soul of Jesus, and therefore could not
keep it in death. The ransom was paid, not to God, but to
Satan, who thereby lost his right in man. Here Origen touches
on mythical Gnosticism. He contemplates the death of Christ,
however, from other points of view also, as an atoning sacrifice
of love offered to God for the sins of the world ; as the highest
proof of perfect obedience to God ; and as an example of patience.
He singularly extends the virtue of this redemption to the whole
spirit world, to fallen angels as well as men, in connexion with
his hypothesis of a final restoration. The only one of the fathers
who accomj)anies him in this is Gregory of Nyssa.
The doctrine of the subjective appropriation of salvation, the
doctrine of faith, justification, and sanctification, was as yet far
less perfectly formed than the objective dogma; and in the
nature of the case, must follow the latter. If any one expects to
find in this period, or in any of the church fathers, Augustine
himself not excepted, the Protestant doctrine of justification by
faith alone as the "articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae," he
will be greatly disappointed. The incarnation of the Logos, his
true divinity and true humanity, stand most unmistakably in the
foreground, as the fundamental dogma. Paul's doctrine of justi-
fication, except perhaps in Clement of Rome, wlio joins it with
the doctrine of James, is left very much out of view, and awaits
the age of the reformation to be more thoroughly established and
understood. The fathers lay chief stress on sanctification and
good works, and show the already existing germs of the Roman
Catholic doctrine of the meritoriousness and even the superero-
gatory meritoriousness of Christian virtue.
The doctrine of the church, as the communion of grace, we
§ 85. CHILIASM. 299
sliall better consider in the section on tlie constitution of the
church ;^ the doctrine of the sacraments, as the objective means
of appropriating grace, in connexion with worship.^
§ 85. Chiliasm. *
I, Barnabas : Epist. c. 15. Papias, in Euseb. III. 39. Just. Mart. : Dial.
c. Tryph. Jud. c. 80. Iren. : Adv. haer. V. 24-36. Tertull. : De resurr.
earn. 25 ; Adv. Marc. III. 24, IV. 29. Caius, in Euseb. III. 28. Oris. :
Deprinc. II. 11.
II. CoRRODi: Kritische Geschichte des Chiliasmus. Ziir. 1794. 4 vols (very
unsatisfactory). Munscher : • Lehre vom tausendjahrigen Reich in den
3 ersten Jahrh. (in Henke's Magazine, VI. 2, p. 233 sqq.) Semisch :
Chiliasmus (in Herzog's Encyclop. II. p. 657-671). D. T. Taylor : The
Voice of the Church on the Coming and Kingdom of the Redeemer ; a
History of the Doctrine of the Reign of Christ on Earth. Revised by
Hastings. 2nd ed. Peace Dale, R. I. 1855.
The most striking point in the eschatology of the ancient
church is the widely current and very prominent chihasm, or
the doctrine of a visible reign of Christ in glory on earth with
the risen saints for a thousand years. The Jewish hope of a
Messianic kingdom, which rested on carnal misapprehension of
the prophetic figures, was transplanted to the soil of Christianity,
but here spiritualized, and fixed on the second coming of Christ
instead of the first ; and this earthly sabbath of the church was .
no longer regarded -as the goal of her course, but only as a pre-
lude to the endless blessedness of heaven.^
The Christian chiliasm, if we leave out of sight the sensuous
and fahatical extravagance, into which it has frequently run,
both in ancient and in modern times, is based on the unfulfilled
promises of the Lord,'* and particularly on the apocalyptic figure
of his thousand years' reign upon earth after the first resurrec-
tion f in connexion with the numerous passages respecting his
glorious return, which declare it to be near, and yet uncertain
and unascertainable as to its day and hour, that believers may
> See § 105 sqq , especially § 111. 2 See §§ 102-104.
3 Rev. XX. 1 sqq., comp. with xxi. 1 sqq.
'' Matt. V. 4, six. 29. Luke xiv. 12 sqq. 5 Rev. xx. 1-6.
300 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
be always ready for it.^ Tins precious hope, through the whole
age of persecutiou, was a copious fountain of encouragement
and comfort under the pains of that martyrdom which sowed
in blood the seed of a glorious harvest for the church.
Ilence we find chiliasm not only among the heretical Jewish-
Christians and the Montanists, with whom it was a fundamental
article of faith ; but also, in a purified form, in a number of
orthodox church teachers. Barnabas considers the Mosaic his-
tory of the creation a type of six ages of labor for the world, with
a thousand years' sabbath of blessed rest ; since with God " one
(lay is as a thousand years."^ Papias of Hierapolis appealed, in
support of his somewhat quaint notions of the happiness of the
millennial reign, to apostolic traditions ; but the other apostolic
fathers make no express mention of the subject. Justin Martyr
regarded the expectation of the earthly perfection of the church
as the keystone of pure doctrine, but knew orthodox Christians
who did not share it ; as, indeed, the other apologists are at least
silent respecting it. Irenaeus, on the strength of tradition from
St. John and his disciples, taught that after the destruction of
the Roman empire, and the brief raging of antichrist, Christ will
visibly appear, will bind Satan, will reign at the rebuilt city of
Jerusalem with the little band of faithful confessors and the host
of risen martyrs over the nations of the earth, and will celebrate
the millennial sabbath of preparation for the eternal glory of
heaven ; then, after a temporary liberation of Satan, follows the
final victory, the general resurrection, the judgment of the world,
and the consummation in the new heavens and the new earth.
Tertullian, in behalf of his chiliastic ideas, pointed not only to the
Apocalypse, but also to the predictions of the Montanist prophets.
But Millenarianism became frequently, especially with the Mon-
tanists in Asia Minor, so colored in the grossly sensuous style
of Judaism, that it provoked opposition, first in the Roman
church and then in the Alexandrian school. The presbyter
Caius, towards the end of the second century, in controversy
' Comp. Matt. xxiv. 33, 3G. Mark xiii. 32. Acts i. 7. 1 Thess. v. 1, 2. 2 Pet.
iii. 10. Rev. i. 3 ; iii. 3. ' Ps. xc. 4.
§ 85. CHILIASM. 801
witli the Montanist Proclus, referred chiliasm, and perhaps
even the Apocalypse of John, to the hated heretic Cerinthus ;
and Origen spiritualized the symbolical language of the Eevela-
tion. Yet even in Egypt chiliasm had many friends. In the
"West ii maintained itself still longer, and found advocates in
Commodian towards the close of the third century, and Lactan-
tius and Victorinus in the beginning of the fourth.
In the age of Constantine, however, a radical change took
place in tliis belief. After Christianity, contrary to all expecta-
tion, triumphed in the Eoman emjDire, and was embraced by the
Caesars themselves, the millennial reign, instead of being anxi-
ously waited and prayed for, began to be dated either fi'om the
first appearance of Christ, or from the conversion of Constantine,
and to be regarded as realized in the glory of the dominant impe-
rial state-church. From that time chiliasm, not indeed in its
essence, as the hope of a golden age of the church on earth, and
of a great sabbath of the world after the hard labor of the world's
history, but in its distorted Ebionistic form, took its place among
the heresies, and was rejected subsequently even by the Protes-
tant reformers as a Jewish dream.
CHAPTER V.
THE CHKISTIAN LIFE IN CONTRAST "WITH PAGAN CORRUPTION.
I. The -works of the Apostolic FAxnERS. The Apologies of Justin. The
practical treatises of Tertullian. The Epistles of Cvprian. The De-
crees of Councils. The Apostolical Constitutions and Canons. The
Acts of the Martyrs.
II. G. Arnold : Erste Liebe, d. i. Wahre Abbildung dor ersten Christen.
Frankf. 1G96, and often since. Neander: Denkwiirdigkeiten aus der
Geschichte des christlichen Lebens (first 1823), vol. i. Ilamb., 1845, 3d
ed. The same in EngUsh by Ryland : Neanders Memorials of Christian
Life, in Bohn's Library, 1853. Coleman : Ancient Christianity exem-
plified in the private, domestic, social, and civil Life of the Primitive
Christians, &c. Phil. 1853. C. Schmidt : Essai historique sur la sod4t4
dans le monde Remain, et sur la transformation par le Christianisme.
Par. 1853. The same transl. into German by A. V. Richard. Leipz.
1857. Chastel : £tudes historiques sur I'influence de la charite durant
les premiers siecles chret. Par. 1853. The same transl. into English
(" The Charity of the Primitive Churches"), by G. A. Matile. Phila.
1857. Villemain : Nouveaux essais sur I'infl. du Christianisme dans le
monde Grec et Latin. Par. 1853. Comp. also the works cited at § 58,
above, on Christian martyrdom.
§ 86. Moral Corruption in the Roman Empire.
Christianity is not only the revelation of truth, but also the
fountain of holiness. It attests its divine origin as much by its
moral workings as by its pure doctrines. By its own inherent
energy, without noise and commotion, without the favor of cir-
cumstances, nay, in spite of all possible obstacles, it has gradu-
ally wrought the greatest and most beneficent moral reformation,
wc should rather say, regeneration, of society, which history has
ever seen. To appreciate this work, we must first review the
moral condition of heathenism in its mightiest embodiment in
history.
§ 86. MORAL CORRUPTION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 803
When Christianity took firm foothold on earth, the pagan
civilization and the Roman empire had reached their zenith.
The reign of Augustus was the golden age of Roman literature ;
his successors added Britain and Dacia to the conquests of the
Republic ; internal organization was perfected bj Trajan and
the Antonines. The fairest countries of Europe, and a consider-
able part of Asia and Africa, then stood under one imperial
government with republican forms, and enjoyed a well ordered
jurisdiction. Military roads, canals, and the Mediterranean Sea
facilitated commerce and travel ; agriculture was improved, and
all branches of industry flourished. Temj)les, theatres, aque-
ducts, public baths, and magnificent buildings of every kind
adorned the great cities ; institutions of learning disseminated
culture ; two languages with a classic literature were current in
the empire, the Greek in the East, the Latin in the "West ; the
book trade, with the manufacture of paper, was a craft of no
small importance, and a library belonged to every respectable
house. The excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum reveal a
high degree of convenience and taste in domestic life ; and no
one can look at the sublime and eloquent ruins of Rome, above
all the Colosseum built by Vespasian for more than eighty thou-
sand spectators, without amazement at the energy and majesty
of the old Roman empire.
But the age of the full bloom of the Graeco-Roman culture
and empire was also the first period of its decline. This impos-
ing show concealed incurable moral putridity and indescribable
wretchedness. The most colossal piles owed their erection to
the bloody sweat of innumerable slaves, who were treated no
better than as many beasts of burden ; on the above-named
amphitheatre alone toiled twelve thousand Jewish prisoners of
war. Even in the later times of the republic, and still more
under the emperors, the influx of wealth from conquered nations
diffused the most extravagant luxury, which collected for a sin-
gle meal peacocks from Samos, pike from Pessinus, oysters from
Tarentum, dates from Egypt, nuts from Spain, in short the
rarest dishes from all parts of the world, and resorted to emetics
804 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
to stimulate appetite and to lighten the stomach. A special class
of servants, the cosmetes, had charge of the dress, the smooth-
ing of the wrinkles, the setting of the false teeth, the painting
of the eye-brows, of wealthy patricians. Hand in hand with this
luxur}^ came the vices of natural and even unnatural sensuality,
which decency refuses to name. Comfortless poverty stood in
crying contrast witli immeasurable wealth ; exhausted provinces,
with revelling cities. Enormous taxes burdened the people, and
misery was terribly increased, especially in the second and third
centuries, by all sorts of public misfortunes. The higher or
ruling families were enervated, and were not strengthened or
replenished by the lower. The free citizens lost all physical
and moral vigor, and sank to an inert mass. The third class
was the huge body of slaves, who performed almost all kinds
of mechanical labor, even the tilling of the soil, and in times of
danger were ready to join the enemies of the empire. A proper
middle class, the only firm basis of a healthy community, there
was not. The army, composed largely of the rudest citizens and
of barbarians, was the heart of the nation, and gradually stamped
the government with the character of an arbitrary military des-
potism. The virtues of patriotism, and of good faith in public
intercourse, were extinct. The basest avarice, suspicion and
envy, usariousness and bribery, insolence and servility, eveiy-
where prevailed.
The work of demoralizing the people was systematically orga-
nized and sanctioned from the highest places downwards. There
were, it is true, some worthy emperors of old Roman energy and
justice ; among whom Titus, Trajan, Adrian, Antoninus Pius,
and Marcus Aurelius stand foremost. But the best they could
do was to check the process of internal putrefaction and to con-
ceal the sores for a little while ; they could not heal them. Most
of the emperors were coarse military despots, and some of them
monsters of immorality. There are few periods in the history
of the world, in which so many and so hideous vices have dis-
graced the throne, as in the period from Tiberius to Constan-
tine. * We are familiar with the dark misanthropy, the tiger-like
§ 86. MORAL COREUPTIOX IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 305
cruelty, and the wild voluptuousness of Tiberius ; the madness
of Caligula, "wlio had men sawed in pieces for his amusement,
raised his horse to the dignity of consul and priest, and crawled
under the bed in a storm ; the bottomless vileness and childish
vanity of the arch-tyrant Nero, who practised unnatural vices
with the most shocking shamelessness ; who in sheer wanton-
ness set fire to Rome, and then burnt the innocent Christians for
it as torches in his gardens ; who either poisoned with his own
hand, or murdered by the hands of accomplices, his precejjtors
Burrhus and Seneca, his half-brother and brother-in-law Britan-
nicus, his mother Agrippina, his wife Octavia, his mistress Pop-
paea ; and finally, supported by a servant, stabbed himself, ex-
claiming : " What an artist dies in me !" — the swinish gluttony
of Vitellius ; the dark suspicion, the refined wickedness, and the
blasphemous pride of Domitian, who, more a cat than a tiger,,
amused himself most with the torments of the dying and with,
catching flies ; the bloodthirstiness and shameless revelry of
Commodus with his hundreds of concubines; the infernal vil-
lany of the youth Heliogabalus, whose greatest delight was, to
raise the lowest men to the highest dignities of the state, to dress
himself in women's clothes, to be called empress, to marry a dis-
solute boy like himself, in short to invert all the laws of nature
and of decency, until at last he was butchered with his mother
by the soldiers, and thrown into the muddy Tiber. And to fill
the measure of impiety and wickedness, such imperial monsters,,
after Augustus, from whose ashes an eagle rose, and whose soul,,
as a senator testified on oath, had visibly ascended to heaven,,
were received after their death, by a formal decree of the senate,,
into the number of the gods, and their abandoned memory was
celebrated by festivals, temples, and colleges of priests ! Domi-
tian, even in his lifetime, caused himself to be called " Bominus
et Deus noster," and whole herds of animals to be sacrificed to
his gold and silver statues. Surely this was not only the height
of adulation, but a public and official mockery of all morality
and religion. »
From the higher regions the corruption descended into the
20
306 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
masses of the people, who by this time had no sense for any-
thing but bread and public sports, " panern et circenses," and, in
the enjoyment of these, looked with morbid curiosity and interest
upon the most flagrant vices of their masters. The earnest
Stoic, Seneca, hesitates not to say of this imperial age : " All is
full of outrage and vice ; a monstrous prize contest of wicked-
ness is being enacted ; the desire to sin increases, and shame
decreases, every day. . . , Vice is no longer even practised
secretly, but in open view. Vileness gains on all the streets and
in every breast, so that innocence has become not only rare, but
altogether extinct."
No wonder Tacitus, with the many cruelties before him, which
he recounts with old Roman earnestness, in his immortal history,
could nowhere, save perhaps among the barbarian Germans,
discover a star of hope, and foreboded the fearful vengeance of
the gods, and even the speedy destruction of the empire. And
certainly nothing could save the empire from this final doom,
whose approach was announced with ever growing distinctness
by wars, insurrections, inundations, earthquakes, pestilence,
famine, irruption of barbarians, and prophetic calamities of every
kind.
The ancient world of classic heathenism, having arrived at
the height of its glory, and at the threshold of its decay, had
exhausted all the resources of human nature left to itself, and
possessed no recuperative force, no regenerative principle. A
regeneration of society could only proceed from religion. But
the heathen religion had no restraint for vice, no comfort for the
poor and oppressed ; it was itself the muddy fountain of im-
morality. God, therefore, who in his infinite mercy desired not
the destruction but the salvation of the race, opened in midst of
this hopeless decay of a false religion a pure fountain of holiness^
love, and peace, in the only true and universal religion of his
Son Jesus Christ.
§ 87. TJie Ckristimi Morality in Oeneral.
In this cheerless waste of pagan corruption the small and
§ 87. THE CHEISTIAN MORALITY IN GENERAL. 307
despised band of Christians was an oasis fresh, with life and hope.
It was really the salt of the earth, and the light of the world.
Poor in this world's goods, it bore in its bosom the imperishable
treasures of the kingdom of heaven. Meek and lowly in heart,
it was destined, according to the promise of the Lord, without a
stroke of the sword, to inherit the earth. In submission it
conquered ; by suffering and death it won the crown of life.
To do full justice to this great subject we should have to enter
into an analysis of the principles of Christian ethics in its
immeasurable superiority over the heathen standard of morality
even under its most favorable forms. But the historian is
limited to the facts placed before him in the particular age of
which he treats. The Christian life, moreover, reveals itself in
its full power and extent only in the long process of successive
ages and centuries. Yet it is present and makes itself felt at
every stage, both in the individual and social sphere, reflecting
in their concrete phenomena and facts more or less purely the
general and eternal principles on which it is founded.
Christianity, indeed, does not come "with outward observa-
tion." Its deepest workings are silent and inward. The opera-
tions of divine grace in the regeneration, conversion, and sancti-
fication of individuals, commonly shun the notice of the historian,
and await their revelation on the great day of judgment, when
all that is secret shall be made known. Who, for example, can
measure the depth and breadth of all those pure and blessed
experiences of forgiveness, peace, gratitude, trust in God, love
for God and love for man, humility and meekness, patience and
resignation, which have bloomed as vernal flowers on the soil of
the renewed heart since the first Christian Pentecost? Who
can tell the number and the fervor of the Christian prayers and
intercessions, which have gone up unuttered from lonely
chambers, caves, deserts, and martyrs' graves, in the silent night
and the open day, for friends and enemies, for all classes of man-
kind, even for blood-thirsty persecutors, to the throne of the
exalted Saviour ? But where this Christian life has taken root
in the depths of the soul it must show itself in the outward
808 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
conduct, and exert a sanctifyang influence on every calling and
sphere of action. The Christian morality surpassed all that the
noblest philosophers of heathendom had ever taught or labored
for as the highest aim of man. The masterly picture of it in the
anonymous Epistle to Diognetus^ is no mere fancy sketch, but a
faithful copy from real life. When the apologists of the second
and third centuries indignantly rej)el the calumnies of the
enemies of the Christians, and with a confidence fearless of con-
tradiction point to the unfeigned piety, the earnest reverence for
God, the warm brotherly love, the self-denying love for enemies,
the purity and chastity, the faithfulness and integrity, the
patience and gentleness, of the confessors of the name of Jesus,
we everywhere feel that they speak from daily experience and
personal observation. " "We, who once served lust," could
Justin Martyr say without exaggeration, " now find our delight
only in pure morals ; we, who once followed sorcery, have now
consecrated ourselves to the eternal good God ; we, who once
loved gain above all, now give up what we have for the com-
mon use, and share with every needy one ; we, who once hated
and killed each other ; we, who would have no common hearth
with foreigners for difference of customs, now, since the appear-
ance of Christ, live with them, pray for our enemies, seek to con-
vince those, who hate us without cause, that they may regulate
their life according to the glorious teachings of Christ, and
receive from the all-ruling God the same blessings with our-
selves." Tertullian could boast, that he knew no Christians,
who suffered by the hand of the executioner, except for their
religion. Minutius Felix tells the heathens: "You prohibit
adultery by law, and practise it in secret ; you punish wicked-
ness only in the overt act ; we look upon it as criminal even in
thought. You dread the inspection of others ; we stand in awe
of nothing but our own consciences as becomes Christians. And
finally your prisons are overflowing with ci'iminals ; but they
are all heathens, not a Christian is there, unless he be an
' Soc § 4G. p. 146 sq.
§ 87. THE CHRISTIAN MORALITY IN GENERAL. 309
apostate." Even tlie lieathen Plinj wrote to Trajan, that the
Christians, whom he questioned by the rack respecting the
character of their rehgion, bound themselves by an oath never
to commit theft, robbery, nor adultery, nor to break their word,
— and this, too, at a time, when the sins of fraud, uncleanness,
and lasciviousness of every form, abounded all around. Another
heathen, Lucian, bears testimony to their incredible benevolence
and charity for their brethren in distress, while he attempts to
ridicule this virtue as foolish weakness in an age of unbounded
selfishness.
The humble and painful condition of the church under civil
oppression made hypocrisy in the confession of Christianity
much more rare at that day than in more favorable times, and
produced the fairest bloom of the Christian graces, of fervor in
prayer, of readiness for self-sacrifice, of brotherly love, of martyr-
heroism, and a patience, which in the deepest suffering preserved
the highest superiority to the world.
Most appropriately did the Christians, in these stormy times
of persecution, delight to regard themselves as soldiers of
Christ, enlisted under the victorious standard of the cross against
sin, the world, and Satan. The baptismal vow was their oath
of per^^etual allegiance ; ^ the Apostles' creed, their parole ; ^ the
sign of the Cross upon the forehead, their mark of service ; '
temperance, courage, and faithfulness unto death, their cardinal
virtues ; the blessedness of heaven, their promised reward. " No
soldier," exclaims Tertullian to the confessors, " goes with his
sports or from his bed-chamber to the battle ; but from the
camp, where he hardens and accustoms himself to every incon-
venience. Even in peace warriors learn to bear labor and
fatigue, going through all military exercises, that neither soul
nor body may flag ... Ye wage a good warfare, in which the
living God is the judge of the combat, the Holy Ghost the leader,
eternal glory the prize." To this may be added the eloquent
passage of Minutius Felix : " How fair a spectacle in the sight
' Sacramentum militiae Christianae. * Symbolum, or, tessera militaris.
' Character militaris, stigma militare.
310 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
of God is a Christian entering tlie lists with affliction, and with
noble firmness combating menaces and tortures, or with a dis-
dainful smile marching to death, through the clamors of the
people, and the insults of the executioners; when he bravely
maintains his liberty against kings and princes, and submits to
God, whose servant he is ; when, like a conqueror, he triumphs
over the judge that condemns him ! For he certainly is victori-
ous, who obtains what he fights for. He fights under the eye of
God, and is crowned with length of days. You have exalted
some of your stoical sufferers to the skies ; such as Scaevola,
who having missed his aim in an attempt to kill the king,
voluntarily burned the mistaking hand. Yet how many among
us have suffered not only the hand, but the whole body to be
consumed without a complaint, when their deliverance was in
their own power ! But why should I compare our elders with
your Mutius, or Aquilius, or Regulus, when our very children,
our sons and daughters, inspired with patience, despise your
racks and wild beasts, and all other instruments of cruelty ?
Surely nothing but the strongest reasons could persuade people
to suffer at this rate ; and nothing else but Almighty power
could support them under their sufferings."
Yet, on tke other hand, the Christian life of the period before
Constmtine has certainly been often unwarrantably idealized.
In a human nature essentially the same, we could but expect all
sorts of the same faults and excrescences, which we found even
in the apostolic churches. The Epistles of Cyprian afford in-
contestable evidence, that, especially in the intervals of repose,
an abatement of zeal soon showed itself, and, on the reopening
of persecution, the Christian name was dishonored by whole
hosts of apostates. And not seldom did the most prominent
virtues, courage in death, and strictness of morals, degenerate to
morbid fanaticisim and unnatural rigor.
§ 88. Opposition to Pagan Amusements and Callings.
Christianity is anytliing but sanctimonious gloominess and
misanthropic austerity. It is the foimtain of all true joy, and of
§ 88. OPPOSITION TO PAGAN AMUSEMENTS AND CALLINGS. 311
that peace whicli "passeth all understanding." But tliis joj
wells up from the consciousness of pardon and of fellowship with
God, is inseparable from holy earnestness, and has no concord
with worldly frivolity and sensual amusement, which carry the
sting of a bad conscience and beget only disgust and bitter
remorse. " What is more blessed," asks Tertullian, " than recon-
ciliation with God our Father and Lord ; than the revelation of
the truth, the knowledge of error; than the forgiveness of so
great past misdeeds ? Is there a greater joy than the disgust with
earthly pleasure, than contempt for the whole world, than true
freedom, than an unstained conscience, than contentment in life
and fearlessness in death ?"
Against the intoxicating and immoral amusements of the hea-
then, therefore, the Christian life of the early church took the cha-
racter of an inexorable Puritanic rigor. Members of the church
were forbidden, on pain of excommunication, to attend the popular
gladiatorial shows and fights of beasts, where murder was prac-
tised as an art to please the eyes and gratify a cruel curiosity.
Tatianus calls them, without exaggeration, terrible feasts, in
which the soul feeds on human flesh and blood.^ The other
apologists sf)eak of them with equal abhorrence, and cannot con-
ceive how any person of culture and humane feelings could fre-
quent and admire them. What a contrast this to the opinion of
even such a noble heathen as Cicero, who, far from condemning
the bloody conflicts of the circus, commended them as excellent
schools of courage and contempt of death.^ To what a height
this cruel passion had risen among the Eomans, we may judge
from the fact, that on the single day of the inauguration of the
Flavian amphitheatre five, or according to other accounts, even
nine thousand wild beasts were slain ; and that the emperor Com-
modus himself appeared before the applauding public seven hun-
dred and thirty-five times in the character of Hercules, with club
and lion's skin, and from a secure position killed innumerable
> Orat. c. Grace, c. 23.
2 Tusc. Quaest. II. 17. It is only just, however, to rema-k that Ovid and Mani-
lius were disposed to regard the circus as a school of barbarism.
312 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
beasts and men. Even a Constantinc, as late as 313, committed
a great multitude of defeated barbarians to the wild beasts of the
circus for the amusement of the people, and was highly applauded
for this generous act by an unknown heathen orator. The Chris-
tians were the more averse to these barbarous and revolting
sports, since not only criminals, but often their own brethren and
other innocent persons, slaves and captives of war, were there
thrown to lions and tigers.
But the prevailing sentiment of the church went further, and
rejected all kinds of public spectacles, tragedies, comedies, dances,
mimic plaj's, and races ; the more decidedly because these amuse-
ments were at that time so closely connected with the idolatries
and immoralities of the heathens, that such a thing as reclaiming
and elevating them was out of the question. After the days of
Augustus the Koman theatre became more and more a nursery
of vice, and deserved to be abhorred by all men of decent feeling
and refined taste. Here, too, the church defended the interests
of virtue and true culture. The theatrical shows of those days
were justly regarded as belonging to the "pomp of the devil,"
which the Christian in baptism renounced. It sometimes hap-
pened that converts, who were overpowered by their old habits
and visited the theatre, either relapsed into heathenism, or fell
for a long time into a demoniacal state and deep dejection of
spirit. Tertullian, even before he became a Montanist, wrote a
special treatise De spectaculis, in which he endeavors to set forth
the incompatibility of Christian sentiment with the frequenting
of the theatre and circus. Such exhibitions, says he, excite all
sorts of wild and impure passions, anger, fury, and lust ; while
the spirit of Christianity is a spirit of meekness, peace, and
purity. "What a man should not say, thinks Tertullian, he should
not hear. He flatly rejects the groujids on which loose Chris-
tians would plead for those fascinating amusements ; — their
appeals to the silence of the Scriptures, or even to the dancing of
David before the ark, and to Paul's comparison of the Christian
life with the Grecian games. ITc inclined strongly to the extreme
view, that all art is a species of fiction and falseliood, and incon-
§ 88. OPPOSITION TO PAGAN AMUSEMENTS AND CALLINGS. 313
sistent with Cliristian trutlifulness. But to all the worldly plea-
sures of those times the Lord's words could be truly applied :
" It is better to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than
having two eyes to be cast into hell-fire." TertuUian likewise,
in two other treatises, De habitu muliebri, and De cultu femi-
narum, specially warned the Christian women against all display
of dress, in which the heathen women shone in temples, theatres,
and public places. Visit not such places, says he to them, and
appear in public only for earnest reasons. The handmaids of
God must distinguish themselves even outwardly from the hand-
maids of Satan, and set the latter a good example of simplicity,
decorum, and chastity.
As to the various callings of life, Christianity gives the instruc-
tion : " Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was
called."^ It forbids no respectable j)ursuit, and only requires
that it be followed in a new spirit to the glory of God and the
profit of men. This is one proof of its universal application — its
power to enter into all the relations of human life and into all
branches of society. This is beautifully presented by the author
of the Epistle to Diognetus in the passage already quoted.^ Ter-
tuUian also protests to the heathens : " We are no Brahmins nor
Indian gymnosophists, no hermits, no exiles from life.^ We are
mindful of the thanks we owe to God, our Lord and Creator •
we despise not the enjoyment of his works ; we only temper it,
that we may avoid excess and abuse. We dwell, therefore, with
you in this world, not without markets and fairs, not without
baths, inns, shops, and every kind of intercourse. We carry on
commerce and war,* agriculture and trade with you. We take
part in your pursuits and give our labor for your use."^
But there were at that time some callings which either minis-
tered solely to sinful gratification, like that of the stage-player,
or were intimately connected with the prevailing idolatry, like
the manufacture, decoration, and sale of mythological images and
' 1 Cor. vii. 20. 2 g 46, p. 146. 3 Exules vitae.
* "Militamus,'' which proves that many Christians served in the army.
5 Apol. c. 42.
314: SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
symbols, the divination of astrologers, and all species of magic.
These callings were strictly forbidden in the church, and must
be renounced by the -candidate for baptism. Other occupations,
which were necessary indeed, but commonly perverted by the
heathens to fraudulent purposes, — inn-keeping, for example,^ —
were elevated by the Christian spirit ; as in the case of one Theo-
dotus at Ancyra, who made his house a refuge for the Christians
and a place of prayer in the Diocletian persecution, in which he
himself suffered martyrdom.
In regard to military and civil offices under the heathen
government, opinion was divided. Some, on the authority of
such passages as Matt. v. 39 and xxvi. 52, condemned all war as
unchristian and immoral. Others appealed to the centurion of
Capernaum and Cornelius of Caesarea, and held the military life
consistent with a Christian profession. The tradition of the legio
fulminatrix indicates that there were Christian soldiers in the
Eoman armies, and at the time of Diocletian the number of
Christians at the court and in civil office was very considerable.
But in general the Christians of those days, with their lively
sense of foreignness to this world, and their longing for the hea-
venly home, were averse to high office in a heathen state ; and
Tertullian expressly says, that nothing was more alien to them
than politics. Their conscience required them to abstain scru-
j)ulously from all idolatrous usages, sacrifices, libations, and flat-
teries connected with such station; and this requisition must
come into frequent collision with their duties to the state, so long
as the state remained heathen. They honored the emperor as
appointed to earthly government by God, and as standing nearest
of all men to him in power ; and they paid their taxes, as Justin
Martyr expressly states, with exemplary faithfulness. But their
obedience ceased whenever the emperor, as he frequently did,
demanded of them idolatrous acts. Tertullian thought that the
empire would last till the end of the world, and would be irre-
concilable with tlic Christian profession. Against the idolatrous
• ITonce canponari, from caupo.
§ 89. THE CHURCH AND SLAVERY. 315
worsliip of tlie emperor he protests with Christian boldness:
"Augustus, the founder of the empire, would never be called
Lord ; for this is a surname of God. Yet I will freely call the
emperor so, only not in the place of God. Otherwise I am free
from him ; for I have only one Lord, the almighty and eternal
God, who also is the emperor's Lord. . . . Far be it from me to
call the emperor God ; which is not only the most shameful, but
the most pernicious flattery."
The comparative indifference then, and partial aversion of the
primitive Christians to the affairs of the state, to civil legisla-
tion and administration, which exposed them to the frequent
reproach and contempt of the heathens, was not so much the
result of their principles as of their situation, and must not be
attributed to an " indolent or criminal disregard for the public
welfare " (as Gibbon intimates), but to their just abhorrence of
the innumerable idolatrous rites connected with the public and
private life of the heathens. But while they refused to incur the
guilt of idolatry, they fervently and regularly prayed for the
emperor and the state, their enemies and persecutors ; they were
the most peaceful subjects, and during this long period of almost
constant provocation, abuse, and persecutions, they never took
part in those frequent insurrections and rebellions which weak-
ened and undermined the empire. They renovated society from
within, by revealing in their lives as well as in their doctrine a
higher order of private and public virtue, and thus proved them-
selves patriots in the best sense of the word.
§ 89. The Church and Slavery.
Wallon : Histoire de I'esclavage de I'antiquite. Par. 1847. 3 vols. Moh-
LER (R. C.) : Bruchstiicke aus der Geschichte der Aufhebung der Skla-
verei. 1834. (Vermischte Scliriften, vol. 2nd, jd. 54 sqq.) Schaff:
History of the Apost. Church, § 113, p. 454 sqq. (The American works
on slavery, by Bledsoe, Armstrong, Boss, Carey, Hodge, Goodell, Charming,
Barnes, Cheever, and many others, are controversial, not historical, and
relate to the modern question of negro-slavery.)
Heathenism had no conception whatever of the general and
316 SECOND PERIOD. A.D, 100-311.
natural rights of men. The ancient republics consisted in the
exclusive dominion of a minority over a hopelessly oppressed
majority. Both the Greeks and Romans regarded only the free,
i. e. the free-born rich and independent citizens as men in the full
sense of the term, and denied this privilege to the foreigners, the
laborers, the poor, and the slaves. They claimed the natural
right to make war upon all foreign nations, without distinction
of race, in order to subject them to their iron rule. Even with
Cicero the foreigner and the enemy are synonymous terms. The
barbarians were taken in thousands by the chance of war (above
100,000 in the Jewish war alone) and sold as cheap as horses.
Besides, an active slave-trade was carried on, particularly in the
Euxine, the eastern provinces, the coast of Africa, and Britain.
It may be safely asserted that the greater part of mankind in the
old Roman empire was reduced to a hopeless state of slavery,
and to a half brutish level.^ And this evil of slavery was so
' Attica numbered, according to Ctesicles, under the governorship of Demetrius
the Phalerian (309 B.C.), 400,000 slaves, 10,000 foreigners, and only 21,000 free citi-
zens. In Sparta the disproportion was still greater. As to the Roman empire,
Gibbon estimates tlie number of slaves, under tlie reign of Claudius, at no less than
one half of the entire population, i. e. about sixty millions (I. 52 ed. Milman, X. Y.
1850). But according to Robertson there were twice as many slaves as free citizens,
and Blair (in his work on Roman slavery, Edinb. 1833, p. 15) estimates over three
slaves to one freeman, between the conquest of Greece (146 B.C.) and the reign of
Alexander Severus (a.d. 222-235). The proportion was of course very different in
the cities and in the rural districts. Athaenaeus, as quoted by Gibbon (p. 51) boldly
asserts that he knew very many (TofuroXXoi) Romans who possessed, not for use, but
ostentation, ten and even twenty thousand slaves In a single palace at Rome four hun-
dred slaves were maintained, and were all executed for not preventing their master's
murder (Tacit. Annal. XIV. 43). Tlie legal condition of tlie slaves is tlius described
by Taylor on Civil Laiu, as quoted in Cooper's Justinian, p. 411 : "Slaves were held
pro nullis, pro nwritds, pro quadruj^edibus ; nay, were in a much worse state than any
cattle whatsoever. They had no head in the state, no name, no title, or register ;
they were not capable of being injured; nor could they take by purcliase or descent ;
they had no heirs, and therefore could make no will ; they wore not entitled to the
rights and considerations of matrimony, and therefore had no relief in case of adul-
tery ; nor were they proper objects of cognation or affinity, liut of quasi-cognation
only; they could be sold, transferred, or pawned, as goods or personal estate, for
goods they were, and as such they were esteemed ; they might be tortured for
evidence, punished at the discretion of their lord, and even put to death by his
authority; together with many other civil incapacities which I have no room to
ennumerate." Gibbon (p. 48) thinks that "against such internal enemies, whose
desperate insurrections had more than once reduced the republic to tlic brink of
§ 89. THE CHURCH AND SLAVERY. 317
tlioroiiglily interwoven with the entire domestic and pubhc life
of the heathen world, and so deliberately regarded, even by the
greatest philosophers, Aristotle for instance, as natural and indis-
pensable, that the abolition of it seemed to belong among the
impossible things.
Yet from the outset Christianity has labored for this end;
not by impairing the right of property, not by outward violence,
nor sudden revolution ; this, under the circumstances, would
only have made the evil worse ; but by its moral power, by
preaching the divine character and original unity of all men,
their common redemption through Christ, the duty of brotherly
love, and the true freedom of the spirit. It placed slaves and
masters on the same footing of dependence on God and of free-
dom in God, the Father, Redeemer, and Judge of both. It con-
ferred inward freedom even under outward bondage, and taught
obedience to God and for the sake of God, even in the enjoyment
of outward freedom. This moral and religious freedom must
lead at last to the personal and civil liberty of the individual ;
since Christianity redeems not only the soul but the body also,
and the process of regeneration ends in the resurrection and
glorification of the entire natural world.
In the period before us, however, the abolition of slavery, save
in isolated cases of manumission, was utterly out of question,
considering only the enormous number of the slaves. The world
was far from ripe for such a step. The church, in her persecuted
condition, had as yet no influence at all over the machinery of
the state and the civil legislation. And she was at that time so
destruction, the most severe regulations and the most cruel treatment seemed almost
justifiable by the great law of self-preservation." It is but just to remark, that the
philosophers of the first and second century, Seneca, Pliny, and Plutarch, entertain
much milder views on this subject than the older writers, and commend a humane
treatment of the slaves ; also that the Antonines improved their condition to some
extent, and took the oft abused jurisdiction of life and death over the slaves out of
private hands, and vested it in the magistrates. But at that time Christian principles
and sentiments already freely circulated throughout the empire, and exerted a silent
influence even over the educated heathens. This unconscious atmospheric influence,
so to speak, is continually exerted by Christianity over the surrounding world, which
without this would be far worse than it actually is.
318 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
absorbed in the transcendent importance of tbe liiglier world and
in her longing for the speedy return of the Lord, that she cared
very little for any earthly freedom or temporal happiness. Hence
Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, counsels servants to serve
only the more zealously to the glory of the Lord, that they may
receive from God the higher freedom ; and not to attempt to be
redeemed at the expense of their Christian brethren, lest they be
found slaves to their own caprice. From this we see that slaves,
in whom faith awoke the sense of manly dignity and the desire
of freedom, were accustomed to demand their redemption at the
expense of the church, as a right, and were thus liable to value
the earthly freedom more than the spiritual. Hence the apos-
tolic father's admonition, which seems to be rather inconsistent
with the advice of St. Paul : "If thou may est be free, use it
rather ; for he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the
Lord's freeman."^ Tertullian declares the outward freedom
worthless without the inward, without the ransom of the soul
from the bondage of sin. " How can the world," says he, " make
a servant free ? All is mere show in the world, nothing truth.
For the slave is already free, as a purchase of Christ ; and the
freedman is a servant of Christ. If thou takest the freedom which
the world can give for true, thou hast thereby become again the
servant of man, and hast lost the freedom of Christ, in that thou
thinkcst it bondage." Chrysostom, in the fourth century, was
the first of the fathers to discuss the question of slavery at large
in the spirit of the apostle Paul, and to recommend, though
cautiously, a gradual emancipation.
But the church before Constantine labored with great success
to improve the intellectual and moral condition of the slaves, to
adjust inwardly the inequality between slaves and masters, as
the first and efficient step towards the final outward abolition of
the evil, and to influence the public opinion even of the hea-
thens, as may be seen in the milder views of a Seneca, Pliny,
Plutarch, and the later legislation concerning the treatment of
this unfortunate class of men.
' 1 Cor. vii. 21, 22.
§ 89. THE CHURCH AND SLAVERY. 819
It is here to be considered, first of all, that Christianity spread
freely among the slaves, except where they were so extremely
rude as to be insensible to all higher impressions ; and that they
were not rarely the instruments of the conversion of their mas-
ters, especially of the women and children, whose training was
frequently intrusted to them. Not a few slaves died martyrs,
and were ^enrolled among the saints ; Onesimus, for example,
Eutychus, Victorinus, Maro, Nereus, Achilleus, Potamiaena, and
others. An ancient tradition makes Onesimus, the slave of Phi-
lemon, bishop of Beroea in Macedonia.^ According to the ac-
count of the author of the "Philosoplioumena" even a Eoman
bishop, Calixtus I,, in the early part of the third century, was
originally a slave. Celsus cast it up as a reproach to Christian-
ity, that it let itself down so readily to slaves, fools, women, and
children. But Origen justly saw an excellence of the new reli-
gion in this very fact, that it could raise this despised and, in
the prevailing view, irreclaimable class of men to the level of
moral purity and worth. If, then, converted slaves, with the
full sense of their intellectual and religious superiority, still re-
mained obedient to their heathen masters, and even served them
more faithfully than before, resisting decidedly only their immo-
ral demands (like Potamiaena, and other chaste women and vir-
gins in the service of voluptuous masters), — ^they showed, in
this very self-control, the best proof of their ripeness for civil
freedom, and at the same time furnished the fairest memorial of
that Christian faith, which raised the soul, in the enjoyment of
sonship with God and in the hope of the blessedness of heaven,
above the sufferings and the conflicts of earth. Euelpistes, a
slave of the imperial household, who was carried with Justin
Martyr to the tribunal of Eusticus, on being questioned con-
cerning his condition, replied : " I am a slave of the emperor,
but I am also a Christian, and have received liberty from Jesus
Christ; by his grace I have the same hope as my brethren."
' According to the Apost. Constitutions VII. 46, St. Paul himself ordained and
installed him as bishop over that congregation. But the Roman Martyrologium
makes him successor of Timothy at Ephesus.
320 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Where the owners of the slaves themselves became Christians,
the old relation virtually ceased ; both came together to the
table of the Lord, and felt themselves brethren of one family, in
striking contrast with the condition of things among their hea-
then neighbors as expressed in the current proverb : " As many
enemies as slaves."^ That there actually were such cases of fra-
ternal fellowship, like that which St. Paul recommciMed to Phi-
lemon, we have the testimony of Lactantius, at the end of our
period, who writes in his Institutes,^ no doubt from life : " Should
any say : Are there not also among you poor and rich, servants
and masters, distinctions among individuals ? No ; we call our-
selves brethren for no other reason, than that we hold ourselves
all equal. For since we measure everything human not b}^ its
outward appearance, but by its intrinsic value, we have, not-
withstanding the difference of outward relations, no slaves, but
we call them and consider them brethren in the Spirit and fel-
low-servants in religion." The same writer says : " God would
have all men equal.^ . . . With him there is neither servant nor
master. If he is the same Father to all, they are all with the
same right free. So no one is poor before God, but he who is
destitute of righteousness ; no one rich, but he who is full of
virtues."
Such views must lead us to presume, that even in this early
period instances of actual manumission among Christian slave-
owners were not rare. And we read, in fact, in the Acts of the
martyrdom of the Eoman bishop Alexander, that a Roman pre-
fect, Ilermas, converted by that bishop, in the reign of Trajan,
received baptism at an Easter festival with his wife and children
and twelve hundred and fifty slaves, and on this occasion gave
all his slaves their freedom and munificent gifts besides,* So in
' Totidem esse hostes, quot servos. — Seneca, Ep. 47.
s Lib. V. c. 15 (ed. Fritzsche. Lips 1842, p. 257).
3 Inst. V. 14 (p. 257): Deus enim, qui homines gcnerat et inspirat, omnes acquoa,
id est pares esse voluit ; candcm conditionem vivcndi omnibus posuit ; oinnes ad
sapientiam gcnuit; omnibus immortalitatcm spopondit, nemo a beneticiis coelestibus
segrogatur. . . . Nemo apud eum servus est, nemo dominus ; si enim cunctis idem
Pater est, aequo jure oinnes liberi sumus.
* Acta Sanct. Boll. Maj. tom. i. p. 371,
§ 90. PKAYER AND FASTING. 321
the martyrology of St. Sebastian, it is related tliat a wealthy Eo-
man prefect, Chromatius, under Diocletian, on embracing Chris-
tianity, emancipated fourteen hundred slaves, after having them
baptized with himself, because their sonship with God put an
end to their servitude to man.^ In the beginning of the fourth
century St. Cantius, Cantianus, and Cantianilla, of an old Eo-
man family, set aU their slaves, seventy-three in number, at
liberty, after they had received baptism.^ These traditions may
indeed be doubted as to the exact facts in the case ; but they
are nevertheless conclusive for our purpose as the exponents of
the spirit which animated the church at that time concerning
the duty of Christian masters. It was felt that in a thoroughly
Christianized society there can be no room for despotism on the
one hand and slavery on the other. After the third century
the manumission became a solemn act, which took place in the
presence of the clergy and the congregation. The master led'
the slave to the altar; there the document of emancipation was-
read, the minister pronounced the blessing, and the congregation;
received him as a free brother with equal rights and privileges.
Constantine found this custom already established, and African
councils of the fourth century requested the emperor to give it
general force.
§ 90. Prayer and Fasting.
In regard to the importance and the necessity of prayer, as
the pulse and thermometer of spiritual life, the ancient church
had but one voice. Here the plainest and the most enlightened
Christians met ; the apostolic fathers, the steadfast apologists, the
realistic Africans, and the idealistic Alexandrians. Tertullian
sees in prayer the daily sacrifice of the Christian, the bulwark of
faith, the weapon against all the enemies of the soul. The be-
liever should not go to his bath nor take his food without pray-
er ; for the nourishing and refreshing of the spirit must precede
that of the body, and the heavenly must go before the earthly.
1 Acta Sanct. Ian. torn. ii. p. 275. ' Acta Sanct. Maj. torn. vi. p. 7'77.
21
822 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
*' Prayer," says lie, " blots out sins, repels temptations, quenches
persecutions, comforts the desponding, blesses the high-minded,
guides the wanderers, calms the billows, feeds the poor, directs
the rich, raises the fallen, holds up the falling, preserves them
that stand." Cyprian requires prayer by day and by night;
pointing to heaven, where we shall never cease to pray and give
thanks. The same father, however, falls already into that false,
unevangelical view, which represents prayer as a meritorious
work and a satisfaction to be rendered to God.^ Clement of
Alexandria conceives the life of a genuine Christian as an un-
broken prayer. "In every place he will pray, though not
openly, in the sight of the multitude. Even on his walks, in
his intercourse with others, in silence, in reading, and in labor,
he prays in every way. And though he commune with God
only in the chamber of his soul, and call upon the Father only
with a quiet sigh, the Father is near him." The same idea we
find in Origen, who discourses in enthusiastic terms of the
mighty inward and outward effects of prayer, and, with all his
enormous learning, regards prayer as the sole key to the mean-
ing of the scriptures.
The order of human life, however, demands special times for
this consecration of the every-day business of men. The Chris-
tians generally followed the Jewish usage, observed as times of
prayer the hours of nine, twelve, and three, corresponding also
to the crucifixion of Christ, his death, and his descent from the
cross ; the cock-crowing likewise, and the still hour of midnight
they regarded as calls to prayer.
With prayer for their own welfare they united intercessions
for the whole church, for all classes of men, especially for the
sick and the needy, and even for the unbelieving. Polycarp
enjoins on the church of Philipj)i to pray for all the saints, for
kings and rulers, for haters and persecutors, and for the enemies
' De orat. domin. 33 : Cito orationes ad Deum adsccndvuit, quas ad Dcum raerita
operis nostri imponunt. De lapsis 17 : Doniinus orandus est, Dominua nostra satis-
factione placandus est. Epist. xl. 2 : Preces et orationes, quibus Dorainus longa et
conlinua satisfactione placandus est.
§ 90. PEAYER AND FASTING. 323
of the cross. " We pray," says Tertullian, " even for tlie emperors
and tlieir ministers, for tlie Holders of power on earth, for the re-
pose of all classes, and for the delay of the end of the world."^
With the free outpourings of the heart, without which living
piety cannot exist, we must suppose, that, after the example of
the Jewish church, standing forms of prayer were also used,
especially such as were easily impressed on the memory and
could thus be freely delivered. The familiar " ex pectore" and
"sine monitore" of Tertullian are nothing against this; for a
prayer committed to memory may and should be at the same
time a prayer of the heart, as a familiar psalm or hymn may be
read or sung with ever new devotion. The general use of the
Lord's prayer in the ancient church in household and public
worship is beyond all doubt. The most eminent fathers of the
second and third centuries, as Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, wrote
special treatises upon it. They considered it the model prayer,
prescribed by the Lord for the whole church. Tertullian calls
it the " regular and usual prayer,^ a brief summary of the whole
gospel, and foundation of all the other prayers of the Christians."
The use of it, however, was restricted to communicants; because
the address presupposes the worshipper's full sonship with God,
and because the fourth petition was taken in a mystical sense,
as referring to the holy supper, and was therefore thought not
proper for catechumens. The celebrated " Gloria in Excelsis,"
the Greek original of which dates probably from the third cen-
tury, and is even appended to the Alexandrian codex of the
Bible, was a morning prayer of the early church. Of like age
is the evening hymn of the Greek Christians in the Apostolic
Constitutions.^ The Constitutions contain also special prayers for
believers, catechumens, the possessed, the penitent, and even for
the dead, and a complete eucharistic service, which forms one of
the older portions of this gradually collected work, although it
was probably not committed to writing till the fourth century.
' Pro mora finis. 2 Oratio legitima et ordinaria.
' "Yf/vof Tov >.v^viKov, beginning: ^wj l\apuv ayiag Sd^ri;. Routh (Reliq. s. ill. 515)
assigns this hymnus vespertinus to the second century.
82-i SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
As to posture in prayer; kneeling or standing, the raising or
closing of the eyes, the extension or elevation of the hands, were
considered the most suitable ex^Dressions of a bowing spirit and
a soul directed towards God. On Sunday the standing posture
was adopted, in token of festive joy over the resurrection from
sin and death. But there was no ■uniform law in regard to these
forms. Origen lays chief stress on the lifting of the soul to God
and the bowing of the heart before him ; and says that, where
circumstances require, one can worthily pray sitting, or lying,
or engaged in business.
After the Jewish custom, fasting was frequently joined with
prayer, that the mind, unencumbered by earthly matter, might
devote itself with less distraction to the contemplation of divine
things. The apostles tliemselves sometimes employed this whole-
some discipline,^ though without infringing the gospel freedom
by legal prescriptions. As the Pharisees were accustomed to fast
twice in the week, on Monday and Thursday, the Christians
appointed Wednesday and especially Friday, as days of half-
fasting or abstinence from flesh,^ in commemoration of the pas-
sion and crucifixion of Jesus. They did this with reference to
the Lord's words: "When the bridegroom shall be taken from
them, then shall they fast."^
In the second century arose also the custom of Quadragesimal
fasts before Easter, which, however, differed in length in differ-
ent countries ; being sometimes reduced to forty hours, sometimes
extended to forty days, or at least to several weeks. Perhaps
equally ancient are the nocturnal fasts or vigils before the high
festivals, suggested by the example of the Lord and the apostles.*
But tlie Quatemporal fasts ° are of later origin, though founded
likewise on a custom of the Jews after the exile. On special
occasions the bishops appointed extraordinary fasts, and aj^plied
the money saved to charitable purposes ; a usage which became
often a blessing to the poor. Yet hierarchical arrogance and
* Comp. Acts xiii. 2 ; xiv. 23 2 Cor. vi. 5.
* Semijejunium, abstineiitia. Comp. § 99. 3 Matt. ix. 15.
* Luke vi. 12. Acts xvL 25 * From quabwr tempora.
§ 91. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE. 825
Judaistic legalism early intruded here, even to tlie entire de-
struction of the liberty of a Christian man.^
This rigidity appeared most in the Montanists. Besides the
usual fasts, they observed special Xerophagiae,^ as they were
called ; seasons of two weeks for eating only dry, or properly
uncooked food, bread, salt, and water. The Catholic church,
with true feeling, refused to sanction these excesses as a general
rule, but allowed ascetics to carry fasting even to extremes. A
confessor in Lyons, for example, lived on bread and water alone,
but forsook that austerity, when reminded that he gave offence
to other Christians by so despising the gifts of Grod.
Against the frequent over-valuation of fasting Clement of
Alexandria quotes the word of Paul : The kingdom of God is
not meat and drink, therefore neither abstinence from wine and
flesh, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.
§ 91. Marriage, and Family Life.
In ancient Greece and Eome the state was the highest object
of life, and the only virtues properly recognised, wisdom, courage,
moderation, and justice, were political virtues. Aristotle makes
the state, that is the organized body of free citizens^ (foreigners and
slaves are excluded), precede the family and the individual, and
calls man essentially a "political animal." In Plato's ideal com-
monwealth the state is everything and owns everything, even the
children. This political absolutism destroys the proper dignity
and rights of the individual and the family, and materially
hinders the development of the domestic and private virtues.
Marriage was allowed no moral character, but merely a political
import for the preservation of the state, and could not be legally
contracted except by free citizens, Socrates, in instructing his
son concerning this institution, tells him, according to Xenophon,
that we select only such wives as we hope will yield beautiful
children. Plato recommends even community of women to the
1 Comp. Matt. ix. 15. Gal. iv. 9; v. 1.
2 'Znpo'payiai, aridus victus. See TertuU. De jejun. 15. HippoL Refut. VIII. 19.
3 Koivoji/ta Tcov c)iev^ipo)v.
826 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
class of warriors in his ideal republic, as the best way to secure
vigorous citizens. Ljcurgus, for similar reasons, encouraged
adultery under certain circumstances, requiring old men to lend
their young and handsome wives to young and strong men.
"Woman was placed almost on the same level with the slave.
She differs, indeed, from the slave, according to Aristotle, but
has, after all, really no will of her own, and is hardly capable of a
higher virtue than the slave. Shut up in a retired apartment
of the house, she spent her life with the slaves. As human na
ture is essentially the same in all ages, and as it is never entirely
forsaken by the guidance of a kind Providence, we must cer-
tainly suppose that female virtue was always more or less main-
tained and appreciated even among the heathen. Such characters
as Penelope, Nausicaa, Andromache, Antigone, Iphigenia, and
Diotima, of the Greek poetry and history, bear witness of this.
But the general position assigned to woman by the jDoets, philoso-
phers, and legislators of antiquity, was one of social oppression
and degradation. In Athens she was treated as a minor during
life-time, and could not inherit except in the absence of male
heirs. To the question of Socrates: "Is there any one with
whom you converse less than with the wife ?" his pupil, Aristo-
bulus, replies: "No one, or at least very few." K she excelled
occasionally, in Greece, by wit and culture, and, like Aspasia,
Phryne, Lais, Theodota, attracted the admiration and courtship
even of earnest philosophers and statesmen, she generally be-
longed to the disreputable class of the Irarpai or amicae, who, in
Corinth, were attached to the temple of Aphrodite, and enjoyed
the sanction of religion for the practice of vice. How could
there be any proper conception and abhorrence of the sin of
licentiousness and adultery, if the very gods, a Jupiter, a Mars,
and a Venus, were believed to be guilty of those crimes !
Modesty forbids the mention of a still more odious vice, which
even depraved nature abhors, which yet was freely discussed
and praised by ancient poets and philosophers, practised with
neither punishment nor dishonor, and likewise divinely sanc-
tioned by the lewdness of Jupiter with Ganymede.
§ 91. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE. 327
The Eomans were originally more virtuous, domestic, and
chaste, as they were more honest and conscientious, than the
Greeks. With them the wife was honored by the title domina,
matrona, materfamilias. But they likewise made marriage alto-
gether subservient to the interest of the state, and allowed it in
its legal form to free citizens alone. The proud maxims of the
republic prohibited even the legitimate nuptials of a Eoman with
a foreign queen ; and Cleopatra and Berenice were, as strangers,
degraded to the position of concubines of Mark Antony and
Titus. According to ancient custom the husband bought his
bride from her parents, and she fulfilled the coemption by pur-
chasing, with three pieces of copper, a just introduction to his
house and household deities. But this was for her simply an
exchange of one servitude for another. She became the living
property of a husband, who could lend her out, as Cato lent
his wife to his friend Hortensius, and as Augustus took Livia
from Tiberius Nero. "Her husband or master" — says the cele-
brated historian of imperial Rome, who will not be charged with
exaggeration of the fliults of his heroes' — " was invested with the
plenitude of paternal power. By his judgment or caprice her
behavior was approved, or censured, or chastised ; he exercised
the jurisdiction of life and death; and it was allowed, that in
cases of adultery or drunkenness, the sentence might be properly
inflicted. She acquired and inherited for the sole profit of her
lord ; and so clearly was woman defined, not as a person^ but as
a tiling^ that, if the original title were deficient, she might be
claimed like other movables, by the use and possession of an
entire year." Monogamy was the rule both in Greece and in
Eome, but did not exclude illegitimate connexions. Concubinage,
in its proper legal sense, was a sort of secondary marriage with
a woman of servile or plebeian extraction, standing below the
dignity of a matron and above the infamy of a prostitute. It was
sanctioned and regulated by law ; it prevailed both in the East
and the West from the age of Augustus to the tenth centurj-, and
1 Gibbon, chapter XLIV. (vol. iv. 346 ed. Milman, N. York), where he discusses
at length the Roman code of laws.
328 SECOND PEEIOD. A.D. 100-311,
■was preferred to regular marriage bj Vespasian, and tlie two
Antonines, the best Roman emperors. Adultery was severely
punished, at times even with suddep destruction of the offender ;
but simply as an interference with the rights and property of a
free man. The wife had no legal or social protection against the
infidelity of her husband. The Romans worshipped a peculiar
goddess of domestic life ; but her name Viriplaca, the appeaser
of husbands, indicates her partiality. Besides, it must be remem-
bered that the intercourse of a husband with the slaves of his
household and with public prostitutes was excluded from the
odium and punishment of adultery. We say nothing of that
unnatural abomination alluded to in Rom. i. 26, 27, which seems
to have passed from the Etruscans and Greeks to the Romans,
and prevailed among the highest as well as the lowest classes.
The women, however, seem to have been as corrupt as their hus-
bands, at least in the imperial age. Juvenal calls a chaste wife
a " rara avis in terris." Under Augustus free-bom daughters
could no longer be found for the service of Vesta, and even the
severest laws of Domitian could not prevent the six priestesses of
the pure goddess from breaking their vow. Divorce is said to
have been almost unknown in the ancient days of the Roman
republic. But the customary civil and religious rites of marriage
were gradually disused ; apparent open community of life between
persons of similar rank was taken as sufficient evidence of their
nuptials ; and marriage, after Augustus, fell to the level of any
partnership, which might be dissolved by the abdication of one
of the associates. " Passion, interest, or caprice," says Gibbon on
the imperial age, "suggested daily motives for the dissolution
of marriage ; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the mandate of a
freedman, declared the separation ; the most tender of human
connexions was degraded to a transient society of profit or
pleasure."^ Various remedies were tardily adopted as the evil
' Gibbon (IV. 349) confirms the statement by several examples, to wliicli more
might be added. Maecenas, "qui uxores millies duxit" (Seneca, Ep. 114) was as
notorious for his levity in forming and dissolving the nuptial tie, as famous for his
patronage of literature and art. Martial (Epigr. VI. 7), in evident poetical exagge-
ration, speaks of ten husbands in one month. Juvenal (Si\tir. VI. 20) exposes a
§ 91. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE. 829
spread, but they proved inefficient, until the spirit of Christianity
gained the control of public opinion and improved tlie Roman
legislation, which, however, continued for a long time to fluctu-
ate between the custom of heathenism and the wishes of the
church.
Another radical evil of heathen family life, which the church
had to encounter throughout the whole extent of the Roman
empire, was the absolute tyrannical authority of the parent over
the children, extending even to the power of life and death, and
placing the adult son of a Roman citizen on a level with the
movable things and slaves, " whom the capricious master might
alienate or destroy, without being responsible to any earthly
tribunal." With this was connected the unnatural and mon-
strous custom of exposing poor, sickly, or deformed children to a
cruel death, or in many cases to a life of slavery or infamy, —
a custom expressly approved, for the public interest, even by a
Plato and an Aristotle ! " The exposition of children" — to quote
once more from Gibbon — " was the prevailing and stubborn vice
of antiquity : it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, al-
most always practised with impunity by the nations who never
entertained the Roman ideas of paternal power ; and the dramatic
poets, who appeal to the human heart, represent with indiffer-
ence a popular custom which was palliated by the motives of
economy and compassion. The Roman empire was stained with
the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by Yalen-
tinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the Cornelian
law. The lessons of jurisprudence and Christianity had been
insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle
influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment." —
Such was the condition of the domestic life of the ancient
world, when Christianity, with its doctrine of the sanctity of
marriage, with its injunction of chastity, and with its elevation
of woman from her half-slavish condition to moral dignitj- and
matron, who in five years submitted to the embraces of eight husbands. Jerome
(ad Gerontiam) " saw at Rome a triumphant husband bury his twenty-first wife, who
had interred twenty-two of his less sturdy predecessors."
330 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
equality with man, began the work of a silent transformation,
which secured incalculable blessings to generations yet unborn.
It laid the foundation for a well ordered family life. It turned
the eye from the outward world to the inward sphere of affec-
tion, from the all-absorbing business of politics and state-life into
the sanctuary of home ; and encouraged the nurture of those
virtues of private life, without which no true public virtue can
exist.^ But, as the evil here to be abated, particularly the degra-
dation of the female sex and the want of chastity, was so deeply
rooted and thoroughly interwoven in the whole life of the old
world, this ennobling of the family, like the abolition of slavery,
must be a very slow and tedious process. "We cannot wonder,
therefore, at the high estimate of celibacy, which in the eyes of
many seemed to be the only radical escape from the impurity
and misery of married life as it generally stood among the hea-
then. But, although the fathers are much more frequent and
enthusiastic in the praise of virginity than in that of marriage,
yet their views on this subject show an immense advance upon
the moral standard of the greatest sages and legislators of Greece
and Eome.
Marriage was regarded in the church from the beginning as a
sacred union of body and soul for the propagation of civil society,
and especially also the kingdom of God, for the exercise of virtue
and the promotion of happiness. It was in its nature indissoluble
except in case of adultery, and this crime was charged not only
to the woman, but to the man as even the more guilty party, and
to every extra-connubial carnal connexion. Thus the wife was
equally protected against the wrongs of the husband, and chastity
was made the general law of the family life.
Clement of Alexandria enjoins upon Christian married per-
sons united prayer and reading of the Scriptures,^ as a daily
morning exercise, and very bcautifulh^ says: "The mother is
the glory of her children, the wife is the glory of her husband,
both are the glory of the wife, God is the glory of all together."
' Comp. § 32, p. 110 sq. « Eix'i *"' a^.i). (.„t,j.
§ 91. MAREIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE. 831
Sacred song also sometimes made part of the family devotions.
A large sarcophagus, which Miinter assigns to the age of the
Antonines, represents an interesting scene of Christian family
worship : on the right, four men, with rolls in their hands, read-
ing or singing ; on the left, three women and a girl playing a
lyre. Tertullian, at the close of the two books which he wrote
to his wife, draws the following graphic picture of a Christian
marriage, which, though somewhat idealized, could be produced
only from the moral spirit of the gospel : ^ " How can I paint the
happiness of a marriage which the church ratifies, the oblation
(the celebration of the Lord's supper) confirms, the benediction
seals, angels announce, the Father declares valid. Even upon
earth, indeed, sons do not legitimately marry without the consent
of their fathers. What a union of two believers, — one hope, one
vow, one discipline, and one worship ! They are brother and sis-
ter, two fellow-servants, one spirit and one flesh. Where there is
one flesh, there is also one spirit. They pray together, fast toge-
ther, instruct, exhort, and support each other. They go together
to the church of God, and to the table of the Lord. They share
each other's tribulation, persecution, and revival. Neither con-
ceals anything from the other ; neither avoids, neither annoys the
other. They delight to visit the sick, supply the needy, give
alms without constraint, and in daily zeal lay their offerings
before the altar without scruple or hindrance. They do not
need to keep the sign of the cross hidden, nor to express slyly
their Christian joy, nor to suppress the blessing. Psalms and
hymns they sing together, and they vie with each other in singing
to God. Christ rejoices when he sees and hears this. He gives
them his peace. Where two are together in his name, there is
he ; and where he is, there the evil one cannot come."
For the conclusion of a marriage, Ignatius^ required "the con-
sent of the bishop, that it might be a marriage for God, and not
for pleasure. All should be done to the glory of God." In Ter-
tullian's time, as may be inferred from the passage just quoted,^
* Ad uxorem, 1. II. c. 8. 2 Ad Polyc. c. 5. In the Syr. version, c. 2.
3 Tert. Ad uxor. II. 8 ; com p. De monog. c. 11 ; De pudic. c. 4.
332 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
the solemnization of marriage was already at least a religious act,
though not a j)roper sacrament, and was sealed by the cele-
bration of the holy supper in presence of the congregation.
The Montanists were disposed even to make this benediction
of the church necessary to the validity of marriage among
Christians. All noisy and wanton Jewish and heathen nuptial
ceremonies, and at first also the crowning of the bride, were
discarded; but the nuptial ring, as a symbol of union, was
retained.
The voice of the church, in agreement with the spirit of the
Old Testament, was unanimous against mixed marriages with
persons not Christian, and also with heretics, unless formed
before conversion, in which case they were considered valid.^
Tertullian even classes such marriages with adultery. What
heathen, asks he, will let his wife attend the nightly meetings of
the church, and the slandered supper of the Lord, take care of
the sick even in the poorest hovels, kiss the chains of the mar-
tyrs in prison, rise in the night for prayer, and show hospitality
to strange brethren ? Cyprian calls marriage with an unbeliever
a prostitution of the members of Christ. The council of Elvira
(805) forbade such mixed marriages on pain of excommunication,
but did not dissolve those already existing. We shall under-
stand this strictness, if, to say nothing of the heathen marriage
rites, and the wretchedly loose notions on chastity and conjugal
fidelity, we consider the condition of those times, and the offences
and temptations which met the Christian in the constant sight of
images of the household gods, mythological pictures on the walls,
the floor, and the furniture ; in the libations at table ; in short,
at every step and turn in a pagan house.
From the high view of marriage, and also from an ascetic
overestimate of celibacy, arose a very prevalent aversion to second
marriage, particularly the re-marriage of widows. The Shep-
herd of Hermas allows this reunion indeed, but with the reser-
vation, that continuance in single life earns great honor with the
' According to 1 Cor. vii. 12, 16.
§ 91. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE. 333
Lord. Atbenagoras goes so far as to call the second marriage a
respectable adultery.^
Tertullian came forward with the greatest decision, as advo-
cate of monogamy against both successive and simultaneous
poljgamj.2 He thought thus to occupy the true middle
ground between the ascetic Gnostics, who rejected marriage
altogether, and the Catholics, who allowed more than one, ^ In
the earlier period of his life, when he drew the above picture of
Christian marriage, before his adoption of Montanism, he already
placed a high estimate on celibacy as a superior grade of Christian
holiness, appealing to 1 Cor. vii. 9, and advised at least his wife,
in case of his death, not to marry again, especially with a
heathen ; but in his Montanistic writings, De exhortatione casti-
tatis and De monogamia, he repudiates second marriage from
principle, and contends against it with fanatical zeal, as un-
christian, as an act of polj^gamy, nay of " stuprum" and
" adulterium ;" with all sorts of acute and sophistical argument ;
now, on the ground of an ideal conception of marriage as a
spiritual union of two souls for time and eternity ; now, from an
opposite sensuous view ; and again, on principles equally good
against all marriage and in favor of celibacy. Thus, on the one
hand, he argues, that the second marriage impairs the spiritual
fellowship with the former partner, which should continue
beyond the grave, which should show itself in daily intercessions
and in yearly celebration of the day of death, and which hopes
even for outward re-union after the resurrection.* On the other
hand, however, he places the essence of marriage in the com-
' Legat. 33: 'O Scircpog yiijiog cvTrpeTTfii tan fioi^eui. Comp. Theophilus ad Autol.
III. 15, where he says, that with the Cliristians iyKp'tTeia duKUTai, ftovyyajiia rrjourai.
Perhaps even Irenaeus held a similar view, to judge from the manner in which he
speaks of the woman of Samaria (John iv. 7), " quae in uno viro non mansit, sed
fornicata est in multis nuptiis." Adv. haer. III. 17, § 2.
"^ Comp. Hauber : Tertullian's Kampf gegen die zweite Ehe, in the " Studien und
Kritiken" for 1845, p. 607 sqq.
' De monog. 1. : Haeretici nuptias auferunt, psychici ingerunt ; illi nee semel, isti
non semel nubunt.
* De exhort, cast. c. 11. Duplex rubor est, quia in secundo matrimonio duae
uxores eundem circumstant maritum, una spiritu alia in came. Neque enim pristi-
334 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
munion of flesh,' and regards it as a mere concession, which God
makes to our sensuality, and which man therefore should not
abuse by repetition. The ideal of the Christian life, with him,
not only for the clergy, but for the laity also, is celibacy. He
lacks clear perception of the harmony of the moral and physical
elements which constitutes the essence of marriage ; and
strongly as he elsewhere combats the Gnostic dualism, he here
falls in with it in his depreciation of matter and corporeity, as
necessarily incompatible with spirit. His treatment of the
exegetical arguments of the defenders of second marriage is
remarkable. The levirate law, he says, is peculiar to the Old
Testament economy. To Eom. vii. 2 he replies, that Paul
speaks here from the position of the Mosaic law, which, according
to the same passage, is no longer binding on Christians. In
1 Cor. vii., the apostle allows second marriage only in his sub-
jective, human judgment, and from regard to our sensuous
infirmity ; but in the same chapter (v. 40) recommends celibacy
to all, and that on the authority of tlie Lord, adding here, that
he also has the Holy Spirit, i.e. the principle, which is active in
the new prophets of Montaiiism. The appeal to 1 Tim. iii. 2,
Tit. i. 6, from which the right of laymen to second marriage
was inferred, as the prohibition of it there related only to the
clergy, he met with the doctrine of the universal priesthood of
believers, which admitted them all both to the privileges and to
the obligations of priests. But his reasoning always amounts in
the end to this : that the state of original virgin purity, which
has nothing at all to do with the sensual, is the best. The true
chastity consists, therefore, not in the chaste sjiirit of married
partners, but in the entire continence of " virgines" and
" spadones." The desire of posterity, he, contrary to the Old
nam potcris odipsp, cui ctiam religiosiorem rcservas affcctioncm ut jam roceptae apiid
Dominum, pro cujus spiritu postnlas, pro qua oblationes annirns reddis. Rtabis
ergo ad Doiniuum cum tot uxoribus quot in orationo coniniemora.a, et ofTcres pro
duabus, etc.
' De exliort. cast c. 9: Leges vidcntur matrimonii et stiipri diflerenliam facerc,
per diversitatem illicili, nou per conditionem rei ipsius . . . Nnptiae ipsae ex eo
constant quod est stuprum.
§ 91. MARRIAGE AIs^D FAMILY LIFE. 835
Testament, considers unworthy of a Christian, who, in fact,
ought to break away entirely from the world, and renounce all
inheritance in it. Such a morality, forbidding the same that it
allows, and rigorously setting up as an ideal, what it must in
reality abate at least for the mass of mankind, may be very far
above the heathen level, but is still plainly foreign to the
deeper substance and the world-sanctifying principle of Chris-
tianit}^
The Catholic church, indeed, kept aloof from this Montanistic
extravagance, and forbade second marriage only to the clergy ;
yet she rather advised against it,^ and, as we shall more particu-
larly observe in § 95, she leaned very decidedly towards a pre-
ference for celibacy, as a higher grade of Christian morality.
As to the relation of parents and children, Christianity
exerted from the beginning a most salutary influence. It
restrained the tyrannical power of the father. It taught the
eternal value of children as heirs of the kingdom of heaven, and
commenced the great work of education on a religious and moral
basis. It resisted with all energy the exposition of children,
who were then generally devoured by dogs and wild beasts, or
if found, trained up for slavery or doomed to a life of infamy.
Several apologists, the author to the Epistle of Diognetus, Justin
Martyr,^ Minutius Felix, and Arnobius speak with just indigna-
tion against this unnatural custom. Lactantius puts it on a par
with murder of the worst kind, and admits no excuse on the
ground of pity or poverty, since God provides for all his crea-
tures.^ The Christian spirit of humanity gradually so penetrated
the spirit of the age that the better emperors, from the time of
' Non proliibemus secundas nuptias, says Ambrose, sed non suademus.
^ ApoL L 27 and 29 (p. 71-77, ed. Otto).
' Inst. div. 1. vi. 20 (p. -48 ed. Lips.) : Ne illud quidem concedi aliquis existimet, ut
recens natos liceat oblidere, quae vel maxima est impietas ; ad vitam enim Deus
inspirat animas, non ad mortem . . . Tam igitur nefarium est exponere, quam
necare. At enim parricidae facultatum angustias conqueruntur, nee se pluribug
liberis educandis sufficere posse praetendunt ; qua.si vero aut facultates in potestate
sint possidentium, aut non quotidie Deus ex divitibus pauperes, et ex pauperibus
pauperes faciat. Quare si quis liberos ob pauperiem non poterit educare, satius est,
ut se ab uxoris congressione contineat, quam sceleratis manibus Dei opera cor
rumpat.
336 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Trajan, began to direct their attention to the diminution of these
crjing evils, but the best legal enactments would never have
been able to eradicate them without the spiritual influence of
the church.
§ 92. Brotherly Love^ and Love for Enemies.
Comp. in part Schaubach : Das Verhaltniss der Moral des classischen Alter-
thums zur christlichen, beleuchtet durcli vergleichende Erurtening der
Lehre von der Feindesliehe, in the " Studien und Kritiken" for 1851,
p. 59-121. Also the works of Schmidt and Chastel, quoted at § 8G.
It is generally admitted, that selfishness was the soul of
heathen morality. The great men of antiquity rose indeed above
its sordid forms, love of gain and of pleasure, but were the more
under the power of ambition and love of fame. It was for fame
that Miltiades and Themistocles fought against the Persians ; that
Alexander set out on his tour of conquest ; that Herodotus wrote
his history, that Pindar sang his odes, that Sophocles composed
his tragedies, that Demosthenes delivered his orations, that
Phidias sculptured his Zeus. Fame was set forth in the
Olympian games as the highest object of life ; fame is held up
by Aeschylus as the last comfort of the suffering ; fame was
declared by Cicero,^ before a large assembly, the ruling passion
of the very best of men. Even the much lauded patriotism of
the heroes of ancient Greece and Kome was only an enlarged
egotism. In the catalogue of classical virtues we look in vain
for the two fundamental and cardinal virtues, love and humility.
The very word which corresponds in Greek to humility,^ sig-
nifies generally, in classical usage, a mean, abject mind. The
highest and purest form of love known to the heathen moralist
is friendship, which Cicero praises as the highest good next to
wisdom. But friendship itself rested, as was freely admitted, on
a utilitarian, that is, on an egotistic basis, and was only })ossiblc
among persons of equal or similar rank in society. For the
' Pro Arcliia poeta, c. 11. Traliimur omncs laudis studio, ot optimus quisquo
maxime gloria ducitur.
§ 92. BROTHERLY LOVE, AND LOVE FOR ENEMIES. 837
stranger, the barbarian, and the enemj, the Greek and Eoman
knew no love, but only contempt and hatred. The jus talionis,
the return of evil for evil, was universally acknowledged
throughout the heathen world as a just principle and maxim, in
direct opposition to the plainest injunctions of the New Testa-
ment.^ We must offend those, who offend us, says Aeschylus.^
Not to take revenge was regarded as a sign of weakness and
cowardice.
On the other hand, however, we should suppose that every
Christian virtue must find some basis in the noblest moral
instincts and aspirations of nature ; since Christianitv is not
against nature, but simply above it and intended for it. Thus
we may regard the humanity and magnanimity which we meet
with occasionally in heathen antiquity, as an approximation to,,
and preparation for, the Christian virtue of charity. It must be
admitted, that the better schools of moralists rose more or less-
above the popular approval of hatred of the enemy, wrath, and.
revenge. Aristotle and the Per'ipatetics, without condemning
this passion as wrong in itself, enjoined at least moderation in its
exercise. The Stoics went further, and required complete apathy
or suppression of all strong and passionate affections. Cicero
even declares placability and clemency one of the noblest traits
in the character of a great man,^ and praises Caesar for forgetting
nothing except injuries. Seneca, Plutarch, and Marcus Aurelius,.
who, however, were already indirectly and unconsciously under.
the influence of the atmosphere of Christian morality, decidedly
condemn anger and vindictiveness, and recommend kindness
to slaves, and a generous treatment even of enemies.
But this sort of love for an enemy, it should be remembered,
in the first place, does not flow naturally from the spirit
1 Matt. V. 23, 24, 44; vi. 12: xviii. 21. Rom. xii. 17, 19, 20. 1 Cor. xiii. T.
1 Thess. V. 15. 1 Pet. iii. 9.
" Prom. Vinct. v. 1005, comp. 1040. Many passages of similar import from
Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Euripides, etc. ; see quoted on p. 81 sqq. of the article
of Schaubach referred to above.
' De Offic. L 25: Nihil eiiim laudabilius, nihil magno et praeclaro viro dignius
placabilitate et dementia.
22
888 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
of heathenism, but is, as it were, an accident and exception ;
secondly, it is not enjoined as a general duty, but expected only
from the great and the wise ; thirdly, it does not rise above the
conception of magnanimity, which, more closely considered, is
itself connected with a refined form of egotism, and with a noble
pride that regards it below the dignity of a gentleman to notice
the malice of inferior men ;^ fourthly, it is commended only in
its negative aspect as refraining from the right of retaliation, not
as active benevolence and charity to the enemy, which returns
good for evil ; and finally, it is nowhere derived from a reli-
gious principle, the love of God to man, and therefore has no
proper root, and lacks the animating soul.
No wonder, then, that in spite of the finest maxims of a few
philosophers, the imperial age was controlled by the coldest
selfishness, so that, according to the testimony of Plutarch,
friendship had died out even in families, and the love of
brothers and sisters was supposed to be possible only in a heroic
age long passed by.
It was in such an age of universal egotism that Christianity
first revealed the true spirit of love to man as flowing from the
love of God, and exhibited it in actual life. This cardinal
virtue we meet first within the Church itself, as the bond of
union among believers, and the sure mark of the genuine disciple
of Jesus. " That especially," says Tertullian to the heathen,
in a celebrated passage of his Apologeticus, " which love
works among us, exposes us to many a suspicion. ' Behold,'
they say, ' how they love one another !' Yea, verily this must
strike them ; for they hate each other. ' And how ready they
are to die for one another!' Yea, truly; for they are rather
ready to kill one another. And even that we call each other
brethren, seems to them suspicious for no other reason, than that
among them all expressions of kindred are only feigned. We
are even your brethren, in virtue of the common nature, which
is the mother of us all ; though ye, as evil brethren, deny your
' Comp. Seneca, De ira II. 32 : Magui nniini est injurias despiccre. — Illc ina_c:nus
et nobilis est, qui more magnae ferae latratus minutonim canum securus cxaudit.
§ 92. BROTHERLY LOvE, AND LOVE FOR ENEMIES. 339
human nature. But how much more justly are those called and
considered brethren, who acknowledge the one God as their
Father ; who have received the one Spirit of holiness ; who
have awaked from the same darkness of uncertainty to the light
of the same truth ? . . . And we, who are united in spirit and in
soul, do not hesitate to have also all things common, except
wives. For we break fellowship just where other men practise
it."
This brotherly love flowed from community of life in Christ.
Hence Ignatius calls believers " Christ-bearers" and " God-
bearers."^ The article of the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in
the communion of saints ;" the current appellation of " brother"
and " sister ;" and the fraternal kiss usual on admission into the
church, and at the Lord's supper, — were not mere empty forms,
nor even a sickly sentimentalism, but the expression of true
feeling and experience, only strengthened by the common
danger and persecution. A travelling Christian, of whatever
language or country, with a letter of recommendation from his
bishop,^ was everywhere hospitably received as a long known
friend. It was a current phrase : In thy brother thou hast seen
the Lord himself The force of love reached beyond the grave.
Families were accustomed to celebrate at appointed times the
memory of their departed members ; and this was one of the
grounds on which Tertullian opposed second marriage.
This brotherly love expressed itself, above all, in the most
self-sacrificing beneficence to the poor and sick, to widows and
orphans, to strangers and prisoners, particularly to confessors in
bonds. It magnifies this virtue in our view, to reflect, that the
Christians at that time belonged mostly to the lower classes, and
in times of persecution- often lost all their possessions. Every
congregation was a charitable society, and in its public worship
took regular collections for its needy members. To these were
added numberless private charities, given in secret, which eter-
Xpi(TTO(|i)(5ooi, Sco<p6poi.
^ Fpa/iftaTa TeTvitMfiiva or KoiviaviKa ; epistolae or literae formatae; so called, because
composed after a certain tuttoj or forma, to guard against frequent forgeries.
840 SECOND PERIOD. A.D, 100-811.
nity alone will reveal. The chureli at Rome had under its care
a great multitude of widows, orphans, blind, lame, and sick,^
whom the deacon Laurentius, in the Dccian persecution, showed
to the heathen prefect, as the most precious treasures of the
church. It belonged to the idea of a Christian housewife, and
was particularly the duty of the deaconesses, to visit the Lord, to
clothe him, and give him meat and drink, in the persons of his
needy disciples. Even such opponents of Christianity as Lucian,
testify to this zeal of the Christians in labors of love, though
they see in it nothing but an innocent fanaticism. "It is in-
credible," says Lucian,^ " to see the ardor with which the people
of that religion help each other in their wants. They spare
nothing. Their first legislator has put into their heads that they
are all brethren." This beneficence reached beyond immediate
neighborhood. In cases of general distress the bishops ap-
pointed special collections, and also fasts, by which food might
be saved for suffering brethren. The Roman church sent its
charities great distances abroad.^ Cyprian of Carthage, who,
after his conversion, sold his own estates for the benefit of the
poor, collected a hundred thousand sestertia, or more than
three thousand dollars, to redeem Christians of Numidia, who
had been taken captive by neighboring barbarians ; and he
considered it a high privilege, " to be able to ransom for a
small sum of money him, who has redeemed us from the
dominion of Satan with his own blood." A fiither, who refused
to give alms on account of his children, Cyprian charged with
the additional sin of binding his children to an earthly inherit-
ance, instead of pointing them to the richest and most loving
Father in heaven.
Finally, this brotherly love expanded to love even for ene-
mies, which returned the heathens good for evil, and not rarely,
in persecutions and public misfortunes, heaped coals of fire on
their heads. During the persecution under Gallus (252), when
the pestilence raged in Carthage, and the heathens threw out their
1 Cornelius, in Euaeb. II. E. VI. 43. ' Dc mortc Percgr. a 13.
• Diouysiua of Coriuth, in Eus. IV. 23.
§ 93. TREATMENT OF THE DEAD. 341
dead and sick upon the streets, ran away from them for fear of
the contagion, and cursed the Christians as the supposed authors
of the plague, Cyprian assembled his congregation, and exhorted
them to love their enemies ; whereupon all went to work ; the
rich with their money, the poor with their hands, and rested
not, till the dead were buried, the sick cared for, and the city
saved from desolation. The same self-denial appeared in the
Christians of Alexandria during a ravaging plague under the
reign of Gallienus. These are only a few prominent manifesta-
tions of a spirit which may be traced through the whole history
of martyrdom and the daily prayers of the Christians for their
enemies and persecutors. For while the love of friends, says
Tertullian, is common to all men, the love of enemies is a virtue
peculiar to Christians.^ " You forget," he says to the heathens
in his Apology, " that, notwithstanding your persecutions, far
from conspiring against j'ou, as our numbers would perhaps
furnish us with the means of doing, we pray for you and do good
to you ; that, if we give nothing for your gods, we do give for
your poor, and that our charity spreads more alms in your
streets than the offerings presented by your religion in your
temples."
§ 93. Treatment of (he Dead. The Church in the Catacombs.
Comp. the large illustrated works of Bottari, D'Agincourt, Marchi, Rostell,
on the Catacombs of Rome, especially Louis Ferret : Catacombes de
Rome ; architecture, peintures murales, inscriptions, figures et symboles
des pierres sepulcrales, verres graves sur fonds d'or, lampes, vases, anneaux,
instruments, etc., des cimetieres des premiers Chretiens; etc. Par. 1853,
sqq. 5 vols, (containing 325 plates). Bellermann : Ueber die altesten
christlichen Begrabnissstatten u. die Katakomben zu Neapel. Hamb. 1839.
Charles Maitland (M.D.) : The Church in the Catacombs, or a Descrip-
tion of the Prim. Church of Rome, illustrated by its Sepulchral Remains.
Lond. 2d ed. 1847. Card. Wiseman : Fabiola, or the Church of the Cata-
combs. Lond. 1855. (A historical romance.) W. T. Kip : The Catacombs
' Ad Scapiilam c. 1 : Ita enim disciplina jubemur diligere inimicos quoque et
orare pro lis qui nos persequuntur, ut haec sit perfecta et propria bonitas nostra, -non
communis. Amicos enim diligere omnium est, inimicos autem solorum Christiano-
rum.
342 SECOND PERIOD, A.D. 100-311.
of Rome, as illustr. the Church of the first three centuries. N. York, 1854.
J. S. NoRTHcoTE (R. C.) : The Roman Catacombs. Lond. 1857. Piper :
Die Grabinschriften der iiltesten Christen, and other archaeological articles
in the " Evang. Kalender" for 1855, p. 28 sqq. ; 1857, p. 37 sqq., &c.
The early clmrch took a cheerful view of death, and con-
sidered it, after the resurrection of Christ, as a peaceful, hopeful
slumber. The day of a believer's death, especially if he were a
martyr, was called the day of his heavenly birth. His grave
was surrounded with symbols of hope and of victory ; anchors,
harps, palms, crowns. The primitive Christians always showed
a tender care for the dead ; under a vivid impression of the
unbroken communion of saints and the future resurrection of
the body in glory. For Christianity redeems the body as well
as the soul, and consecrates it a temple of the Holy Ghost.
Hence the Greek and Koman custom of burning the corpse was
repugnant to Christian feeling. Tertullian even declared it a
symbol of the fire of hell. In its stead the church adopted the
primitive Jewish usage, practised also by the Egyptians and Ba-
bylonians, of burial ;^ but they discarded lamentation?, rending
of clothes, and all signs of extravagant grief. The bodies of the
dead were washed,^ wrapped in linen cloths,^ sometimes embalm-
ed,* and then, in the presence of ministers, relatives, and friends,
with prayer and singing of psalms, committed as seeds of im-
mortality to the genial bosom of the earth. Funeral discourses
were very common as early as the Nicene period. But in the
times of persecution the interment was often necessarily per-
formed as hastily and secretly as possible. The death-days of
martyrs the church celebrated annually at their graves, with
oblations, love-feasts, and the Lord's supper. Families likewise
commemorated their departed members in the domestic circle.
The current prayers for the dead were originally only thanks-
givings for the grace of God manifested to them. But they
afterwards passed into intercessions, without any warrant in the
' Comp. Gen. xxiii. 19. Matt, xxvii. 00. Jiio. xi. 17. Acts v. fi ; viii. 2.
» Acts ix. 37. ' Matt, xxvii. 59. Luko xxiii. 53. Juo. xi. 44.
* Jno. xLx. 39 sq. ; xii. 7.
§ 93. TREATMENT OF THE DEAD, 843
teacliing of the apostles, and in connexion witli questionable
views in regard to the intermediate state. Tertullian, for in-
stance, in his argument against second marriage, says of the
Christian widow, she prays for the soul of her departed husband,^
and brings her annual offering on the day of his departure.
The same feeling of the inseparable communion of saints gave
rise to the usage, unknown to the heathens, of consecrated places
of common burial.^ For these cemeteries, the Christians, in the
times of persecution, when they were mostly poor and enjoyed
no corporate rights, selected remote, secret spots, such as waste
fields, caves, and especially subterranean vaults, called at first
crypts,^ but after the sixth century commonly termed catacombs,
or resting-places.*
The catacombs were originally sand-pits and quarries, whence
building materials were taken. Into these excavations, when
abandoned, the heathens frequently cast the corpses of slaves and
convicts. The Christians used them as places of refuge, cha-
pels, and tombs, and converted these dark and cheerless passages
into sacred rooms, where, especially on the festivals of the mar-
tyrs, they held their most solemn worship, and amidst the
shadows of death felt the breath of the resurrection and the life
everlasting. The flourishing period of the catacomb-worship,
however, began only with the increased reverence for saints,
after Constantine, and continued till the eighth century, when
the remains of the martyrs began to be deposited in the churches
for more convenient worship ; though long after this also, when
the catacombs were again opened, in the sixteenth century,
individual saints of the Roman church, like Philip Neri and
Charles Borromeo, spent whole nights praying amid these
venerable scenes of the triumphs of the early church. Jerome
relates,^ how, while a school-boy, about the middle of the fourth
century, he used to go with his companions on Sundays to the
graves of the apostles and martyrs in the crypts at Rome,
1 Pro animaejus orat. ' Koi^nr/'jpia, cimeteria, dormitoria, areae.
* Kpirrnit, also aronariae. * KaraHiijPtov, catatumba, catacumba.
' Conmi. in Eze'.v. 40.
344 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
"where in subterranean depths the visitor passes to and fro
between the bodies of the entombed on both walls, and where
all is so dark, that the prophecy here finds its fulfilment : The
living go down into hcll.^ Here and there a ray from above,
not falling in through a window, but only pressing in through a
crevice, softens the gloom ; as you go onward, it fades away, and
in the darkness of night which surrounds you, that verse of
Virgil comes to your mind :
" Ilorror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent."
And the poet Prudentius also, in the beginning of the fifth cen-
tury, several times speaks of these burial-places, and. the devo-
tions held within them.
These catacombs are found to this day in the vicinity of
several Italian cities, Sjrracuse and Naples, and especially under
the basilicas of St. Lorenzo, St. Agnes, and St. Sebastian in
Rome, and from the sixteenth century they have been a field of
antiquarian research. The most renowned of all is the one
under St. Sebastian, which pope Calixtus (219-224) caused to
be enlarged and ornamented, and where the bones of Peter and
Paul, of forty-six bishops of Rome, and of an incredible number
— the inscription on the entrance says a hundred and seventy-
four thousand ! — of martyrs, are said to repose. The niches are
hewn out like shelves in the perpendicular walls, and closed
with a slab of marble or tile. Sometimes they form several
tiers ; in the upper story of the crypt of Calixtus, even eight and
ten. The more wealthy were laid in sarcophagi. The larger
rooms are arranged as chapels for worship, with a simple altar,
and a bishops' chair hewn out of the tufa. Articles of ornament,
rings and sculptures, playthings in the case of children, were
inclosed with the dead ; even rare coins and all kinds of tools,
also lamps of clay (terracotta), metal, or glass, carved with the
monogram of Christ, or other Christian symbols. A great num-
' Num. xvi. 33, and Ps. Iv. 16.
§ 94. ASCETICISM. 345
ber of flasks and cups also, with or without ornamentation, are
found, mostly outside of the graves and fastened to the grave-
lids. These were formerly supposed to have been receptacles
for tears, or, from the red, dried sediment in them, for the blood
of martyrs. But later archaeologists consider them drinking
vessels used in the agapae and oblations in the crypts. On
opening the graves the skeleton appears frequently even now
very well preserved, sometimes in dazzling whiteness, as covered
with a glistening glory ; but falls into dust at the touch.
The inscriptions are interesting and characteristic, traced in
red or black uncial letters on the grave-lids and the sarcophagi,
often in bad Latin, faulty orthography, and in their simplicity
strongly contrasting with the inscriptions of distinguished
heathen Romans or the magnificence of modern Christian Rome.
The}^ are collected in large numbers in the "Vatican and the
lately founded Lateran museums in Rome, and some in the
Christian museum at Berlin. The oldest give, for the most part,
only the name of the deceased and his nearest kindred, or the
name, with the age, and a short word of Christian love and
hope: "In peace;" "Deposited;" "He sleeps;"^ "He rests
well;" "Live in God;" "Be received into Christ;" "God
quicken thy spirit ;" " Weep not, my child ; death is not eter-
nal." Almost uniformly the Constantinian monogram of Christ,
3^' °^ a"X"") stands upon the grave-stones, as well as the sym-
bolical signs of the cross, the ship, the dove with the olive-
branch, the anchor, the palm;^ and often also hammers, pincers,
spears, and other instruments of torture. The sarcophagi, which
came into more general use after Constantine, as also the lids
and walls, are richly ornamented with scenes from Bible history
and Christian tradition, and show us the beginnings of Christian
painting and sculpture. The most beautifal piece of ancient
Christian sculpture is the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, a prefect
of Rome, who died soon after his baptism in 359.
Domitiuf, or Florentinus, or Yictorina dormit — dormit in pace — in pace Domini.
Comp. § 99.
346 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
§ 94. Asceticism.
MoHLER (R. C.) ; Geschichte des Monelithums in der Zeit seiner ersten
Entstehung u. ersten Ausbildung, 183G (Vermischte Schrif'ten, ed. D61-
linger, Regensb. 1839. II. p. 165 sqq.). Is. Taylor: Ancient Chris-
tianity, 4th ed. London, 1844, I. 133-299 (anti-Puseyite and anti-Ca-
tholic). H. RuFFNER (Presbyt.) : The Fathers of the Desert ; or an
Account of the Origin and Practice of Monkery among heathen nations;
its passage into the church ; and some wonderful Stories of the Fathers
concerning the primitive Monks and Hermits. N. York, 1850. 2 vols.
Here we enter a field where the early churcli appears most
remote from the free spirit of evangelical Protestantism, and
stands nearest the legal position of Greek and Eoman Catholicism.
Ilere she seems already to regard the Christian life as consisting
mainly in certain outward exercises, rather than an inward dis-
position ; and she makes it the great problem of virtue, not so
much to transform the world and sanctify the natural things
and relations created by God, as to flee from the world into
monastic seclusion, and voluntarily renounce property and mar-
riage. The Pauline doctrine of faith and of justification by
grace alone, steadily retreats, or rather, it has never yet been
rightly enthroned in the general thought and life of the church.
The qualitative view of morality yields more and more to quan-
titative calculation by the number of outward meritorious and
even supererogatory works, prayer, fasting, alms-giving, volun-
tary poverty, and celibacy. This necessarily brings with it a
Judaizing self-righteousness and over-estimate of the ascetic lite,
which developes, by an irresistible impulse, into the hermit-life
and monasticism of the Nicene age. All the germs* of this asce-
ticism appear in the third century.
By asceticism^ we mean, in general, a rigid outward self-disci-
pline, by which the spirit strives after full dominion over the flesh,
and a superior grade of virtue. It includes not only that true
' "AiKn"";, from dTKiot, to exercise, to strengthen ; primarily applied to athletic
and gymnastic exercises, but used also, even by the heathens and by Philo, of moral
Belf-discij)liue.
§ 94. ASCETICISM. , 847
moderation and restraint of the animal appetites, whicli is a
universal Christian duty, but total abstinence from enjoyments
in themselves lawful, from wine, animal food, property, and
marriage, together with all kinds of penances and mortifications
of the body. In the union of the abstractive and penitential
elements, or of self-denial and self-punishment, the catholic asce-
ticism stands forth complete in light and shade ; exhibiting, on
the one hand, wonderful examples of heroic renunciation of self
and the world, but very often, on the other, a total misapprehen-
sion and perversion of Christian morality ; the renunciation
involving more or less a Gnostic contempt of the gifts and ordi-
nances of the God of nature, and the penance or self-punishment
running into practical denial of the all-sufficient merits of Christ.
The ascetic and monastic tendency rests primarily upon a lively,
though for the most part morbid sense of the sinfulness of the
flesh and the irremediable corruption of the world ; then upon
the desire for undisturbed solitude and exclusive occupation with
divine things ; and finally, upon a certain religious ambition to
attain extraordinary holiness and merit. It would anticipate
the life of angels^ upon earth. It substitutes an abnormal, self-
appointed virtue and piety for the normal forms prescribed by
God; and not rarely looks down upon the divinely-ordained
standard with spiritual pride. It is a mark at once of moral
strength and moral weakness. It presumes a certain degree of
culture, in which man has emancipated himself from the powers
of nature and risen to the consciousness of his moral calling ; but
thinks to secure itself against temptation only by entire separa-
tion from the world, instead of standing in the world to over-
come it and transform it into the kingdom of God.
Asceticism is by no means limited to the Christian church,
though it there first developed its highest and noblest form. We
observe kindred phenomena even long before Christ ; among the
Jews, in the Nazarites, the Essenes, and the cognate Therapeutae ;
' Matt. xxii. 30. Hence the frequent designation of monastic life as a vita
angelica.
348 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
and still more among the heathens, in the old Persian and Indian
religions, especially among the Buddhists. Even the Grecian
philosophy was conceived by the Pythagoreans, the Platonists,
and the Stoics, not as theoretical knowledge merely, but also as
practical wisdom, and frequently joined itself to the most rigid
abstemiousness, so that "philosopher" and "ascetic" were inter-
changeable terms. Most of the apologists of the second century
had by this practical philosophy, particularly the Platonic, been
led to Christianity; and they on tliis account retained their
simple dress and mode of life. Tertulhan congratulates the
philosopher's cloak on having now become the garb of a better
philosophy. In the show of self-denial the Cynics, the followers
of Diogenes, went to the extreme ; but these, at least in their
later degenerate days, concealed under the guise of bodily squalor,
untrimmed nails, and uncombed hair, a vulgar cynical spirit,
and a bitter hatred of Christianity.
In the ancient church there was a special class of Christians of
both sexes, who, under the name of "ascetics" or " abstinents,"^
though still living in the midst of the community, retired from
society, voluntarily renounced marriage and property, devoted
themselves wholly to fastings, prayer, and religious contemplation,
and strove thereby to attain Christian perfection. Sometimes
they formed a society of their own,^ for mutual improvement, an
ecclesiola in ecclesia, in which even children could be received
and trained to abstinence. They shared with the confessors the
greatest regard from their fellow Christians, had a separate seat
in the pubhc worship, and were considered the fairest ornaments
of the church. In times of persecution they sought with enthu-
siasm a martyr's death as the crown of perfection. While as yet
each congregation was a lonely oasis in the desert of the world's
corruption, and stood in downright opposition to the surround-
ing heathen world, these ascetics had no reason for separating
from it and flying into the desert. It was under Constantine,
and partly as the result of the union of church and state, the
• ^AiTKTtTal, oontinentes ; also vao^ivoi, virgines. * ' AvKJirfiptov,
§ 94. ASCETICISM. 349
consequent transfer of tlie world into the church, and the cessa-
tion of martyrdom, that asceticism developed itself to anchoretism
and monkery, and endeavored thus to save the virgin purity of
the church by carrying it into the wilderness. Yet the lives of
the two first hermits, Paul of Thebes (f 340) and Anthony of
Egypt (f 356), fall at least partly in the period before us. At
the time of Cyprian ^ there was as yet no absolutely binding vow.
The early origin and wide spread of this ascetic life are due to
the deep moral earnestness of Christianity, and the prevalence of
sin in all the social relations of the then still thoroughly pagan
world. It was the excessive development of the negative, world-
rejecting element in Christianity, which must precede its positive
effort to transform and sanctify the world.
The ascetic principle, however, was not confined, in its influ-
ence, to the proper ascetics and monks. It ruled more or less
the entire morality and piety of the ancient and mediaeval
church ; though, on the other hand, there were never wanting
in her bosom protests of the free evangelical spirit against moral
narrowness and excessive regard to the outward works of the law.
The ascetics were but the most consistent representatives of the
old catholic piet}^, and were commended as such by the apologists
to the heathens. They formed the spiritual aristocracy, the full
bloom of the church, and served especially as examples to the
clergy.
But we must now distinguish two different kinds of asceticism
in Christian antiquity : a heretical and an orthodox.
The heretical asceticism, the beginnings of which are resisted
in the New Testament itself,^ meets us in the Gnostic and Mani-
chaean sects. It is descended from Oriental and Platonic hea-
thenism, and is based on a dualistic view of the world, a confu-
sion of sin with matter, and a perverted idea of God and the
creation. It places God and the world at irreconcilable enmity,
derives the creation from an inferior being, considers the human
body substantially evil, a product of the devil or the demiurge,
' Epist LXII. 2 1 Tim. iv. 3. Col. iL 16 sqq. Comp Kom. xiv.
350 SECOND PERIOD. A.J). 100-311.
and makes it the great moral business of man to rid himself of
the same, or gradually to annihilate it, whether by excessive
abstinence or by unbridled indulgence. Many of the Gnostics
placed the fall itself in the first gratification of the sexual desire,
which subjected man to the dominion of the Hyle.
The orthodox or catholic asceticism proceeds upon Chris-
tian views, and upon a literal and overstrained construction of
certain passages of scripture. It admits that all nature is the
work of God and the object of his love, and asserts the divine
origin and destiny of the human body, without which there
could, in fact, be no resurrection, and hence no admittance to
eternal glory. It therefore aims not to mortify the body, but
perfectly to Control and sanctify it. For the metaphysical dual-
ism between spirit and matter, it substitutes the ethical conflict
between the spirit and the flesh. But in practice it exceeds the
simple and sound limits of the Bible, falsely substitutes the bo-
dily appetites and affections, or sensuous nature, as such, for the
flesh, or the principle of selfishness, which resides in the soul as
well as the body ; and thus, with all its horror of heresy, really
joins in the Gnostic and Manichaean hatred of the body as the
prison of the spirit. This comes out especially in the deprecia-
tion of marriage and the family life, that divinely appointed
nursery of church and state, and in excessive self-inflictions, to
which the apostolic piety affords not the remotest parallel. The
heathen Gnostic principle of separation from the world and from
the body^ as a means of self-redemption, after being theoreti-
cally exterminated, stole into the church by a back door of prac-
tice, directly in face of the Christian doctrine of the high destiny
of the body and perfect redemption through Christ.
The Alexandrian fathers first furnished a theoretical basis for
this asceticism in the distinction, suggested even by the Pastor
Hermae,^ of a lower and a higher morality ; a distinction, which,
' Entweltlichung and Kntleiblicliung.
' SimiL v. 3 (p. 492, oil. Drc?sel): Si nutcm praeter ca quae mandavit Pominus
nliquid boni adjeceris, majorem dignitatem tibi conquircs, ct bonoratior apud Domi-
iiiim eris, quam eras t'uturus.
§ 95. VOLUNTARY POVERTY AND CELIBACY. 851
like that introduced at the same period by Tertullian, of mortal
and venial sins,^ gave rise to many practical errors, and favored
both moral laxity and ascetic extravagance. The ascetics, and
afterwards" the monks, formed a moral nobility, a spiritual aris-
tocracy, above the common Christian people ; as the clergy
stood in a separate caste of inviolable dignity above the laity.
Clement of Alexandria, otherwise remarkable for his elevated
ethical views, requires of the Christian sage or gnostic, that he
excel the plain Christian not only by higher knowledge, but
also by higher, emotionless virtue, and stoical superiority to all
bodily conditions ; and he inclines to regard the body, with
Plato, as the grave and fetter^ of the soul. How little he un-
derstood the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, may be
inferred from a passage in the Stromata, w^here he explains the
word of Christ : " Thy faith hath saved thee," as referring, not
to faith simply without good works, but to the Jews only, who
lived according to the law ; as if faith was something to be add-
ed to the good works, instead of being the source and principle
of the holy life.^ Origen^ goes still further, and propounds
quite distinctly the catholic doctrine of works of supererogation,^
works not enjoined indeed in the gospel, yet recommended,^
which were supposed to establish a peculiar merit and secure a
' Peccata irremissibilia and remissibilia, or mortalia and venialia.
3 Strom. VL 14, 108 : 'H tiVtij aov ciaoKt ct (Marc. V. 34), oi!;^ otiAwj tovs hitw
covv irtarciovrns aco^nasjOai Xiyetn airoi/ ixSf^d^e^a, tui' ftii koi ra I'pya enaKo^ov^fiat]' avTt'
KU 'luu^niois /jovoti Tavrriv e\cyc Tt]v (fxovtjv roii vofiiKots Kal di'tTTiXiJTrtoj ffePioiKoatv. oJ; nuvnv
* In ep. ad Rom. c. iii. ed. de la Rue iv. p. 507 : Donee quis hoc tantum facit, quod
debet, i. e. quae praecepta sunt, inutilis servus. Si autem adda^ aliquid ad praecep-
tum, tunc non jam inutilis servus eris, sed dicetur ad te : Euge serve bone et tidelis.
Quid autem sit quod addatur praeceptis et su2^ra dehitum fiat, Paulus ap. dixit : De
virginibus autem praeceptum Domini non habeo, consilium autem do, tamquam mise-
ricordiam assecutus a Domino (1 Cor. vii. 25). Hoc opus super praeceptum est. Et
iterum praeceptum est, ut hi qui evangelium nunciant, de evangelic vivant. Paulus
autem dicit, quia nullo horum usus sum : et ideo non inutilis erit servus, sed fidelis
et prudens.
* Opera supererogatoria.
5 Matt. xix. 21. Luke xxiv. 26. 1 Cor. vii. 8 sq. 25. Hence consilia evangelica,
in distinction from praecepta.
852 SECOND TERIOD. A.U. 100-311.
higher degree of blessedness. lie who does only what is re-
quired of all, is an unprofitable servant;' but he who does
more, who performs, for example, what Paul, in 1 Cor. vii. 25,
merely recommends, concerning the single state, or, like him,
resigns his just claim to temporal remuneration for spiritual ser-
vice, is called a good and faithful servant.^ Among these works
were reckoned martyrdom,^ voluntary poverty, and voluntary
celibacy. All three, or at least the last two of these acts, in
connexion with the positive Christian virtues, belong to the idea
of the higher perfection, as distinguished from the fulfilment of
regular duties, or ordinary morality. To poverty and celibacy
was afterwards added absolute obedience ; and these three things
were the main subjects of the consilia evangelica and the mo-
nastic vow.
§ 95. Voluntary Poverty and Celibacy.
The ground on which these particular virtues were so strongly
urged is easily understood. Proj)erty, which is so closely allied
to the selfishness of man and Ijinds him to the earth ; and sex-
ual intercourse, which brings out sensual passion in its greatest
strength, and which nature herself covers with the veil of mo-
desty ; — these present themselves as the firmest obstacles to that
perfection, in which God alone is our possession, and Christ
alone our love and delight.
In these things the ancient heretics went to the extreme.
The Ebionites made poverty the condition of salvation. The
Gnostics, as already remarked, were divided between the two
excesses of absolute self-denial and unbridled self-indulgence.
The Marcionites, Carpocratians, Prodicians, false Basilidians, and
Manichaeans objected to individual property, from hatred to the
material world; and Epiphanes, in a book "on Justice" about
125, defined virtue as a community with equality, and advocated
the community of goods and women. The more earnest of these
heretics entirely prohibited marriage and procreation as a dia-
I Luke xvil 10. « Matt. xxv. 21. » Comp. § 53 and 59.
§ 95. VOLUNTARY POVERTY AND CELIBACY. S53
bolical work, as in the case of Saturninus, Marcion, and the
Eucratites ; while other Gnostic sects substituted for it the most
shameless promiscuous intercourse, as in Carpocrates, Epiphanes,
and the Nicolaitans.
The ancient church, on the contrary, held to the divine insti-
tution of property and marriage, and was content to recommend
the voluntary renunciation of these intrinsically lawful pleasures
to the few elect, as means of attaining Christian perfection. She
declared marriage holy, virginity more holy. But unquestiona-
bly even the church fathers so exalted the higher holiness of vir-
ginity, as practically to neutralize, or at least seriously weaken,
their assertion of the holiness of marriage. The Roman church,
in spite of the many Bible examples of married men of God
from Abraham to Peter, can conceive no real holiness without
celibacy, and therefore requires celibacy of its clergy without
exception.
The recommendation of voluntary poverty was based on a
literal interpretation of the Lord's advice to the rich young ruler,,
who had kept all the commandments from his youth up : " If
thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come and fol-
low me."^ To this were added the actual examples of the poverty
of Christ and his apostles, and the community of goods in the
first Christian church at Jerusalem. Many Christians, not of
the ascetics only, but also of the clergy, like Cyprian, accord-
ingly gave up all their projDerty at their conversion, for the
benefit of the poor. The later monastic societies sought to repre-
sent in their community of goods the original equality and the
perfect brotherhood of men. Yet on the other hand, Clement
of Alexandria, for example, in a special treatise on the right use
of wealth,^ observes, that the Saviour forbade not so much the
possession of earthly property, as the love of it and desire for it ;
and that it is possible to retain the latter, even though the pos-
session itself be renounced. The earthly, says he, is a mate-
* Matt. Xix. 2L " Tij h o-wfo'^syoj irAotio-iof,
23
854 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
rial and a means for doing good, and tlie unequal distribution
of property is a divine provision for the exercise of Christian
love and beneficence. The true riches are the virtue, which can
and should iiKiiiitaiu itself under all outward conditions; the
false are the mere outward possession, which comes and goes.
The old catholic exaggeration of celibacy attached itself to
four passages of scripture, viz. Matt. xix. 12 ; xxii. 30 ; 1 Cor.
vii. 7 sqq. ; and Eev. xiv. 4 ; but it went far beyond them, and
unconsciously admitted influences from foreign modes of thought.
The words of the Lord in Matt. xxii. 30, Luke xx. 35 sq., were
most frequently cited ; but they expressly limit unmarried life
to the angels, without setting it up as the model for men.
Eev. xiv. 4 was taken by some of the fathers more correctly in
the symbolical sense of freedom from the pollution of idolatry.
The example of Christ, though often urged, cannot here furnish
a rule ; for the Son of God and Saviour of the world, was too
far above all the daughters of Eve, to find an equal companion
among them, and in any case cannot be conceived as holding
such relations. The whole church of the redeemed is his purs
bride. Of the apostles some at least were married, and among
them Peter, the oldest and most prominent of all. The advice
of Paul in 1 Cor. vii. is so cautiously given, that even here the
view of the flithers found but partial support ; especially if ba-
lanced with the Pastoral Epistles, where monogamy is presented
as the proper condition for the clergy. Nevertheless he was
frequently made the apologist of celibacy by orthodox and
heretical writers.^ Judaism — with the exception of the pagan-
izing Essenes, who abstained from marriage — highly honors the
family life ; it allows marriage even to the priests and the high-
priests, who had in fact to maintain their order by physical
' Tluis, for example, in the rather worthless apocryphal Ada PauH et Theclae,
which are first mentioned by Tcrtullian (Do baptismo c. 17, as the production of a
certain Asiatic presbyter), and must therefore have existed in the second century.
There Paul is made to say: Mu^cnpioi ol eyKpurcTs, on airoTs ^aX^iaei h ^ed; . . i/aKoptot
ol eyovTC; yvimtKai iu{ /ifj tvovrid on airoi K^rjoot'oiifiaovai t6v ^i6v . . . ^laxnota ra adfia
Til Tciv rrap^lvioi', on avra ciapcoTfiaorxTtv rw Of^ Kut nvK dT'i^ionviriii rni' nia^dv ti'k ayvcini
aiiTuv. See Tiflchendorf : Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha. Lipa 1851. p. 42 sq.
§ 95. VOLUNTARY POVERTY AND CELIBACY. 355
reproduction ; it considers unfruitfolness a disgrace or a curse.
Heathenism, on the contrary, just because of its own degrada-
tion of woman, and its low, sensual conception of marriage, fre-
quently includes celibacy in its ideal of morality, and associates
it with worship. The noblest form of heathen virginity appears
in the six Vestal virgins in Rome, who, while girls of from sis
to ten years, were selected for the service of the pure goddess,
and set to keep the holy fire burning on its altar ; but, after
serving thirty years, were allowed to return to secular life and
marry» . The penalty for breaking their vow of chastity was to
be buried alive in the campus sceleratus.
The ascetic depreciation of marriage is thus due, at least in
part, to the influence of heathenism. But with this was asso-
ciated the Christian enthusiasm for angelic purity in opposition
to the horrible licentiousness of the Graeco-Roman world. It
was long before Christianity raised woman and the family life to
the purity and dignity which became them in the kingdom of
God. In this view we may the more easily account for many
expressions of the church fathers resjDecting the female sex, and
warnings against intercourse with women, which to us, in the
present state of European and American civilization, sound per-
fectly coarse and unchristian. John of Damascus has collected
in his Parallels such patristic expressions as these: "A woman
is an evil." " A rich woman is a double evil." " A beautiful
woman is a whited sepulcre." " Better is a man's wickedness
than a woman's goodness." The men who could write so, must
have forgotten the beautiful passages to the contrary in the pro-
verbs of Solomon and Sirach ; they must have forgotten their
own mothers.
The excessive regard for celibacy and the accompanying depre-
ciation of marriage date from about the middle of the second
century, and reach their height in the Nicene age.
Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, expresses himself as yet
very moderately : "If any one can remain in chastity of the flesh
to the glory of the Lord of the flesh (or, according to another
reading, of the flesh of the Lord), let him remain thus without
350 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-ull.
boasting ; ^ if he boast, he is lost, and if it be made known, be-
yond the bishop,^ he is ruined." What a stride from this to the
obUgatory celibacy of the clergy I Yet the admonition leads us
to suppose, that cehbacy was thus early, in the beginning of the
second century, in many cases boasted of as meritorious, and
allowed to nourish spiritual pride, Ignatius is the first to call
voluntary virgins brides of Christ and jewels of Christ,
Justin ]Martyr goes further. He points to many Christians of
both sexes who lived to a great age unpolluted ; and he desires
celibacy to j^revail to the greatest possible extent. He refers to
the example of Christ, and expresses the singular opinion, that
the Lord was born of a virgin only to put a limit to sensual
desire, and to show that God could produce without the sexual
agency of man. His disciple Tatian ran even to the Gnostic
extreme upon this point, and, i)i a lost work on Christian perfec-
tion, condemned conjugal cohabitation as a fellowship of corrup-
tion destructive of prayer. At the same period Athenagoras
wrote, in his Apology: "Many may be found among us, of
both sexes, who grow old unmarried, full of hope that they are
in this way more closely united to God."
Clement of Alexandria is the most reasonable of all the fathers
in his views on this point. He considers eunuchism a special
gift of divine grace, but without yielding it on this account
preference above the married state. On the contrar}', he vindi-
cates with great decision the moral dignity and sanctity of mar-
riage against the heretical extravagances of his time, and lays
down the general principle, that Christianity stands not in out-
ward observances,. enjoyments, and privations, but in righteous-
ness and peace of heart. Of the Gnostics he says, that, under
the fair name of abstinence, they act impiously towards the
creation and the holy Creator, and repudiate marriage and pro-
' 'Ev aKavy^riaia jicvctm.
2 E'"ii' yi".)rS,7 TrShv Toi lirtcrKdmv, according to tlic larger Greek recension, c. 5, witli
wliicli the Syriac (c. 2) and Armenian versions agree. But the shorter Greek recen-
sion reads nXiny for irArji', wliich would give the sense: " If he think himself (on that
account) above the Cmarried) bishop ; si inajorem se episcopo censeat."
§ 95. VOLUNTARY POVERTY AND CELIBACY. 357
creation on tlie ground that a man should not introduce others
into the world to their misery, and provide new nourishment for
death. He justly charges them with inconsistency in despising
the ordinances of God and yet enjoying the nourishment created
by the same hand, breathing his air, and abiding in his world.
He rejects the appeal to the example of Christ, because Christ
needed no help, and because the church is his bride. The apos-
tles also he cites against the impugners of marriage. Peter and
Philip begot children ; Philip gave his daughters in marriage ;
and even Paul hesitated not to speak of a female companion
(rather only of his right to lead about such an one, as well as
Peter). We seem translated into an entirely different Protestant
atmosphere, when in this genial writer we read : The perfect
Christian, who has the apostles for his patterns, proves himself
truly a man in this, that ■- he chooses not a solitary life, but mar-
ries, begets children, cares for the household, yet under all the
temptations which his care for wife and children, domestics and
property presents, swerves not from his love to God, and as a
Christian householder exhibits a miniature of the all-ruling
Providence.
But how little such views agreed with the spirit of that age,
we see in Clement's own stoical and Platonizing conception of
the sensual appetites, and still more in his great disciple Origen,
who voluntarily disabled himself in his youth, and could not
think of the act of generation as anything but polluting. Hie-
racas, who also perhaps belonged to the Alexandrian school, is
said to have carried his asceticism to a heretical extreme, and to
have declared virginity a condition of salvation. Methodius was
an opponent of the spiritualistic, but not of the ascetic Origen,
and wrote an enthusiastic plea for virginity, founded on the idea
of the church as the pure, unspotted, ever young, and ever beau-
tiful bride of God. Yet, quite remarkably, in his " Feast of the
Ten Virgins," the virgins express themselves respecting the
sexual relations with a minuteness which, to our modern taste,
is extremely indelicate and offensive.
As to the Latin fiithers: The views of Tertullian for and
358 SECOND PERIOD. A.D, .100-311.
against marriage, particularly against second marriage, we have
already noticed.' His disciple Cyprian diflfers from him in his
ascetic principles only by greutcr moderation in expression, and,
in his treatise De habitu virginum, commends the unmarried life
on the ground of Matt. xix. 12, 1 Cor. vii., and Rev. xiv. 4.
Celibacy was most common witii pious virgins, who married
themselves only to God or to Christ,^ and in the spiritual delights
of this heavenly union found abundant compensation for the
pleasures of earthly matrimony. But cases were not rare where
sensuality, thiis violently suppressed, asserted itself under other
forms ; as, for example, in indolence and ease at the expense of
the church, which Tertullian finds it necessary to censure ; or in
the vanity and love of dress, which Cyprian rebukes ; and, worst
of all, in a venture of asceticism, which probably often enough
resulted in failure, or at least filled the imagination with impure
thoughts. Many of these heavenly brides^ lived with male
ascetics, and especially with unmarried clergymen, under pretext
of a purely spiritual fellowship, in so intimate intercourse as to
put their continence to the most perilous test, and wantonly
challenge temptation, from which we should rather praj to be
kept. This unnatural and shameless jjractice was probably
introduced by the Gnostics ; Irenaeus at least charges it upon
them. The first trace of it in the church appears, though under
a rather innocent allegorical form, in the Pastor Hermae, which
originated from the Roman church.* It is next mentioned in the
> See § 91. 2 Nuptae Deo, Clmsto.
3 'A^£>0ai', sorores (1 Cor. ix. 5); .afterwards cleverly called ywaTKCi (rvnirraKToi,
mulieres subintroductae, extraneae.
■I Simil. IX. c. 11 (in Drossel, p. G27). The virgines, who doubtless symbolically
represent the Christian graces (fldos, abstinentia, potestas, patientia, simplicitas,
innocentia, castitas, hilaritas, Veritas, intelligentia, concordia, and caritas, comp. c. 15),
there say to Hermaa, when he proposes an evening walk : Oi) Hvaoai dip' fifiwn dva-
yupnaai .... Mt5' rjiioii- tcatfin^n"^ <^f dSc\<p6i, xal oi)(^ if dvrip' finircpo; yap die\(pdf u'
Kal Tov XotiToS /itXXo^itv /itra cuv KaroiKtiv, \iav yap as dyamoptv. Then tho first of thcsO
\\Tgm9, fides, comes to the blushing Hermas, and begins to kiss him. The others do
the same ; they lead him to the tower (symbol of the church), and sport with him.
"WTien night comes on, they retire together to rest, with singing and prayer; «ui
e/ieiva, ho continues, per^ aiiTMii rfiv vixra xai iKotpi'j^ni' irapa rdv rrvpyov, 'EffTptoo-Of il al
irap^cvoi Tovi Xivovi ^iToJvai lavTciv y_apai, koX ipl dvUXivav tli rd pcaov airioi', koI ovilv
§ 96. CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY. 359
Pseudo-Clementine Epistles ad Virgines. In the third century
it prevailed widely in the East and West. The worldly-minded
bishop Paulus of Antioch, favored it by his own example.
Cyprian of Carthage came out earnestly,^ and with all reason,
against the vicious practice, in spite of the solemn protestation
of innocence by these sorores, and their appeal to investigations
through midwives. Several councils, at Elvira, Ancyra, Nice,
&c., felt called upon to forbid this pseudo-ascetic scandal. Yet
the intercourse of clergy with "mulieres subintroductae " rather
increased than diminished with the increasing stringency of the
celiljate laws, and has at all times more or less disgraced the
Eomish priesthood.
§ 96. Celibacy of the Clergy.
Comp. J. Ant. & Aug. Theiner (R. C.) ; Die Einfiihrimg der erzwungenen
Ehelosigheit bei den Geistiichen u. ikre Folgen. Oldenb. 1828, 2 vols.
As the clergy were supposed to embody the moral ideal of
Christianity, and to be in the full sense of the term the heritage
of God,^ they were required to practise especially rigid sexual
temperance after receiving their ordination. The virginitj^ of
the church of Christ, who was himself born of a virgin, seemed,
in the ascetic spirit of the age, to demand a virgin priesthood.
In the present period, however, this celibacy did not become a
matter of law, but was left optional, like the vow of chastity
among the laity. In the Pastoral Epistles of Paul a single mar-
riage, if not expressly enjoined, is at least allowed to the pres-
byter-bishop, and is presumed to exist as the rule. The first
step was the disapproval of second marriage; the passages, 1 Tim.
iii. 2 and Tit. i. 6, being taken as a restriction, and as prohibit-
ing successive polygamy. Yet so late as the beginning of the
third century, there were many clergymen in the Catholic church
SXtof EToium/ £t jit] -rpiirrjv-^rii'-n,' icdyu iner aiiToiv d^iaXciJrrfjf ■rTpoar)V)(6fir)V, It Can hardly
be conceived, that the apostolic Hermas wrote such silly stuff. It sounds much more
like a later Hermns towards the middle of the second century. Comp. below, § 121.
' Ep. LXir. also V. and VL ^ KXiJpof ^c
i€UV.
360 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
who were married a second time. This appears from the accu-
sation of TertuUian, who asks the CathoUcs, with Montanistic
indignation : " Quot enim et bigami praesident apud vos, insul-
tantes utique apostolo? . . Digamus tinguis? digamus ofl'ers?"
Second marriage thus seems to him to disquahfj for the admi-
nistration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper.
Hippolytus, in the Philosophoumena, reproaches the Eoman
bishop Calhstus with admitting to sacerdotal and episcopal
office those who were married the second and even the third
time, and allowing the clergy to marry after having been or-
dained.
The next step was the disapproval of even one marriage for
the clergy ; but not yet the prohibition of it. The priesthood
and marriage became more and more incompatible in the pre-
vailing view. The Montanists shared in this feeling ; among the
oracles of the j)rophetess Prisca is one to the effect: "Only a
holy (that is an unmarried) minister can administer in holy
things." ^ Even those fathers who were married, like the pres-
byter TertuUian and the bishop Gregory of Nyssa, give decided
preference to virginity. The Apostolical Constitutions and some
provincial councils accordingly prohibited priests not only from
marrying a widow, or a divorced woman, or a slave, and from
second marriage, but also from contracting marriage after ordi-
nation. The synod of Ancyra, in 314, allowed it to deacons,
but only when they expressly stipulated for it before taking
orders. The rigoristic Spanish council of Elvira (Illiberis), in
305, went farthest. It appears even to have forbidden the con-
tinuance of nuptial intercourse after consecration, upon pain of
deposition.^ The ecumenical council of Nice, in 325, to antici-
' Tertull. De cxliort. cast. c. 10: Sanctus minister sanctimoniam novit ministrare.
That abstinence from all carnal intercourse is implied in the conception of sanctit}',
seems to follow from the connexion.
2 Can. 33 : Placuit in totnm prohibere episcopis, presbyteris, et diaconibus, vel
omnibus clericis positis in ministerio, abstinexe se a conjugibus suis, el iion generaro
lilios; quicunque vero fecerit, ab honore clericatus cxterminetur. Some, however,
on account of the v.'OTds positis in ministerio, would see here only a prohibition of
sexual commerce at the time of the performance of clerical functions, as in the Jew-
§ 96. MONTANISM. 361
pate this result here, proposed to make celibacy of priests tlie
universal law of tlie churcli, but was prevented by the protest
of the venerable Egyptian bishop and confessor Paphnutius,
who, though himself a strict ascetic,^ and trained from his youth
in an ascetic school,^ still foresaw, with true eye, the injurious
moral consequences of such coercion. And thus the movement
stopped for the present with the decrees of the Apostolical con-
stitutions, forbidding marriage after ordination, without dissolv-
ing marriages contracted before it.
The Greek church, after the seventh century, limited the law
of celibacy to bishops, and made a single marriage the rule for
priests and deacons ; while in the Latin church the ascetic prin-
ciple, in connexion with the interests of hierarchy, advanced as
early as the fourth century to the absolute prohibition of mar-
riage for the clergy, and in this way enhanced the official power
of the priesthood, but by no means elevated its moral purity and
dignity. For while voluntary abstinence, or such as springs
from a special gift of grace, is honorable and may be a great
blessing to the church, the forced celibacy of the clerg}^ does
violence to nature and Scripture, and, all sacramental ideas of
marriage to the contrary notwithstanding, degrades this divine
ordinance, which descends from the primeval state of innocence,
and symbolizes the holiest of all relations, the union of Christ
with his church. Much, therefore, as Catholicism has done to
raise woman and the family life from heathen degradation, we
still find, in general, that in Evangelical Protestant countries,
where the marriage of the clergy has become the rule, particu-
larly in Grermany, England, and North America, woman occu-
pies a far higher grade of intellectual and moral culture, and the
married life is practically regarded as far more sacred than in
Southern Europe and South America.
ish law ; but this does not agree with the otherwise evident Montanistic and Nova-
tian rigorism of this council. The positis in min. also seems to refer only to clericis,
that is, in distinction from the officers just specified, to subdiaconi and other ordines
minores.
^"Arrstpoi iou y'l/wv kuI ((t,\(j{ ci-civ yvvaiKOi, sayS SocratCS. ' ' AoKrtTfipKP',
362 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
97. Montanism.
I. Tertullian, in his numerous Montanistic writings. Ecseb. : H. E. V, 3)
14r-19. Epipuan. : Ilaer. 48 and 49.
II. Gr. Wernsdorf: De Montanistis, Gedani, 1741. F. MIjnter: Effata et
oracula Montanistar. Havn. 1829. Neander : Antignosticus oder Geist
aus Tertullian's Schriften, Berl. 1825 (2d ed. 1847). Schwegler: Der
Montanismus u. die christl. Kirche des 2ten Jahrh. Tiib. 1841 (an arti-
ficial and arbitrary a-priori construction of history). Baur: Das Wesen
des Montanismus nach den neusten Forschungen, in the Theol. Jahr-
bvicher. Tub. 1851 (comp. his Christenth. der 3 ersten Jahrh., p. 213-224).
Niedner: K. Gesch. 253 sqq. 259 sqq. Ritschl: Entstehung der altka-
thol. Kirche, 2d ed. 1857, p. 402-550.
All the ascetic and rigoristic elements of the ancient church
combined in Montanism. They here asserted a claim to univer-
sal validity, which the catholic church was compelled, for her
own interest, to reject; since she left the effort after extraor-
dinary holiness to the comparatively small circle of ascetics and
priests, and sought rather to lighten Christianity, than add to its
weight, for the great mass of its professors. Here is the place,
therefore, to speak of this remarkable phenomenon, and not
under the head of doctrine, where it is commonly placed. For
Montanism was not, originally, a departure from the faith, but a
morbid overstraining of the practical morality of the earl}--
church. It is the first example of an earnest and well meaning,
but gloomy and fanatical hyperchristianity, which, hkc all
hypcrspiritualism, ends again in the flesh.
1. To speak first of the external history of Montanism : It
originated in Asia Minor, the theatre of many movements of the
church in this period ; and in the province of Phrygia, once the
home of a sensuously m3-stic and dreamy nature-religion. The
movement was started after tlie middle of the second century by
a certain Montanus, probably at first a priest of Cybele, with no
special talents nor culture, but burning with fanatical zeal. He
fell into somnambuli.stic ecstasies, and considered himself the
inspired organ of the Paraclete promised by Christ, of the Helper
§ 97. MONTAJsriSM. 363
and Comforter in these last times of distress. Some cliurch
fathers wrongly inferred from the use of the first person for the
Holy Ghost in his oracles, that he made himself directly the
Paraclete, or, according to Ejjiphanius, even God the Father.
Connected with him were two prophetesses, Priscilla and Maxi-
milla. During the bloody persecutions under Marcus Aurelius,
all three went forth as prophets and reformers of the Christian
life, and proclaimed the near approach of the age of the Holy
Ghost and of the millennial reign in Pepuza, a village of Phrygia,
upon which the new Jerusalem was to come down. The frantic
movement soon far exceeded the intention of its authors, and
threw the whole church into commotion.
The bishops and synods of Asia Minor, though not with one
voice, declared the new prophecy the work of demons, and cut
off the Montanists — also called Priscillianists, Cataphrygians,
Pepuzians — from the fellowship of the church. Among their
literary opponents in the East are mentioned Claudius Apolli-
naris of Hierapolis, Miltiades, Apollonius, Serapion of Antioch,
and Clement of Alexandria.
The Eoman church, likewise, during the episcopate of Eleu-
therus (177-190) or of Victor (190-202), after some vacillation,
set itself against them at the instigation of the presbyter Caius
and the confessor Praxeas.^ Yet the ojDposition of Hippolytus
to Zephyrinus and Callistus and the later Novatian schism shows
that the disciplinary rigorism of Montanism found energetic
advocates in Eome till after the middle of the third century.
The Gallic Christians, Irenaeus at their head, took a concilia-
tory posture, and sympathized at least with the moral earnestness,
the enthusiasm for martyrdom, and the chiliastic hopes of the
Montanists. They sent the presbyter Irenaeus to bishop Eleu-
therus at Rome to intercede in their behalf, and this mission may
have induced him or his successor to issue letters of peace, which
were, however, soon afterwards recalled.^
* Comp. § 82.
* This is, however, merely a conjecture. For TertulHan, who mentions these
" literas pacis jam emissas" in favor of tlie Montanists in Asia (Adv. Prax. 1), leaves
364 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
In North Africa they met with extensive sympathy, as the
Punic national character leans naturally towards gloomy and
rigorous acerbity.^ Here especially the genial, but eccentric and
rigoristic Tertullian became, from the year 201, a most energetic
and influential advocate of Montanism, and helped its dark feel-
ing towards a twilight of philosophy. He is the proper and
only theologian of this schismatic movement, which started in
purely practical questions, and we derive the best of our know-
ledge of it from his works. Through him, too, its principles
reacted in many respects on the Catholic church ; and that not
only in North Africa, but also in Spain, as we may see from the
harsh decrees of the council of Elvira in 203. It is singular that
Cyprian, who with all his high church tendencies and abhorrence
of schism was a daily reader of Tertullian, makes no allusion to
Montanism. Augustine^ relates that Tertullian left the Mon-
tanists and founded a new sect which wae called after him, but
was, through his (Augustine's) agency, reconciled to the Catholic
congregation of Carthage.
As a separate sect the Montanists or Tertullianists, as they
were also called in Africa, run down into the sixth century. The
successors of Constantine, down to Justinian, 530, repeatedly
enacted laws against them.
2. We pass now to the internal character of Montanism.
In doctrine it agreed in all essential points with the Catholic
church, and held very firmly to the traditional rule of foith."-*
Infant baptism only it seems to have rejected, or at least dis-
countenanced, though on grounds very different from those of
the later Baptists ; namely, the assumption, that mortal sins
us ill the diirk as to the name of the episcopus Romanus from whom they proceeded
and by whom tliey were recalled, and as to the cause of this temporary favor.
' This disposition, an iJSjj mKpdv, ffxuSpwTiii, and (rv>;?'Mi,, even Plutarch notices
in the Carthaginians (in his HoXiriKa TrapayyiXjiaTa, c. 3), and contrasts with the
excitable and cheerful character of the Athenians.
2 De haeresibus, § 6.
' This was acknowledged by its opponents. Epiphanius, Ilaer. XLVIIT. 1, says,
the Cataphrygians receive the entire Scripture of the Old and New Testament, and
agree with the holy Catholic church in their views on the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit.
§ 97. MONTANISM. 365
could not be forgiven after baptism. Through TertuHian it
contributed to the development of the orthodox doctrine of the
Trinity, in asserting against Patripassianism the personal distinc-
tion in God, and the import of the Holy Ghost. Its views were
rooted neither, like Ebionism, in Judaism, nor, like Gnosticism,
in Heathenism, but in Christianity ; and its errors consist in a
morbid exaggeration of Christian ideas and demands. TertuHian
says, that the administratio Paracleti consists only in the reform
of discipline, in deeper understanding of the Scriptures, and in
effort after higher perfection ; that it has the same faith, the same
God, the same Christ, and the same sacraments with the Catholics.
The sect combated the Gnostic heresy with all decision ; and forms
the exact counterpart of that system, placing Christianity chiefly
in practical life instead of theoretical speculation, and looking
for the consummation of the kingdom of God on this earth,
though not till the millennium, instead of transferring it into an
abstract ideal world. Yet between these two systems, as always
between opposite extremes, there were also points of contact;
a common antagonism, for example, to the present order of
the world, and the distinction of a pneumatic and a psychical
church
But in the field of practical life and discipline this Montanistic
movement came into conflict with the reigning Catholicism ; and
this conflict, consistently carried out, must of course show itself
to some extent in the province of doctrine. Every schismatic
tendency becomes in its progress more or less heretical.
Montanism, in the first place, sought a forced continuance of the
miraculous gifts of the apostolic church, which gradually disap-
peared as Christianity became settled in humanity, and its super-
natural principle naturalized on earth. ^ It asserted, above all,
the continuance of prophecy, and hence it went generally under
the name of the nova prophetia. But the pretended prophecy
appeared only in the form of a morbid ecstasy and frenzy, and
sometimes fell to the level of the heathen divination. TertuHian
1 In this point, as in others, Montanism bears a striking affinity to Irvingisra.
366 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
calls it an " amentia," an " exciderc sensu," and describes it in a
way which irresistibly reminds one of the phenomena of magnetic
clairvoyance. Montanus compares a man in the ecstasy with a
musical instrument, on which the Holy Ghost plays his melodies.
"Behold," — says he in one of his oracles, in the name of the
Paraclete — " the man is as a lyre, and I sweep over him as a
plectrum. The man sleeps ; I wake. Behold, it is the Lord, who
puts the hearts of men out of themselves,^ and who gives hearts
to men." As to its matter, the Montanistic projjhecy related to
the approaching heavy judgments of God, the persecutions, the
millennium, fasting, and other ascetic exercises, which were to be
enforced as laws of the church. Tertullian conceived religion
as a process of development, which he illustrated by the analogy
of organic growth in nature. He distinguishes in this process
four stages : — (1.) Natural religion, or the innate idea of God ; (2.)
the legal religion of the Old Testament ; (3.) the gospel during the
earthly life of Christ ; and (-i.) the revelation of the Paraclete ;
that is, the spiritual religion of the Montanists, who accordingly
called themselves the "rveu/xaTjxoi or the spiritalis ecclesia, in dis-
tinction from the psychical Catholic church. This is the first
instance of a theory of development which assumes an advance
beyond the New Testament and the Christianity of the apostles ;
misapplying the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven, and
Paul's doctrine of the growth of the church in Christ and his word,
not heyond them. Tertullian, however, was by no means rational-
istic in his view. On the contrary, he demanded for all new
revelations the closest agreement with the traditional faith of the
church, the regula fidci, which, in a genuine Montanistic work, he
terms " immobilis et irreformabilis." The Catholic church did not
deny, indeed, the continuance of prophecy and the other apostolic
gifts,' but was disposed, at least from the beginning of the tliird
century, to derive the Montanistic revelations from satanic inspi-
ration,^ and mistrusted them all the more, for their proceeding
I i^iiTTav^ov. 2 Comp. § Gf), p. 204 sq.
* Tert. De jejun. 11: Spiritus dialwli est, dicis o psychice. Tertullian bimsel'',
however, always occupied an Louorable rauk among the church teachers.
§ 97. MONTANisM. ■ 367
not from tlie regular clergy, but in great part from unauthorized
laymen and fanatical women.
This brings us to another feature of the Montanistic movement,
the assertion of the universal prophetic and priestly office of
Christians, even of females, against the special priesthood in the
Catholic church. Under this view it may be called a democratic
reaction against. the clerical aristocracy, which from the time of
Ignatius had more and more monopolized all ministerial privileges
and functions. The Montanists found the true qualification and
appointment for the office of teacher in direct endowment by the
Spirit of God, in distinction from outward ordination and episco-
pal succession. They everywhere proposed the suj^ernatural
element and the free motion of the spirit against the mechanism
of a fixed ecclesiastical order. Here was the point where they
necessarily assumed a schismatic character, and arrayed against
themselves the episcopal hierarchy. But they only brought
another kind of aristocracy into the place of the condemned dis-
tinction of clergy and laity. They claimed for their prophets
what they denied to the Catholic bishops. They put a great gulf
between the true spiritual Christians and the merely psychical ;
and this induced spiritual pride and false pietism. Their affinity
with the Protestant idea of the universal priesthood is more appa-
rent than real ; they go on altogether different principles.
Another of the essential and prominent traits of Montanism was
a visionary millenarianism, founded indeed on the Apocalypse and
on the apostolic expectation of the speedy return of Christ, but
giving them extravagant weight and a materialistic coloring. The
Montanists lived under a vivid impression of the great final cata-
strophe, and looked therefore with contempt upon the present
world, and directed all their desires to the second advent of
Christ. Maximilla says : " After me there is no more prophecy,
but only the end of the world." The failure of these predictions
weakened, of course, all the other pretensions of the system.
But, on the other hand, the abatement of faith in the near approach
of the Lord was certainly accompanied with an increase of world-
liness in the Catholic church.
368 SECOND TEUIOD. A.D, 100-311.
Finally, the Montanistic sect was characterized by fanatical
severity in asceticism and church discipline. It raised a zealou?
protest against the growing looseness of the Catholic penitential
discipline/ which in Rome i)articularly, under Zephyrinus and
Callistus, to the great grief of earnest minds, established a scheme
of indulgence for the grossest sins, and began, long before Con-
stantino, to obscure the line between the church and the world.
Tertullian makes the restoration of a rigorous discipline the chief
office of the new prophecy.^ But Montanism certainly went to
the opposite extreme, and fell from evangelical freedom into
Jewish legalism. It turned with horror from all the enjoyments
of life, and held even art to be incompatible with Christian sober-
ness and humility. It forbade women all ornamental clothing,
and required virgins to be veiled. It courted the blood-baptism
of martyrdom, and condemned concealment or flight in persecu-
tion as a denial of Christ. It multiplied fasts and other ascetic
exercises, and carried them to extreme severity, as the best pre-
paration for the millennium. It prohibited second marriage as
adultery, for laity as well as clergy, and inclined even to regard
a single marriage as a mere concession on the jDart of God to the
sensuous infirmity of man. It taught the impossibility of a
second repentance, and refused to restore the lapsed to the fellow-
ship of the church. Tertullian held all mortal sins (of which he
numbers seven) committed after baptism to be unpardonable,*''
at least in this world, and a churcli, which showed such lenity
towards gross offenders, as the Roman church at that time did,
according to the corroborating testimony of Hippolytus, he
called worse than a " den of thieves," even a " spclunca moccho-
rum et fornicatorum."'*
» Comp. § 114.
2 De monof^. c. 2, he calls the Paraclete novae disciplinac institutor, but in c. 4 ho
saj's, correcting himself: Paracletus rcstitutor potiiis, quain institutor disciplinae.
3 Comp. De pud. c. 2 and 19.
^ De pudic. c. 1 : Audio otiam edietum esse propositum, ct quidem pereniptorium.
Pontifex scilicet maximus, quod est episcopus episcorum (so he calls, ironically, the
Roman bishop; in all probability he refers to Zepliyrinus), cdicit: Ego et mocchiao
et fornicationis delicta poenitentia functis dimitto. . . . Absit, absit a sponsa Christa
tale praecouium 1 Ilia, quae vera est, quae pudica, quae saucta, carebit cliam auriaui
§ 97. MONTANISM. 369
The Catholic church, indeed, as we have already seen, opened
the door likewise to excessive ascetic rigor, but only as an excep-
tion to her rule; while the Montanists pressed their rigoristic
demands as binding upon all. Such universal asceticism was
simply impracticable in a world like the present, and the sect
itself necessarily dwindled away. But the religious earnestness
which animated it, and the fanatical extremes into which it ran,
have since reappeared, under various names and forms, in Nova-
tianism, Donatism, Anabaptism, the Camisard enthusiasm, Puri-
tanism, Pietism, Irvingism, and so on, by way of protest and
wholesome reaction against various evils in the church.
macula. Non habet quibus hoc repromittat, et si habuerit, non repromittit, quo-
niam et terrenum Dei templum citius spelunca latronum (Matt, xxi 13) appellari
potuit a Domino quam moechorum et fornicatorum.
24
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHRISTIAN WORSHIP.
L The richest sources here are works of Justin M., Tertullian, Ctprian,
EusEBius, and the so called Constitutiones Apostolicae.
II. HiLDEBRANDT : De priscae et primitivae ecclesiae sacris publicis. Helmst.
1702. Alt : Der christl. Cultus, Berl. I. 1851. Harnack : Der christl.
Gemeindegottesdienst im apost. u. altkath. Zeitalter. ErL 1854. The
relevant sections in the archaeological works of Bingham (Origines
eccles., or, the Antiquities of the Christian Church. Lond. 1708-22.
10 vols. ; new ed. Lond. 1852, in 2 vols.), Augusti (whose larger work
fills 12 vols., Leipz. 1817-31, and his Handbuch der Christl. ArchaeoL
3 vols. Leipz. 183G), Binterim (R. C), Rheinwald, Siegel, Coleman,
&c.
§ 98. Plobces of Common Worship.
R. Hospinianus : De templis, etc. Tig. 1603. Fabricius : De tempUs vett.
Christ. Helmst. 1704. Muratori (R. C.) : De priniis Christianorum
ecclesiis. Arezzo, 1770. Comp. also, in part, the Uterature cited at
§93.
The Christian worsliip, as might be expected from the servant-
form of the church in this period of persecution, was very sim-
ple, strongly contrasting with the pomp of the later Catliolicism,
yet on the other hand not synonymous with puritanic meagre-
ness and baldness. We perceive here, as well as in the organi-
zation of the church and the forms of her doctrine, the gradual
and sure approach of the Nicene age.
Let us glance first at the places of public worship. Until
about the close of the second century the Christians held their
worship mostly in private houses,^ or in desert places, at the
graves of martyrs, and in the catacombs.^ This arose from
> Comp. § 39. 2 Comp. § 93.
§ 98. PLACES OF COMMON WORSHIP. 371
their poverty, tlieir oppressed and outlawed condition, their love
of silence and solitude, and their aversion to all heathen art.
The apologists freqaently assert, that their brethren had neither
temple nor altars — meaning a national sanctuary. Heathens,
like Celsus, cast this up to them as a reproach ; but Origen
admirably replied : The humanity of Christ is the highest temple
and the most beautiful image of God, and true Christians are
living statues of the Holy Ghost, with which no Jupiter of
Phidias can compare. Justin Martyr said to the Roman prefect :
The Christians assemble wherever it is convenient, because their
God is not, like the gods of the heathens, inclosed in space, but
is invisibly present everywhere. Clement of Alexandria re-
futes the superstition, that religion is bound to any building.
In private houses the room best suited for worship and for the
love-feast was the oblong dining-hall, the triclinium^ which was
never wanting in a convenient Greek or Roman dwelling, and
which often had a semicircular niche, like the choir ^ in the
later churches. An elevated seat^ was used for reading the
Scriptures and preaching, a basin of water for baptism, and a
simple table ^ for the holy communion. Similar arrangements
were made also in the catacombs, which sometimes have the form
of a subterranean church.
The first traces of special houses of worship^ occur in Ter-
tuUian, who speaks of going to the church,^ and in liis contempo-
rary, Clement of Alexandria, who mentions the double meaning
of the word hn^dM.^ About the year 230, Alexander Severus
granted the Christians the right to a place in Rome against the
protest of the tavern-keepers, because the worship of God in any
form was better than tavern-keeping. After the middle of the
third century the building of churches began in great earnest,
as the Christians had enjoyed over forty years of repose (2 BO-
SOS), and had so multiplied, that, according to Eusebius, more
I Chorus, 8n^a. 2 'AfiPiov, suggestus, pulpitum.
* Tparre^a, mensa sacra ; also ara, altare.
* ^EKKXriiriat, KvptuKai, oIkoi Steov, ecclesiae, dominicae, domus Dei.
5 In ecclesiam, in domum Dei venire. ^ ToVjs and li^poiafia t<Zv UXcktuiv,
372 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
spacious places of devotion became everywhere necessary. The
Diocletian persecution began with the destruction of the magni-
ficent church atNicomedia, which, according to Lactantius, even
towered above the neighboring imperial palace. Rome is sup-
posed to have had, as early as the beginning of the fourth
century, more than forty churches. But of the form and arrange-
ment of them we have no account.
§ 99v Weekly and Yearly Festivals.
R. HospiNiANDS : Festa Christ., li. e. de origine, progressu, ceremoniis et
ritibus festorum dierum Christ. Tig. 1593, and often. A. Gr. Pillwitz :
Gesch. der heil. Zeiten in der abendliind. Kirche. Dresd. 1842. M. A.
Nickel (R. C.) : Die heil. Zeiten u. Feste nach ihrer Gesch. u. Feier
in der kath. Kirche. Mainz. 1825 sqq. 6 vols. F. Piper : Gesch. des
Osterfestes. Berl. 1845.
The Easter controversies are treated very thoroughly, and with reference to
the Johannean controversy, by Weitzel : Die Christl. Passafeier der drei
ersten Jahrh. Pforzheim, 1848 (and in the " Stud. u. Krit." 1848, No. 4,
against Baur). Baur: Das Christenth. der 3 ersten Jalirh. 1853, p. 141
sqq. Against him, Seitz, in the " Stud. u. Krit." 1856, p. 721 sqq., and
Lechler : Das apostol. u. nachapost. Zeitalter, 1857, p. 509 sqq. The
sources for these paschal controversies are fragments from Melito, Apolli-
naris, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, and Hippohjtus, in Euseb. IV.
26, Y. 23-25, and in the Chronicon pasch. I. 12 sqq. ; to wliich must be
added the passage in the recently discovered Philosophoumena,
VII. 18.
1. The weekly festivals. The celebration of Sunday in me-
mory of the resurrection of the Lord dates undoubtedly from
the apostolic age.^ It was at all events, according to the unani-
mous testimony of Barnabas, Ignatius, Pliny,^ and Justin Mar-
tyr, a universal custom in the church at the beginning of the
second century. On this day of holy joy there was no fosting,
and the kneeling posture was exchanged for the standing in
prayer. Tertulhan appears to have considered attention to secu-
lar business on Sunday to be sin. The observance of the Sab-
bath among the Jewish Christians gradually ceased. Yet the
eastern church to this day marks the seventh day of the week
» Comp. g 39. ' " Stato die," in liis letter to Trajan.
§ 99. WEEKLY AND YEARLY FESTIVALS. 873
(excepting only tlie Easter Sabbath) by omitting fasting and by
standing in prayer ; wbile the Latin church, in direct opposition
to Judaism, made Saturday a fast day. The controversy on
this point began as early as the end of the second century.
"Wednesday,^ and especially Friday,^ were devoted to the
weekly commemoration of the sufferings and death of the Lord,
and observed as days of penance, or watch-days,^ with worship
and half-fasting till three o'clock in the afternoon.^
2. The yearly festivals of this period were only Easter, Pen-
tecost, and Epiphany.
(a) Easter,^ or the Christian passover, is the oldest and most
important annual feast of the church, and can be traced back
into the first century. It answered to the Jewish passover, and
was based on the view that Christ crucified . and risen is the
centre of faith. It formed at first the beginning of the church
year. It had a wide scope in the early church, embracing both
the feast of the crucifixion* and the feast of the resurrection ;^
corresponding to the Friday and Sunday among weekly festi-
vals. Between the two lay the great Sabbath,^ on which also
the Greek church fasted by way of exception ; and the Easter
vigils,^ which were kept, with special devotion, by the whole
congregation, till the break of day ; and kept the more scrupu-
lously, as it was universally believed that the Lord's glorious
return would occur on this night. The paschal feast was pre-
ceded by a season of penance and fasting, which culminated in
the holy week.^" This fasting varied in length, in different
countries, from one day or forty hours to six weeks ; but after
1 Feria quarta. ^ Feria sexta, ^ napaoKevfi.
' Dies stationum of the milites Christi. ■* Semijejunia.
® The English Easier, Anglo-Saxon Osier, German Ostern, is at all events con-
nected with East and sunrise, and is akin to ndt;, oriens, aurora (comp. Jac. Grimm's
Deutsche Mythol. 1835, p. 181 and 349). The comparison of sunrise and the natu-
ral spring with the new moral creation in the resurrection of Christ, and the transfer
of the celebration of Ostara, the old German divinity of the rising, health-bringing
light, to the Christian Easter festival, was the easier, because all nature is a symbol
of spirit, and the heathen myths are dim presentiments and carnal anticipations of
Christian truths.
* ITaiTi^a aravpoiaiixov. "^ Wau'^a dvaaTMi^ov,
8 Sabbatum magnum. 9 Ilavi'iip^iMej. " 'E/?J»f(nj jxtyiWr),
37-i SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311,
the fiftli century, through the influence of Eome, it was univer-
sally fixed at forty days,^ with reference to the forty days' fast-
ing of Christ in the wilderness,^ and the Old Testament types of
that event.
Respecting the time of Easter and of the fast connected with
it, a difference prevailed, which in the second century gave rise
to violent controversies in the church ; and more recently has
occasioned almost equally violent controversies in the school — in
connexion with the questions of the primacy of Rome and the
genuineness of John's Gospel. The Christians of Asia Minor,
following the Je^vish chronology, and appealing to the authority
of the apostles John and Philip, celebrated the Passover on the
fourteenth of Nisan,^ fixed the close of the fast accordingly, and
seem to have partaken on the evening of this day, after three
o'clock, not indeed of the Jewish paschal lamb, a^ has sometimes
been supposed, but of the communion and love-feasts, as the
Christian passover and the festival of the redemption completed
by the death of Christ.^ Hence they were afterwards called
Quartodecvmani, Ts(f(ia^s(fxaiSsxaT7rcu. The Roman church, on the
contrary, according to early custom, celebrated the death of Je-
sus always on Friday, and his resurrection on a Sunday after
the March full moon, and extended the fast to the latter day.
The gist of the controvers}^, therefore, was, whether tlie Jewish
paschal-day, be it a Friday or not, or the Christian Sunday,
should control the idea and time of the entire festival. The Jo-
hannean practice of Asia represented here the spirit of adhesion
to objective historical precedent ; the Roman, the principle of
freedom and discretionary change, and the independence of the
Christian festival system towards the Jewish. Dogmatically
stated, the difference would be, that in the former case the chief
stress was laid on the Lord's death; in the latter, on his resur-
* Quadragesima. * Matt. iv. 2.
3 The 1(5 =14, Hence the sectarian name Quartodeciraani.
* From this it has been not unjustly inferred, that, according to the presumption
of the Asiatic Christians, Christ died as the true pasclial Lamb on the 14th, not on
the 15th ; that, consequently, this practice argues rather for than against the authen-
ticity of John's Gospel, which likewise places the death on the 14th.
§ 99. WEEKLY AXD YEARLY FESTIVALS. 875
rection. But tlie leading interest of the question for the early
church was not the astronomical, nor the dogmatical, but the
ritual. The main object was to assert the originality of the
Christian festival cycle, and its independence of Judaism ; and
on this account the Eoman usage at last triumphed even in the
east.
The difference came into discussion first on a visit of Poly carp,
bishop of Smyrna, to Anicet, bishop of Eome, about the year
160. It was not settled; yet the two bishops parted in peace,
after the latter had charged his venerable guest to celebrate the
holy communion in his church.
Soon after, about a.d. 170, the controversy broke out under
another form, in Laodicea, where it seems a third usage had
arisen, the Judaizing rite of eating the paschal lamb on the l-tth
of Nisan; though this was rejected even by the Asiatic bishops
Melito of Sardis and Apollinaris of Hierapolis, on the ground
that Jesus (according to the gospel of John) did not eat the legal
passover, but died as the true paschal lamb. The same argu-
ment is urged in the fragments of Hippolytus. Thus, in order
to harmonize the accounts — certainly very incomplete — in Euse-
bius and in the chronicon paschale, we have to distinguish two
parties of Quartodecimanians ; an orthodox party and a here-
tical— in this point Judaistic — one ; the former of which was the
more widely spread in Asia Minor, the latter limited to Laodicea.
Much more important and vehement was the third stage of
the controversy, which extended over the whole church, and
occasioned many synods and synodical letters. The Roman
bishop Victor, a very different man from his predecessor Anicet,
in 196 required the Asiatics, in an imperious tone, to abandon
their quartodecimanian practice. Against this Polycrates, bishop
of Ephesus, solemnly protested in the name of a synod held by
him, and appealed to an imposing array of authorities for their
primitive custom. When Victor thereupon branded them as
heretics, and threatened to excommunicate them, even Irenaeus,
in the name of the Grallic Christians, though he agreed with Vic-
tor on the disputed point, earnestly admonished him for such
376 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
arrogance, and this protest appears to have prevented the excom-
munication.
In the course of the third century, however, the Roman prac-
tice gained ground in the east, and — to anticipate the result —
was established by the council of Nice in 825 as the law of the
whole church. This council considered it unbecoming in Chris-
tians to follow the usage of the unbelieving, hostile Jews, and
ordained that Easter should always be celebrated on the Sunday
which fell upon the first new moon after the vernal equinox, and
always afkr the Jewish passover. Henceforth the Quartodeci-
manians were universally regarded as heretics, and were punished
as such. The desired uniformity, however, was still hindered
by differences in reckoning the Easter Sunday according to the
course of the moon and the equinox, which the Alexandrians
fixed on the 21st of March, and the Romans on the 18th ; so that,
in the year 887,. for example, the Romans kept Easter on the
21st of March, and the Alexandrians not till the 25th of April.
(b) Easter was followed by the festival of Pentecost, which
likewise rested on Jewish precedent, and was universally observed
as early as the second century in memory of the appearances and
heavenly exaltation of the risen Lord. It lasted through fifty
days — Quinquagesima — which were celebrated as a continuous
Sunday, by daily communion, the standing posture in prayer,
and the absence of all fasting. Subsequently the celebration
was limited to the fortieth day as the feast of the Ascension, and
the fiftieth, or Pentecost proper, as the feast of the outpouring of
the Holy Ghost and the birthday of the Christian church.
(c) The feast of the Epiphany is of later origin. It spread in
the latter part of the second century from the east towards the
west, but here, even in the fourth century, it was resisted by
such parties as the Donatists, and condemned as an oriental inno-
vation. It was, in general, the feast of the appearance^ of Christ
in the flesh, and particularly of the manifestation of his Messiah-
ship by his baptism in the Jordan, the festival at once of his
'KTTii^afCia.
§ 100. CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS. 877
birtli and Ms baptism. It was usually kept on tlie Gth. of
January. In the west it was afterwards made a collective festi-
val of several events in the life of Jesus, and, as the "feast of the
three kings," that is, the wise men from the east, it was placed
in special connexion with the mission to the heathen.
(d) Of the Christmas festival there is no clear trace before the
fourth century ; partly because the feast of the Epiphany in a
measure held the place of it ; partly because the birth of Christ,
the date of which, at any rate, was uncertain, was less prominent
in the Christian mind than his death and resurrection.
(e) The veneration for martyrs ^ was the first and the innocent
occasion of the festivals of the saints ; but these did not acquire
a definite and settled form till the following period.
§ 100. Christian Symhols.
Fr. MiJNTER: Sinnbilder u. Kunstvorstellungen der alten Christen. Altona,.
1825. Helmsdorfer: Christl. Kunstsymbolik u. Ikonographie. Frkf.
1839. F. Piper: Mythologie u. Symbolik der christl. Kunst. vol. I..
Weimar, 1847-51. F. Piper: Ueber den christl. Bilderkreis. Bed..
1852. (p. 3-10.) Comp. also the literature at § 93.
Christianity owed its origin neither to art nor to science, and is-
altogether independent of both. But it serves itself of both,,
penetrates and pervades them with its leaven-like nature, and
baptizes them with the Holy Ghost. Art reaches its real perfec-
tion in worship, as an embodiment of religion and devotion in
beautiful forms, which afford a pure j^leasure, and at the same
time excite and promote devotional feeling. Hence, in all civi-
lized nations it stands united with religion. Poetry and music,
the most free and spiritual arts, which present their ideals in
word and tone, and lead immediately from the outward form to
the spiritual substance, were an essential element of worship even
in Judaism, and passed thence, in the singing of psalms, into the
Christian church.
Not so with the plastic arts, especially sculjDture and painting,
I Comp. § 59.
878 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
which employ grosser material, stone, wood, color, as the medium
of representation, and, with a lower grade of culture, are almost
inevitably perverted to idolatry. The ante-Nicene church had a
decided aversion to these arts ; in the first place, on account of
the well known prohibition in the decalogue, and then on account
of the degradation of art in that age to the service of idolatry and
immorality. In the worship of God in spirit and in truth, also,
it thought the symbols of the Jewish temple could be dispensed
with, as mere shadows of the real good things now revealed.
" We must not cleave to the sensible," says Clement of Alexan-
dria, " but rise to the spiritual ; the habit of daily view lowers
the dignity of the divine, which cannot be honored, but is only
degraded, by sensible material." This hostility to art, carried
furthest by the rigoristic Montanists, was closely connected, too,
with the servant-form of the early church, her thorough contempt
for all hypocritical show and all earthly vanities, her enthusiasm
for martyrdom, and her absorbing expectation of the speedy
destruction of the world and establishment of the millennial
kingdom.
Tertullian, and even Clement of Alexandria, supposed tlie
external ajDpearance of the Redeemer himself to have been ugly,
according to a literal interpretation of the Messianic prophecy :'
" He hath no form nor comeliness," &c. A true and healthy
feeling leads rather to the opposite view ; for Jesus certainly
had not the phj^siognomy of a sinner, and the heavenly purity
and harmony of his soul must in some way have shone through
the veil of his flesh. Those fathers, however, had the state of
humiliation alone in their eye. The exalted Redeemer they
themselves viewed as clothed with unfading beauty and glory,
which was to pass from Him, the Head, to his church also, in
her perfect millennial state. "We have here, therefore, not an
essential opposition made between holiness and beauty, but only
a temporary separation.
Notwithstanding this aversion of the early Christians to the
' Is. liii. 2, 8.
§ 100. CHRISTIAN SYMBOLS. 379
plastic arts in public worship, the artistic feeling asserted itself
among them without contradiction in the sphere of private de-
votion even in the second century. Christian art was born in
the house and upon tombs, ^ and thence, in the fourth century,
passed into the church and the public worship. It originated in
the practical necessity of suppressing the heathen mythological
figures on walls, floors, goblets, seal-rings, and grave-stones,
and substituting symbols, which might perpetually remind the
Christians of their Eedeemer from sin and misery, and of their
own holy calling. Innocent and natural as this effort was, it
could easily lead, in the less intelligent multitude, to confusion
of the sign with the thing signified, and to many a superstition.
Yet this result was the less apparent in the first three centuries,
because in that period artistic works were confined to the pro-
vince of symbol and allegory.
The oldest and dearest of these primitive Christian symbols is
the cross, the sign of redemption ; sometimes alone, sometimes
with the Alpha and Omega, sometimes with the anchor of hope
or the palm of peace. Upon this arose, as early as the second
century, the custom of making the sign of the cross,^ according
to Tertullian, on rising, bathing, going out, eating, in short on
engaging in any affairs of every-day life ; a custom probably
attended in many cases, even in that age, with superstitious con-
fidence in the magical virtue of this sign. We find as fre-
quently, particularly upon ornaments and tombs, the monogram
of the name of Christ, X P, usually combined in the cruciform
character, -^^ either alone, or with the Greek letters a and w,
" the first and the last ;" in later cases with the addition : " in
signo " (in hoc signo vinces).
A further step was the allegorical representation of Christ him-
self; now as a shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep,^
or carries the lost sheep on his shoulders ;^ now as a lamb, who
bears the sin of the world f more rarely as a ram, with refer-
ence to the substituted victim in the history of Abraham and
1 Comp. § 93. ^ Signaculum crucis. ' Jno. x. 11.
* Lu. XV. 3-7: comp. Is. xvi. 11. 5 jno. i. 29 ; 1 Pet. i. 19; Rev. v. 12.
380 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Isaac ;^ frequently as a fistier, as Clement of Alexandria in liis
hymn calls Christ the " Fisher of mortals, who with his sweet
life catches the pure fish out of the hostile flood in the sea of
iniquity." A very favorite figure was that of the fish ; partly
as a pregnant anagram, the corresponding Greek Ichthys con-
taining the initials of the words : " Jesus Christ, Son of God,
Saviour ;"^ but partly, and perhaps originally, as a symbol of
the soul caught in the net of the great Fisher of men and his
servants, with reference to Matt, iv, 19 ; comp. xiii. 47. Ter-
tullian gives it another rather artificial application to the water
of baptism, where he says :^ " "We little fishes (pisciculi) are
born by our Fish (secundum 'IX0TN nostrum) Jesus Christ, in
water, and can thrive only by continuing in the water ;" that is,
if we are faithful to our baptismal covenant, and preserve the
grace there received.
The following symbols relate to the virtues and duties of the
Christian life : The dove, with or without the olive branch, the
type of simplicity and innocence '* the ship, representing some-
times the church, as safely sailing through the flood of cornqv
tion, with reference to Noah's ark, sometimes the individual soul
on its voyage to the heavenly home under the conduct of the
storm-controlling Saviour ; the palm-branch, which the Aj30ca-
lypse^ puts into the hands of the elect, as the sign of victory ;
the anchor, the figure of hope f the lyre, denoting festal joy
and sweet harmony ; the cock, an admonition to watchfulness,
with reference to Peter's fall f the hart, which pants for the
water-brooks f and the phenix, a symbol of rejuvenation and
of the resurrection, derived from the well known heathen myth.
Besides these emblems, there were typical prophetic scenes
from the Old Testament, such as the fall, the ark of Noah, the
giving of the law, the sacrifice of Isaac, the deliverance of Jonah,
»
* Gen. xxii. 13.
' '1X0Y12 = 'Iriirjvi Xpiffroj Ocov Y[oj Ewriiip. Comp. Augustiu Do civit. Dei.
xviii. 23.
' De baptisnio, c. 1.
* Matt. X. 16; comp. iii. IG. Gen. viii. 11. Sol. Song vi. 9.
5 vii. 9. « Hob. vi. 19. ^ Matt. xxvi. 34. ^ pg. xlii. 1.
§ 101. PUBLIC WORSHIP. 381
tlie translation of Elijah, Daniel in the lions' den, &c., painted in
the catacombs perhaps as early as the third century. From this
it was but a single step to the plastic representation of scenes
from the Gospels and from apostolic and post-apostolic history.
The sympathy with art increased just in proportion as the
church appropriated Grecian literature and culture. Perhaps
Gnosticism had a stimulating effect in art, as it had in theology.
At all events the sects of the Carpocratians, the Basilideans, and
the Manichaeans cherished art.
Yet, previous to the time of Constantine, we find no trace of
an image of Christ, properly speaking, except among the Gnos-
tic Carpocratians, and in the case of the heathen emperor Alex
ander Severus, who adorned his domestic chapel, as a sort of
pantheistic Pantheon, with representatives of all religions. The
above-mentioned idea of the uncomely personal appearance of
Jesus, the entire silence of the Gospels about it, and the Old
Testament prohibition of images, restrained the church from
making either pictures or statues of Christ, until the Nicene age,
when a great reaction in this respect took place, though not
without energetic and long continued opposition.
The first attemjits to transfer these emblematic representations
from dwellings and tombs into the churches appear to have
been made in the beginning of the fourth century ; but they
were also resisted. The rigid Spanish council of Elvira in 805,
for example, decreed in can. 36 : " There must be no pictures
in the churches, and the objects of veneration and worship shall
not be painted on the walls."
§ 101. PuUic Worship.
On the secret discipline comp. particularly R. Rothe: De Disciplinae arcani,
quae dicitur, in Ecclesia Christ. Origine. Heidelb. 1841.
The earliest description of the Christian worship is given us
by a heathen, the younger Pliny, a.d. 107, in his well known
letter to Trajan, which embodies the result of his judicial inves-
882 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
ligations in Bithynia.^ According to tliis, the Christians assem-
bled on an appointed day (Sunday) at sunrise, sang responsively
a song to Christ as to God, and then pledged themselves by an
oath,^ not to any evil work, but that they would commit no
theft, robbery, nor adultery, would not break their word, nor
sacrifice property intrusted to them. Afterwards (at evening)
they assembled again, to eat ordinary and innocent food (the
agapae). This account then bears witness to the primitive ob-
servance of Sunday, the separation of the love-feast from the
morning worship (with the communion), and the worship of
Christ as God in song.
Unfortunately nothing remains of this primitive Christian
psalmody, except the sublime hymn in Clement of Alexandria
(which, however, is not at all suited for j^uUic worship, and was
probably never intended for such use), the morning and evening
hymn in the Apostolical Constitutions, and the first forms of the
gloria in excelsis or hymnus angel icus. An author towards the
close of the second century ^ could appeal against the Artemo-
nites, to a multitude of such hymns, in proof of the faith of the
church in the divinity of Christ: "How many psalms and odes
of the Christians are there not, which have been written from
the beginning by believers, and which, in their theology, praise
Christ as the Logos of God?" Tradition says, that the antipho-
nies, or responsive songs, were introduced by Ignatius of An-
tioch. The Gnostics, Valentine and Bardesanes, also composed
religious songs ; and the church surely learned the practice not
from them, but from the Old Testament psalms,
Justin Mart3'r, at the close of his larger Apology,'* describes
the public worship more particularly, as it was conducted about
the year 139. After giving a full account of baptism and the
holy Supper, to which we shall refer again, he continues: "On
Sunday a meeting of all, who live in the cities and villages, is
held, and a section from the memoirs of the apostles (the Gospels)
and the writings of the prophets (the Old Testament) is read, as
' Comp. § 53, p. 164. 2 Sacramentum. 3 In Eus. V. 28. * C. 6.5-67.
§ 101. PUBLIC WORSHIP. 383
long as the time permits.^ When the reader has finished, the
president,^ in a discourse, gives an exhortation^ to the imitation
of these noble things. After this we all rise in common prayer.^
At the close of the prayer, as we have before described,^ bread
and wine with water are brought. The president offers prayer
and thanks for them, according to the power given him,*' and
the congregation responds the Amen. Then the consecrated
elements are distributed to each one, and partaken, and are car-
ried by the deacons to the houses of the absent. The wealthy
and the willing then give contributions according to their free
will, and this collection is deposited with the president, who
therewith supplies orphans and widows, poor and needy, pri-
soners and strangers, and takes care of all who are in want.
We assemble in common on Sunday, because this is the first day,
on which God created the world and the light, and because
Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead
and appeared to his disciples."
Here prayer, song, reading of the Scriptures, preaching (and
that as an episcopal function), and communion, plainly appear as
the regular parts of the Sunday worship; all descending, no
doubt, from the apostolic age.^ The communion is not yet
clearly separated from the other parts of the worship. But this
was done towards the end of the second century.
For at that time the public service was then divided into
the worship of the catechumens,® and the worship of the faith-
* MexP'i ^YX^C"' ^ ^ rpocuToig, the presiding presbyter or bishop.
3 Tfiv vov^e^iav Ka'i TnipaifXjjTii'. * Evx^i Tt/in-ufici', preces emittimus. ^ 0. 65.
'"Oo-j; avrtj Sifafiti; that is probably, pro viribus, quantum potest; or like Tertul-
lian's "de pectore" and "ex proprio ingenio." Others translate: totis viribus, with
all his might. Comp. Otto : 0pp. Just. M. I. p. 160. The passages, however, in no case
contain any oidposition to forms of prayer which were certainly in use already at
that time, and familiar without book to every worshipper; above all the Lord's
Prayer. The whole liturgical literature of the fourth and fifth centuries presupposes
a much older liturgical tradition. The prayers in the eighth book of the apost. con-
stitutions are probably among the oldest portions of the work. Comp. § 93.
» Comp. § 36.
8 AtiTovpyia rrov ifHTrjY'Ji'f £''«'■, missa catecliumenorum. The name missa cat.
and fid., occurs first in Augustine and in the acts of the council at Carthage, A. D.
398. It arose from the formula of dismission at the close of each part of the services,
38-1 SECOND PERIOD, A.D. 100-311.
ful.^ The former consisted of scripture reading, preacliing,
prayer, and song, and was open to the unbaptized and persons
under penance. The latter consisted of the communion, with its
liturgical appendages; none but the proper members of the church
could attend it ; and before it began, all catechumens and unbe-
lievers left the assembly at the order of the deacon,^ and the
doors were closed or guarded. The earliest witness for this
strict separation is Tertullian, who reproaches the heretics with
allowing the baptized and the unbaptized to attend the same
prayers, and casting the holy even before the heathens.^ He
demands, that believers, catechumens, and heathens should
occupy separate places in public worship. The Alexandrian
divines furnished a theoretical ground for this practice by their
doctrine of a secret tradition for the esoteric. Besides the com-
munion, the sacrament of baptism, with its accompanying con-
fession, was likewise treated as a mystery for the initiated,^ and
withdrawn from the view of Jews and heathens.
We have here the beginnings of the Christian mystery-wor-
ship, or what has been called since 1679 the secret discipline,
Disciplina arcani^ which is presented in its full development in
the liturgies of the fourth century, but disappeared from the
Latin church after the sixth century, with the dissolution of
heathenism and the universal introduction of infant baptism.
The secret discipline had reference not to doctrine — this was
inculcated upon the catechumens — but only to the ritual, to the
celebration of the sacraments; and the conclusions, therefore,
which many Roman Catholic theologians have drawn from its
and is equivalent to niissio, clismissio. Missa (mass) afterwards came to denote
exclusively the celebration of the holy communion
1 Atirutipyi'a rCtv -KiarCtv, missa fidelium.
2 Mil ri{ Twv KaTr)-)(uvjiivMi, fin rif ruiti aKpoiOfi'iiwu, fiii Tt{ Ttov diriaroii, /jrj ti{ tuv ircpo-
iu^wv. Comp. Const. Apost. viii. 12.
* De praescr. haer. c. 41 : quis catechumenus, quis fidelis, incertum est (that is,
among the heretics) ; pariter adeunt, pariter orant, etiam cthnici, si supervcnerint ;
sanctum canibus et porcis margaritas, licet non voras (since tiicy have no proper
sacraments), jactabuiit. But this does not apply to all heretics, least of all to tlio
Manichaeans, who carried the notion of mystery in the sacraments much further
than the catholics.
* MOijToi, initiati =: ntaroi, fldeles.
§ 101. PUBLIC WORSHIP. 385
mysterious silence, in favor of transubstantiation, saint-worship,
and other later dogmas, are wliollj unwarranted.^ Some have
recently assigned the origin of this institution of the Nicene and
ante-Nicene cultus even to the apostolic age, and have supposed
it to explain the more readily the early slanders of the heathens
upon the celebration of the communion and the agape.^ But
against this are the words of Paul in 1 Cor. xiv. 23-25, and the fact,
that Justin Martyr, in his first apology, addressed to a heathen
emperor, describes the celebration of baptism and the holy sup-
per without the least reserve, while the later apologists do not
use such freedom. On the other hand, however, we cannot well
trace this secret discipline to the mysteries of the pagan worship,
though many expressions and formulas of these mysteries, toge-
ther with all sorts of unscriptural mystic pedantries, gathered upon
it. Its origin must be sought rather in an opposition to heatlien-
ism ; to wit, in the feeling of the necessity of guarding the sacred
transactions of Christianity, the embodiment of its deepest mys-
teries, against profanation in the midst of the hostile world, accord-
ing to Matt. vii. 6 ; especially when after Adrian, perhaps even,
from the time of Nero, those transactions came to be so shamefully-
misunderstood and slandered. To this must be added a proper-
regard for modesty and decency in the administration of baptism
by immersion. And finally, the institution of the order of cate-
chumens led to a distinction of half-Christians and full-Christians,
exoteric and esoteric, and this distinction gradually became
established in the liturgy. With the catechumens, therefore,
or with the general use of infant baptism and the union of church
and state, disappeared also the secret discipline in the sixth, and
seventh centuries : cessante causa cessat efiectus. The Eastern'
church alone has retained in her liturgies to this day the ancient
forms for the dismission of catechumens and the special prayers,
for them ; though she also has for centuries had no catechumens
' The learned Jesuit Emanuel von Schelstrate first used this argument, in 1 678';
but he was soon thoroughly answered by the Lutheran W. Ernst Tenzel, in hisCisserfe
de disc, arcani, Lips. 1683 and 1692.
2 Comp. § 62.
25
386 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
in the old sense of tlie word, that is Heathen or Jewish disciples
preparing for baptism, except in rare cases of exception, or on
missionary ground.
§ 102. The Eucharist.
Besides the literature at § 38, comp. Hufling : Die Lehre der altesten Kirche
vom Opfer iin Leben u. Cultus der Cliristen. Erl. 1851. On the Eucha-
ristic doctrine of Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, and TertuUian, there are also
special treatises by Thiersch (1841), Semisch (1842), Engelhardt (1842),
Baur (1839 and 1857), and others.
1. The DOCTRINE, concerning the sacrament of the Lord's
Supper, not coming into special controversy in the period before
us, remained indefinite and obscure. The ancient church made
more account of the worthy participation of the ordinance than
of the logical apprehension of it. She looked upon it as the
holiest mystery of the Christian worship, and accordingly cele-
brated it with the deepest devotion, without inquiring particu-
larly into the mode of Christ's presence and of the believer's
partaking of him, in the ordinance, nor into the relation of the
sensible signs to his flesh and blood. It is unliistorical to carry-
any of the later theories back into this age ; as is nevertheless
done frequently by all confessions in the apologetic and polemic
discussion of this subject.
Of the apostolic fathers Ignatius alone, the champion of old
Catholic episcopacy, speaks of the Eucharist, in two passages of
the Greek text ; more in the way of allusion, but in very strong,
mystical terms, calling it the flesh of our crucified and risen Lord
Jesus Christ, and the consecrated bread a medicine of immor-
tality and an antidote of spiritual death.^ This view, closely
connected with his high-churchly tendency in general, no doubt
' Ad Smyrn. c. 7 ; against the Docctists, who deny r(> £WY<»p'o-i"i'ai' aapKa tliai rov
GMTnpof hi^'ov 'I. Xp., <f. T X.; and Ad Ephes. c. 20: "Oj (sc. uproj) ccnv (jidpfiaKov
li^iii'aoiiii, dfTtiiiTni rov ^tti t'nTo^avcXv, dWa {jji/ iv 'I;)<rnt) Xpiorto (!iu irniTiis. Both pas-
SHfjes are wanting in the Sjriac version. But the first is cited by Thoodorct, Dial.
III. p. 2:31, and must therefore have been known even in the Syrian church in his
time.
§ 102. THE EUCHAEIST, 887
involves belief in tlie real presence, and ascribes to tlie boly sup-
per an effect on spirit and body at once, witb reference to the
future resurrection,^ but is still somewbat obscure, and rather an
expression of elevated feeling, than a logical definition. The
same may be said of Justin Martjrr, when he compares the
descent of Christ into the consecrated elements to his incarna-
tion for our redemption.^ Irenaeus says repeatedly, in combat-
ing the Grnostic Docetism,^ that bread and wine in the sacrament
became, by the presence of the "Word of Grod, and by the power
of the Holy Ghost, the body and blood of Christ, and that the
receiving of them strengthens soul and body (the germ of the
resurrection body) unto eternal life. Yet this would hardly
warrant our ascribing either transubstantiation or consubstan-
tiation to Irenaeus. For in another place he calls the bread and
wine, after consecration, "antitypes," implying the continued dis-
tinction of their substance from the body and blood of Christ.*
This expression in itself, indeed, might be understood as merely
contrasting here the Supper, as the substance,with the Old Testa-
ment passover, its type ; as Peter calls baptism the antitype of the
saving water of the flood.^ But the connexion, and the usus
hquendi of the earlier Greek fathers, require us to take the term
antitype in the sense of type, or, more precisely, as the antithesis
of archetype. The bread and wine represent and exhibit the
■ Comp. Jno. vi. 54
* Apol. I. 66. Here also occurs already the terra /xcrapoXij, which some Roman
controversialists use at once as an argument for transubstantiation. Justin says : 'E|
ris (i. e. Tpo<prji) tuna Kal aapKeg Kara ^£ra/?u>ii' rpiipnuTai lifiwv^ eX qUO alimentO Sanguis
et carnes nostrae per mutationem aluntur. But according to the context, this de-
notes by no means a transmutation of the elements, but either the assimilation of
them to the body of the receiver, or the operation of them upon the bodj', with refer-
ence to the future resurrection. Comp. Jno. vi. 54 sqq., and like passages in Igna-
tius and Irenaeus.
' Adv. haer. IV. 18, and passim.
^ In the second of the Fragments discovered by Pfaff (0pp. Iren. ed. Stieren, voL
I. p. 855), which Maffei and other Roman divines have unwarrantably declared spu-
rious. It is there said, that the Christians, after the offering of the eucharistic sacri-
fice, call upon the Holy Ghost, oVms diTO<pfivri rnv ^vaiav rairriv Koi Tov aprov aiojia rov
XptCTToC, Ka'i TO TTorfipiov TO aifia tov Xp., fi/a o'l iisraXaiSovrei tovtojv rtji/ livTiTviroiVy ti's
diJo-Ews TtSv ajjapri'TiV Kal rrjs ^oirjs alojviov TV^Ciiatv,
5 1 Pet iii. 20, 21.
388 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
body and blood of Christ, as the archetype, and correspond to
them, as a copy to the original. In exactly the same sense it is
said in Heb. ix. 24 — comp. viii. 5, — that the earthly sanctuary is
the antitype, that is the copy, of the heavenly. Other Greek
fathers also, down to the fifth century, and especially the author
of the Apostolical Constitutions, call the consecrated elements anti-
types (sometimes, like Theodoretus, types) of the body and blood
of Christ.i
A different view, approaching nearer the Reformed, we meet
with among the African fathers. Tertullian makes the words
of institution : Hoc est corpus meum, equivalent to : fvjura cor-
poris mei, to prove in opposition to Marcion's docetism, the
reality of the body of Jesus, — a mere phantom being capable of
no emblematic representation .^ This involves, at all events, an
essential distinction between the consecrated elements and the
body and blood of Christ in the supper. Yet he must not be
understood as teaching a merely symbolical presence of Christ ;
for in other places Tertullian, according to his general realistic
turn, speaks in almost materialistic language of an eating of the
bod}^ of Christ, and extends the participation even to the body
of the receiver.^ Cyprian likewise appears to favor a symbolical
interpretation of the words of institution ; yet not so clearly. In
the customary mixing of the wine with water he sees a type of
the union of Christ with his church,^ and, on the authority of John
' Const. ApOSt. 1. V. C. 14: Tn avTiTvira iivarfipia rnii rijiiov aio/jiaTOf airnv Kin iii/ifiros ;
FO VI. 30, and in a eucharistic prayer, VII. 25. Other passages of the Greek fathers
see in Stieren, 1. c., p. 884 sq. Comp also Bleek's learned remarks on Heb. viii. 5,
and ix. 24.
* Adv. Marc. IV. 40; and likewise III. 19. This interpretation is plainly very
near that of (Ecolampadius, who, in fact, attached no small weight to this authority.
But the Zwinglian view, whicli puts the figure in the can, instead of the predicate,
appears also in Tertullian, Adv. Marc. I. 14, in the words: Panem qui ipsum corpus
suum repra&sentai.
3 Do resur. carni.", c. 8, Caro corporo ct sanguine Christi vcscitur,)it ct anima do
Deo saginetur. Do pudic. c. 9, ho refers the fatted calf, in the parable of the prodi-
gal son, to the Lord's Supper, and says : Opimitato Dominici corporis vescitur, eucha-
ri.stia scilicet De orat. c. 6: Quod et corpus Chrisli in pane ccnsetur; which should
probably be translated : — is to be understood by the bread (not contained in the bread).
* For this reason he considers the mixing essential. Epist. 63 (ed. Bal.) c. 13: Si
vinum tautum quis offerat, sanguis Christi incipit esse sine nobis; si vcro aqua sit
§ 102. THE EUCHARIST. 389
vi. 53, holds the communion of the supper indispensable to sal-
vation. The idea of a sacrifice comes out very boldly in Cy-
prian,
The Alexandrians are here, as usual, decidedly spiritualistic.
Clement twice expressly calls the wine a symbol or an allegory
of the blood of Christ, and says, that the communicant receives
not the physical, but the spiritual blood, the life, of Christ ; as,
indeed, the blood is the life of the body. Origen distinguishes
still more definitely the earthly elements from the heavenly
bread of life, and makes it the whole design of the supper to feed
the soul with the divine word.^ Applying his unsound alle-
gorical method here, he makes the bread represent the Old
Testament, the wine the New, and the breaking of the bread
the multiplication of the divine word ! But these were rather
private views for the initiated, and can hardly be taken as pre-
senting the doctrine of the Alexandrian church.
~VVe have, therefore, among the ante-Nicene fathers, three
different views, an Oriental, an African, and an Alexandrian.
The first view, that of Ignatius and Irenaeus, agrees most nearly
with the mystical character of the celebration of the eucharist,
and with the catholicizing features of the age.
2. The eucharist as a sacrifice. This point is very impor-
tant in relation to the doctrine, and still more important in rela-
tion to the cultus and life, of the ancient church. The Lord's
supper was universally regarded not only as a sacrament, but
also as a sacrifice,^ the true and eternal sacrifice of the new
covenant, superseding all the provisional and typical sacrifices
sola, plebs incipit esse sine Cliristo. Quando autem utrumque miscetur et aduna-
tione confusa sibi invicem copulatur, tunc sacramentum spirituale et coeleste per-
ficitur.
" Comment, ser. in Matt. c. 85 (III. 898) : Panis iste, quem Deus Vcrbum
(Logos) corpus suum esse fatetur, verbum est nutritorium animarum, verbum de
Deo Verbo procedens, et panis de pani coelesti. . . . Non enim panem ilium visibi-
lem, quem tenebat in manibus, corpus suum dicebat Deus Verbum, sed verbum, in
cuius mj'sterio fuerat panis ille frangendus. Then the same of the wine. Origen
evidently goes no higher than the Zwinglian theory, while Clement approaches the
Calvinistic view of a spiritual real fruition of Christ's life in the eucharist.
* Upo(T(popa, Sufjt'a, oblatio, sacrificium.
390 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
of the old ; taking the place particularly of the passover, or the
feast of the typical redemption from Egypt. This eucharistic
sacrifice, however, the ante-Nicene fathers conceived not as an
unbloody repetition of the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the
cross, but simply as a commemoration and renewed appropriation
of that atonement, and, above all, a thank-offering of the whole
church for all the fovors of God in creation and redemption.
Hence the current name itself — eucharist ; which denoted in the
first place the prayer of thanksgiving, but afterwards the whole
rite.^ The consecrated elements were regarded in a twofold
light, as representing at once the natural and the spiritual gifts
of God, which culminated in the self-sacrifice of Christ on the
cross. Hence the eucharistic prayer, like that connected with
the typical passover, related at the same time to creation and
redemption, which were the more closely joined in the mind of
the church for their dualistic separation by the Gnostics. The
earthly gifts of bread and wine were taken as types and pledges
of the heavenly gifts of the same God, who has both created and
redeemed the world.
Upon this followed the idea of the self-sacrifice of the wor-
shipper himself. Down to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
the eucharistic elements were presented as a thank-offering by
the members of the congregation themselves, and the remnants
went to the clergy and the poor. In these gifts the people
yielded themselves as a priestly race and a living thank-offering
to God, to whom they owed all the blessings alike of providence
and of grace.
This subjective offering of the congregation on the ground of
the objective atoning sacrifice of Christ is the real centre of the
ancient Christian worship, and particularly of the communion.
It thus differed both from the later Catholic mass, which has
changed the thank-offering into a sin-ofiering, and from the com-
mon Protestant cultus, which, in opposition to the Koman mass,
' So among the Jews the cup of wine at the pascal suppor was call"l z'i'S
«-j>-'-)3|-[ Tzornoiuv tiXoyi'dj = cv^apiariaf, COtlip. 1 CoF. X. IG.
§ 102. THE EUCHARIST. 391
has almost entirely banished the idea of sacrifice from the celebra-
tion of the Lord's supper.
The writers of the second century keep strictly within the
limits of the notion of a thank-oWermg. Thus Justin says
expressly, prayers and thanksgivings alone are the true and
acceptable sacrifices, which the Christians offer. Irenaeus has
been brought as a witness for the Roman doctrine, only on the
ground of a flilse reading.^ The African fathers, in the third
century, who elsewhere incline to the symbolical interpretation
of the words of institution, are the first to approach on this
point the later Roman idea of a sin-offering ; especially Cyprian,
the steadfast advocate of priesthood and of episcopal authority.^
The ideas of priesthood, sacrifice, and altar, are intimately con-
nected, and a Judaizing conception of one must extend to all.
3. The CELEBRATION of the eucharist. Of this Justin Martyr^
gives the following description, which still bespeaks the primi-
tive simplicity : " After the prayers (of the catechumen worship)
we greet one another with the brotherly kiss. Then bread and
a cup with water and wine are handed to the president (bishop)
of the brethren. He receives them, and offers praise, glory, and
thanks to the Father of all, through the name of the Son and the
Holy Ghost, for these his gifts. When he has ended the prayers
and thanksgiving, the whole congregation responds: Amen.
For amen in the Hebrew tongue means : Be it so. Upon this
the deacons, as we call them, give to each of those present some
of the blessed bread,* and of the wine mingled with water, and
• Adv. liaer. IV. c. 18, § 4: Verbum (the Logos) quod offertur Deo; instead of
which should be read, according to other manuscripts : Verbum per quod offertur,
— whicli suits the connexion raucli better. Comp. IV. 17, § 6: Per Jes. Christum
offert ecclesia. Stieren reads Verbum quod, but refers it not to Christ, but to the
word of the prayer. The passage is, at all events, too obscure and too isolated to
build a dogma upon.
* Epist. 63 ad Caecil. c. 14 : Si Jesus Christus, Dominus et Deus noster, ipse est
suramus sacerdos Dei Patris et sacrificium Patri seipsum primus obtulit et hoe fieri
in sui commemorationem praecepit : utique ille sacerdos vice Ghristi vere fungitur,
qui id, quod Christus fecit, imitalur et sacrificium verum et plenum tunc offert in
ecclesia Dei Patri, si sic incipiat ofi'ere, secundum quod ipsum Christum videat
obtulisse.
' Apol. I. c. 65, 66 (ed. Otto, I. 154). * Kixac'CTn^ivTos Uprov.
892 SECOND PERIOD, A.D. 100-811.
carry it to the absent in their dwellings. This food is called
with us the eucharist, of which none can partake, but the
believing and baptized, who live according to the commands of
Christ. For we use these not as common bread and common
drink ; but like as Jesus Christ our Kedcemer was made flesh
through the word of God, and took upon liim flesh and blood for
our redemption ; so we are taught, that the nourishment blessed
by the word of prayer, by which our flesh and blood are
nourished by transformation (assimilation), is the flesh and blood
of the incarnate Jesus." Then he relates the institution from the
Gospels, and mentions the customary collections for the poor.
We are not warranted in carrying back to this period the full
liturgical service, which we find prevailing with striking unifor-
mity in essentials, though with many variations in minor points,
in all quarters of the church in the Nicene age. A certain sim-
plicity and freedom characterized the period before us. Even
the so-called Clementine liturgj^, in the seventh book of the
pseudo- Apostolical Constitutions, was probably not composed
and written out in this form before the fourth century. Yet by
the third century a tolerably uniform practice must have arisen
and spread by oral tradition ; otherwise the later liturgies were
historically unaccountable.
From scattered statements of the ante-Nicene fathers we may
gather the following view of the eucharistic service a's it may
have stood in the middle of the third century, if not earlier.
The communion was a regular part, and in flict the most im-
portant and solemn part, of the Sunday worship ; or it was the
worship of God in the stricter sense, in which none but full mem-
bers of the church could engage. In many places and by many
Christians it was celebrated even daily, after apostolic precedent,
and according to the very common mystical interpretation of
the fourth petition of the Lord's prayer,^ The service began,
1 Cyprian speaks of daily sacrifices. Ep. 54: Sacordotes qui sacrifioia Dei qnotidie
celebra:nus. So Ambrose, Ep. 14 ad MareelL, and the oldest liturjiical works. But
that the observance was various, is certified by Augustine, among others, Ep. 118
ad Jannar. c. 2 : Alii quotidie connnunicant corpori et sanguini Dominico ; alii certis
§ 102. THE EUCHARIST. 393
after tlie dismission of the catechumens, with the kiss of peace,
given by the men to men, and by the women to women, in token
of mutual recognition as members of one redeemed family in the
midst of a heartless and loveless world. The service proper con-
sisted of two principal acts : the oblation,^ or presenting of the
offerings of the congregation by the deacons for the ordinance
itself, and for the benefit of the clergy and the poor; and the
communmi^ or partaking of the consecrated elements. In the
oblation the congregation at the same time presented itself as a
living thank-offering ; as in the communion it appropriated anew
in faith the sacrifice of Christ, and united itself anew with its
Head, Both acts were accompanied and consecrated by prayer
and songs of praise. In the prayers we must distinguish, first,
the general thanksgiving^ the eucharist in the strictest sense of the
word, for all the natural and spiritual gifts of God, commonly
ending with the seraphic hymn, Isa. vi. 3 ; secondly, the prayer
of consecration^ or the invocation of the Holy Ghost '^ upon the
people and the elements, usually accompanied by the recital of
the words of institution and the Lord's prayer ; and finally, the
general intercessions for all classes, especially for the believers, on
the ground of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for the salvation
of the world. The length and order of the prayers, however,
were not uniform ; nor the position of the Lord's prayer, which
sometimes took the place of the prayer of consecration. The
congregation responded from time to time, according to the
ancient Jewish and the apostolic usage,^ with an audible "Amen"
diebus accipiunt; alibi nullus dies intermittitur quo non offeratur; alibi sabbato
tantum et dominico ; alibi tantum domiuico.
' Wui>a(j)up'i.
2 'Eirt''cX»)(ri{ Tuv Ylv. 'Ay. Irenaeus derives this invocatio Spiritus S., as well as the
oblation and the thanksgiving, from apostolic instruction. See the 2nd fragment,
already cited, in Stieren I. 854. It appears in all the Greek liturgies. In the
Liturgia Jacobi it reads thus : Kal i^aTzoaTtiXov ip^ /(^us koI im ra npo'JKdfi.tva Soipa Tav-
Ta TO iLvtvua aov to Trui'ayioi', to kvpiov koI ^oiunciov . . . tea , . . aytarrr) Kal TToifjaij tov jitv
aprov rovToi/ (rcofia ayiov tov ^piaTov aov, Kal ro noTriptov tovto aifia Tiftiov tov Xp, aov, "va
yii/t}Tai ndai tois £| avTuiv iitTaXafiPavovaw et; afeatv afiapTiun' Kal ti'j fui/i' aidviov, £i'j ayiaa-
uov ipv^wv /CO! (TWjuura)!', eis KapTTo(popiav cpy(ov dyaScov.
3 Comp. 1 Cor. xiv. 16
894 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
or " Kyrie eleison." The " Sursum corda," also, as an incite-
ment to devotion, with the response, " Ilabemus ad Dominum,"
appears at least as early as Cyprian's time, who expressly alludes
to it. The elements were common ^ or leavened bread (except
among the Ebionites, who, like the later Roman church from
the seventh centur)^, used unleavened bread), and wine mingled
with water. This mixing was a general custom in antiquity,
but came now to have various mystical meanings attached to it.
The elements were placed in the hands (not in the mouth) of
each communicant by the clergy who were present, or, according
to Justin, by the deacons alone, amid singing of psalms by the
congregation (Psalm xxxiv.), with the words: "The body of
Christ;" "The blood of Christ, the cup of life;" to each of
which the recipient responded "Amen."^ The whole congrega-
tion thus received the elements, standing in the act.^ Thanks-
giving and benediction concluded the celebration.
After the public service the deacons carried the consecrated
elements to the sick and those who were in prison. Many took
portions of the bread home with them, to use in the family at
morning prayer. This domestic communion was practised par-
ticularly in North Africa, and furnishes the first example of a
communio sub una specie. In the same country, in Cyprian's
time, we find the custom of infant communion (administered
1 Koii/of (iprof, saj'S Justin, while in view of its sacred import he Ciills it also
uncommon bread and drink. The use of leavened or unleavened bread became
afterwards, as is well known, a point of controversy between the Roman and Greek
churches.
2 This simplest form of distribution, " Ew/^a XoKTroC," and " \ ' Xn., -r-i-Onr .r ftoijs,"
occurs in the Clementine liturgy of the Apostolic Constitution;?, VIII. 13, and seems
to be the oldest.
3 The .standing posture of the congregation during the principal pra3'ers, and in
the communion itself, seems to have been at first universal. For this was, indeed,
the custom alwaj-s on the day of the resurrection in distinction from Friday (stantes
cramus, q\iod est signum resurrectionis, says Augustine); besides, the conmiunion
was, in the highest sense, a ceremony of festivity and joy; and finally, Justin
expressly observes: "Then we all stand up to prayer." After the twelfth century,
kneeling in receiving the elements became general, and pns.scd from the Catholic
church into the Lutheran and Anglican, while most of tiie Reformed churches returned
to the original custom of standing. Sitting in the communion was first introduced
aft;er the reformation by the Presbyterian church of Scotland.
§ 103. BAPTISM, AND CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTION". ',95
witli wine alone), wliicli was justified from John vi. 53, an( lias
continued in tHe Greek (and Eussian) cliurcli to this day, th(>ugh
irreconcilable with the apostles' requisition of a preparatory
examination.^
4. At first the communion was joined with a love feast,
and was then celebrated in the evening, in memory of the last
supper of Jesus with his disciples. But so early as the I egin-
ning of the second century these two exercises were separated,
and the communion was placed in the morning,^ the lov«3 feast
in the evening. Tertullian gives a detailed description of the
latter in refutation of the calumnies of the heathens. But the
growth of the churches and the rise of manifold abuses led to
the gradual disuse, and in the fourth century even to the formal
prohibition, of the agape, which belonged in fact only to th*^
childhood and first love of the church.
§ 103. Baptism and Catechetical Instruction. Confirmation.
Comp. the literature at § 37, particularly the work of Hofling.
1. The IDEA of baptism. This ordinance was regarded in the
ancient church as the sacrament of conversion and regeneration,
as the solemn rite of initiation into the Christian church, admit-
ting to all her benefits and committing to all her obligations.
Its effect was supposed to consist in the forgiveness of sins and
the communication of the Holy Ghost. Justin calls it "the
water-bath for the forgiveness of sins and regeneration, "^ and
"the bath of conversion and the knowledge of God." It is
often called also illumination,^ spiritual circumcision, anointing,
sealing, gift of grace, symbol of redemption, death of sins, &c.
Tertullian describes its effect thus : " When the soul comes to
faith, and becomes transformed through regeneration by water
' 1 Cor. xi. 28.
' Yet on Maunday-Thursday, according to Augnstine's testimony, the commu-
nion continued to be celebrated in the evening, " tamquam ad insigniorem comme-
morationem." So on high feasts and in fasting seasons. See Ambrose, Serm. viiL
in Ps. 1 18.
' Comp. Tit. iii. 5. * $wri(T/<df, ^curnr/ia.
396 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
and power from above, it discovers, after the veil of the old cor-
ruption is taken away, its whole light. It is received into the
fellowship of the Holy Ghost; and the sou], which unites itself
to the Holy Ghost, is followed by the body." He already leans
towards the notion of a magical operation of the baptismal
water. Yet the subjective condition of repentance and faith was
universally required. Baptism was not only an act of God. but
at the same time the most solemn surrender of the man to God,
a vow for life and death, to live henceforth only to Christ, and
his people. The keeping of this vow was the condition of con-
tinuance in the cliurch ; the breaking of it must be followed
either by repentance or excommunication.
From Jno. iii. 5, Tertullian and others argued the necessity of
baptism to salvation. Clement of Alexandria supposed with
Hermas, that even the saints of the Old Testament were baptized
by the apostles in Hades. But exception was made in favor of
the bloody baptism of martyrdom, as compensating the want of
baptism with water ; and thenceforth the principle was established,
that not the unavoidable omission, but only the contempt of this
sacrament, is damning.^
The effect of baptism, however, was thought to extend only to
sins committed before receiving it. Hence the frequent post-
ponement of the sacrament,^ which Tertullian very earnestly
recommends, though he censures it when accompanied with
moral levity and presumption.^ Many, like Constantino the
Great, put it off to the bed of sickness and of death. They pre-
ferred the risk of dying unbaptized to that of forfeiting for ever
the baptismal grace.
But then the question arose, how the forgiveness of sins com-
mitted after baptism could be obtained? This is the starting
point of the Roman doctrine of the sacrament oi penance. Tertul
lian* and Cyprian^ were the first to suggest that satisfaction must
* Non defectus, scd contemtus sacramenti damnat. ' Procrastinatio baptismi.
3 So the autlior of tho Apost. Constit. VI. 15, disapproves those who say: "Ore
^ Do poenitentia. * Do ooere et eleemosynis.
§ 103. BAPTISM, AND CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTION. 397
be made for such sins by self-imposed penitential exercises and
good works, sucli as prayers and almsgiving. TertuUian held
seven gross sins, wbich he denoted mortal sins, to be unpardonable
after baptism, and to be left to the uncovenanted mercies of God ;
but the Catholic church took a milder view, and even received
back the adulterers and apostates on their public repentance.
2. Preparation for baptism, or the Catechumenate. This
was a very important institution of the early church. As the
church was set in the midst of a heathen world, and addressed
herself in her missionary preaching in the first instance to the
adult generation, she saw the necessity of preparing the suscepti-
ble for baptism by special instruction under teachers called cate-
chists, who were generally presbyters and deacons.^ The cate-
chumenate thus preceded baptism (of adults) ; whereas, at a later
period, after the general introduction of infant baptism, it fol-
lowed. It was, on the one hand, a bulwark of the church against
unworthy members ; on the other, a bridge from the world to the
church, a Christian novitiate, to lead beginners forward to matu-
rity. The catechumens or hearers^ were regarded not as unbe-
lievers, but as half-christians, and were accordingly allowed to
attend all the exercises of worship, except the celebration of the
sacrament.^ They embraced people of all ranks, ages, and grades
of culture, even philosophers, statesmen, and rhetoricians, — Jus-
tin, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, TertuUian, Cj^prian,
Arnobius, Lactantius, who all embraced Christianity in their
adult years. In the third century they were divided into three
classes.^ The catechetical school of Alexandria was particularly
renowned for its highly learned character.'^ The duration of this
catechetical instruction was fixed sometimes at two years, some-
times at three, but might be shortened according to circum-
stances.
3. The CELEBRATION of baptism. Of this also Justin gives
^ KarrixriTai, doctores audientiutn.
2 KaTri)(^ovitti'ot, dtrpjarai, auditores, audientes, 3 Comp. § lOL
* 'AKpo<'>iicvoi, or audientes; yowKXimvTcs, or genuflectentes ; and fj>wTt^6^tvot, or
competentes.
» Comp. § 126.
3US SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
tlie following brief account :^ " Those wlio are convinced of the
truth of our doctrine, and have promised to live according to it,
are exhorted to prayer, fasting, and repentance for past sins ; we
praying and fasting with them. Then they are led by us to a
place where is water, and in this way are regenerated,^ as we
also have been regenerated ; that is, they receive the water bath
in the name of God, the Father and Ruler of all, and of our
Redeemer Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost. For Christ
says: Except ye be born again, ye cannot enter the kingdom
of heaven.^ .... Thus, from children of necessity and
ignorance, we become children of choice and of wisdom, and
partakers of the forgiveness of former sins The
baptismal bath is called also illumination, because those who
receive it are enlightened in the understanding."
This account may be completed by the following from later
writers : —
Before the act the candidate was required in a solemn vow to
renounce the service of the devil, that is, all evil,* give himself
to Christ, and confess the sum of the apostolic faith in God the
Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.^ The apostles' creed, therefore,
is properly the baptismal symbol, as it grew, in fact, out of the
baptismal formula.® This act of turning from sin and turning to
God, or of repentance and faith, on the part of the candidate,
was followed by an appropriate prayer by the minister, and then
by the bajDtism itself in the triune name, with either three suc-
cessive immersions, or only a single one, in which the deacons
and deaconesses assisted. In exceptional cases, of sick persons
' ApoL I., c. 61, p. 142. 2 'AvayevvMVTai. ^ Jno. iii. 5.
* Abrenunciatio diabolL Tertullian : Rcnunciare diabolo et pompae et angelia
ejus. Const. ApOSt. : ^A.KOTd(T(TOftai tC* EirmS Kai TuTf ipyoii airov Ka\ raif itn^maXi
avTov, Kill rais Xurpciuif airov, xnt naai roT; in' avrov. This renunciation of thc devil
was made, at least in the fourth century, as wc learn from Cyril of Jerusalem, in the
vestibule of the baptistery, with the face towards the west, and the hand raised in
thc repelling posture, as if Satan were present (it napAvTi aKOTaaatn^t Earaj'S), and
was sometimes accompanied with oxsufllations, or other signs of expulsion of the
evil spirit.
5 '0/iu>oyi|iT(5, professio. The creed was either said by the catechumen after the
priest, or confessed in answer to questions, and with the face eastward.
« Comp. § 76.
§ 103. BAPTISM, AXD CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTION. 899
(and probably of cliildren), the water was applied by affusion or
sprinkling. Many were unwilling to allow tbis *' baptismus
clinicorum," as it was called, full validity; and Cyprian wrote
in its defence. According to ecclesiastical law it at least incapa-
citated for tlie clerical office. Yet the Roman bishop Fabian
ordained Novatian a presbyter, though he had been baptized on
a sick-bed by sprinkling alone. Thanksgiving, benediction, and
the brotherly kiss concluded the sacred ceremony.
Besides these essential elements of the baptismal rite, we
find, so early as the third century, several other subordinate
usages, which have indeed a beautiful symbolical meaning, but,
like all redundancies, could easily obscure the original simplicity
of this sacrament, as it appears in Justin Martyr's description.
Among these appendages are the signing of the cross on the
forehead and breast of the subject, as a soldier of Christ under
the banner of the cross ; giving him milk and honey (also salt) in
token of sonship with God, and citizenship in the heavenly Canaan.
Exorcism^ or the expulsion of the devil, which is not to be
confounded with the essential formula of renunciation, was pro-
bably practised at first only in special cases, as of demoniacal
possession. But after the council of Carthage, A.D. 256, we
find it a regular jDart of the ceremony of baptism, preceding
the baptism proper, and in some cases, it would seem, seve-
ral times repeated during the course of catechetical instruction.
To understand fully this custom, we should remember that the
early church derived the whole system of heathen idolatry,
which it justly abhorred as one of the greatest crimes,^ from the
agency of Satan. The heathen deities, although they had been
eminent men during their lives, were, as to their animating
principle, identified with demons — either fallen angels or their
progeny. These demons, as we may infer from many passages
of Justin, Tertullian, Minutius Felix, and others, were believed
to traverse the air, to wander over the earth, to deceive and
torment the race, to take possession of men, to encourage sacri-
' Tertullian calls it " principale crimen generia humani " (De idol. c. 1), and
Cyprian, "summum delictum" (Ep. x.).
400 SECO^'D TEKIOD. A.D. 1(JU-81L
fices, to lurk in statues, to speak through the oracles, to direct
the flights of birds, to work the illusions of enchantment and
necromancy, to delude the senses by false miracles, to incite per-
secutiun against Christianity, and, in fact, to sustain the whole
fabric of heathenism with all its errors and vices. But even
these evil spirits were subject to the powerful name of Jesus.
Tertullian openly challenges the pagan adversaries to bring
demoniacs before the tribunals, and affirms that the spirits
which possessed them, would bear witness to the truth of Chris-
tianity.
The institution of sponsors,^ first mentioned by Tertullian,
arose no doubt from infant baptism, and was designed to secure
Christian training, without thereby excusing Christian parents
from their duty.
Baptism might be administered at any time, but was com-
monly connected with Easter and Pentecost, and in the East
with Epiphany also, to give it the greater solemnity. During
the week following, the neophytes wore white garments as
symbols of their purity.
Separate chapels for baptism, or baptisteries, occur first in the
fourth century. Baptism might be performed in any place,
where, as Justin says, " water was." Yet Cyprian, in the mid-
dle of the third century, and the pseudo-Apostolical Constitu-
tions, require the element to be previously consecrated, that it
may become the vehicle of the purifying energy of the Spirit.
This corresponded to the consecration of the bread and wine in
the supper, and involved no transformation of the substance.
4. Confirmation^ was originally closely connected with bap-
tism, as its positive complement, and was performed by the impo-
sition of hands, and the anointing of several parts of the body
with fragrant balsam-oil, the chrism, as it was called. These
acts were the medium of the communication of the Holy Ghost,
and of consecration to the spiritual priesthood. Later, however,
it came to be separated from baptism, especially in the case of
1 'AvaSoxoi, sponsorcs, fidoijussorcs.
* L'/ipuyi'j, X(n<T/<a, coiilinnatio, obsignatio, signacuium.
§ 104. INFANT BAPTISM, AND HERETICAL BAPTISM. 401
infants, and to be regarded as a sacrament by itself. Cyprian is
tlie first to distinguish, the baptism with water and the baptism
with the Spirit as two sacraments ; yet this term, sacrament, was
used as yet very indefinitely, and applied to all sacred doctrines
and rites. The Western church, after the third century, restricted
the power of confirmation to bishops, on the authority of Acts
viii. 17 ; they alone, as tbe successors of the apostles, being able
to impart the Holy Ghost. The Greek church extended this
function to priests and deacons.
§ 104. Infant Baptism, and Heretical Baptism.
On infant baptism comp. Just. M. : Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. c. 43. Iren. : Adv.
haer. II. 22, § 4, compared with III. 17, § 1. Tertull. : De baptismo,.
c. 18. Cypr. : Epist. LIX. ad Fidum. Clem. Alex.: Paedag. III. 247.
Orig. : Coram, in Rom. V. 0pp. IV._565, and Homil. XIV. in Lucan.
On heretical baptism comp. Euseb. : H. E. VII. 3-5. Cypr. : Epist. LXX.-
LXXVI. The Acts of the Council of Carthage, a.d. 256, and the anony-
mous tract, De rebaptismate, among Cyprian^s works, and in Routh's-
Reliquiae sacrae, vol. v. 283-328.
1. During this period, while the church is still a missionary
institution in the midst of a heathen world, infant baptism yields
to the baptism of adult proselytes ; as, in the following period,,
upon the union of church and state, the order is reversed. At
that time, too, there could of course be no such thing, even on
the part of Christian parents, as the compulsory baptism, which,
dates from Justinian's reign, and which almost inevitably leads
to frequent profanation of the sacrament. The cases of Gregory
of Nazianzen, St. Chrysostom, and St. Augustine, who had
mothers of exemplary piety, and yet were not baptized before
early manhood, show sufiiciently that considerable freedom pre-
vailed in this respect even in the Nicene and post-Nicene age.
Gregory of Nazianzen^ gives the advice to put off the baptism
of children, where there is no danger of death, to their third
year.
But at the same time it seems to us a settled fact, though by
' Orat. XL.
26
402 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
many disputed, that, with the baptism of converts, the optional
baptism of the children of Christian parents in established congre-
gations, comes down from the apostolic age.^ Among the fathers,
Tertullian himself not excepted — for he combats only its expe-
diency— there is not a single voice against the lawfulness and
the apostolic origin of infant baptism. No time can be fixed
at which it was first introduced. Tertullian suggests, that it was
usually based on the invitation of Christ : " Suffer the little
children to come unto me, and forbid them not." The usage of
sponsors, of which Tertullian himself bears witness, and still
more, the almost equally ancient abuse of infant communion,
imply the existence of infant baptism. Heretics also practised
it, and were not censured for it.
The apostolic fathers make, indeed, no mention of it But
their silence proves nothing ; for they hardly touch upon bap-
tism at all, except Uermas, and he declares it necessary to salva-
tion, even for the j)atriarchs in Hades (therefore, as we may well
infer, for children also). Justin Martyr expressly teaches the
capacity of all men for spiritual circumcision by baptism; and
■ his ■rafl'iv can with the less propriety be limited, since he is here
speaking to a Jew, and as he elsewhere (in his smaller Apology)
speaks of old men who have been from childhood^ disciples of
Christ. According to Irenaeus, the faithful bearer of Johannean
tradition, Christ passed through all the stages of life, to sanctify
them all, and came to redeem, through himself, " all who through
him are horn again unto God, sucklings, children, boys, youths,
and adults."^ This profound view involves an acknowledg-
ment not only, as is universally granted, of the idea of infant
baptism, but also of the practice of it ; for in the mind of the
ancient church baptism and regeneration were intimately con-
' Comp. § 37. 2 'Ek ra.'Jcor.
' Adv. haor. II. 22, § 4 : Omncs venit per scmctipsum salvare ; omncs, inquam, qui
per eum renaacuntur in Denm, infantes et parvuloa et pueros et juvenes et seniorea.
Ideo per omnem vciiit aetatem, et infaiitibus infiins factus, sanctificans infantes; in
parvuli.s parvulus, sanctificans linnc ipsani liabentes aetatcni ; simul et excmplum
illis pietatis effectus et justitiae et aubjcctionis, in juvenibus juvenis, &c. Comp. tlie
pa.ssage, III. 17, § 1, wlicrc baptism is defined as regcneratio in Deum.
§ 104. INFANT BAPTISM, AND HERETICAL BAPTISM. 403
nected, and by Irenaeus liimself, in another passage, they axe
distinctly identified. In an infant, in fact, any regeneration but
through baptism is inconceivable. A moral regeneration, as dis-
tinct from sacramental, would imply conversion, and this is a con-
scious act of the will, an exercise of repentance and faith of which
the infant is incapable.
In the churches of Egypt infant baptism must have been prac-
tised from the first. For, aside from some not very clear expres-
sions of Clement of Alexandria, Origan distinctly derives it from
the a}>)-;tles; and he liimself, being descended from Christian
parents and grand-parents, was baptized soon after his birth in
185, and, through his journeys in the east and the west, was well
acquainted with the practice of the church in his time.
The only opponent of infant baptism is Tertullian. He con-
demns the hastening of the innocent age to the forgiveness of
sins,^ and intrusting it with divine gifts, while we would not
commit to it earthly property. Whoever considers the solem-
nity of baptism, will shrink more from the receiving, than from
the postponement of it. But the very manner of TertuUian's
opposition proves as much in favor of infant baptism as against
it. He meets it not as an innovation, but as a prevalent custom ;
and he meets it not with exegetical nor historical argument, but
only with considerations of religious prudence. His opposition
to it is founded on his erroneous view of the impossibility of
having mortal sins forgiven in the church after baptism, this
ordinance cannot be repeated, and washes out only the guilt
contracted before its reception. On the same ground he advises
healthy adults, especially the unmarried, to postpone this sacra-
ment, until they shall be no longer in danger of forfeiting for ever
the grace of baptism by committing adultery, murder, apostasy, or
any other of the seven crimes which he calls mortal sins. On
the same principle his advice applies only to healthy children,
' " Quid festinat innocens aetas ad remissionera peccatorum ?" The " innocens" here
is to be taken only in a relative sense ; for Tertullian in other places teaches a vitium
originis, or hereditary sin and guilt, although not as distinctly and clearly as Augus-
tine. Comp. the remarks on his opposition to infant baptism in my Hist, of the
Apost. Church, p. 579 sq.
40-1 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
not to sickly ones, if we consider that he held baptism to be
the indispensable condition of forgiveness of sins, and taught the
doctrine of hereditary sin. With him this position resulted from
moral earnestness, from a lively sense of the great solemnity of
the baptismal vow. But many put off baptism to their death-
bed, in moral levity and presumption, that they might sin as
long as they could.
Tertullian's opposition, moreover, had no influence, at least
no theoretical influence, even in North Africa. His disciple
Cyprian differed from him wholly. In his day it was no ques-
tion, whether the children of Christian parents might and should
be baptized — on this all were agreed, — ^but whether they might
be baptized so early as the second or third day after birth, or
according to the precedent of the Jewish circumcision, on the
eighth day. Cyprian, and a council of sixty-six bishops held at Car-
thage in 253 under his lead, decided for the earlier time, yet with-
out condemning the delay. ^ It was in a measure the same view
of the almost magical effect of the baptismal water, and of its
absolute necessity to salvation, which led Cyprian to hasten, and
Tertullian to postpone the holy ordinance ; one looking more at
the beneficent effect of the sacrament in regard to past sins, the
other at the danger of sins to come.
II. Heretical baptism was, in the third century, the subject of
a violent controversy, important also for its bearing on the ques-
tion of the authority of the Roman see.^
Cyprian, whose Epistles afford the clearest information on this
subject, followed Tertullian in rejecting baptism by heretics as
an inoperative mock-ba])tisin, and demanded that all heretics
coming over to the Catholic church be baptized (he would not
say re-baptized). His position here was due to his high church
exclusivism and his horror of schism. As the one Catholic
church is the sole repository of all grace, there can be no forgive-
' A later council of Carthage of the year 418 went further and decreed: Item
placuit, ut quicunque parvulos recentes ab uteris niatruni baptizandoa uegat . . . ana-
thema sit.
2 Corap § 109.
§ 10-i. HERETICAL EAPTIS:vr. 405
ness of sins, no regeneration or communication of tlie Spirit, no
salvation, therefore no valid sacraments, out of her bosom. So
far he had logical consistency on his side. But, on the other
hand, he departed from the objective view of the church, as the
Donatists afterwards did, in making the efficacy of the sacrament
depend on the subjective holiness of the priest. "How can one
consecrate water," he asks, " who is himself unholy, and has not
the Holy Ghost?" He was followed by the North African
church, which, in several councils at Carthage in the years 255-6,
rejected heretical baptism; and by the church of Asia Minor,
which had already acted on this view, and now, in the person of
the Cappadocian bishop Firmilian, a disciple and venerator of
the great Origen, vigorously defended it against the intolerance
of Rome.
The Roman bishop Stephen (253-257) appeared for the oppo-
site doctrine, on the ground of the ancient practice of his church.
He offered no argument, but spoke with the consciousness of
authority, and followed a catholic instinct. He laid chief stress
on the objective nature of the sacrament, the virtue Cf which
depended neither on the officiating priest, nor on the receiver,
but solely on the institution of Christ. Hence he considered
heretical baptism valid, provided only it had been administered
in the right form, to wit, in the name of the Trinity, or even of
Christ alone ; so that heretics coming into the church needed only
confirmation, or the ratification of baptism by the Holy Ghost.
" Heresy," says he, " produces children and exposes them ; and
the church takes up the exposed children, and nourishes them
as her own, though she herself has not brought them forth."
The doctrine of Cyprian was the more consistent from the
churchly point of view ; that of Stephen, from the sacramental.
The one preserved the principle of the exclusiveness of the
church; the other, that of the objective force of the sacrament,
even to the borders of the opus operatum theory. Both were
under the direction of the same hierarchial spirit, and the same
hatred of heretics ; but the Roman doctrine is after all a happy
inconsistency of liberality, an inroad upon the principle of abso-
406 SECOND PERIOD. AJ). 100-311.
lute exclusiveness, an involuntary concession, that baptism, and
with it the remission of sins and regeneration, therefore salvation,
are possible outside of Roman Catholicism.^
The controversy itself was conducted with great warmth.
Stej)hen, though advocating the liberal view, showed the genuine
l)apal arrogance and intolerance. He would not even admit to his
presence the dej)uties of Cyprian, who brought him the decree of
the African synod, and called this bishop, who in every respect
far excelled Stephen, and whom the Roman church now venerates
as one of her greatest saints, a "pseudochristum, ^Dscudoapostolum,
et dolosum operarium."^ He broke off all intercourse with the
African church, as he had already with the Asiatic. But Cyprian
and Firmilian, nothing daunted, vindicated with great boldness,
the latter also with bitter vehemence, their different view, and
continued in it to their death. The Alexandrian bishop Diony-
sius endeavored to reconcile the two parties, but with little success.
The Valerian persecution, which soon ensued, and the martj-rdom
of Stephen (257) and of Cyprian (258), suppressed this internal dis-
cord. In the course of the fourth century, however, the Roman
j)ractice gradually gained on the other, was raised to a doctrine
of the church by the council of Nice in 325, and was afterwards
confirmed by the council of Trent with an anathema on the
opposite view.
' Unless it bo maintained that the baptismal grace, if received outside of the
Catholic communion, becomes available only by the subjective conversion and regular
confirmation of the heretic.
" Firmil. ad Cyp., towards the end.
CHAPTER VII.
ORGANIZATION AND DISCIPLINE OF THE CHURCH.
I. The chief sources for this chapter are the Epistles of Ignatius, the works
of Cyprian, and the so-called Constitutiones Apostolicae.
II. Comp. the relevant sections in the archaeological works of Bingham,
AuGUSTi, SiEGEL, Rheinwald, Binterim (R. C), Coleman, &c. Also, P.
King : Constit. of the Primitive Church. Lond. 1719 (N. York, 1841).
A. MoHLER (R. C.) : Die Einheit der Kirche oder das Princip des Katho-
licismus, dargestellt im Geiste der Kirchenvater der 3 ersten Jahrh.
Tiib. 1825. (2nd ed. 1843.) R. Rothe: Die Anfange der christlichen
Kirche u. ihrer Verfassung. Wittenb. 1837 (I. 311-711). W. Palmer:
Treatise on the Church of Christ. Oxf, 1838. 2 vols, (also 1842, and
reprinted in N. York). J. W. Bickell: Gesch. des Kirchenrechts, I.
Frankf. 1849. F. C. Baur: Das Christenthum u. die Kirche der 3
ersten Jahrh. Tiib. 1853, p. 239-279. J. A. Ritschl: Die Entste-
hung der altkathol. Kirche. Bonn, 2nd edit. 1857. p. 555-583. John
Kaye : Some Account of the External Discipline and Government of
the Church of Christ during the first three Cent. Lond. 1855.
§ 105. Clergy and Laiiy.
In tlie external organization of the churcli, several important
changes appear in the period before us. The distinction of
clergy and laity becomes prominent and fixed ; subordinate
church offices are multiplied ; the episcopate arises ; the begin-
nings of the Roman primacy appear ; and the exclusive unity of
the Catholic church developes itself in opposition to heretics and
schismatics. The apostolical organization of the first century
now gives place to the old catholic episcopal system, which, in
its turn, passes into the metropolitan, and after the fourth cen-
tury into the patriarchal. With this the Greek church stops,
408 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
wliile the Latin goes yet a step further, and produces in the
middle ages the absolute papacy. The germs of this papacy
likewise betray themselves even in our present period, particu-
larly in Cyprian.
The characteristics, however, of the pre-Constantinian hier-
archy, in distinction from the post-Constantinian, both Greek
and llornan, are, first, its grand simplicity, and secondly, its
spirituality, or freedom from all connexion with the political
power and worldly splendor. Tertullian even held it impossible
for an emperor to be a Christian, or a Christian to be an
emperor ; and even after Constantine, the Donatists persisted in
this view, and cast up to the Catholics the memory of the former
age: "Quid Christianis cum rcgibus? aut quid episcopis cum
palatio?"
The idea and institution of a special priesthood, distinct from
the body of the people, with the accompanying notion of sacri-
fice and altar, passed imperceptibly from the synagogue, through
the medium of Jewish Christianity, into the church, to fulfil
there the mission of a schoolmaster in training the Christian
people to the general priesthood. Neander and other historians
see in it an apostasy from the gospel, and a relapse into Juda-
ism, though they can fix no time for the revolution, nor more
definitely establish the fact. The New Testament unquestion-
ably teaches the universal priesthood, as it does the universal
kingship, of believers,^ and that in a far deeper and larger sense
than the Old f in a sense, too, which even to this day is not yet
fully realized. It calls the entire body of Christians xX^^oi, a
peculiar pcc)ple, the heritage of God.^ But it presents also a
preaching oflice, instituted by Christ, for the very purpose of
raising the mass of believers from infancy and pupilage to inde-
pendent and immediate intercourse with God, to that prophetic,
priestly, and kingly position, which in principle and destination
belongs to them all.* This work is the gradual process of church
> 1 Pet. ii. .5, 9. Rev. i. 6; v. 10; xx. 6. * Exod. ix. 6.
3 1 Pet. V. 3. Comp Dcut. iv. 20; ix. 29, LXX. * Conip. Epli. iv. 11-13.
§ 105. CLERGY AND LAITY. 409
History itself, and will not be accomplished till the kingdom of
glory shall come.^
After the gradual abatement of the extraordinary spiritual ele-
vation of the apostolic age, which anticipated in its way the ideal
condition of the church, the distinction of a regular class of
teachers from the laity became more fixed and prominent. This
appears first in Ignatius, who, in his high episcopalian spirit, con-
siders the clergy the necessary medium of access for the people to
God. " Whoever is within the sanctuary, is pure ; but he who
does anything without bishop and presbytery and deacon, is not
pure in conscience."^ Even Clement of Rome, in other respects
very near the evangelical position of Paul, draws a parallel
between the Christian presiding office and the Levitical priest-
hood,^ and uses the exjjression Xaixoj av^puifog as antithetic to high
priests, priests, and Levites. In the third century it became cus-
tomary to apply the term priest directly and exclusively to the
Christian ministers, especially the bishops,^ and to call the whole
ministry, and it alone, Clerus,^ with a double reference to its pre-
sidency and its peculiar relation to God ; it was distinguished by
this name from the Christian people or laity .^ Solemn consecra-
tion by the laying on of hands^ was the form of admission into
the ordo ecclesiasticus or sacerdotalis. In this order itself there
were again three degrees, ordines majores, as they were called :
the diaconate, the presby terate, and the episcopate — held to be of
divine institution. Under these were the later ordines minores,
from sub-deacon to ostiary, which formed the stepping-stone
between the proper clergy and the people.* Thus we find, so
1 Rev. xs. 6. 2 Ad Trail, c. 7. 3 1 Cor. 40-44.
* Sacerdos, also summus sacerdos (Tertullian De bapt. 1), and once pontifex maxi-
mus (De pudic. 1, with ironical reference, it seems, to the Roman bishop), ordo
sacerdotalis (De exhort, cast. 7); upevi and sometimes dp^upci; (Apost. Const.
IL 34, 35, 36, 57 ; III. 9, vi. 15, 18, &c.). Hippol)'tus calls his office an dpxiepaTc'ia
and S'SaaKa\ia (Ref. haer. I. prooem.). Cyprian generally applies the term sacer-
dos to the bishop, and calls his colleagues consacerdotales.
5 KXnpoi, Tiifif, ordo, ordo sacerdotalis (Tertull. De exhort, cast. 7), ordo eccle-
siasticus or ecclesiae (De Monog 11 ; De idolol. 7); KXtjpiKoi, clerici.
6 Aaos, XaiVoi, plebs. ''■ Ordinatio.
8 Occasionally, however, we find a somewhat wider terminology. Tertulliau
410 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
early as the third century, the foundations of a complete hierar-
chy ; though a hierarchy of only moral power, and holding no
sort of outward control over the conscience. The body of the
laity consisted of two classes : the faithful, or the baptized and
comnmnicating members, and the catechumens, who were being
pre2)arcd for baptism Those church members who lived toge-
ther in one place,^ formed a church in the narrower sense.^
With the exaltation of the clergy appeared the tendency to
separate them from secular business, and even from social rela-
tions— from marriage, for example, and to represent them, even
outwiirdly, as a caste independent of the people, and devoted
exclusively to the service of the sanctuary. They drew their
support from the church treasury, which was supplied by volun-
tary contributions and weekly collections on Sunday. After
the third century they were forbidden to engage in any secular
business, or even to accept any trusteeship. Celibacy was not
yet in this period enforced, but left optional. Tertullian, Gre-
gory of Nyssa, and other distinguished church teachers, lived in
wedlock, though theoretically preferring the unmarried state.
Of an official clerical costume no certain trace appears before the
fourth century ; and if it came earlier into use, as may have
been the case, after the example of the Jewish church, it must
have been confined, during the times of jDcrsecution, to the actual
exercises of worship.
With the growth of this distinction of clergy and laity, how-
ever, the idea of the universal priesthood continued to assert
itself: in Irenaeus,' for example, and in a morbid form in the
Montanists, who even allowed women to teach publicly in the
church. So Tertullian, with whom clems and laid were at
one time familiar expressions, inquires, as the champion of the
Montanistic reaction against the Catholic hierarchy : Nonne et
laici sacerdotes sumus? It is written, he continues: lie hath
mentions, Demonog. c. 12, tlie ordo viduamm among the ordincs ecclesiastic!, and
even the much later Jerome (see In Jcsaiam 1. v. c. 19, 18), enumerates quinque
ecclcsiae ordines, episcopos, presbyteros, diaconos, fideles, catecliumcnos.
1 TlapoiKoi, napcriSniioi, Kpli. ii. 19. 1 Pet. ii. 11. 2 or parish, mpouta.
8 Adv. haer. iv. 8, § 3.
§ 105, CLERGY AXD LAITY. 411
made us kings and priests. Eegard to the churcli alone has
made the distinction between clergy and laity. Where there is
no college of ministers, thou administerest the sacrament, thou
baj^tizest, thou art a priest for thyself alone. And where there
are three of you, though you be only laymen," there is a church.
For each one lives by his faith, and there is no respect of per-
sons with God.2 All, therefore, which the clergy considered
peculiar to them, he claimed for the laity as the common sacer-
dotal privilege of all Christians.
Even in the catholic church an acknowledgment of the general
priesthood showed itself in the custom of requiring the baptized
to say the Lord's prayer before the assembled congregation.
With reference to this, Jerome says: Sacerdotium laici, id est
baptisma. The congregation also, at least in the West, retained
for a long time the right of approval and rejection in the choice
of its ministers, even of the bishop. Clement of Eome ex-
pressly requires the assent of the whole congregation for a valid
election;^ and Cyprian terms this an apostolic and almost uni-
versal regulation.^ According to his testimony it obtained also
in Rome, and was observed in the case of his contemporary,
Cornelius.^ Sometimes in the filling of a vacant bishopric the
"suifragium" of the people preceded the "judicium" of the
clergy of the diocese. Cyprian, and afterwards Athanasius,
Ambrose, and other eminent prelates, were in a manner pressed
into the bishopric in this democratic way. Cyprian, with all his
high-church proclivities, declares it his principle to do nothing
as bishop without the advice of the presbyters and deacons, and
the consent of the people.^ A peculiar influence, which even
the clergy could not withstand, attached to the confessors, and it
was sometimes abused by them, as in their advocacy of the
^ Licet laicL
2 De exhort, cast. c. 7. Comp. also De monog. 7, 12 ; De Bapt. 17 ; De orat. 18.
3 1 Cor. 44: EwcvSoKdarii Trjs eKK^naiui ^racrj;. * Ep. Ix. 3-4 (sd. G-oldhom).
5 Ep. Iv. 7 : Factus est Cornelius episcopus de Dei et Christi ejus judicio, de
clericorura paene omnium testimonio, de plebis quae turn adfuit, suffragio, et de sacer-
dotum antiquorum et bonorum virorum coUegio.
* Sine consensu plebis.
412 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
lapsed, who denied Christ in the Decian persecution. Finally,
we notice cases where the function of teaching was actually
exercised by laymen. The bishops of Jerusalem and Caesarea
allowed the learned Origen to expound the Bible to their con-
gregations before his ordination, and appealed to the example of
several bishops in the East. Even in the Apostolical Constitu-
tions there occurs, under the name of the apostle Paul, the direc-
tion: "Though a man be a layman, if experienced in the
delivery of instruction, and morally worthy, he may teach ; for
they shall be all taught of God." The fourth general council at
Carthage (398) prohibited laymen from teaching in the presence
of clergymen and without their consent, implying at the same time,
that with such permission the thing might be done. It is worthy
of notice that a number of the most eminent church teachers of
this period, Hermas, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, were
either laymen, or at most only presbyters.
§ 106. New Church Officers.
The expansion of the church, the development of her cultus,
and the tendency towards hierarchical pomp, led to the multipli-
cation of offices below the diaconate, which formed the ordines
minores. About the middle of the third century the following
new officers are mentioned : —
1. Sub-deacons, or under-helpers ;^ assistants and deputies of
the deacons ; the only one of these subordinate offices for which
a formal ordination was required. Opinions diffijr as to its value.
2/ Readers,^ who read the Scriptures in the assembly and had
charge of the church books.
3. Acolyths,^ attendants of the bishops in their official duties
and processions.
' 'Y7ro(5idifoi/oi, subdiaconi, perhaps the same as the ivripiTat of the New Testa-
ment and the earlier fathers.
" 'Ai-ayvMorai, lectores, mentioned by TertulUan.
^ 'A-coXv^ii, acolythi.
§ 107. ORIGIN OF THE EPISCOPATE. 413
4. Exorcists/ who, by prayer and the laying on of hands, cast
out the devil from the possessed,^ and from catechumens, and
frequently assisted in baptism. This power had been formerly
considered a free gift of the Holy Ghost.
5. Precentors,^ for the musical parts of the liturgy, psalms,
benedictions, responses, etc.
6. Janitors or sextons,^ who took care of the religious meeting-
rooms, and at a later period also of the church-yards.
7. Besides these there were in the larger churches catechists,
and, where the church language in the worship was not under-
stood, as in Alexandria, interpreters; but the interpreting was
commonly done by presbyters, deacons, or readers.
The bishop Cornelius of Rome (f 252), in a letter on the Nova-
tian schism,^ gives the number of ofl&cers in his church as
follows: Forty-six presbyters, probably corresponding to the
number of the meeting-houses of the Christians in the city;
seven deacons, after the model of the church at Jerusalem,
Acts vi. ; seven subdeacons ; forty-two acolyths, and fifty-two
exorcists, readers, and janitors.
As to the ordines majores, the deacons during this period rose
in importance. In addition to their original duties of caring for
the poor and sick, they baptized, distributed the sacramental
cup, said the church prayers, not seldom preached, and were
confidential advisers, sometimes even delegates and vicars of
the bishops. This last is true especially of the archdeacon, who
does not appear, however, till the fourth century. The presby-
ters, on the contrary, though above the deacons, were now over-
topped by the new ofl&ce of bishop, in which the entire govern-
ment of the church became centred.
§ 107. Origin of the Episcopate.
Besides the works already cited, compare the special works and essays pub-
lished since 1837, by Rothe (close of his "Anfange"), Hefele (R. C),
1 'E^op/ciffraf, exorcistae. 2 ^ainovi^6)icvoi, ivepynvjitvoi.
^ ^FfflXrai, psalmistae, cantorea. * Qvpwpoi, irvXwpoi, ostiarii, janitores.
s la Euseb. vi. 43.
414 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-811.
Baur, Htlgenfeld, Bunsek, Peter.mann, Ccreton, Lipsics, Uhlhork,
etc., on the Ignatian controversy. (Conip. § 119.)
The most important and also tlie most difficult plienomenon
of our period in the department of church organization is the rise
and development of the episcopate. This institution comes to
view in the second century as the supreme spiritual office, and is
retained to this day by all Eoman and Greek Christendom, and
even by a large part of the Protestant church. A form of
government so ancient and so widely adopted, can be satisfac-
torily accounted for only on the supposition of a religious need,
namely, the need of a tangible outward representation, and cen-
tralization, to illustrate and embody to the people their relation
to Christ and to God, and the unity of the church. It is there-
fore inseparable from the catholic principle of authority and
mediation, while the protestant principle of freedom and direct
intercourse of the individual with Christ, consistently carried
out, infringes the strict episcopal constitution, and tends to minis-
terial equality.
During the lifetime of the apostles, those eye and ear-wit-
nesses of the divine-human life of Jesus, and the inspired organs
of the Holy Ghost, there was no room for proper bishops ; and
those who were so called, must have held only a subordinate
place. The church, too, in the first century was as yet a strictly
supernatural organization, a stranger in this world, standing with
one foot in eternity, and longing for the second coming of her
heavenly bridegroom. But in the episcopal constitution the
church provided an extremely simple but compact and freely
expansible organization, planted foot firmly upon earth, became
an institution for the education of her infant people, and, as
chiliaatic hopes receded, fell into the path of quiet historical
development ; yet unquestionably she thus incurred also the
danger of a secularization, which reached its height just when
the hierarchy became complete in the Roman church, and which
finally necessitated a reformation on the basis of apostolical
Christianity. That this secularization began with the growing
power of the bishops even before Constantino and the Byzan-
§ 107. ORIGIN" OF THE EPISCOPATE. 415
tine court ortliodoxj, we perceive, for instance, in the lax peni-
tential discipline, the avarice, and the corruption with which
Hippolytus, in the ninth book of his Philosophoumena, re-
proaches Zephyrinus and Callistus, the Roman bishops of his
time (202-223); also in the example of the bishop Paul of
Antioch, who was deposed in 269 on almost incredible charges,
not only against his doctrine, but still more against his moral
character;^ and finally from the testimony of Origen,^ who com-
plains, that there are, especially in the larger cities, overseers of
the people of God, who seek to outdo the pomp of heathen poten-
tates, would surround themselves, like the emperors, with a body-
guard, and make themselves terrible and inaccessible to the poor.
We consider, first, the origin of the episcopate. The unreliable
character of our documents and traditions from this transition
period between the close of the apostolic church and the begin-
ning of the post-apostolic, leaves large room here for critical
research and combination. First of all comes the question : Was
the episcopate directly or indirectly of apostolic (Johannean) ori-
gin, as the Catholics and the Anglicans, and in a modified sense
also some of the recent Protestant divines of Grermany, maintain ?
Or did it arise, as the Presbyterians and most Protestant histo-
rians assert, not till after the death of the apostles, and develope
itself from the presidency of the congregational presbytery ?
For the former view the following points may be made:
(1) The position of James, who evidently stood at the head of
the church of Jerusalem,^ and is called bishop, at least in the
pseudo-Clementine literature, and in fact supreme bishop of the
whole church.* This instance, however, stands quite alone, and
does not warrant an inference in regard to the entire church.
(2) The office of the assistants of the apostles, like Timothy,
Titus, Silas, Epaphroditus, Luke, Mark, who had a sort of super-
vision of several churches and congregational officers, and in a
measure represented the apostles. But, in any case, these were
not limited, at least during the life of the apostles, each to a par-
1 Comp. § 82, and Euseb. vii. 27-30. ' In Matt. £ 420, ed. Huet.
* Acts XV. 13 ; XxL 18. * 'KviaKoVo; CTiOKOiTCJV.
416 SECOXD PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
ticular diocese ; they were itinerant evangelists and legates of
tlie a^DOstles; only the doubtful tradition of a later da}- assigns
them distinct bishoprics. (3) The angels of the seven churches
of Asia/ who, if regarded as individuals, look very like the later
bishops, and indicate a monarchical shaping of the church gov^ern-
ment in the days of John. But, apart from the various interpre-
tations of the Apocalyptic ayysKoi^ that office appears not
co-ordinate with the apostolate of John, but subordinate to it.
(4) The testimony of Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of John,
in his seven (or three) epistles from the beginning of the second
century (even according to the shorter Syriac version), presup-
poses the episcopate, in distinction from the presbyterate, as
already existing, though as a new institution, yet in its growth.
(5) The statement of Clement of Alexandria,^ that John insti-
tuted bishops after his return from Patmos ; and the accounts of
Irenaeus,^ TertuUian,^ Eusebius,^ and Jerome,^ that the same
apostle nominated and ordained Polycarp (with whom Irenaeus
was personally acquainted) bishop of Smyrna. (6) The uncertain
tradition in Eusebius,' who derived it probably from Hegesippus,
that the surviving apostles and disciples of the apostles, soon
after the destruction of Jerusalem, elected Symeon, the son of
Klopas and a cousin of Jesus, bishop of that city and successor
of James. But this arrangement at best was merely local, and
not general. (7) The tradition of the churches of Antioch and
Rome, which trace their line of bishops back to apostolic institu-
tion. (8) A passage in the second of the Pfaff Fragments of Ire-
naeus, wliich speaks of 5s>£pai twv c/.'ttoo't&Xwv ^mTk^ng ; by which
Rothe understands the institution of the episcopate. But these
words are at all events of unsettled interpretation, and, according to
the connexion, relate not to the government of the church at all, but
to the celebration of the eucharist. (9) Equally uncertain is the
conclusion drawn from a passage in the First Epistle of Clement
of Rome to the Corinthians,^ where it is said, that the apostles,
* Rev. i. 20. 2 Quis dives salvus, c 42. * Adv. hacr. III. 3.
De praeacr. haer. a 32. s H. E. III. 36. « Catal sub. Polyc.
1 H. E. III. 11, comp. the fragment of Hegesippus, IV. 22. » C. 44.
§ 107. ORIGIX OF THE EPISCOPATE. 417
foreseeing the future controversy about the name of the episcopal
(ministerial) office/ appointed bishops (i. e. presbyters and dea-
cons,^) BJudiCifteriuards gave order,^ that when they should die, other
approved men should follow ihem in office.'* Kothe refers " they"
and " them " to the apostles as the main subject. But these words
are usually understood of the congregational officers just before
mentioned, and in this case the "other approved men" are not
diocesan bishops, but presbyter-bishops and deacons. This view is
sustained by the connexion. The difficulty in the Corinthian con-
gregation was a rebellion, not against a single bishop, but a num-
ber of presbyter-bishops, and Clement reminds them that the
apostles instituted this office not only for the first generation,
but provided for a permanent succession, and that the officers
were appointed for life, and could therefore not be deposed, sO'
long as they discharged their duties. Hence he goes on to say,.
immediately after the disputed passage in chapter 44, " AYhere-
fore we think that those cannot justly be thrown out of their-
ministry, who were appointed either by them (the apostles), or-
afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole
congregation ; and who have with all lowliness and innocency
ministered to the flock of Christ, in peace, and without self-
interest, and were for a long time commended by all." (10)
Finally, the philosophical consideration, that the universal and
uncontested spread of the episcopate in the second century can-
not be satisfactorily explained without the presumption of at
least the indirect sanction of the apostles.
1 'En-i Tiiii dmjtiiTnq riif UtcKOTrrn, wliich Signifies here the ministerial of3fice in general.
Comp. Acts i. 20, and the Septuagint in Ps. cix. 8 ; Num. iv. 16 ; 2 Chron. xxiii. I'Sj
2 Comp. c. 42.
"Ettih)/''); an obscure word, which Rothe ingeniously translates, "testamentary-
direction," and identifies with the i^f.vTcpat iiani^cts of Irenaeus. The drift of the pas-
sage, however, does not so much depend upon the meaning of this word as upon the
question whetlier the apostles or the congregational officers are the grammatical sub-
jects of the following verb, Koifiri^oatv,
* The whole passage in c. 44 reads thus: Oi dTrnTroXot hiaov tyvwaav ita mv Kvpiuv
flfioiv Iris. Xoiaroii, on cpis iarai firi Tov dvofiaroi Tn; £mo-ico7r/)f. Ata ravrnf ovi> riji/ ahiav
npoyvoxriv eiXriipdre; reXeiav KariaTqaav tov; npociprifiivovi (i.e. presbyter-bishopS and
deacons), kuI jie-a^v imvujttiv 6c6ojKacip^ 0Kii)i, ian Koijiq^MUti'^ SiaSi^b^vTai ercpoi id'iKinaa^i-
vol afSpe; ri)y ^rtrovpytaf avToiv.
27
418 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
In favor of the second view, wliicli denies tlie apostolic origin
of the episcopate as a separate office or order, and derives it by
way of human, though natural and necessary development from
the presidency of the original congregational presbyterate, are
the following facts : — (1) The undeniable identity of presbyters
and bishops in the New Testament,^ conceded even by the best
interpreters among the church fathers, by Jerome, Chrysostom,
and Theodoret. (2) Later in the second century the two terms
are still used in like manner for the same office. The Roman
bishop Clement, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians,^ says,
that the apostles, in the newly-founded churches, appointed the
first fruits of the faith, i. e. the first converts, f-TritfxoVoug xa/ (Jiaxovoi;^.
He here omits the ■7r^5o'/3i;Vs^oi, as Paul does in Phil. i. 1, for
the simple reason that they are in his view identical with
iirkxoiroi ; while, conversely, in c. 57 he enjoins subjection to
presbyters, without mentioning bishops.^ Clement of Alexan-
dria distinguishes, it is true, the deaconate, the presbyterate, and
the episcopate ; but he supposes only a two-fold official charac-
ter, that of presbyters, and that of deacons; — a view which
found advocates so late as the middle ages, even in pope Urban
II., A.D. 1091. Lastly, Irenaeus, towards the close of the
second century, though himself a bishop, makes only a relative
diffi^rence between episcopi and presbytcri ; speaks of successions
of the one in the same sense as of the other ; terms the office of
the latter episcopatus; and calls the bishops of Rome ir^stf/SoTs^oi.*
Sometimes, it is true, he appears to use the term -r^stf.Si^Te^oj in a
more general sense, for the old men, the fathers." But in any
case his language shows that the distinction between the two
offices was at that time still relative and indefinite. (3) The
' Acts XX. 17-28. Phil. i. 1. Tit. i. 5. 1 Tim. iii. 1-7, 8-13. 1 Pet. v. 1, 2.
Comp. the author's Hist, of the Apo.st. Ch. §§ 132, 133, p. 522-531 (N. Y. ed.).
2 C. 42.
3 The fiyfiiitvnt, c. 1, also, and the jrporjynvficvoi, c. 21, are not bishops of the later
sort, as might bo inferred even from tlie plural number, but the congregational offi-
cers collectively, as in Ileb. xiii. 7 ; xvii. 24.
* Adv. haor. iii. 2, § 2 ; 3, § 2. iv. 26, § 2, § 4 and § 5. Comp. also, the letter
of Irenaeus to the Roman bi.sliop Victor in Kuseb., v. 24.
s Comp. 2 Jno. i. and 3 Jno. i.
§ 107. ORIGIN OF THE EPISCOPATE. 419
express testimony of the learned Jerome,' that the churches
originally, before divisions arose through the instigation of
Satan, were governed by the common council of the presbyters,
and not till a later period was one of the presbyters placed at
the head, to watch over the church and suppress schisms. He
traces the difference of the ofiice simply to ecclesiastical custom
as distinct from divine institution.^ (4) The custom of the
church of Alexandria, where, from the evangelist Mark down
to the middle of the third century, the twelve presbyters elected
one of their number president, and called him bishop. This
fact rests on the authority of Jerome,^ and is confirmed inde-
pendently by the Annals of the Alexandrian patriarch, Euty-
chius, of the tenth century.'* The latter states that Mark insti-
tuted in that city a patriarch (this is an anachronism) and twelve
presbyters, who should fill the vacant patriarchate by electing
and ordaining to that office one of their number and then elect-
ing a new presbyter, so as always to retain the number twelve.
He relates, moreover, that down to the time of Demetrius, at the
end of the second century, there was no bishop in Egypt besides
the one at Alexandria ; consequently there could have been no
episcopal ordination except by going out of the province.
The only satisfactory conclusion from these various facts and
traditions seems to be, that the episcopate proceeded, both in the
descending and ascending scale, from the apostolate and the
original presbyterate conjointly, as a contraction of the former
and an expansion of the latter, without either express concert or
general regulation of the apostles, neither of which, at least, can
' Ad Titum i. 7. Comp. Epist. 83 and 85.
2 Ad Tit. i. 7 : Sicut ergo presbyter! sciunt, se ex eeclesiae consuetudine ei, qui
sibi praepositus fuerit, esse subjectos, ita episcopi noverint, se magis consuetudine
quam dispositionis Dominicae veritate presbyteris esse majores et in commune debere
ecclesiam regere. Tlie Roman deacon Hilary (Ambrosiaster) says, ad 1 Tim. iii. 10:
Hie enim episcopus est, qui inter presbytcros primus est. Comp. also Chrysostora
Hom. xi. in epist. 1 ad Tim. iii 8.
3 Epist. ad Evangelum (0pp. iv. p 802, ed. Martinay) : Alexandriae a Marco
evangelista usque ad Heraclara et Bionysium episcopos presbyteri semper unum ex
se eleetum in excelsiori giadu collocatum episcopum nominabant, quomodo si exer-
citus imperatorem facial, aut diaconi elegant de se, quern industrium noverint et
archidiaconum vocent. ^ Ed. Oxon. 1658, p. 331.
420 SECOND PEIilOD. A.D. 100-311.
be historically proved. It arose instinctively, as it were, in that
transition period between the first and second centuries, probably
before the death of John. It grew, in part, out of the universal
demand for a continuation of, or substitute for, the apostolic
church government, and this, so far as it was transmissible at all,
very naturally passed first to the most eminent disciples and
fellow-laborers of the apostles, to Mark, Luke, Timothy, Clement,
Ignatius, Polycarp, which accounts for the foct that tradition
makes them all bishops in the prominent sense of the term. It was
further occasioned by the need of a unity in the presbyterial
government of congregations, which, in the nature of the case and
according to the analogy of the Jewish d^-x^Kfwu.'yuyog,'^ required a
head or president. This president was called bishop, at first only by
eminence, as primus inter pares ; afterwards in the exclusive sense.
In the smaller churches there was, perhaps, from the beginning,
only one presbyter, w4io of himself formed this centre, like the
chorepiscopi or country -bishops^ in the fourth century. The
dioceses of the bishops in Asia Minor and North Africa, owdng
to their large number, in the second and third century, can
hardly have exceeded the extent of respectable pastoral charges.
James of Jerusalem, on the other hand, and his immediate suc-
cessors, whose positions in many respects were altogether jjeculiar,
seem to have been the only bishops in Palestine. Somewhat
similar was the state of things in Egypt, where, down to Deme-
trius (a.d. 190-232), we find only the one bishop of Alexandria.
We cannot therefore assume any strict uniformity. But the
whole church spirit of the age tended towards centralization ; it
every whoi'e felt a demand for compact, solid unity ; and this
inward bent, amidst the surrounding dangers of persecution and
heresy, carried the church irresistibly towards the episcopate.
In so critical and stormy a time, the principle, union is strength,
division is weakness, prevailed over all. In fact, the existence
of tlu! church at that jx'rifxl may be said to have depended in a
gi'cat measure on tlie preservation and jiromotion of unity, and
' Wk. V. 35, 36, 38. Lu. viii. 41, 49. Acta xviii. 8, 17.
§ 108. DEVELOPMENT OF THE EPISCOPATE. 421
tliat in an outward, tangible form, suited to the existing grade
of culture. Sucli a unity was offered in the bishop, who held a
monarchical, or more properly a ]3atriarchal relation to the
congregation. In the bishop was found the visible representa-
tive of Christ, the great Head of the whole church. In the
bishop, therefore, all sentiments of piety found a centre. In the
bishop the whole religious posture of the people towards God
and towards Christ had its outward support and guide. And in
proportion as every church pressed towards a single centre, this
central personage must acquire a peculiar importance and subor-
dinate the other presbyters to itself; though, at the same time,
as the language of Clement and Irenaeus, the state of things in
Egvpt, and even in North Africa, and the testimony of Jerome
and other fathers, clearly prove, the remembrance of the original
equality could not be entirely blotted out, but continued to show
itself in various ways.
Whatever may be thought, therefore, of the origin and the
divine right of the episcopate, its historical necessity, and its
adaptation to the wants of the church at the time, no unpreju-
diced historian can deny.
But, then, this primitive catholic episcopal system must by no
means be confounded with the later hierarchy. The dioceses,
especially, excepting those of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch,
and Eome, must have long remained very small, if we look at the
number of professing Christians. In the Apocalypse seven such
centres of unity are mentioned within a compai'atively small com-
pass in Asia Minor ; and in 258 Cyprian assembled a council of
eighty-seven bishops of North Africa. The functions of the bishops
were not yet strictly separated from those of the presbyters, and it
was only by degrees that ordination, and, in the "Western church,
confirmation also, came to be intrusted exclusively to them.
§ 108. Development of the Episcopate.
It is matter of fact that the episcopal form of government was
universally established in the eastern and western church as
early as the middle of the second century. Even the heretical
422 SECOND PEEIOD. A.D. 100-311.
sects, at least the Ebiouites, as we must infer from the commen-
dation of the episcopacy in the pseudo-Clementine literature,
were organized on this plan, as well as the later schismatic par-
ties of Novatians, Donatists, etc. But it is equally undeniable,
that the episcopate reached its complete form only step by step.
In the period before us we must note three stages in this
development connected with the names of Ignatius in Syria
(t 107 or 116), Irenaeus in Gaul (f 202), and Cyprian in North
Africa (f 258).
The episcopate first appears, as distinct from the presbyterate,
though as yet a young institution, greatly needing commenda-
tion, in the famous seven (or three) Epistles of Ignatius of Anti-
och, a disciple of the apostles. We have three different versions
of these Epistles, but only one of them can be genuine ; either
the smaller Greek version, or the lately discovered Syriac.^ In
the latter, which contains only three epistles, most of the pas-
sages on the episcopate are wanting, indeed ; yet the leading fea-
tures of the institution appear even here, and we can recognise
ex ungue leonem. Nor is it, by-the-way, much to the credit of
the hierarchical system, that its very oldest documents are of
such equivocal sort, and subject to the suspicion of fraudulent
interpolation. The substance of these epistles (with the excep-
tion of that to the Eomans, in which, singularly enough, not a
word is said about bishops) consists of earnest exhortations to
obey the bishop and maintain the unity of the church against
the Judaistic and docetic heretics. With the near prospect and
the most ardent desire of martyrdom, the author has no more
fervent wish than the perfect inward and outward unity of the
faithful ; and to this the episcopate seems to him indispensable.
In his view Christ is the invisible supreme head, the one great
universal bishop of all the churches scattered over the earth.
The human bishop is the centre of unity for the single congre-
gation, and stands in it as the vicar of Christ and even of God.^
The people, therefore, should unconditionally obey him, and do
• Com p. § 119.
* 'En-iT(fOT95 di rrfn-jj- ^sov rpoAaS/'z/icios ; each bishop bcing thus a sort of pope.
§ 108. DEVELOPMENT OF THE EPISCOPATE. 423
notliing without liis will. Blessed are tliey wlio are one witk
the bishop, "as the church is with Christ, and Christ with the
Father, so that all harmonizes in unity. Apostasy from the
bishop is apostasy from Christ, who acts in and through the
bishops as his organs.
The peculiarity in this Ignatian view is that the bishop appears
in it as the head and centre of a single congregation, and not as
equally the representative of the whole church ; also, that (as in
the pseudo-Clementine Homilies) he is the vicar of Christ, and
not, as in the later view, merely the successor of the apostles, —
the presbyters and deacons around him being represented as
those successors ; and finally, that there are no distinctions of
order among the bishops, no trace of a primacy ; all are fully
coordinate organs of Christ, who provides for himself in them,
as it were, a sensible, perceptible omnipresence in the church.
In all these points the idea of the episcopate in Irenaeus, the
great opponent of Gnosticism, is either lower or higher. This
father represents the institution as an office of the whole church,
and as the continuation of the apostolate, as the vehicle of the
catholic tradition, and the support of doctrinal unity in opposi-
tion to heretical vagaries. He exalts the bishops of the original
apostolic churches, above all the church of Eome, and speaks
with great emphasis of an unbroken episcopal succession.^
The same view we find also in the earlier writings of Tertul-
lian f but he afterwards, in the chiliastic and democratic cause
of Montanism, broke with the episcopal hierarchy, and presented
against it the antithesis that the church does not consist of
bishops,^ and that the laity are also priests.
The old catholic high-church episcopalianism is most clearly
and vigorously represented by Cyprian, and as it were embodied
in him. He considers the bishops as the bearers of the Holy
Ghost, who passed from Christ to the apostles, from them by
ordination to the bishops, propagates himself in an unbroken
line of succession, and gives efficacy to all religious exercises.
• Comp. Adv. haer. iii. 3, § 1, 2 ; 4, I ; iv. 33, § 8. 2 De praescr. liaer. c. 32, 36.
' Xon ecclesia uumerus episcoporum. De pudic. c. 21.
424: SECOXD PERIOD. A.T). 100-311.
Hence they are also the pillars of the unity of the church ; nay,
in a certain sense they are the church itself. " The bishop,"
says he, "is in the church, and the church in the bishop, and if
any one is not with the bishop he is not in the church."^
And this is the same with him as to say, he is no Christian.
Cyprian is thoroughly imbued with the idea of the solidary
unity of the episcopate, — the many bishops exercising only one
office in solidum, each within his diocese, and each at the same
time representing in himself the whole office.^
But with all this, the bishop still appears in Cyprian in the
closest connexion with the presbyters. He undertook no im-
portant matter without their advice. The fourth general council,
at Cartilage, A.D. 398, even declared the sentence of a bishop,
without the concurrence of the lower clergy, void, and decreed
that in the ordination of a presbyter, all the presbyters, w^ith the
bishop, should lay their hands on the candidate.^ The ordina-
tion of a bishop was performed by the neighboring bishops,
requiring at least three in number. In Egypt, however, so long-
as there was but one bishop there, presbyters must have per-
formed the consecration, which Eutychius* and Hilary^ expressly
assert was the case.
Besides this catholic formation of the episcopate, the kindred
monarchical hierarchy of the Ebionistic sects deserves attention,
as it meets us in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies.® Chronologi-
1 Epist. Ixvi. 3. Comp. Ep. Iv. 20 : Christianus non est, qui in Cliristi ecclesia
non est.
2 De unit. cccl. c. 5 : Episcopatus unus est, cujus a sinfjulis in solidum pars tone-
tur. Comp. Ep. Iv. 20. Quum sit a Christo una ecclesia per totum mundum in
multa membra divisa, item episcopatus unus episcoporum multorum concordi
numerositatc diffus\is.
3 C. .T : Presbyter quum ordinatur, episcopo cum benedicente et manum super
caput ejus tenente, etiam omnes presbyteri, qui praesentes sunt, manus suas juxta
manum episcopi super caput illius teneant.
* Eutycliii Patriarchae Alexandr. Annal. interpr. Pocockio. Oxen. 1658, 1, p. 331 :
Coustituit evangelista Marcus una cum Hakania patriarcha duodecim presbyteros,
qui nenipe cum patriarcha nianerent, adeo ut cum vacaret patriarcliatus uiiuni
e duodecim presbyteris eli^rcrent, cuius capiti rciiqui undecim inanus imjtoiieiitcs ipsi
benedicerent et patriarcham crcareiit.
5 Or Aml,>rosiaster, Ad Kjih. iv. 11. * Comp. g (i9.
§ 109. THE METROPOLITAN AND PATRIARCHAL SYSTEMS. 425
cally this falls in tlie middle of the second century, between
Ignatius and Irenaeus, and forms a sort of transition from the
former to the latter ; though it cannot exactly be said to have
influenced the catholic church. It is rather a heretical counter-
part of the orthodox episcopate. The author of the pseudo-
Clementina, like Ignatius, represents the bishop as the vicar of
Christ,^ and at the same time, according to the view of Irenaeus,
as the vicar and successor of the apostles f but outstrips both in
his high hierarchical expressions, such as xaSs^^a, S^o'vo? ro\J liad-
xoVo'j, and in his idea of the primacy, or of a universal church
monarchy, which he finds, however, not as Irenaeus suggests
and Cyprian more distinctly states, in Peter and the Roman see,
but, agreeably to his Judaistic turn, in James of Jerusalem, the
§ 109. Beginnings of the Metropolitan and Patriarchal Systems.
Though the bishops were equal in their dignity and powers as
successors of the apostles, they gradually fell into different ranks,
according to the ecclesiastical and political importance of their
several districts. On the lowest level stood the bishops of the
country churches, the chorepiscopi,^ who though not mentioned
till the fourth century, probably originated at an earlier period.
Among the city bishops again, the metropolitans rose above the
rest; that is, the bishops of the capital cities^ of provinces.
They presided in the provincial synods, and, as primi inter pares,
ordained the bishops of the province. The metropolitan system
appears, from the Council of Nice in 325, to have been already
in operation, and was afterwards more fully carried out in the
East. In North Africa the oldest bishop, hence called senex,
stood as primas, at the head of his province ; but the bishop of
Carthage enjoyed the highest consideration, and could summon
general councils.
Still older and more important is the distinction of apos-
1 Horn. iii. 60, 66, 70. Ep. Clem, ad Jac. 17. Comp. Recogn. iiL 66.
2 Ilora. xi. 36. Recogn. iii. 66; vi. 15. 3 Horn. xi. 35. Recogn. iv. 35.
* Xto()r;ri(r«o7roi, ^ "Slq-niT: >\ci:. Hcnce firiTpij-KjXiTai.
420 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
tolic mothcr-cliurclies,^ such as those at Jerusalem, Antioch,
Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome. In the time of Ire-
naeus and Tertullian they were held in the highest regard, as
the chief bearers of the pure church tradition. Among these
Antioch, Alexandria, and Eome were most prominent, be-
cause they were the capitals respectively of the three divisions^
of the Roman empire, and centres of trade and intercourse, com-
bining with their apostolic origin the greatest political weight.
To the bishop of Antioch fell all Syria as his metropolitan dis-
trict ; to the bishop of Alexandria, all Egypt ; to the bishop of
Rome, central and lower Italy, without definite boundaries.
Here we have the germs of the eparchal or patriarchal system,
to which the GTreek church to this day adheres. The name
patriarch was at first, particularly in the East, an honorary title
for all bishops, and was not till the fourth century exclusively
appropriated to the bishops of the three, or, if we add Constan-
tinople and Jerusalem, the five, ecclesiastical and political capitals
of the Roman empire. So in the West the term papa, after-
wards appropriated by the Roman bishop, as summus pontifex,
vicarius Christi, was current for a long time in a more general
application.
§ 110. Genyis of (lie Papacy.
Blondel: Traite liistorique de la primaute en I'eglise Geneve. 1641. Sal-
MASius: De primatu Papae. Lugd. Bat. 1G45. I? Barrow: The Pope's
Supremacy. Lond. 1680 (new ed. Oxf. 1836. N. lork, 1845). Rotiiensee
(R.C.) : Der Primat des Papstos in alien christlichen Jahrhunderten, 3 vols.
Mainz, 1836-38 (I. 1-98). Kenrick (R. C, archbi?hop of Baltimore) :
The Primacy of the Apostolic See vindicated. N. York, 4th ed. 1855.
R. I. Wilberforce (formerly archdeacon in the Anglican church; died
in the Roman church, 1857) : An Inquiry into the Prixiciples of Church
Authority ; or Reasons for recalling my subscriptions to the Royal Sujire-
macy. Lond. 1854 (ch. vi.-x.). J. E. Riddle : The History of the Pa-
pacy to the Period of the Reformation. Lond. 1856. 2 vols. (Chapter
1, p. 2-113; chiefly taken from Schrockh and Planck). Thomas Green-
wood: Cathedra Petri. A Political History of the great Latin Patri-
archate. Lond. 1856. — On the chronology of the papacy comp. Pui-
LTPPUS Jaffe: Regesta PontiGcum Romanorum ab condit?^ ecclesia ad
annum 1198. Bcrol. 1851.
' Scdus apostolicac, matrices ecclesiae. ' 'Ejr(ip;^(ij.
§ 110. GEKMS OF THE PAPACY. 427
Among the great bishops of Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome,
the Roman bishop combined all the conditions for a primacy,
which, from a purely honorary distinction, gradually became the
basis of a supremacy of jurisdiction. The same propension to
monarchical unity, which created out of the episcopate a centre,
first for each congregation, then for each diocese, pressed -on
towards a visible centre for the whole church. Primacy and
episcopacy grew together. In the present joeriod we already
find the faint beginnings of the papacy, in both its good and its
evil features ; and with them, too, the first examples of earnest
protest against the abuse of its power.
The historical influences which favored the ascendency of the
Roman see were : (1) The high antiquity of the Roman church,
which had been honored even by Paul with the most important
doctrinal epistle of the New Testament ; it was properly the only
apostolic mother-church in the West, and was thus looked upon
from the first by the churches of Italy, Gaul, and Spain, with pecu-
liar reverence. (2) The labors, martyrdom, and burial at Rome
of Peter and Paul, the two leading apostles. (3) The political
preeminence of that metropolis of the world, which was destined
to rule with the sceptre of the cross, as she had formerly ruled
with the sword the European race. (4) The executive wisdom
and the catholic orthodox instinct of the Roman church, which
made themselves felt in this period in the three controversies on
the time of caster, the penitential discipline, and the validity of
heretical baptism. To these may be added, as secondary causes,
her firmness under persecutions, and her benevolent care for
suffering brethren, even in distant places, as celebrated by Dio-
nysius of Corinth (180) and Eusebius.
The first example of the exercise of a sort of papal authority
has been found in the letter of the Roman bishop Clement
(■|-102) to the bereaved and distracted church of Corinth. But
this epistle, full of beautiful exhortations to harmony, love, and
humility, is sent, as the very introduction shows,^ not in the
bishop's own name, but in that of the Roman congregation, and
428 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
has besides, anything but a hierarchical tone. It was a service
of love, proffered by one church to another in time of need.
Yet it is worthy of notice, after all, that the Ilornan church here
Qieets in calm dignity the most important church of Greece,
\;xhorts her to order and unity, and betrays a considerable
tlegree of practical administrative wisdom.
Ignatius, as we have already remarked, knows nothing of a
primacy. True, in his epistle to the Roman church, he applies
to her at once, in the salutation, a host of honorable titles, and
calls her, even according to the Syriac version, 'rrpoxa^rnxivri Tr,g
dya-jfyjc:^ presidens in caritate, "taking the lead in love." But
he certainly does not intend b}^ this, as the artificial interpreta-
tion of some Roman Catholic scholars, even Mcihlcr,^ would have
it: "Head of the love-union of Christendom." He designs
merely to commend the love and beneficence of that church
towards others, as Dionysius of Corinth also did after the middle
of the second century. The bishop of Rome is not even men-
tioned in the whole epistle ; the church alone is addressed
throughout. Far from ascribing to him a superior authority
to his own, and with a lively sense of his own inferiority to
the apostles, he tells the Romans : " I do not command you as if
I were Peter or Paul ; they were apostles."
Yet we unquestionably find, even before the close of the
second century, unequivocal traces of an honorary pre-eminence
of the Roman church.
Irenacus calls her the greatest, the oldest (?) church, acknow-
ledged by all, founded by the two most illustrious apostles, Peter
and Paul, the church, with which, on account of her more im-
portant precedence, all Christendom must agrec.^ The "more
important precedence" places her above the other apostolic
' ratrol. i. 144.
* The famous jjiussage, Adv. haer. iii. 3 § 2, is, however, only extant in Latin, and is
of somewhat disputed interpretation : Ad hanc enini ecclcsiam propter potentiorem
(according to Massuot's conjecture: potiorein) principalitatem necos.«o est omnem
convonire ecclesiam, hoc est, cos qui sunt undiquo fideles, in qua semper ab his, qui
sunt undique, conservata e.st ab apostolis traditio. In the original Greek it probably
read: W^'ti rat^rnv yilo rill' i K\ri<Ttav 6ia ri/f iKavMTtpav nooTcinv o-ii/i/inutc (^not cviep^t<T-
Sai) <!ci (according to others: diiyKi, natural necessitj') Tno-m' ri> iKK^n"'"'; etc.
§ 110. GEEMS OF THE PAPACY. 429
churches, to which likewise a precedence is allowed. This is
surely to be understood, however, as a precedence only of honor,
not of jurisdiction. For when pope Victor, about the year 190,
in hierarchical arrogance and intolerance, broke fellowship with
the churches of Asia Minor only on the ground of their peculiar
easter usage, the same Irenaeus, though agreeing with him on
the disputed point itself, rebuked him very emphatically as a
troubler of the peace of the church, and declared himself against
a forced uniformity in such unessential matters. Nor did the
Asiatic churches allow themselves to be intimidated by the dic-
tation of Victor. They answered the Roman tradition with that
of their own sedes apostolicae, till the council at Nice at last
settled the controversy in favor of the Roman practice.
Tertullian points the heretics to the apostolic mother churches,
as the chief repositories of pure doctrine ; and among these gives
special prominence to that of Rome, where Peter was crucified, Paul
beheaded, and John immersed unhurt in boiling oil (?), and then
banished to the island. Yet the same father became afterwards
an opponent of Rome. He attacked its loose penitential discipline,
and called the Roman bishop (probably Zephyrinus), in irony and
mockery, "pontifex maximus" and "episcopus episcoporum."
So the celebrated Hippolytus, in the beginning of the third
century, was a decided antagonist of the Roman bishops, Zephy-
rinus and Callistus, and in part on the same ground of lax disci-
pline. But at the same time, we learn from his Philosophoumena,
that at that time the Roman bishop already claimed an absolute
power within his own jurisdiction ; and that Callistus, to the great
grief of part of the presbytery, laid down the principle, that a
bishop can never be deposed or compelled to resign by the
presbytery, even though he have committed a mortal sin.
Cyprian is clearest, both in his advocacy of the fundamental
idea of the papacy, and in his protest against the mode of its ap-
plication in a given case. Starting from the superiority of Peter,
ujDon whom the Lord has built his church, and to whom he has
intrusted the feeding of his sheep, in order to represent tliereby
the unity in the college of apostles, Cyprian transferred the same
430 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
superiority to the Bishop of Eomc, as the successor of Peter, and
accordingly called the Roman church the chair of Peter, and the
fountain of priestly unity,^ the root, also, and mother of the
catholic church.^ But on the other side, he asserts with equal
energy the equality and relative independence of the bishops, as
successors of the apostles, who had all an equally direct appoint-
ment from Christ. In his correspondence he uniformly addresses
the Roman bishop as "brother" and "colleague," conscious of
his own equal dignity and authority. And in the controversy
about heretical baptism,'^ he opposes pope Stephen with almost
Protestant independence, accusing him of en'or and abuse of his
power, and calling a tradition without truth an old error. Of
this protest he never retracted a word.
Still more sharp and unsparing was the Cappadocian bishop,
Firmilian, a disciple of Origen, on the bishop of Rome, while
likewise imj)lying a certain acknowledgment of his papacy.
Firmilian charges him with folly, and with acting unworthily of
his position ; because, as the successor of Peter, he ought rather
to further the unity of the church than to destroy it, and ought
to abide on the rock foundation instead of laying a new one by
recognising heretical baptism. Perhaps the bitterness of Firmi-
lian was due partly to his friendship and veneration for Origen,
who had been condemned by a council at Rome.
Nevertheless, on this question of baptism, also, as on those of
easter, and of penance, the Roman church came out victorious in
the end.
From this testimony it is clear, that the growing influence of
the Roman see was rooted in public opinion and in the need of
unity in the ancient church. It is not to be explained at all by
the talents and the ambition of the incumbents. On the contrary,
the personality of the thirty popes of the first three centuries fiills
quite remarkably into the background; though they are all
• Petri cathedram atque ecclesiain principalem, undo unitas sacerdotalis cxorta est.
Epist. Iv. c. 19 (cd. Bal.) ad Cornelium cpisc. Rom. In Goldlioni's ed. Kp. lix. VJ
' Ecclesiao catholicao radiccm et niatriccm. Ep. xl. 2 ed. Bal. (xlviii ed. Goldh.
3 Comp. § 104.
§ 110. GERMS OF THE PAPACY. 431
canonized saints, and, according to a later but very doubtful
tradition, were also, with two exceptions, martyrs.^ Among tliem,
and it may be said down to Leo the Great, about the middle of
the fifth century, there was hardly one, perhaps Clement, who
could compare, as a church leader, with an Ignatius, a Cyprian,
and an Ambrose ; or, as a theologian, with an Irenaeus, a Tertul-
lian, an Athanasius, and an Augustine. Jerome, among his hun-
dred and thirty-six church celebrities, brings in only four Eoman
bishops, Clement, Victor, Cornelius, and Damasus, and even these
wrote only a few epistles. Hippolytus, in his Philosophoumena,
written about 230, even presents two contemporaneous popes, St.
Zephyrinus (202-218) and Callistus (St. Calixtus I., 218-223),
from his own observation, though not without partisan feeling,
in a most unfavorable light ; charging the first with ignorance and
avarice, the second with scandalous conduct (he is said to have
been once a swindler and a fugitive slave rescued from suicide),
and both of them with the Patripassian heresy. Such charges
could not have been mere fabrications with so honorable an author
as Hippolytus, even though he was a schismatic rival bishop to
Callistus ; they must have had at least some basis of fact.
It is further worthy of remark, that just the oldest links in the
chain of Eoman bishops are veiled in impenetrable darkness.
While Tertullian and most of the Latins (and the pseudo-Cle-
mentina) make Clement the first successor of Peter, Irenaeus,
Eusebius, and other Greeks (also Jerome and the Eoman Cata-
logue) give him the third place, and put Linus^ and Anacletus
between him and Peter. Perhaps Linus and Anacletus acted
during Peter's life as his assistants, or presided only over one
part, the Jewish-Christian, Petrine portion of the church, while
Clement may have had charge of the Gentile-Christian, or Pauline
branch ; for, at that early day, the government of the congrega-
tion was hardly so centralized as it afterwards became. Further-
■ Irenaeus recognises among the Roman bishops from Clement to Eleutherus (177)^
all of whom he mentions by name, only one martyr, to wit, Telesphorus, of whom he
says: "Of Kal evSo^c^i ifiapripnacv, Adv. haer. III., c. 3, § 3. So Eusebius, H.
E. Y. 6. From this we may judge of the value of tlie Roman Catholic tradition on
tills point. " 2 Tim. iv. 21.
432 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
more, the earliest fathers, with a true sense of the distinction
between the apostohc and episcopal offices, do not reckon Petei
among the bishops of Rome at all ; and the Roman Catalogue
in placing Peter in the line of bishops, is strangely regardless of
Paul, whose independent labors in Rome are attested not onl}
by tradition, but by the clear witness of his own epistles and thf
book of Acts.
After all, however, it must in justice be admitted that the lis!
of Roman bishops has by far the preeminence, in age, complete-
ness, integrity of succession, consistency of doctrine and policy,
and weight of name, above every similar catalogue, not excepting
those of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople ;
and must carry great weight with every one, who grounds his
views chiefly on external testimonies, without being able to rise
to the free Protestant view of Christianity and its history on
earth.
§ 111. Tlie Catholic Unity.
(Corap. §§ 74, 7G, and 108.)
Besides Mohler (1. c), and especially Rotiie (1. c. p. 553-711), comp. also Hu
THER : Cyprians Lehre von der Einheit der Kirche. Hanib. 1839. J. W
Nevin : Cyprian ; 4 articles in the '• ^lercersburg Review," 1852.
In connexion with Paul's idea of the unity, holiness, and uni
versality of the church, as the body of Christ ; hand in hand
with the episcopal system of government; in the form of fact
rather than of dogma ; and in perpetual conflict with heathen
persecution from without, and heretical and schismatic tendencies
within — arose the idea and the institution of the sancta ecclesia
catholica, as the Apostles' Creed has it ; or, in the fuller language
of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan, the una sancta catholica
apostolica ecclesia. In both the ecumenical symbols, as even in
the more indefinite creeds of the second and tliird centuries, on
which those symbols are based, the church appears as an article
of faith,' presupposing and necessarily following fliith in the
' Credo eccl., yet not in (tij) eccl., as in the case of the Divine persons.
§ 111. THE CATHOLIC UNITY. 433
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; and as a holy fellowship,^
within which the various benefits of grace, from the forgiveness
of sins to the life everlasting, are enjoyed. Nor is any distinc-
tion made here between a visible and an invisible church. All
catholic antiquity thought of none but the empirical, historical
church, and without hesitation applied to this, while yet in the
eyes of the world a small persecuted sect, those five predicates of
unity, universality, holiness, exclusiveness, and apostolicity (in-
fallibility and indestructibility were afterwards added), which
are certainly inseparable from the ideal kingdom of Christ.
There sometimes occur, indeed, particularly in the Novatian
schism, hints of the incongruity between the empirical reality
and this idea ; and this incongruity became still more palpable,.
at least in regard to the predicate of holiness, after the abatement
of the spiritual elevation of the apostolic age, the cessation of per-
secution, and the decay of discipline. But the unworthiness of
individual members and the external servant-form of the church
were not allowed to mislead as to the general objective charac-
ter, which belonged to her in virtue of her union with her glori-
ous heavenly Head. The fathers of our period all saw in the
church, though with different degrees of clearness, a divine, su-
pernatural order of things, in a certain sense the continuation of
the life of Christ on earth, the temple of the Holy Ghost, the sole
repository of the powers of divine life, the possessor and inter-
preter of the Holy Scriptures, the mother of all the faithflil. She
is holy because she is separated from the service of the profane
world, is animated by the Holy Ghost, forms her members tO'
holiness, and exercises the strictest discipline. She is catholic,
that is (according to the precise sense of oXo^c, which denotes not
so much numerical totality as wholeness), complete, and alone true,
in distinction from all particularistic parties and sects. Catholi-
city, strictly taken, includes the three marks of universality, unity,
and exclusiveness, and is an essential property of the church as
the body and organ of Christ, who is, in fact, the only Redeemer
Communio sanctorum.
28
43 J: SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
for all men. Equally inseparable from her is the predicate of
apostolicity, that is, the historical continuity or unbroken succes-
sion, which reaches back through the bishops to the apostles,
from the apostles to Christ, and from Christ to God. In the
view of the fathers, every theoretical departure from this empiri-
cal, tangible, catholic church is heresy, that is, arbitrary, subject-
ive, ever changing human opinion ; every practical departure, all
disobedience to her rulers is schism, or dismemberment of the
body of Christ; either is rebellion against divine authority,
and a heinous, if not the most heinous, sin. No heresy can reach
the conception of the church, or rightly claim any one of her pre-
dicates ; it forms at best a sect or party, and consequently falls
within the province and the fate of human and perishing things,
while the church is divine and indestructible.
This is without doubt the view of the ante-Nicene fathers,
even of the speculative and spiritualistic Alexandrians. But
the most important personages in the development of the doc-
trine concerning the church are, again, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and
Cyprian. Their whole doctrine of the episcopate is intimately
connected with their doctrine of the catholic unity, and deter-
mined by it. For the ej^iscopate is of value in their eyes only
as the indispensable means of maintaining and promoting this
unity ; while they are compelled to regard the bishops of heretics
and schismatics as rebels and antichrists.
In the Epistles of Ignatius the unity of the church, in the
form and through the medium of the episcopate, is the funda-
mental tliought and the leading matter of exhortation. The
author calls himself a man prepared for union .^ He also is the
first to use the term catholic in the ecclesiastical sense, when he
says :^ " Where Christ Jesus is, there is the catholic church ;"
that is, the closely united and full totality of his people. Only
in her, according to his view, can we eat the broad of God ; he,
who follows a schismatic, inherits not the kingdom of God.^ We
meet similar views, although not so clearly and strongly stated,
' ,) 3 I'.i—i/ {I'j h'l.tatv KaTrtoTiiTiilvnv, ^ Ad SmjTn. c. 8.
3 Ad Ephes. c. 5. Ad Trail, o. 7. Ad Philad. c. 3, eta
§ 111. THE CATHOLIC UNITY. 435
in the Eoman Clement's First Epistle to tlie Corintliians, in the
letter of the church of Smyrna on the martyrdom of Polycarp,
and in the Shepherd of Hermas.
Irenaeus speaks much more at large respecting the church.
He calls her the haven of rescue, the way of salvation, the
entrance to life, the paradise in this world, of whose trees, to
wit, the holy Scriptures, we may eat, excepting the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, which he takes as a type of heresy.
The church is inseparable from the Holy Ghost ; it is his home,
and indeed his only dwelling-place on earth. "Ubi ecclesia,"
says he,^ putting the church first, in the genuine catholic spirit,
" ibi et Spiritus Dei, et ubi Spiritus Dei, illic ecclesia et omnis
gratia." (Protestantism would say, conversely: "Where the
Spirit of God is, there is the church, and where the church is,
there is the Spirit of God and all grace.") Only on the bosom
of the church, continues" he, can we be nursed to life. To her
must we flee, to be made partakers of the Holy Ghost; separa-
tion from her is separation from the fellowship of the Holy
Ghost. Heretics, in his view, are enemies of the truth and sons
of Satan, and will be swallowed up by hell, like the company
of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Characteristic in this respect
is the well-known legend, which he relates, about the meeting
of the apostle John with the Gnostic Cerinthus, and of Polycarp
with Marcion, the "first-born of Satan."
Tertullian is the first to make that comparison of the church
with Noah's ark, which has since become classical ; and he like-
wise attributes heresies to the devil, without any qualification.
But as to schism, he was himself guilty of it since he joined the
Montanists and bitterly opposed the Catholics in questions of
discipline.
Even Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, with all their spi-
ritualistic and idealizing turn of mind, are no exception here.
The latter, in the words: "Extra hanc domum, id est extra
ecclesiam, nemo salvatur,"^ brings out the principle of the catho-
lic exclusiveness as unequivocally as Cyprian. Yet we find in
' Adv. haer. iii. 2-i. • Horn. 3 in Josuam, c. 5.
436 SECOND PERIOD, A.D, 100-311-
him, together with very severe judgments of heretics, mild and
tolerant expressions also ; and he even supposes, on the ground
of Rom. ii. 6 sqq., that in the future life honest Jews and
heathens will attain a suitable reward, a low grade of blessed-
ness, though not the "life everlasting" in the proper sense. — Of
the other Greek divines of the third century, Methodius in par-
ticular, an opponent of Origen, takes high views of the church,
and in his Symposium poetically describes it as " the garden of
God in the beauty of eternal spring, shining in the richest splen-
dor of immortalizing fruits and flowers;" as the virginal,
unspotted, ever young and beautiful royal bride of the divine
Logos.
Finally, Cyprian, in his Epistles, and especially in his tract:
De Unitate Ecclesiae, written in the year 251, amidst the distrac-
tions of the Novatian schism, and not without an intermixture
of party spirit, has most distinctly and most forcibly developed
the old catholic doctrine of the church, her unity, universality,
and exclusiveness. The church, he here teaches, was founded
from the first by Christ on Peter alone, that, with all the equality
of power among the apostles, unity might still be kept promi-
nent as essential to her being. She has ever since remained one,
in unbroken episcopal succession; as there is only one sun,
though his rays are everywhere diffused. Try once to separate
the ray from the sun ; the unity of the light allows no division.
Break the branch from the tree ; it can produce no fruit. Cut
off the brook from the fountain ; it dries up. Out of this em-
pirical orthodox church, episcopally organized and centralized
in Rome, Cyprian can imagine no Christianity at all ;^ not only
among the Gnostics and other radical heretics, but even among
the Novatians, who varied from the Catholics in no essential
point of doctrine, but only elected an opposition bishop in the
interest of their rigorous penitential discipline. AVhoever sepa-
rates himself from the catholic church is a foreigner, a profane
person, an enemy, condemns himself, and must be shunned.
• Christianus non est, qui iu Cliristi ecclcsia non est.
§ 111. THE CATHOLIC UNITY. 437
No one can have God for his father, who has not her for his
mother.^ As well might one out of the ark of Noah have
escaped the flood, as one out of the church be saved ;2 because
she alone is the bearer of the Holy Grhost and of all grace.
In the controversy on heretical baptism Cyprian carried out
the principle of exclusiveness even more consistently than the
Roman church. For he entirely rejected such baptism, while
Stephen held it valid, and thus had to concede, in strict consis-
tency, the possibility of regeneration, and hence of salvation,
outside the Catholic church. Here is a point where even the
Eoman system, generally so consistent, has a loophole of liberal-
ity, and practically gives up her theoretical principle of exclu-
siveness. But in carrying out this principle, even in per-
sistent opposition to the pope, in whom he saw the successor
of Peter and the visible centre of unity, Cyprian plainly denied
the supremacy of Roman jurisdiction and the existence of an
infallible tribunal for the settlement of doctrinal controversies,
and protested against identifying the church in general with the
church of Rome. And if he had the right of such protest in
favor of strict exclusiveness, should not the Grreek church, and
above all the Evangehcal, much rather have the right of protest
against the Roman exclusiveness, and in favor of a more free
and comprehensive conception of the church ?
While we freely acknowledge the profound and beautiful
truth at the bottom of this old catholic doctrine of the church,
and the historical necessity of it for that period of persecution,
as well as for the great missionary work among the barbarians
of the middle ages, we cannot but perceive that the doctrine
rested in part on a fallacy, which, in course of time, after the
union of the church with the state, or, in other words, with the
world, became more and more glaring, and provoked an internal
protest of ever-growing force. It blindly identified the spiritual
unity of the church with unity of organization, insisted on out-
ward uniformity at the expense of free development, and con-
' Habere non potest Deum patrem, qui ecclesiam uoa habet matrem.
" Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
438 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
founded the faulty empirical church, or a temporary phase of
the development of Christianity, with the ideal and eternal king-
dom of Christ, which will not be perfect in its manifestation
until the glorious second coming of its Head.
Finally, no effort after outward unity could prevent the dis-
tinction of an Oriental and Occidental church from showing itself
at this early period, in language, customs, and theology ; — a dis-
tinction which afterwards led to a schism to this day unhealed.
§ 112. Councils.
C. J. Hefele (R. C.) : Conciliengeschichte, Freiburg. Yol. I., 1855 (p. 69-
118). E. B. Pusey: The Councils of the Church, from the Council of
Jerusalem, a.d. 51, to the Council of Constantinople, a.d. 381 ; chiefly as
to their constitution, but also as to their objects and history. Lond. 1857.
Besides the mutual intercourse of the bishops, councils^ were
an important means of maintaining and promoting ecclesiastical
unity. They were the highest organs of legislation and con-
trol in the church, and especially of the settlement of doctrinal
controversies. Though having precedent and sanction in the
apostolical council at Jerusalem,^ they do not occur distinctly till
the middle of the second century in the disputes concerning
Montanism and Easter. At the beginning of the third century,
first in Greece, where the spirit of association had continued
strong since the days of the Achaean league, and then in Asia
and North Africa, regular provincial synods were formed.
These were held, so far as the stormy circumstances allowed,
once or twice a year, in the metropolis, under the presidency of
the metropolitan, who thus gradually acquired a supervision
over the other l)ishops of the province.
The meetings were public, and the people of the community
around sometimes made their influence felt. In the time of Cy-
prian presbyters, confessors and laymen took an active part, a cus-
' Concilium, first used in the ecclesiastical sense by Tcrtulliim, De jij'"'- c. 13;
ovvoioi, first in the pseudo-Apostolical Constit., v. 20, and the Cations, c. 3G or 38.
2 A.D. 50. Acts XV. and Gal ii.
§ 112. COUNCILS. 439
torn wKicli seems to have the sanction of apostolic practice,^ At
the Synod which met about 256, in the controversy on heretical
baptism, there were present eighty-seven bishops, very many
priests and deacons, and "maxima pars plebis;"- and in the sy-
nods concerning the restoration of the Lapsi, Cj^prian convened
besides the bishops, his clergy, the " confessores," and " laicos
stantes" (i. e. in good standing).^ Nor was this practice con-
fined to North Africa. "We meet it in Syria, at the synods con-
vened on account of Paul of Samosata (264-269), and in Spain
at the council of Elvira. Origen, who was merely a presbyter,
was the leading spirit of two Arabian synods, and convinced there
bishop Beryllus of his christological error. Even the Roman
clergy, in their letter to Cyprian,'* speak of a common synodical
consultation of the bishops with the priests, deacons, confessors,
and " laicis stantibus." But with the advance of the hierarchical
spirit, this republican feature gradually vanished. After the
council of Nice (325) bishops alone had seat and voice, and the
priests appear hereafter merely as secretaries, or advisers, or
representatives of their bishops. The bishops, moreover, did not
act as representatives of their churches, nor in the name of the
body of the believers, as formerly, but in their own right as
successors of the apostles. They did not as yet, however, in
this period, claim infallibility for their decisions, unless we choose
to find a slight approach to such a claim in the formula : " Placuit
nobis Sancto Spiritu suggerente," as used, for example, by the
council of Carthage, in 252.^ At all events, their decrees at that
' Comp. Acts XV. 6, 1, 12, 13, 23, where the "brethren" are mentioned expressly,
besides the apostles and elders, as members of the council, even at the final decision
and in the pastoral letter.
^ Cyprian, Opera, p. 329, ed. Baluz. In the acts of this council, however, (p. 330-
338) the bishops only appear as voters, from which Hefele (1. c. I. 17) infers that the
laity and even the presbyters had no votum decisivnira. But in several old councils
the presbyters and deacons subscribed their names after those of the bishops ; see
Harduin, Coll. Cone. I. 250 and 266 sq.
^ P'ipp. xi., xiil, Ixvi., Ixxi. 4 Bp_ xxxi.
5 Cyprian, Ep. liv., on the ground of the t^n^e r&j ayuo Trvciixart Kal /j/uV, visum
est Spiritui Sancto et nobis, Acts xv. 28. So, also, the council of Aries, a.d. 314:
Placuit ergo, presente Spiritu Sancto et angelis ejus (Ilarduin Coll. Concil. I. 262).
440 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
time could lay no claim to universal validity. The more import-
ant acts, such as electing bishops, excommunication, decision of
controversies, were communicated to other provinces by epistolae
synodicae. In the intercourse and the translation of individual
members of churches, letters of recommendation^ from the bishop
were commonly employed.
As the episcopate culminated in tlie primacy, so the synodal
system rose into the ecumenical councils, which represented the
whole church of the Roman em])ire. But these could not be
held till persecution ceased, and the emperor became the patron
of Christianity. The first was the celebrated council of Nice, in
th6 year 325.
§ 113. Collections of Ecclesiastical Law.
I. Atara/yoM; -tiliv aytcov 'ArtotJi'oT.toi' 5ta K^.^fifvroj, etc., Constitutiones Aposto-
LiCAE, in Cotelie7''s ed. of the Patres Apostolici (I. 199 sqq.), in Mcmsi
(Collect. Concil. I.), and Harduin (Coll. Cone. I.), newly edited by Uelt-
zerij Rost. 1853. Kavovii ixxXrinia.riri.xol tC^v ay. Arioato'Kuiv, Canones, qui
dicuntur Apostolorum, in most collections of church law, and in Cotel.
(I. 437 sqq.), Mansi, and Harduin (torn. I.). De Lagarde: Reliquiae
juris eccles. antiquissimae Syr. et Gr. 1856.
II. Krabbe : TJeber den Ursprung u. den Inhalt der apost. Constitutionen
des Clemens Romanus. Hamb. 1829. S. v. Drey (R. C.) : Neue Unter-
sucliungen uber die Constitut. u. Kanones der Ap. Tiib. 1832. J. W.
Bicicell: Gesch. des Kirchenrechts. Giess. 1843 (1. 1, p. 52-255). Chase:
Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, including the Canons ; Whiston's
version revised from the Greek ; with a prize essay (of Krabbe) upon
their origin and contents. New York, 1848. Bunsen : Hippolytus u.
seine Zeit. Leijiz. 1852 (I. p. 418-525, and II. p. 1-126 ; and in ^hc 2d
Engl. ed. Lond. 1854, vols. V-VII.). IlEFELE(R.C.)Conciliengeschichte
I. p. 7G7 sqq.
Towards the end of our period collections of church laws and
usages made their appearance. Tradition traced them to apostolic
origin ; but they evidently arose at various periods and in diifer-
ent j)arts of the church, and hence have been excluded from the
canon as pseudo-apostolic. They are valuable chiefly as afford-
• Episiolac formatae, yp.i/i/.nTu rtTurw/itia.
§ 113. COLLECTIONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL LAWS. 411
ing a complete view of the government, the cultus, and the prac-
tical life of the church in the third and fourth centuries.
The oldest collection of this sort is the " Apostolical Church
Ord^r,"^ which originated, probably, in the beginning of the
third century. It contains, in thirty-five articles, moral precepts
of John, and ordinances of the other apostles respecting the
duties of church officers and of laymen, and respecting the part
of women in the functions of worship, with a closing exhortation
from Peter to obey these directions. It is remarkable, that in the
account of the pretended acts of the apostolic council, even Martha
and Mary, besides the apostles, are introduced as speaking.
Much more famous and important are the "Apostolic Con-
stitutions."^ The work is, in form, a fabrication, profess-
ing to be a bequest of all the apostles, handed down through the
Eoman bishop Clement, or dictated to him. It begins with the
words : " The apostles and elders, to all who among the nations
have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with you,
and peace," &c. It contains, in eight books, a collection of
moral exhortations, church laws and usages, and liturgical formu-
laries, which had gradually arisen in the various churches from
the close of the first century, the time of the Roman Clement,
downward, particularly in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and
Rome, partly on the authority of apostolic practice. These were
at first orally transmitted ; then committed to writing in differ-
ent versions, like the creeds; and finally brought, by some
unknown hand, into their present form. The first six books,
which have a strong Jewish-Christian tone, are the original basis,
and, according to recent investigations, were composed, with the
exception of some later interpolations, at the end of the third cen-
tury, in Syria (according to Baur, in Rome). The seventh and
eighth books, each of which, however, forms an independent
piece, come from the beginning of the fourth century, at all
* Ordinatio ecclesiastica apostolorum, known through Ethiopic and Arabic MSS.,
and recently through a Greek text discovered by Bickell.
2 Aiarayai twv 'AirooToXwvj also A.^aaKaXin^ ^luni^fij, SiSavi:^ SiSa^a't, t(jv 'A'roordXtJi',
442 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
events, from a period before the council of Nice (325). The col-
lection of the three parts into one whole may be the work of the
author of the eighth book. The design was, to set forth the
ecclesiastical life for laity and clergy, and to establish the episco-
pal theocracy. These constitutions were more used and consulted
in the East than any work of the fathers, and were taken as the
rule in matters of discipline, like the holy Scriptures in matters of
doctrine. Still the collection, as such, did not rise to formal
legal authority, and the second Trullan council of 692 rejected it
for its heretical interpolations, while the same council acknow-
ledged the Apostolic Canons.
The "Apostolic Canons," consisting of brief church rules or
prescriptions, in some copies eighty-five in number, in others fifty,
and pretending to be of apostolic origin, are incorporated in the
"Constitutions" as an appendix to the eighth book, but are
found also by themselves, in Greek, Syriac, Ethiopic, and Arabic
manuscripts. Their contents are borrowed partly from the Scrip-
tures, especially the Pastoral Epistles, partly from tradition, and
partly from the decrees of early councils at Antioch, Neo-Caesa-
rea, Nice, Laodicea, &;c. (but probably not Chalcedon, 451). They
are, therefore, evidently of gradual growth, and were collected
either^ after the middle of the fourth century, or^ not till the
latter part of the fifth, by some unknown hand, probably also in
Syria. They are designed to furnish a complete system of dis-
cipline for the clergy. Of the laity they say scarcely a word.
The eighty-fifth and last canon settles the canon of the Scrip-
ture, but reckons among the New Testament books two epistles
of Clement and the genuine books of the pseudo-Apostolic Con
stitutions. The Greek church, at the Trullan council of 692,
adopted the whole collection of eighty-five canons as authentic
and binding, and John of Damascus even placed it on a parallel
with the epistles of the apostle Paul, thus showing that he had
no sense of the infinite superiority of the insj^ired writings.
The Latin church rejected it at first, but subsequently decided
* As Bickell supposes. ^ According to Dr. von Drey.
§ 11-i. CHURCH DISCIPLINE. 443
for the smaller collection of fifty canons, wliicli Dionysius Exi-
guus about the year 500 translated from a Greek manuscript.
§ 114. Church Discipline.
I. Several Tracts of Tertullian (especially De poenitentia). The Philoso-
phoumena of Hippolytus (1. IX.). The Epistles of Cyprian, and his
work De lapsis. The Epistolae canonicae of Dionysius of Alex., Gre-
gory Thaumaturgus (about 260), and Peter of Alex, (about 306), col-
lected in RoutKs Keliquiae sacrae, torn. III., 2nd ed. The Constit.
Apost. II. 16, 21-24. The Canons of the councils of Elvira, Arelate,
Ancyra, Neo- Caesarea, and Nice, between 305 and 325 (in the Collec-
tions of Councils, and in RoutKs Keliq. sacr. torn. lY.).
II. MoRiNUs: De disciplina in administratione sacram. poenitentiae, XIII.
primis saec. Par. 1651 (Venet. 1702). Marshall : Penitential Discipline
of the Primitive Church. Lond. 1714 (new ed. 1844).
The ancient church was distinguished for strict discipline.
Previous to Constantine the Great, this discipline rested on
purely moral sanctions, and had nothing to do with civil con-
straints and punishments. It had in view, on the one hand, the
dignity and purity of the church, on the other, the spiritual wel-
fare of the offender ; punishment being designed to be also cor-
rection. The extreme penalty was excommunication, exclusion
from all the rights and privileges of the faithful. This was
inflicted for heresy and schism, and all gross crimes, such as
theft, murder, adultery, blasphemy, and the denial of Christ in
persecution. After Tertullian, these and like offences, incompa-
tible with the regenerate state, were classed as mortal sins,^ in
distinction from venial sins, or sins of weakness.^
Persons thus excluded passed into the class of penitents,^ and
could attend only the catechumen worship. Before they could
1 Peccata mortalia, or, ad mortem ; after a rather arbitrary interpretation of 1 Jno.
V. 16. Tertullian gives seven mortal sins: Homieidium, idololatria, fraus, negatio,
blasphemia, utique et moechia et fornicatio et si qua alia violatio templi Dei. De
pudic. c. 19. These he declares irremissibilia, horum laltra exorator non erit Chris-
tus ; that is, if they be committed afkr baptism ; for baptism washes away all
former guilt.
2 Peccata venialia. ^ Poenitentes.
444: SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
be re-admitted to the fellowship of the church, they were re-
quired to pass through a process like that of the catechumens,
only still more severe, and to prove the sincerity of their peni-
tence by abstinence from all pleasures, from ornament in dress,
and from nuptial intercourse, by confession, frequent prayer,
fasting, almsgiving, and other good works. Under pain of a
troubled conscience and of separation from the only saving
church, they readily submitted to the severest penances. The
church teachers did not neglect, indeed, to inculcate the penitent
spirit and the contrition of the heart as the main thing. Yet
many of them laid too great stress on certain outward exercises.
Tertullian conceived the entire church penance as a satisfaction^
paid to God. This view could easily obscure to a dangerous
degree the all-sufficient merit of Christ, and lead to that self-
righteousness against which the Reformation raised so loud a
voice.
The time and the particular form of the penances, in the
second century, was left as yet to the discretion of the several
ministers and churches. Not till the end of the third century
was a rigorous and fixed system of penitential discipline esta-
blished, and then this could hardly maintain itself a century.
Though originating in deep moral earnestness, and designed only
for good, it was not fitted to promote the genuine spirit of repent-
ance. Too much formality and outward legal constraint always
deadens the spirit, instead of supporting and regulating it. This
disciplinary formalism first appears, as already familiar, in the
council of Ancyra, in the year 314. The penitents were distri-
buted into four classes : —
(1) The weepers,^ who prostrated themselves at the church
doors in mourning garments and implored restoration from the
clergy and the people.
(2) The hearers,^ who, like the first class of catechumens, of
the same name, were allowed to hear the Scripture lessons and
the sermon.
* Satisfactio. ' UpoirK^nioirei, Hcntes ; also called ;^«i/ia{ui'r£f, hiemantes.
' 'Afpuco/y£i/')i, audientcs, or auditores.
§ 114. CHUKCH DISCIPLINE. 445
(3) The kneelers/ who attended the pubhc prayers, but only
in the kneeling posture.
(4) The standers,^ who could take part in the whole worship
standing, but were still excluded from the communion.
These classes answer to the four stages of penance,^ the last
three running parallel with the three grades of the catechume-
nate. The course of penance was usually three or four years
long, but, like the catechetical preparation, could be shortened
according to circumstances, or extended to the day of death. In
the East there were special penitential presbyters,* intrusted with
the oversight of the penitential discipline.
After the fulfilment of this probation came the act of recon-
ciliation.^ The penitent made a public confession of sin, received
absolution by the laying on of hands of the ministers, and precatory
or optative benediction,^ was again greeted by the congregation
with the brotherly kiss, and admitted to the celebration of the
communion. For the ministry alone he was for ever disquali-
fied. Cyprian and Firmilian, however, guard against the view,
that the priestly absolution of hypocritical penitents is uncondi-
tional and infallible, and can forestall the judgment of God.^
In reference to the propriety of any restoration in certain cases,
there was an important diiference of sentiment, which gave rise
to several schisms. All agreed that the church punishment could
not forestall the judgment of God at the last day, but was merely
* Tovvx'SivovTii, genuflectentes : also iiraTriizTovres, substrati.
' i;ui'((T7<i//£i">i, consistentes.
' UontTKXiivfjti, fletus ; (i/fpduo-if, auditus ; uno'irrwo-i;, prostratio, humiliatio; ffvoroiriy,
consistentia.
* YlosafivTcooi M rng fierafota;, presb. poenitentiarii. * Reconciliatio.
6 The declarative, and especially the direct indicative or judicial form of absolu-
tion seems to be of later origin.
7 Cypr. Epist. LV., c 15: Neque enim prejudicamus Domino judicaturo, quomi-
nus si poenitentiam plenam et justam peccatoris invenerit tunc ratum faciat, quod a
nobis fuerit hie statutum. Si vero nos aliquis penitentiae simulations deluserit, Deus,
qui non deridetur, et qui cor hominis intuetur, de his, quae nos minus perspeximus,
judicet et suorum sententiam Dominus emendet. Comp. the similar passages in
Epist. LXXV. 4, and De Lapsis, c. 17. But if the church can err in imparting abso-
lution to the unworthy, as Cyprian concedes, she can err also in withholding abso-
lution and in passing sentence of excommunication.
446 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
temporal, and looked to tlie repentance and conversion of the
subject. But it was a question whether the church should
restore even the grossest offender on his confession of sorrow,
or should, under certain circumstances, leave him to the judg-
ment of God. The strict, puritanic party, to which the Monta-
nists, the Novatians, and the Donatists belonged, and, for a time,
the whole African and Spanish Church, took ground against
the restoration of those who had forfeited the grace of baptism
by a mortal sin, especially by denial of Christ ; since, otherwise,
the church would lose her characteristic holiness, and encourage
loose morality. The moderate party, which prevailed in the
East, in Egypt, and especially in Rome, and was so far the catho-
lic party, held the principle that the church should refuse absolu-
tion and communion, at least on the death-bed, to no penitent
sinner. Paul himself restored the Corinthian offender.^
■The point here in question was of great practical moment in the
times of persecution, when hundreds and thousands renounced
their faith through weakness, but as soon as the danger was
passed, pleaded for readmission into the church, and were very
often supported in their plea by the potent intercessions of the
martyrs and confessors, and their libelli pacis. The principle
was : necessity knows no law. A mitigation of the penitential
discipline seemed in such cases justified by every consideration
of charity and policy. So great was the number of lapsi in the
Decian persecution, that even Cyprian found himself compelled
to relinquish his former rigoristic views.
The strict party were zealous for the holiness of God ; the
moderate, for his grace. The former would not go beyond the
revealed forgiveness of sins by baptism, and were content with
urging the lapsed to repentance, without offering them hope of
absolution in this life. The latter refused to limit the mercy of
God and expose the sinner to despair. The former were carried
away with an ideal of the church which cannot be realized till
the second coming of Christ; and while impelled to a fanatical
' 1 Cor. V. 1 sqq. Comp. 2 Cor. ii. 5 sqq.
§ 115. CHURCH SCHISMS. 447
separatism, they proved, in their own sects, the impossibility of
an absolutely pure communion on earth. The others not rarely
ran to the opposite extreme of a dangerous looseness, were quite
too lenient, even towards mortal sins, and sapped the earnestness
of the Christian morality.
It is remarkable that the lax penitential discipline had its chief
support from the end of the second century, in the Roman church.
Tertullian assails that church for this with bitter mockery. Hip-
polytus, soon after him, does the same ; though no Montanist,
he was zealous for strict discipline. According to his statement,^
evidently made from fact, the pope Callistus, whom a later age
stamped a saint because it knew little of him, admitted bigami
and trigami to ordination, maintained that a bishop could not be
deposed, even though he had committed a mortal sin, and
appealed for his view to Rom. xiv. 4, to the parable of the tares
and the wheat, Matt. xiii. 30, and, above all, to the ark of Noah,
which was a symbol of the church, and which contained both
clean and unclean animals, even dogs and wolves. In short, he
considered no sin too great to be loosed by the power of the
keys in the church. And this continued to be the view of his
successors. But here we perceive, also, how the looser practice
in regard to penance was connected with the interest of the
hierarchy. It favored the power of the priesthood, which claimed
for itself the right of absolution ; it was at the same time matter
of worldly policy ; it promoted the external spread of the church,
though at the expense of the moral integrity of her membership,
and facilitated both her subsequent union with the state and her
hopeless confusion with the world. No wonder the church of
Rome, in this point, as in others, triumphed at last over all oppo-
sition.
§ 115. Church Schisms.
On the Schism of Fehcissimus : Cypr. : Epist. 38-40, 42, 55.
On the Novatian Schism : Hippol. : Philosoph. 1. IX. Cypr. : Epist. 41-52 ;
and the Epistles of Cornelius of Rome, and Dionys. of Alex., in Euseb.
H. E., VI. 43-45, VII. 8.
' Philosoph. 1. IX., p. 290 (ed. Oxon.).
448 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
On the Meletian Schism: Documents in Latin translation in MnffA: Osserva-
tioni Letterarie. Verona, 1738, torn. III. p. 11 sqq., and the Gieek frag-
ments from the Liber de poenitentia of Peter of Alexandria in Ronth:
Reliquiae sacr. vol.' II. p. 21-51. Epiphan. : Haer. 68 (favorable to Me-
letius), Atiianas. : Apol. contra Arianos, § 59, and after him SocR.,
SozoM., and Tueod. (very unfavorable to Meletius).
Out of this controversy on the restoration of the lapsed, pro-
ceeded three schisms in the latter half of the third century ; one
in North Africa, one in Rome, and one in Egypt. Montanism,
too, was in a measure connected with the question of penitential
discipline, but extended, also, to several other points of Christian
life.i
1. The schism of Felicissimus, at Carthage, about the year
250, originated in the personal dissatisfaction of five presbytere
with the hasty and irregular election of Cyprian to the bishopric,
by the voice of the congregation, very soon after his baptism, a.d.
248. At the head of this opposition party stood the presbyter
TTovatus, an unprincipled ecclesiastical demagogue, of restless,
insubordinate spirit and notorious character,' and the deacon
Felicissimus, whom Novatus ordained, without the permission or
knowledge of Cyprian, therefore illegally, whether with his own
hands or through those of foreign bishops. The controversy
cannot, however, from this circumstance, be construed, as it is
by Neander and others, into a presbyterial reaction against
episcopal autocracy. For the opposition themselves afterwards
chose a bishop in the person of Fortunatus. The Novatians
and the Meletians likewise had the episcopal form of or-
ganization, though doubtless with many irregularities in the
ordination.
After the outbreak of the Decian persecution this personal
rivalry received fresh nourishment and new importance from
the question of discipline. Cyprian originally held Tertullian's
I 1 Comp. § G7.
* Cyprian charges him with terrible cruelties, such as robbing; widows and orphans,
gross abuse of his father, and of liis wife even during her pregnancy; and says,
that he was aliout to be arraigned for this and similar misconduct, when the Decian
persecution broke out. Ep. 49.
§ 115. CHURCH SCHISMS. 449
principles, and utterly opposed tlie restoration of the lapsed, till
further examination changed his views. Yet, so great was the
multitude of the fallen, that he allowed an exception in periculo
mortis. His opponents still saw even in this position an un-
christian severity, least of all becoming him, who, as they mis-
represented him, fled from his post for fear of death. They
gained the powerful voice of the confessors, who in the face of
their own martyrdom freely gave their peace-bills to the lapsed.
A regular trade was carried on in these indulgences. An arro-
gant confessor, Lucian, wrote to Cyprian in the name of the rest,
that he granted restoration to all apostles, and begged him to
make this known to the other bishops. "We can easily under-
stand how this lenity from those who stood in the fire, might
take more with the people, than the strictness of the bishop, who
had secured himself. The church of Novatus and Felicissimus
was a resort of all the careless lapsi. Felicissimus set himself
also against a visitation of churches and a collection for the poor,
which Cyprian ordered during his exile. When the bishop re-
turned, after Easter, 251, he held a council at Carthage, which,
though it condemned the party of Felicissimus, took a middle
course on the point in dispute. It sought to preserve the in-
tegrity of discipline, yet at the same time to secure the fallen
against despair. It therefore decided for the restoration of those
who proved themselves truly penitent, but against restoring the
careless, who asked the communion merely from fear of death.
Cyprian afterwards, when the persecution was renewed under
Gallus, abolished even this limitation. He was thus, of course,
not entirely consistent, but gradually accommodated his princi-
ples to circumstances and to the practice of the Eoman church.^
His antagonists elected their bishop, indeed, but were shortly
compelled to yield to the united force of the African and Eoman
churches, especially as they had no moral earnestness at the bot-
tom of their cause.
• In Ep. 52, Ad Antonianum, he tried to justify himself in regard to this change
in his views.
29
450 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-811.
His conflict with this schismatical movement strengthened
Cyprian's episcopal authority, and led him in his doctrine of
the unity of the church to the principle of absolute exclusive-
ness.^
2. The NovATiAN schism in Eome was prepared by the
controversy already alluded to between Hippolytus and Callistus.
It broke out soon after the African schism, and, like it, in conse-
quence of an election of bishop. But in this case the opposition
advocated the strict discipline against the lenient practice of the
dominant church. The Novatianists considered themselves the
only pure communion,^ and unchurched all churches which
defiled themselves by re-admitting lapsi, or any other gross
offenders. They went much farther than Cyprian, even as far
as the later Donatists. They admitted the possibility of mercy
for a mortal sinner, but denied the power and the right of the
church to decide upon it and to prevent by absolution the judg-
ment of God upon such offenders. They also, like Cyprian,
rejected heretical baptism, and baptized all who came over to
them from other communions not just so rigid as themselves.
At the head of this party stood the Roman presbyter Nova-
tian,^ an earnest, learned, but gloomy man, who had come to faith
through severe demoniacal disease and inward struggles. He
fell out with Cornelius, who, after the Decian persecution in 251,
was nominated bishop of Rome, and at once, to the grief of
many, showed great indulgence towards the lapsi. Among his
adherents the above named Novatus of Carthage was particularly
busy, either from a mere spirit of opposition to existing author-
ity, or from having changed his former lax principles on his
removal to Rome. Novatian, against his will, was chosen bishop
by the opposition. Cornelius excommunicated him. Both par-
ties courted the recognition of the churches abroad. Fabian,
bishop of Antioch, sympathized with the rigorists. Dionysius
of Alexandria, on the contrary, accused them of blaspheming
> Comp. § 111. 2 K..Sc.o..,-.
3 Eusebius and the Greeks call him S jovaroc, and confound him with Novatus
of Carthage.
§ 115. CHURCH SCHISMS. 451
the most gracious Lord Jesus Christ, by calling liim unmerciful.
And especially Cyprian, from his zeal for ecclesiastical unity and
his aversion to Novatus, took sides with Cornelius, whom he
regarded the legitimate bishop of Eome.
In spite of this strong opposition the Novatian sect, by vir-
tue of its moral earnestness, propagated itself in various pro-
vinces of the West and the East down to the fifth century. In
Phrygia it combined with the remnants of the Montanists. The
council of Nice recognised its ordination, and endeavored, with-
out success, to reconcile it with the Catholic church. Constan-
tine, too, at first dealt mildly with it, but afterwards prohibited
its public worship,
3. The Meletian schism in Egypt arose in the Diocletian per-
secution, about 805, and lasted more than a century, but, owing
to the contradictory character of our accounts, it is not so well
understood. It was occasioned by Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis,
in Thebais, who, according to one statement, from zeal for strict
discipline, according to another, from sheer arrogance, rebelled
against his metropolitan, Peter of Alexandria (martyred in 311),
and during his absence encroached upon his diocese with ordi-
nations, excommunications, and the like. Peter warned his peo-
ple against him, and, on returning fi-om his flight, deposed him
as a disturber of the peace of the church. But the controversy
continued, and spread over all Egypt. The council of Nice
endeavored, by recognising the ordination of the twenty -nine
Meletian bishops, and by other compromise measures, to heal the
division ; but to no purpose. The Meletians afterwards made
common cause with the Arians.
CHAPTER YIIL
THE CnUECH FATHERS AND THEIR WRITINGS.
Jerome (t419) : De viris illustribus (comprising in 135 numbers the biblical
and ecclesiastical authors, down to a.d. 393). Tillemont (R.C.) : Me-
moires, etc., Par. 1693 sqq., 16 vols, (the first six centuries). E. Ddpin
(R. C.) : Nouvelle Bibliotheque des auteurs ecclesiastiques, contenant
I'histoire de leur vie, etc. Par. 1693-1715, 20 vols. Remi Cellier (R.
C.) : Histoire generale des auteurs sacres et ecclesiastiques. Par. 1729-
63, 23 vols. Gr. Cave : Scriptorura ecclesiasticorum Historia literaria a
Christo nato usque ad saecul. XIV. Lond. 1688. 2 vols. (Ox. 1740 and
often). Fabricius : Bibliotheca Graeca. Hamb. 1708-28, 14 vols. (ed.
quarta by Harless, Hamb. 1790-1812, in 12 vols., embracing all the Greek
writers down to the dissolution of the Eastern empire). Fabricius : BibUo-
theca ecclesiastica. Hamb. 1718. Gudin : Gommentarius de scriptoribus
ecclesiae antiquis illorumque scriptis. Lips. 1822, 3 vols, (reaching to
the 15th century.) Mohler (R. C.) : Patrologie oder christliche Lite-
rargeschichte. Edited by Reithmayer. Regensb. 1840, Vol. I. (covering
only the first three centuries.) Fr. Bohringer : Die Kirche Christi u.
ihre Zeugen, oder die K. G. in Biographieen. Ziir. 1842 sqq. Vol. I. in
4 parts (to Gregory the Great). — Comp. also Dallaeus (DaiUe) : De
usu Patrum in decidendis controversiis. Genev. 1656 (and often), and
J. J. Blunt (Anglican) : The Right Use of the Early Fathers. Lond. 1857
(largely polemical against the depreciation of the fathers, by Daill^, Bar-
beyrat, and Gibbon).
§ 116. The Patristic Literature in General.
As Christianity is primarily a religion of divine facts, a new
moral creation, the literary and scientific element in its history
held, at first, a secondary and subordinate place. Of the apostles,
Paul alone received a learned education, and even he made his
rabbinical culture and great natural talents subservient to the
higher knowledge imparted to him by revelation of the Holy
Ghost. But for the very reason that it is a new life, Christianity
must jiroduce also a new science and literature ; partly from the
§ 116. THE PATRISTIC LITERATURE IN GENERAL. 453
inherent impulse of faith towards deeper and clearer knowledge
of its object for its own satisfaction ; partly from the demands of
self-preservation against assaults from without ; partly from the
practical want of instruction and direction for the people. The
church also gradually appropriated the classical culture, and
made it tributary to her theology. Throughout the middle ages
she was almost the sole vehicle and guardian of science and art,
and she is the mother of the best elements of the modern Euro-
pean and American civilization. We have already treated of the
mighty intelldbtual labor of our period on the field of apologetic,
polemic, and dogmatic theology. In this section we have to do
with patrology, or the biographical and bibliographical matter of
the ancient theology and literature.
The ecclesiastical literature of the first six centuries was cast
almost entirely in the mould of the Graeco-Eoman culture. The
earliest church fathers, even Clement of Rome, Hermas, and Hip-
polytus, who lived and labored in and about Rome, used the
Grreek language, after the example of the apostles, with such
modifications as the Christian ideas required. Not till the end
of the second century, and then not in Italy, but in North Africa,
did the Latin language also become, through TertuUian, a medi-
um of Christian science and literature. The Latin church, how-
ever, continued for a long time dependent on the learning of the
Greek. The Greek church was more excitable, speculative, and
dialectic; the Latin more steady, practical, and devoted to
outward organization ; though we have on both sides striking
exceptions to iJiis rule, in the Greek Chrysostom, who was the
greatest practical divine, and the Latin Augustine, who was the
profoundest speculative theologian among the fathers.
The patristic literature in general falls considerably below
the classical in elegance of form, but far surpasses it in the
sterling quality of its matter. It wears the servant form of its
master, during the days of his flesh, not the splendid, princely
garb of this world. Confidence in the power of the Christian
truth made men less careful of the form in which they presented
it. Besides, many of the oldest Christian writers lacked early
454 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
education, and bad a certain aversion to art, from its manifold
perversion in those days to the service of idolatry and immo-
rality. But some of them, even in the second and third centu-
ries, particularly Clement and Origen, stood at the head of their
age in learning and philosophical culture ; and in the fourth and
fifth centuries, the literary productions of an Athanasius, a
Gregory, a Chrysostom, an Augustine, and a Jerome, excelled
the contemporaneous heathen literature in every respect. Many
fathers, like the two Clements, Justin MartjT, Athenagoras, Theo-
philus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and among the later ones, even
Augustine, embraced Christianity after attaining adult years;
and it is interesting to notice with what enthusiasm, energy, and
thankfulness they lay hold upon it.
The term " church-fether " originated in the primitive custom
of transferring the idea of father to spiritual relationships, espe-
cially to those of teacher, priest, and bishop. In the case before
us the idea necessarily includes that of antiquity, involving a cer-
tain degree of general authority for all subsequent periods and
single branches of the church. Hence this title of honor is justly
limited to the more distinguished teachers of the first five or six
centuries, excepting, of course, the ajDOStles, who stand far above
them all as the inspired organs of the Holy Ghost. It applies,
therefore, to the period of the ecumenical formation of doctrines,
before the separation of Eastern and Western Christendom.
When the Eoman church extends the line of the Patrcs, among
whom she further distinguishes a small number of Doctores
ecclesiae, emphatically so-called, down late into the middle ages,
and reckons in it Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Bona-
ventura, and even the divines of the Council of Trent, she rests
only on her claim to exclusive catholicity, which is recognised
neither by the Greek nor the Evangelical church.
Besides antiquity, or direct connexion with the formative age
of the whole church, learning, holiness, orthodoxy, and the ap-
probation of the church, or general recognition, are the qualifi-
cations for a church father. These qualifications, however,
arc onlv relative. At least we cannot apjily the scale of fully
§ 116. THE PATRISTIC LITERATURE EST GENERAL. 455
developed ortliodoxy, whether Greek, Roman, or Evangelical, to
the ante-Nicene fathers. Their dogmatic conceptions were often
very indefinite and uncertain. In fact the Roman church excludes
a Tertullian for his Montanism, an Origen for his Platonic and
idealistic views, a Eusebius for his semi-Arianism, from the list
of proper Patres, and designates them merely scriptores ecclesi-
astici. In strictness, not a single one of the ante-Nicene fathers
fairly agrees with the Roman standard of doctrine in all pomts.
Even Irenaeus and Cyprian differed from the Roman bishop ; the
former in reference to Chiliasm and Montanism, the latter on the
validity of heretical baptism. We must resort here to a liberal
conception of orthodoxy, and duly consider the necessary stages of
progress in the development of Christian doctrine in the church.
In general the excellences of the church fathers are very vari-
ous. Polycarp is distinguished, not for genius or learning, but
for patriarchal simplicity and dignity ; Clement of Rome, for the
gift of administration; Ignatius, for impetuous enthusiasm for
episcopacy, unity, and Christian martyrdom ; Justin, for apolo-
getic zeal and extensive reading; Irenaeus, for sound doctrine
and moderation ; Clement of Alexandria, for stimulating fertility
of thought ; Origen, for brilliant learning and bold investigation ;
Tertullian, for freshness and vigor of intellect, and sturdiness of
character; Cyprian, for energetic churchliness ; Eusebius, for
industry in compilation ; Lactantius, for elegance of style.
Each had also his weakness. Not one compares in depth and
spiritual fulness with a St. Paul or St. John ; and the whole
patristic literature, with all its incalculable value, must ever
remain very far below the New Testament.
The church fathers before the council of Nice may be divided
into five or six classes :
(1.) The apostolic fathers, or personal disciples of the apostles.
Of these, Polycarp, Clement, and Ignatius are the most eminent.
(2.) The apologists for Christianity against Judaism and hea-
thenism ; Justin Martyr and his successors to the end of the
second century.
(3.) The controversialists against heresies within the church ;
456 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
Irenaeus and Ilippolytus, at the close of the second century and
beginning of the third.
(4.) The Alexandrian school of philosophical theology ;
Clement and Origen, in the first half of the third century.
(5.) The contemporary but more practical North African school
of Tertullian and Cyprian.
Then there were also the germs of the Antiochan school, and
some less prominent writers, who can be assigned to no particular
class.
Together with the genuine writings of the church fathers there
appeared in the first centuries, in behalf both of heresy and of
orthodoxy, a multitude of apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Apo-
calypses, under the names of apostles and of later celebrities;
also Jewish and heathen prophecies of Christianity, such as the
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Books of Hydaspes, of
Hermas Trismegistos, and of the Sibylls. The frequent use
made of such fabrications of an idle imagination even by eminent
church teachers, particularly by the apologists, evinces not only
great credulity and total want of literary criticism, but also a very
imperfect development of the sense of truth^ which had not yet
learned utterly to discard the jDia fraus as falsehood.
§ 117. The Apostolic Fathers.
I. Patrum Apostolicorum Opera; editions by B. CoTELERrus (Cotelier, R. C),
Par. 1G72. 2 vols., including the spurious works ; J. Clericus (Le
Clerc), Amst. 1G98 and 1724. 2 vols. ; R. Russel, Lond. 1746. 2 vols,
(the genuine works) ; Guil. Jacobson, Oxon. 1838, ed. iii. 1847. 2 vols,
(very elegant and accurate, but containing only Clemens, Ignatius, Poly-
carp, and the niartyria of Ign. and Polyc.) ; C. J. Hefele (R. C), Tub. 1839
ed. iv. 1855. 1 vol. ; A. R. M. Dressel, Lips. 1857. 1 vol. (including the
Greek Pastor Hermae, and a treatise on it by Tischendorf ). E. V. Mu-
RALT : Codex N. T. deuterocanonicus. Turic. 1847.
II. The Prolegomena to the editions just named, particularly those of Cote-
lier— Clericus, Hefele, and Dressel. A. Schwegler : Das nachapostoiische
Zeitalter. Tub. 1846. 2 vols, (liypercritical, and full of untenable hy-
potheses). A. IIilgenfeld: Die apostolischen Vater. Halle, 1853. J.
H. B. LiJBKERx: Die Theologie der apostolischen Yiiter, in the "Zeit-
schrift fiir hist. Tbeol." Lcipz. 1854. Leculer : Das apost. u. nacha-
post. Zeitalter. Stuttgart, 1857. p. 476-195.
§ 117. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 457
The apostolic fathers were the first church teachers after the
apostles, had enjoyed personal intercourse with them, and thus
form the connecting link between them and the apologists of the
second century. This class consists of Barnabas, Clement of
Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Hermas, and, taken in a broad sense,
Papias, and the unknown author of the Epistle to Diognetus.
Of the outward life of these men, their extraction, education,
and occupation before conversion, hardly anything is known.
The distressed condition of that age was very unfavorable to
authorship; and more than this, the spirit of the primitive
church regarded the new life in Christ as the only true life, the
only one worthy of being recorded. But the pio-us story of the
martyrdom of several of these fathers, as their entrance into per-
fect life, has been copiously written.
The extant works of the apostolic fathers are of small com-
pass, and are in some cases of doubtful genuineness ; but they
belong at all events to that obscure and mysterious transition
period between the end of the first century and the middle of
the second. They all originated, not in scientific study, but in
practical religious feeling, and contain not analyses of doctrine
so much as simple direct assertions of faith and exhortations to
holy life ; all, excepting the Shepherd of Hermas, in the form
, of epistles after the model of Paul's. Yet they show the germs
of the apologetic, polemic, dogmatic, and ethic theology, as well
as the outlines of the organization and the cultus of the old
Catholic church. Critical research has to assign to them their
due 23lace in the external and internal development of the church ;
in doing this it needs very great caution to avoid arbitrary
construction.
If we compare these documents with the canonical Scriptures
of the New Testament, it is evident at once that they fall far
below in creative force, depth, and fulness of spirit, and afford
in this a strong indirect proof of the inspiration of the apostles.
Yet tliey still shine with the evening red of the apostolic day,
and breathe an enthusiasm of simple faith and fervent love and
fidelity to the Lord, which proved its power in suffering and
458 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
martyrdom. They move in the element of living tradition, and
make reference oftener to the oral preaching of the apostles than
to their writings ; for these were not yet so generally circulated ;
but they bear a testimony none the less valuable to the genuine-
ness of the apostolic writings, by numerous citations and by the
coincidence of their reminiscences with the facts of the gospel
history and the fundamental doctrines of the New Testament.
If the epistles of Barnabas, Clement, and Polycarp, and the
Shepherd of Hermas, were sometimes read in public worship, or
were even incorporated in some manuscripts of the Bible, this only
shows that the sense of the church, as to the extent of the canon,
had not yet become everywhere clear. Their authority at any
rate was always but sectional and subordinate to that of the
Gospels and the apostolic Epistles. It was a sound instinct of
the church, that the writings of the disciples of the apostles,
excepting those of Mark and Luke, who were peculiarly associated
with Peter and Paul, were kept out of the codex of the New
Testament. For by the wise ordering of the Euler of history,
there is an impassable gulf between the inspiration of the apostles
and the illumination of the succeeding age, between the standard
authority of holy Scripture and the derived validity of the
teaching of the church.
§ 118. Clement of Rome.
Lipsius : De Clementis Rom. Epist. ad Corinth, priore. Lips. 1855. Comp,
the Hterature at § 69.
Among the apostolic fathers Clement of Eome and Ignatius
of Antioch clearly take the front rank, from their position as
bishops of the largest apostolic churches in capital cities of the
Koman empire, and from the importance of their writings.
Clement, a name of great celebrity in antiquity, was a disciple
of Paul and Peter ; perhaps the same who is mentioned in Phil,
iv. 3, as a zealous fellow-laborer in the gospel. At the close of
the first century, from the twelfth year of Domitian to the tliird
of Trajan (a.d. 92-101 or 102), he stood, according to Euscbius,
§ 118. CLEMENT OF ROilE. 459
at the head of the Roman church. Yet tradition is divided against
itself as to the time of his administration ; now making him the
first successor of Peter, now, with more probabihty, the third.^
Further than this we know nothing with certainty respecting him,
but what can be gathered from his Epistle to the Corinthians.
Later legends have decked out his life in romance, both in
the interest of the catholic church and in that of heresy. They
picture him as a noble and highly educated Roman, who, dissatis-
fied with the wisdom and art of heathenism, journeyed to Pales-
tine, became acquainted there with the apostle Peter, and was
converted by him ; accompanied him on his missionary tours ;
composed many books in his name ; was appointed by him his
successor as bishop of Rome, with a sort of supervision over the
whole church ; and at last, being banished under Trajan to the
Taurian Chersonesus, died the glorious death of a martyr in the
waves of the sea. But the oldest witnesses, down to Eusebius
and Jerome, know nothing of his martyrdom. The Acta Mar-
tyrii dementis (by Simon Metaphrastes) make their appearance
first in the ninth century. They are purely fictitious, and ascribe
incredible miracles to their hero.
From this father we have a Greek epistle to the Corinthians
in fifty-nine chapters, which is often cited by the church fathers,
then disappeared, but was found again complete, together with
the fragments of the second epistle, in the Alexandrian codex of
the Bible (now in the British Museum), and was first published
from this by Patricius Junius at Oxford in 1633.^ It enjoyed
the highest esteem in ancient times, and continued in public use
in the Corinthian church so late as the year 180. And it is in
fact one of the most beautiful and valuable remains of the .post-
apostolic literature. It was occasioned by party differences and
quarrels in the church of Corinth, where some restless spirits had
deposed the presbyter -bishops. It consists of earnest fraternal
exhortations to harmony and love, humility and holiness, after
1 Comp. § 110, p. 431.
2 The best edition from the same MS. is that of Prof. Jacobson, Oxf. 1838, 3rd ed.
1847.
460 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
the pattern of Christ and his apostles, especially of Paul and
Peter. It evinces the calm dignity and the practical executive
wisdom of the Eoman church in her original apostolic simpli-
city, without the slightest infusion of hierarchical arrogance. It
is altogether worthy of a disciple of the apostles.
In regard to its theology, this e23istle belongs plainly to the
school of Paul, and strongly resembles the Epistle to the Hebrews,
while at the same time it betrays the influence of Peter also ; both
these apostles having, in fact, personally labored in the church of
Rome, in whose name the letter is written, and having left the
stamp of their spirit upon it. Clement is really the only one of
the apostolic fathers, except perhaps Polycarp,^ who clearly
asserts the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. " All (the
saints of the Old Testament)," says he,^ "became great and glo-
rious, not through themselves, nor by their works, nor by their
righteousness, but by the will of God. Thus we also, who are
called by the will of God in Christ Jesus, are righteous not of
ourselves, neither through our wisdom, nor through our under-
standing, nor through our piety, nor through our works, which
we have wrought in purity of heart, but by faith, by which the
almighty God justified all these from the beginning ; to whom
be glory to all eternity." And then Clement, precisely like
Paul in Rom. vi., derives sanctification from justification, and
continues: "What, then, should we do, beloved brethren?
Should we be slothful in good works and neglect love ? By no
means! But with zeal and courage we will hasten to fulfil every
good work. For the Creator and Lord of all things himself
rejoices in his works." Among the good works he especially
extols love, and describes it in a strain which reminds one of
Paul's 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians: "He who has love in
Christ, obeys the commands of Christ. Who can declare the
bond of the love of God, and tell the greatness of its beauty ?
The height to which it leads is unspeakable. Love unites us
with God ; covers a multitude of sins ; beareth all things,
endureth all things. There is nothing mean in love, nothing
' Ad Philipp. c. 1. 2 Ch. 32.
§ 118. CLEMENT OF ROME. 461
hauglity. It knows no division ; it is not refractory ; it does
everj^thing in harmony. In love have all the elect of God
become perfect. Without love nothing is pleasing to God. In
love has the Lord received ns ; for the love which he cherished
towards us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave his blood for us accord-
ing to the will of God, and his flesh for our flesh, and his soul
for our soul."^ Hence all his zeal for the unity of the church.
" Wherefore are dispute, anger, discord, division, and war among
you ? Or have we not one God, and one Christ and one Spirit,
■who is poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ? Where-
fore do we tear and sunder the members of Christ, and bring
the body into tumult against itself, and go so far in delusion,
that we forget that we are members one of another?"^ Yery
beautifully also he draws from the harmony of the universe an
incitement to concord, and incidentally expresses here the remark-
able sentiment, perhaps suggested by the old legends of the Atlan-
tis, the orbis alter, the ultima Thule, &c., that there are other
worlds beyond the impenetrable ocean, which are ruled by the
same laws of the Lord.^
But notwithstanding its prevailing Pauline character, this
epistle lowers somewhat the free evangelical tone of the Gentile
apostle's theology, softens its anti-Judaistic sternness, and blends
it with the Jewish-Christian counterpart ; showing that the con-
flict between the Pauline and Petrine views was substantially set-
tled at the end of the first century in the Eoman church, and
also in that of Corinth.
Clement knows nothing of an episcopate above the presby-
terate ; and his epistle itself is written, not in his own name, but
in that of the church at Home. But on the other hand, he pre-
sents the Levitical priesthood as a type of the Christian teaching
office, and insists with the greatest decision on outward unity,
fixed order, and obedience to church rulers ; thus revealing the
easy and as yet innocent beginnings of the Eoman system. The
' Ch. 49. " Ch. 46. Comp. Eph. iv. 3 sqq.
*= Ch. 20 : '^Kcavof di/^pajnoii dnipavTOS Kal ol ust avTov Koofioi raii ovraTj r.i-
y.iTs roi cicttOtov Stev^vovrai,
4(32 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
interval between Clement and Paul, and the transition from the
apostolic to the apocryphal, from faith to superstition, appears in
the difference between Paul's treatment of scepticism in regard
to the resurrection,^ and liis disciple's treatment of the same
subject.^ Clement points not only to the types in nature, the
changes of the seasons and of day and night, but also in full
earnest to the heathen myth of the miraculous bird, the phenix
in Arabia, which regenerates itself every five hundred years.
When the phenix — so runs the fable — approaches death, it makes
itself a nest of frankincense and other spices ; from its decaying
flesh a winged worm arises, which, when it becomes strong, car-
ries the reproductive nest from Arabia to Heliopolis in Egypt,
and there lays it, with the bones of its predecessors, upon the
altar of the sun. And this takes place, according to the reckon-
ing of the priests, every five hundred years. After Clement
other fathers also used the phenix as a symbol of the resurrec-
tion.
As to the time of its composition, this epistle falls certainly
after the death of Peter and Paul, for it celebrates their martyr-
dom ; and most probably after the death of John, possibly during
his exile ; for one would suppose, that if this apostle had been
living, the Corinthian Christians would have applied to him for
counsel, rather than to a disciple of the apostles in distant Rome.
The persecution alluded to in the beginning of the epistle would
then be the Domitian, and not the Neronian. Clement's calling the
church at Corinth at that time firmly established and ancient,^
agrees well with this date; as also the fact, that, according to
Eusebius, he did not take the bishop's chair in Rome till 92 or 93.
The name of Clement has been forged upon several later writ-
ings, both orthodox and heretical, to give them the more currency
by the weight of his name and position. These pseudo-Clemen
tine works are : —
1. A second epistle to the Corinthians, likewise in the Codex
Alexandrinus, but now extant only in fragments. Its great
• 1 Cor. XV. 2 Ad Corinth, c. 24 sqq.
' ijt3ainTaTr]v KoX dp^aiav, C. 47.
§ 119. IGNATIUS OF AXTIOCH. 4G3
inferiority to the first, botli in matter and in style, stamps it at
once as the work of another and later author ; and it is, in fact,
mentioned first by Eusebius, and then with the remark, that the
ancients made no use of it,^ It is probably a fragment of a
homily falsely ascribed to Clement, and is occupied with general
exhortations to active Christianity and to fidelity in persecution,
meantime contending with the Gnostic denial of the resurrection.
2. Two encyclical letters to Virgins, first discovered by Wetstein
in 1752, in a Syriac version. They commend the unmarried
life, and contain exhortations and rules of discipline for ascetics
of both sexes.
3. The Apostolical Constitutions and Canons.^ The so-called
Liturgia S. Clementis is a part of the eighth book of the Consti-
tutions.
4. The Pseudo-Clementina, or twenty Ebionistic homilies and
their catholic reproduction, the Eecognitions.^
5. Five decretal letters, which pseudo-Isidore has placed at the
head of his collection. Two of them are addressed to James,
and are older than, the pseudo-Isidore ; the three others were
fabricated by him.
§ 119. Ignatius of Antioch.
I. Besides the works cited at § 117, see W. Cureton: The Ancient Syriac
Version of the Epistles of S. Ignatius to S. Polycarp, the Ephesians, and
the Komans. With Engl, transl. and notes. Lond. and Berl. 1845.
C. C. J. BuNSEN : Die 3 achten u. die 4 unachten Briefe des Ignatius
von Ant. Hergestellter u. vergleichender Text mit Anmerkk. Hamb.
1847. W. Cureton : Corpus Ignatianum : a complete collection of the
Ignatian Epistles, genuine, interpolated, and spurious; together with
numerous extracts from them as quoted by eccles. writers down to the
tenth century ; in Syriac, Greek, and Latin, an Engl, transl. of the Syriac
text, copious notes, and introd. Lond. and Berl. 1849. J. H. Peter-
mann: S. Ignatii quae feruntur Epistolae, una cum ejusdem martyrio,
1 H, E. III. 38. Irenaeus, Dionysius of Corinth, Clement of Alex., and Origen,
know only of one epistle of Clement, the first. Dionysius of Corinth (ap. Euseb.
H. E. IV. 23) calls, indeed, the epistle of Clement voiripa, but with reference, not to
a second epistle of Clement, but to a later epistle of Bishop Soter of Rome to the
Corinthians.
* Comp. § 113. 3 Comp. § 69.
464 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
collatis edd. Graecis, versionibusque Syriaca, Armeniaca, Latinis. Lips.
1849.
11. J. Pearson: Vindiciae Ignatianae. Cambr. 1672. (Also in Cleric, ed. of
the Patres Apost. II. 250-440). Republished with annotations by E. Ch tir-
ton, Oxon. 1852, 2 vols. Rothe : Anfiinge der christl. Kirche. Wittenb.
1837. I. p. 715 sqq. Bunsen: Ignatius von Ant. u. seine Zeit. 7 Send-
schreiben an Dr. Neander. Hamb. 1847. Baur: Die Ignatianischen
Briefe u. ihr neuster Kritiker. Tiib. 1848 (against Bunsen). Denzinger
(R. C.) : Ueber die Aechtheit des bisherigen Textes der Ignatian. Briefe.
Wiirzb. 1849. G. Uhlhorn : Das Verhaltniss der syrischen Recension
der Ignatian. Br. zu der kiirzeren griechischen. Leipz. 1851 (in the
"Zeitschr. fiir hist. Theol."); and his article "Ignatius" in Herzog's
Theol. Encykl., vol. vi. (1856) p. 623 sqq. Thiersch : Kirche im apost
Zeitalter. Franlcf. u. Erl. 1852. p. 320 sqq. Lipsius : Ueber die Aech-
theit der syr. Recens. der Ignat. Br. Leipz. 1856 (in Niedner's " Zeitschr.
fiir hist. Theol."). — The statements of the fathers respecting Ignatius
are collected by Petermann, 1. c. p. 554 sqq. ; also by Cureton and
Bunsen, 1. c.
Ignatius, siirnamed Theophorus/ stood at tlie liead of the
church of Antioch at the close of the first century and the begin-
ning of the second ; and was thus contemporaneous with Clement
of Rome and Simeon of Jerusalem. The church of Antioch was
the mother church of Gentile Christianity ; and the city was the
second city of the Roman empire. Great numbers of Christians
and a host of heretical tendencies were collected there, and pushed
the development of doctrine and organization with great rapidity.
As in the case of Rome, tradition differs concerning the first
episcopal succession of Antioch, making Ignatius either the
second or the first bishop of this church after Peter, and calling
him now a disciple of Peter, now of Paul, now of John. The
Apostolic Constitutions intimate that Evodius and Ignatius pre-
sided contemporaneously over that church, the first being ordained
by Peter, the second by Paul.^ Baronius and others suppose
the one to have been the bishop of the Jewish, the other of the
Gentile converts. Thiersch endeavors to reconcile the conflict-
ing statements by the hypothesis, that Peter appointed Evodius
' Qco<p6po!, " bearer of God," as he styles himself iu his epistles.
2 Ap. Const. VII. 46: 'Ajtio-^si.is Ev')6ios ^tv W ifiov IltT-pou, 'lyvanoj 61 vnd TiaiXov
§ 119. IGi^TATIUS OF ANTIOCH. 465
presbyter, Paul Ignatius, and John subsequently ordained Igna-
tius bishop. According to later story, Ignatius was the first
patron of sacred music, and introduced the antiphony in Antioch.
But his peculiar glory, in the eyes of the ancient church, was his
martyrdom, the fact of which is unquestionable, though the
minute account of it, the Martyrium S. Ignatii, which is said to
be the work of two of his deacons and travelling companions,
but has come down to us in several discordant versions, and
which was unknown to Eusebius, contains manj^ embellishments
of a pious fancy. Ignatius himself says, in his Epistle to the
Eomans, according to the Syriac version : " From Sj^ria to Eome
I fight with wild beasts, on water and on land, by day and by
night, chained to ten leopards,^ which are only made worse by
signs of kindness. Yet their wickednesses do me good as a dis-
ciple; but not on this account am I justified. Would that I
might be glad of the beasts made ready for me. And I pray
that they may be found ready for me. Nay, I will fawn upon
them, that they may devour me quickly, and not, as they have
done with some, refuse to touch me from fear. Yea, and if they
will not voluntarily do it, I will bring them to it by force." The
Acts of his martyrdom relate more minutely, that Ignatius was
brought before the emperor Trajan at Antioch in the ninth year
of his reign (106-107), was condemned to death as a Christian,
was transported in chains to Eome, and was there thrown to
lions in the Coliseum for the amusement of the people. The
transportation may be accounted for as designed to cool the zeal
of the bishop, to terrify other Christians on the way, and to pre-
vent an outbreak of fanaticism in the church of Antioch. But
the chronological part of the statement makes difficulty. So far
as we know, from coins and other ancient documents, Trajan did
not come to Antioch on his Parthian expedition till the year 11-4
or 115. We must therefore either place the martyrdom later,? or
i "O itjTi (TrpuTtojTMv ray/ia, is added here for explanation by the two Greek versions,
but by Eusebius also, H. E. III. 36.
2 Grabe proposes to read, in the Martyr, c. 2, SexaTM Ii'vutm it^i, for iwdro^^. which
would give the year 116. Tillemont and others escape the difficulty by supposing,
30
466 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
suppose that Ignatius did not appear before tlie emperor Hmself
at all, but before his governor. His remains were taken to
Antioch, and preserved there as an " invaluable treasure."^
On this journey to Eome, bishop Ignatius, as a prisoner of
Jesus Christ, wrote seven epistles to various churches, mostly in
Asia Minor. Eusebius and Jerome put thera in the following
order : (1) To the Ephesians ; (2) to the Magnesians ; (3) to the
Trallians ; (4) to the Eomans ; (5) to the Philadelphians ; (6) to
the Smyrneans ; (7) to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. The first
four were composed in Smyrna ; the other three later in Troas.
These seven epistles, in connexion with a number of other decid-
edly spurious epistles of Ignatius, have come down to us in two
Greek versions, a longer and a shorter. The shorter is unques-
tionably to be preferred to the longer, which abounds with
later interpolations. Besides these, to increase the confusion of
controversy, a Syriac translation has been recently discovered,
which contains only three of the former epistles — those to Poly-
carp, to the Ephesians, and to the Eomans — and these in a much
shorter form. This version is regarded by some as an exact
transfer of the original, by others, with greater probability, as a
mere extract from it for practical and ascetic purposes. The
question therefore lies between the shorter Greek copy and the
Syriac version. The preponderance of testimony is for the for-
mer, in which the letters are no loose patch-work, but were pro-
duced each under its one impulse, were known to Eusebius
(probably even to Polycarp), and agree also with the Armenian
version of the fifth century, as compared by Petermann. The
three Syriac epistles, however, though they lack some of the
strongest passages on episcopacy and on the divinity of Christ,
contain the outlines of the same life-picture, and especially the
same fervid enthusiasm for martyrdom, as the seven Greek
epistles.
Ignatius stands out in history as the ideal of a catholic martyr,
without good reason, a double Parthian expedition of Trajan, one in 107 and anothei
in 115 or IIG. Comp. Francke: Zur Geschichte Trajan's, 1837, p. 253 sqq.
' OncavpJi HTi.iof, Martyr, c 6.
§ 119. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH. 467
and as tlie earliest advocate of tlie liierarcMcal principle in both
its good and its evil points.
As he appears personally in his epistles, his most beautiful and
venerable trait is his glowing love for Christ as God incarnate,
and his enthusiasm for martyrdom. "I would rather die for
Christ," says he, " than rule the whole earth." " It is glorious
to go down in the world, in order to go up into God." He
beseeches the Eomans : " Leave me to the beasts, that I may by
them be made partaker of God. I am a grain of the wheat of
God, and I would be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, that I
may be found pure bread of God. Bather fawn upon the beasts,
that they may be to me a grave, and leave nothing of my body,
that, when I sleep, I may not be burdensome to any one. Then
will I truly be a disciple of Christ, when the world can no longer
even see my body. Pray the Lord for me, that through these
instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God."^ And further
on : " Fire, and cross, and exposure to beasts, scattering of the
bones, hewing of the limbs, crushing of the whole body, wicked
, torments of the devil, may come upon me, if they only make me
partaker of Jesus Christ My love is crucified, and there
is no fire in me, which loves earthly stuff. .... I rejoice not in
the food of perishableness, nor in the pleasures of this life. The
bread of God would I have, which is the flesh of Christ ; and for
drink I wish his blood, which is imperishable love."^
From these and similar passages, however, we perceive also
that his martyr spirit exceeds the limits of the genuine apostolic
soberness and resignation,^ and degenerates almost into boisterous
impatience and morbid fanaticism. There mingles also in all his
extravagant professions of humility and entire unworthiness a
refined spiritual pride and self-commendation. And, finally,
there is something offensive in the tone of his epistle to Poly-
carp, in which he addresses that venerable bishop and apostolic
disciple, who must have been at that time already entered upon
the years of manhood, not as a colleague and brother, but rather
' Ad Rom. c. 2, according to the Syriac text ; c. 4, in tlie Greek.
' Cli. 4 (Svr.), or 5-7 (Gr.). = Comp. Phil. i. 23, 24, and Matt. xxvi. 39.
468 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
as a pupil, with exhortations and warnings, such as : " Strive
after more knowledge than thou hast." " Be wise as the ser-
pents." " Be more zealous than thou art." " Flee the arts of
the devil."^ This last injunction goes even beyond that of Paul
to Tmiothy : " Flee youthful lusts, "^ and can hardly be justified
by it. Thus, not only in force and depth of teaching, but also
in life and suffering, there is a significant difference between an
apostolic and a post-apostolic martyr.
The doctrinal and churchly views of the Ignatian epistles are
framed on a peculiar combination and somewhat materialistic
apprehension of John's doctrine of the incarnation, and Paul's
idea of the church as the body of Jesus Christ. In the " catholic
church " — an expression introduced by him — that is, the episco-
pal orthodox organization of his day, the author sees, as it were,
the continuation of the mystery of the incarnation, on the reality
of which he laid great emphasis against the Docetists ; and in
ever}'- bishop, a visible representative of Christ, and a personal
centre of ecclesiastical unity, which he presses home upon his
readers with the greatest solicitude and almost passionate zeal.
He thus applies those ideas of the apostles directly to the out-
ward constitution, and makes them subservient to the principle
and institution of the growing hierarchy. Here lies the chief
importance of these epistles ; and in this respect we have found
it necessary to distinguish them already in the section on the
organization of the church.^
It is remarkable that the idea of the episcopal hierarchy should
be first clearly and boldly brought out, not by the contemporary
Roman bishop Clement, but by a bishop of the Eastern church ;
though it wiis transplanted by him to the soil of Rome, and there
sealed with his martyr blood. Equally noticeable is the circum-
stance, that these oldest documents of the hierarchy soon became
' Taj KitKOTcxvici iprvyt, according to all the MSS., even the Syriac. Bunsen
proposes to read KaKOTix^ovi, in tlie sense of seductive women, coquettes, instead
of vaAortyinf. But tliis, bcsidcs being a mere conjecture, would not materially soften
the warning.
" 2 Tim. iL 23. ^ Comp. § 108.
§ 119. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH. 469
SO interpolated, curtailed, and mutilated by pious fraud, that it is
to-day almost impossible to discover with certainty the genuine
Ignatius of history under the hyper- and pseudo-Ignatius of tra-
dition.
CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE IGNATIAN CONTROVERSY.
Of all the writings of the apostoHc fathers none have been so much dis-
cussed, especially in modern times, as the Ignatian Epistles. This arises
partly from the importance of their contents to the episcopal question, partly
from the fact of so many different versions. The latter fact seems to argue as
strongly for the hypothesis of a genuine hasis for all, as against the supposition
of the full integrity of any one of the extant texts. The Ignatian controver-
sies have not yet reached a satisfactory result, though they have made con-
siderable progress towards one. In the first place, it is now on all hands
agreed, that of the fifteen epistles which bear the name of Ignatius, at least
eight are wholly spurious and of later origin ; namely, three Latin (two ad
S. Joannem Apost., and one ad S. Mariam Virginem, to which is added a
Responsio of Mary), and five Greek (ad Mariam Cassobolitam, with an answer ;
ad Tarsenses ; ad Antiochenos ; ad Heronem Diaconum Antiochenum ; and
ad Philippenses). Their many oifences against history and chronology are
alone decisive against them. There remain therefore, at most, the seven
epistles, which have been named in the text above and are cited by Eusebius.
But here the views of critics diverge.
1. The longer Oreek recension, first published by Pacaeus in 1557, and by
Gessner in 1559 (in connexion with five spurious epistles), has found de-
fenders in Whiston (1710), and even more recently in C. Meier (1836) ; but
since Rothe (1837) and Arndt (1839) refuted their arguments, it has been
universally given up, as a later expansion.
2. The shorter Greek recension was first published by archbishop Usher in
164i, and then by Isaac Vossius, from a Medicean codex, in 1646. We have
from it also fragments of a Syriac version (in Cureton), and an Armenian
version apparently from the Syriac (printed in 1783 in Constantinople, and
compared by Petermann). In regard to this Greek Text there are three
views, among which scholars are divided : (a) Its genuineness and integrity
are advocated by Pearson (Vindiciae Ignatianae, 1672, against the doubts of
the acute Calvinistic divine, Dallaeus, who, together with Salmasius, Blon-
del, and Sam. Basnage, suspected the whole Ignatian epistles on account
especially of their strong episcopal tendency), latterly by Gieseler, Mohler
(R. C), Rothe (1837), Huther (1841), Dusterdieck (1843), Dorner (1845), and
(since the publication of the shorter Syriac version) by Jacobson. Hefele (R.
C, 1847 and 1855j, Denzinger (R. C, 1849), Petermann (1849), Wordsworth,
Churton (1852), and most thoroughly by Uhlhorn (1851 and '56). (b) The
friends of the three Syriac epistles (see below under No. 3) let only so many
of the seven epistles stand as agree with those. Also Mosheim, Neander,
Thiersch (1852), and Lechler (1857) are inchned to suppose at least interpola-
470 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
tion. (c) Baur (first against Rothe, 1838, then against Bunsen, 1848 and '53),
Schwegler (1846), and more thorouglily Hilgenfeld (1853), allow it, indeed,
the advantage of greater age over the Syriac text, but deny it, with all other
recensions, to Ignatius, and declare it a fiction of the later half of the second
century ; partly because the entire historical situation implied in it is in itself
improbable, partly because it advocates a form of church government and
combats Gnostic heresies, which could not have existed in the age of Ignatius.
This extreme scepticism is closely connected with the whole view of the
Tubingen school in regard to the history of primitive Christianity.
We certainly grant that the integrity of these epistles, even in the shorter
copy, is not beyond all reasonable doubt. As the manuscripts of them con-
tain, at the same time, decidedly spurious epistles (even the Armenian trans-
lation has thirteen epistles), the suspicion arises, that the seven genuine also
have not wholly escaped the hand of the forger. Yet there are, in any case,
very strong arguments for their genuineness and substantial integrity ; viz.
(a) The testimony of the fathers, especially of Eusebius. (b) The raciness and
freshness of their contents, which a forger could not well imitate, (c) The
small number of citations from the New Testament, indicating the period of the
immediate disciples of the apostles, (d) Their way of combating the Judaists
and Docetists (probably Judaizing Gnostics of the school of Cerinthus), show-
ing us Gnosticism as yet in the first stage of its development, (e) Their dog-
matical indefiniteness, particularly in regard to the Trinity and Christology,
notwithstanding very strong expressions in regard to the divinity of Christ,
(f) Their urgent recommendation of episcopacy as an institution still new and
fresh, (g) Their entire silence respecting a Roman primacy, even in the
epistle to the Romans.
3. The Syriac version contains three epistles (to Polycarp, to the Ephesians,
and to the Romans), and even these in a much reduced form, less than half
of the corresponding Greek epistles. It has the subscription : '• Here end
the three epistles of the bishop and martyr Ignatius," on which, however, Bun-
sen lays too great stress ; for, even if it comes from the translator himself, and
not from a mere transcriber, it does not necessarily exclude the existence of
other epistles (comp. Petermann, 1. c. p. xxi.). It was discovered in 1839
and '43 by the Rev. Henry Tattam in a monastery of the Libyan desert,
together with 365 other Syriac manuscripts, now in the British Museum ;
published first by Cureton in 1845, and again in 1849, with the help of a
third MS. discovered in 1847 ; and advocated as genuine by him, as also by
Lee (1846), Bunsen (1847), Ritschl (1851 and 1857), Weiss (1852), and most
fully by Lipsius (1856). In this view concurs also the latest editor of the
works of the apostolic fathers, Dressel, though with the qualification : " Ver-
sio Syriaca exhibere videtur genuina spuriis permixta aequo ac archetypon
Graecum. Utri prior locus sit concedendus, id recte definiri non potest, nisi
novi testes pro hac aut ilia parte reperiantur superstitibus eftioaciores" (Patr.
Apost. 1857. Prolegg. p. XXIX.).
Now, it is true, that all the considerations wC have adduced in I'avor uf the
shorter Greek text, except the first, are equally good, and some of them even
better, for the genuineness of the Syrian Ignatius, which has the additional
§ 120. POLYCARP OF SMYRNA. 471
advantage of lacking many of the most offensive passages (though not in the
epistle to Polycarp). But against the S3^riac text is, in the first place, the
external testimony of antiquity, especially that of Eusebius, who confessedly
knew of and used seven epistles, whereas the manuscript of this version,
according to Cureton, belongs at earliest to the sixth or seventh century, a
much later period, when the longer copy also had become circulated through
all the East, and that too in a Syriac translation, as the fragments given by
Cureton show. Secondly, the internal testimony of the fact, that the Syriac
text, on close examination, betrays the character of a fragmentary extract
from the Greek ; as Baur, Hilgenfeld, and especially Uhlhorn, by an accurate
comparison of the two, have proved in a manner hitherto unrefuted. In this
state of the controversy, we must for the present side with the advocates of
the genuineness of the shorter seven epistles ; hoping, that, perhaps the dis-
covery of some new manuscripts may clear up the obscurity which still
exists.
§ 120. Polycarp of Smyrna.
S. PoLTCARPi, Smyrnaeorum episcopi et hieromartyris, ad Philippenses Epis-
tola, first editions (Gr. & Lat.), by Petrus Halloisius, Duaei, 1633 ; and
Jac. Usseriiis, Lond. 1647 ; also in all the editions of the Apost. Fath.,
especially that of Jacobson, who compared several new manuscripts.
Marttrium S. Polycarpi (epistola circularis ecclesiae Smyrnensis), first com-
plete ed. in Gr. & Lat., by archbish. Usher, Lond. 1647, then in all the
ed. of the Patr. Apost., especially that of Jacobson, who here also made
use of three new codices.
Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John, and a friend of
Ignatius, presided as bishop over the church of Smyrna in Asia
Minor in the first half of the second century ; made a journey
to Eome about the year 160, to adjust the Easter dispute; and
died at the stake in the persecution under Marcus Aurelius,
A.D. 167, at a great age, having served the Lord six and eighty
years.^ He was not so original and intellectually active as
Clement or Ignatius, but a man of truly venerable character,
and simple, patriarchal piety. His disciple Irenaeus of Lyons,
in a letter to liis fellow-pupil Florinus," who had fallen into the
1 Comp. § 54. There is a diiference of opinion as to the date of his death. Sca-
liger, Valesius, Gieseler, and Neander fix on the year 167 ; Baronius and Usher on
169; Tillemout on 166; Stieren on 161; Pearson, Dodwell, Cave, Lardner, and
Gallandi on 147.
« Apud Euseb. H. E. v. 20.
472 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
error of Grnosticism, has given us most valuable reminiscences
of this " blessed and apostolic presbyter," which show how
faithfully he held fast the apostolic tradition, and how he
deprecated all departure from it. He remembered vividly his
mode of life and personal appearance, his discourses to the
people, and his communications respecting the teaching and
miracles of the Lord, as he had received them from the mouth
of John and other eye-witnesses, in agreement with the Holy
Scriptures. In another place,^ Irenaeus says of Polycarp, that
. he all the time taught what he had learned from the apostles,
and what the church handed down ; and relates, that he once
called the Gnostic Marcion in Eome, " the first-born of Satan."
This is by no means incredible in a disciple of John, who, with
all his mildness, forbids his peoj)le to salute the deniers of the
true divinity and humanity of the Lord;^ and it is confirmed by
a passage in the epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians,^ where
he says : " Whoever doth not confess, that Jesus Christ is come
in the flesh, is antichrist,^ and whoever doth not confess the
mystery of the cross, is of the devil ; and he, who wresteth the
words of the Lord according to his own pleasure, and saith,
there is no resurrection and judgment, is the first-born of Satan.
Therefore would we forsake the empty babbling of this crowd
and their false teachings, and turn to the word which hath been
given us from the beginning, watching in prayer,^ continuing in
fasting, and most humbly praying God, that he lead us not into
tem])tation,^ as the Lord hath said : ' The spirit is willing, but
the flesh is weak.' "'
This epistle to the Philippians, which consists of fourteen
short chapters, and has been published in full since 1633, is the
only document that remains to us from this last witness of the
Johanncan age. It is mentioned first by his pupil Irenaeus ; it
was still in public use in the churches of Asia Minor in the time
of Jerome; and its contents correspond with the known life and
character of Polycarp ; its genuineness there is no just reason to
' Adv. liner, iii. 3, § 4. "2 Jnn. 10. « Cli. 7. ■» Comp. 1 Jiio. iv. 3
5 Comp. 1 Pet. iv. 7. « Matt. vi. 13. ' Matt. x.wi. 41.
§ 120. POLYCAEP OF SMYRNA. 473
doubt.^ It was written after tlie death of Ignatius (whose
epistles it promises, c. 13, to transmit) in the name of Polycarp
and his presbyters ; commends the Philippians for the love they
showed Ignatius in bonds and his companions, and for their
adherence to the ancient faith; and proceeds with simple,
earnest exhortations to love, harmony, contentment, patience,
and perseverance, to praj^er even for enemies and persecutors ;
also giving special directions for deacons, presbyters, youths,
wives, widows, and virgins; with various reminiscences from
the Grospels and the Epistles of Paul and John (which make it
important to the history of the canon), and with occasional
strokes against Grnostic Docetistic errors. Of Christ it speaks in
high terms, as the Lord, who sits at the right hand of Grod, to
whom everything in heaven and earth is subject ; whom every
living being serves ; who is coming to judge the quick and the
dead ; whose blood God will require of all, who believe not on
him.^ Polycarp guards with sound feeling against being con-
sidered equal with the apostles : "I write these things, brethren,
not in arrogance, but because ye have requested me. For
neither I, nor any other like me, can attain the wisdom of the
blessed and glorious Paul, who was among you, and in the pre-
sence of the then living accurately and firmly taught the word
of truth, who also in his absence wrote you an epistle,^ from
which ye may edify yourselves in the faith given to you, which
is the mother of us all,* hope following after, and love to God
and to Christ, arid to neighbors leading further.^ For when
any one is full of these virtues, he fulfils the command of
righteousness ; for he, who has love, is far from all sin."^ This
does not agree altogether with the system of St. Paul. But
it should be remembered that Polycarp, in the very first
' Nor has its integrity been called in question with sufficient reason by Dallaeus,
and quite recently by Bunsen, and Ritschl in the second ed. of his Entstehung der
altkath. Kirche, p. 58-1-000.
2 Ch. 2.
* 'ETTiCTTi/Aaj must here probably be understood, lilve the Latin Uterae, of one
epistle.
^ Gal. iv. 26. 5 Trpoayoiam. * Ch. 3.
474 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
chapter, represents fuitli and the whole salvation as the gift of
free grace.^
The Martyrium S. Poljcarpi, in the form of a circular letter of
the church of Smyrna to the church of Philomelium in Phrygia,
and all " parishes of the Catholic church," appears, from ch.
18, to have been composed before the first annual celebration of
his martyrdom. Eusebius has incorporated in his church history
the greater part of this beautiful memorial, and Usher first pub-
lished it complete in the Greek original, 1647. It contains an
edifying description of the trial and martyrdom of Polycarp,
though embellished with some marvellous additions of legendary
poesy. When, for example, the pile was kindled, the flames sur-
rounded the body of Polycarp, like the full sail of a ship, with-
out touching it ; on the contrary it shone, unhurt, with a gorgeous
color, like white baken bread, or like gold and silver in a crucible,
and gave forth a lovely fragrance as of precious spices. Then
one of the executioners j)ierced the body of the saint with a
spear, and forthwith there flowed such a stream of blood that
the fire was extinguished by it. The narrative mentions also
a dove, which flew up from the burning pile; but Eusebius,
Eufinus, and Nicephorus make no reference to it.^ This dove
was probably first marked on the margin, and designed as a
symbol of the pure soul of the martyr, or of the power of the
Holy Spirit which pervaded him ; but it reminds us at once of
the eagle, which flew up from the ashes of the Eoman emperors,
and proclaimed their apotheosis, and is thus connected with the
rising worship of martyrs and saints. Throughout its later chap-
ters this narrative considerably exceeds the sober limits of the
Acts of the Apostles in the description of the murtyrdom of
Stephen and the elder James, and serves to illustrate, in this
1 XuptTi i<TT€ (TEtrwj^ifvyi, OVK i^ tpyui', liXAu •ScXi'i^art ^eov, 6ta 'lijeroS XpioroC, COmp. Eph.
il 8, 9.
" All sorts of corrections, accordingly, have been proposed for Kcptarcpd in c. 1 6 ;
e.g. £jr' dpiarena. a sinistra; or ncpl aripva; or TTtf)inT£pa a'liKiToi (sciiitillarum iiistar
sanguinis). Coinp. Ilefelc: Patr. Ap. p. 288 (4tli ed.) note 4 ; and Kuinart : Ac!,-!
primorum martyr. 1713 (ed. 2) p 35. The symbol of the dove is frequently tumid
on ancient sepulchral monuments.
§ 121. THE OTHER APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 475
respect also, the undeniable difference, notwithstanding all the
afiinity, between the apostolic and the old catholic literature.
§ 121. The Other Apostolic Fathers. Bariiahas, Hermas, Papias.
The Epistle to Diognetus.
In addition to the general literature quoted at § 117 compare :
1. Hefele (R. C.) : Das Sendschreiben des Ap. Barnabas auf s Neue unter-
sucht, iibersetzt, und erklart. Tiib. 1840.
2. Hermae Pastor Graece. Primum ed. R. Anger. Praef. et indicem adj.
Gr. Dindorf. Lips. 1856. Hermae Pastor G-raece a Tischendorfio
editus, in Dressel's edition of the Patres Apost. 1857, p. 572-637, with
Tischendorf's dissertation de Herma G-raeco Lipsiensi, p. XLIV-LV.
3. The fragments of Papias collected in Routh : Reliquiae sacrae I., p. 3-16.
4. Epistola ad Diognetum, ed. Otto (with Lat. transl., introduction, and
critical notes), ed. 2. Lips. 1852. Der Brief an Diognet, herausg. u.
bearbeitet von Hollenberg. Berl. 1853. Comp. also Semisch, in Her-
zog's Encykl. III. 407-410.
The writings which have come down to us under the names
of Barnabas and Hermas are of uncertain origin, and inferior to
the other productions of the apostolic fathers in matter as well
as in sound simplicity, and contain many elements which we
must ascribe to a later generation.
1. The Catholic Epistle of Barnabas, in twenty-one chap-
ters,^ first published complete by Usher, 1643, and by Voss, 1646,
is anonymous, and was first cited by Clement of Alexandria,
and Origen, as a work of this apostolic man, who plays so pro-
minent a part in the Acts.^ A genuine production of Barnabas
would doubtless have found a place in the canon, with the writ-
ings of Mark and Luke, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. Be-
sides, the contents of this epistle are not worthy of him. It has
many good ideas, and valuable testimonies, such as that in favor
of the observance of the Christian sabbath. But it goes to ex-
tremes in opposition to Judaism, and indulges in all sorts of arti-
ficial, sometimes absurd, allegorical fancies.^ It is a general
' The first four chapters, and part of the fifth, exist only in Latin, the rest in the
Greek original.
* Acts i. 23; iv. 37; ix. 26 sq. ; xi. 22, 30, &c. ^ Ch. 5-12.
476 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
letter to Jewish Christian readers (according to Hilgenfeld, Gen-
tile Christian), and has the same object as the Epistle to the
Hebrews, but is infinitely behind it in depth, spiritual fervor and
unction. It endeavors to show, that Christianity is the all-sujfi-
cient divine institution for salvation, and that Judaism, with all
its laws and ceremonies, was entirely done away. It is an unsound
application of the true thought, that the old is passed away,
and all is made new by Christ. "It is sin," says the writer,
" and an aggravation of guilt, to assert, that the old covenant is
binding also on Christians. Christians should labor for deeper
knowledge to know the difference. Christ has given a law, but
a new one, without the yokfe of constraint. Broken are the
tables of Moses, that the love of Christ may be sealed in your
hearts."^ By Judaism, however, the anonymous author under-
stands not the Old Testament, but the carnal misapprehension
of it. The Old Testament is, with him, rather a veiled Chris-
tianity, which he puts into it by his mystical allegorical interpre-
tation, as Philo smuggled into it the Platonic philosophy. In
this allegorical conception he goes so far, that he actually denies
the literal historical sense. He asserts, for example, that God
never willed the sacrifice and fasting, the sabbath observance and
temple- worship of the Jews, and that the laws of food did not
relate at all to the eating of clean and unclean animals, but only
to intercourse with different classes of men, and to certain virtues
and vices. Such an ultra-Paulinism, verging almost to the
anti-Judaistic Gnosticism, surely does not suit the apostolic Bar-
nabas, who rather stood as a mediator between Paul and the
Jewish apostles. "With many forced and insijiid views, however,
the pseudo-Barnabas has some profound glances, and some ink-
lings of a Christian philosophy. He broke the way in a measure
to the Christian Gnostic theology of the Alexandrian fathers ;
and hence was so overrated by them.
The work comes probably from some Alexandrian Jewish
Christian, who was acquainted with Philo's writings, and gave to
Ch. 4.
§ 121. THE OTHER APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 477
his allegorical handling of the Old Testament a Christian turn.
Hefele puts the composition between the years 107 and 120.
2. The Shepherd of Hermas^ represents a more practical
and Judaizing spirit, and is distinguished from all the produc-
tions of the apostolic fathers by its literary form. It is a
remarkable, but rather tedious apocalyptic book, a sort of didac-
tic religious 'romance. It has come down to us in an old,
inaccurate Latin translation, and was first published by Faber
Stapulensis in 1513. The Greek text, which was brought from
Mount Athos to Leipzig in 1856, and there published, is not the
original, but seems to be a mediaeval retranslation from the
Latin. The circumstance that He^-mas in the second and third
books is instructed by an angel in the costume of a shepherd,
gives the work its title. The author professes to be a contempo-
rary of the Eoman Clement, and appears to have been a married
layman,^ probably a Roman merchant, who had lost his wealth
through his own sins and the misdeeds of his neglected sons,
and had incurred the punishment of God, but had been awakened
thereby to repentance, and now came forward himself as a plain
preacher of repentance in the church. But now comes the
question : is he the apostolic Hennas, whom Paul greets in Eom.
xvi. 14 ; or a later Hermas (Hermes), a brother of the Roman
bishop Pius I., about the middle of the second century ? The
former view was first proposed by Origen, though only as a pri-
vate opinion ; while the latter is confidently asserted in Mura-
tori's Fragmentum de Canone, of about a.d. 170,^ and seems to
have generally prevailed in the Latin church. It is possible that
single parts, especially the visions, originated in the beginning
of the second century, as Irenaeus cites a passage from them as
' Pastor Hermae ; 'O Hotfifiv.
2 So Fleury and Hilgenfeld; while Tillemont and Hefele suppose him to have
been a presbyter.
3 " Pastorem vero nuperrime temporibus nostris in urbe Roma Herma (Hermas)
conscripsit, sedente cathedra urbis Romae ecclesiae Pio episcopo, fratre ejus. Et ideo
legi eum quidem opportet, sed publicare vero in ecclesia populo neque inter proplie-
tas completum (read completes) numero, neque inter apostolos, in finem temporura
potest."
•i78 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
if from Scripture •/ and that the younger Hennas was only the
collector, translator, and compiler of the work. The estimates
of the value of this document were very different. The Alex-
andrian fathers, who, with all their learning, were wanting in
sound critical discrimination, use it often with great regard, and
Origcn even calls it divinely inspired.^ On the contrary, the
Fragmentum above mentioned reckons it among the apocrypha,
with the remark that it should be read only in private, and not
publicly in the church. Tertullian, who took offence at its
antinomian doctrine of the possibility of a second repentance,
and the lawfulness of second marriage, speaks even contemptu-
ously of it, as also does Jerome. At all events it is far from the
apostolic simplicity, and often reminds one of such Jewish
apocalyptic writings as the Book of Enoch, the Fourth Book
of Ezra, and the lost Book of Eldad and Mcdad, expressly cited
by Hermas. Its doctrine of angels, particularly, flowed from
such apocryphal sources.
As to its matter, the Pastor Hcrmae is a sort of system of
Christian morality, and a call to repentance and to a renovation
of the already somewhat slumbering and secularized church.
It falls into three books :^ (1) Visiones ; four visions and revela-
tions, which were given to the autlior in the neighborhood of
Rome, and in which the church appears to him first in the form
of a venerable matron, then as a tower, and lastly as a virgin.
(2) Mandata, or twelve commandments, prescribed by an angel
in the garb of a shepherd. (3) Similitudines, or ten parables,
like the visions, in which the church again appears in the form
of a building, and the different virtues are represented under the
figures of stones and trees.
The theological hue of the Pastor is very different from that
of the first epistle of Clement to tlie Corinthians, and bears
witness that in the Roman church, whence it likewise issued,
' Adv. haer. IV. 20 § 2 : E^tcv h yoa>pfi ; perliaps through a fault of memory.
2 " Valde utilis et divinitus inspirata." Explan. in Ep. ad Rom. xvi. 14.
3 This division, however, is made by later editors, and is found neither in the Ujanu-
scripta nor willi the ancient wi-iters.
§ 121. THE OTHER APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 479
tlie free Pauline spirit dwelt side by side, in tlie beginning of the
second century, with a legal Jewish Christian tendency, which
afterwards, in a far richer form, became the reigning one. The
work reminds one of the Epistle of James, and shows no trace
of the influence of Paul, though it nowhere contends with him.
It knows little of the gospel, and nothing of justifying faith;
on the contrary, it talks much of the " law of Christ " and of
repentance, lays chief stress on practice, enjoins fasting and
voluntary poverty, and teaches the merit, even the supereroga-
tory merit, of good works, and the sin-atoning virtue of martyr-
dom. Its Jewish Christianity, however, is by no means
Ebionistic, but quite conformed to catholic ideas. The work of
Hermas requires baptism as indispensable to salvation ; agrees
in all essential points with the orthodox christology, as well
as with the Eoman penance theory ; and rests on the view of
an exclusive church, in which alone salvation is to be found.
Nor does it, with all its zeal for a stricter discipline, run into
the excesses of Montanism ; it ascribes, indeed, supererogatory
merit to abstinence, but allows second marriage and second
repentance, at least till the return of the Lord, which is supposed
to be near at hand.^ It closes with the characteristic exhorta-
tion : " Do good works, ye who have received earthly blessings
from the Lord, that the building of the tower (the church)
may not be finished while ye loiter ; for the labor of the build-
ing has been interrupted for your sakes. Unless, therefore,
ye hasten to do right, the tower will be finished, and ye will be
shut out."
3. Papias, a disciple of John (?) and friend of Polycarp,
bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, till towards the middle of the
second century, was a pious man, and well read in the Scriptures,
but credulous and weak minded. He entertained a grossly mate-
riahstic view of the millennium. He collected with great zeal
the oral traditions of the apostles respecting the discourses and
works of Jesus, and published them under the title: "Explana-
' On account of this comparative mildness, Tertullian calls Hermas sarcastically,
" ille apocryphus Pastor moechorum." De pud. c. 20, comp. c. 10.
480 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
tions of the Lord's Discourses/'^ in five books. Altliough this
work (according to Galhindi and Pitra) maintained itself down
to the thirteenth century, yet we possess only some fragments of
it in Irenaeus and Eusebius, which, together with a few valuable
notices, in regard, for example, to the Gospels of Matthew and
Mark, contain perfectly monstrous and fabulous inventions.
Papias puts into the mouth of the Lord, for instance, the follow-
ing prophecy concerning the vines in the millennium : " The
days shall come, in which vines shall grow up, each having ten
thousand main branches, and on every main branch ten thousand
arms, and on every arm ten thousand shoots,- and on every
shoot ten thousand bunches, and on every bunch ten thousand
grapes, and every grape, when pressed, shall give twenty-five
measures of wine. And if any one take hold of a holy bunch,
another bunch shall cry out, I am better, take me, and through
me bless the Lord."^ Even understood as a figure for the in-
exhaustible spiritual fruitfulness of Christ and his church, this
parabolic speech contrasts quite too strongly with our Lord's
discourses in the Gospels, to lay any possible claim to credibility.
4. The anonymous Epistle to Diogxetus, in twelve chap-
ters, first published in Greek by Henry Stephanus, 1592, is a
reply to a distinguished heathen^ in vindication of Christianity,
and forms the transition from the post-apostolic literature to the
apologetic. It evinces fine taste and classical culture, is remark-
able for its fresh enthusiasm of faith, richness of thought, and
elegance of style, and is altogether one of the most beautiful
memorials of Christian antiquity. We have already given, in
the introduction to this period,^ its masterly description of the
• AiiyitDV KVptOKtov t^r)y»i(r<:i5.
" Preserved in the Latin translation of Irenaeus, Adv. haer. Y. c. 33, § 3 (comp. § 4),
wlio seems to have taken this childish parable in good faith. With it agrees the
fragment of Papias, which Dom Pitra, in the first vol. of the Spicilegium Solesniense,
communicates from an Armenian manuscript of the twelfth century. But this was
not a translation of Papias, as Pitra supposes, but of Irenaeus, as the title and the
opening words plainly intimate.
3 Otto conjectures that he was the preceptor of the emperor Marcus Aurelius,
whose name was Diognetus. But this would bring the composition down to the
middle of the second century.
* See § 46.
§ 122. JUSTIN" THE PHILOSOPHER AND MARTYR. 481
Christian life truly worthy of a disciple of the apostles. And
the author calls himself such in the text/ but not till the eleventh
chapter, which, with the twelfth, seems to be an addition by a
later hand, and is even marked in the manuscripts as suspicious.
The epistle itself has no certain marks of the precise time of its
composition, but proves itself in general a production of the
transition period between the simple practical faith of the apos-
tolic fathers and the reflective theology of the apologists. The
manuscripts, and more recently Otto, ascribe it to Justin Martyr,
whose style, however, is far from being so pure and forcible as
this. The epistle, also, rather breathes the free spirit of the
Pauline school. Hefele puts it among the works of the apostolic
fathers, and assigns it to the age of Trajan, while others place it
later in the reign of Adrian, and attribute it to the apologist
Quadratus (so Dorner) or Aristides.
§ 122. Justin the Philosopher and Martyr.
I. Corpus Apologetartjm Christianorum saeculi secundi, ed. J. C. Th. Otto,
Jen. 1847 sqq. (The first 5 vols, contain the genuine and spurious Opera
S. JusTiNi Philosophi et Martyris.) Older ed. of the Apologists by Prud.
Maranus, Par. 1742, republ. at Venice, 1747. The " Apologies " of
Justin M. were also edited by Grabe in 1700, and by Thirlby in 1722.
II. Bp. Kaye : Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Justin Martyr.
Cambr. 1829, 3d ed. 1853. C. Semisch : Justin der Miirtyrer. Bresl.
1840, 2 vols. The same in English, by Ryland, Edinb. 1844. 2 vols.
C. Otto: Zur Characteristik des heil. Justinus. Wien, 1852. Also
his art. " Justinus der Apologet," in Ersch and G-ruber : Encykl. Se-
cond Section, 30th part (1853), pp. 39-76.
The next series of the church fathers, which flourished in the
reigns of Adrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, is the
Apologists ; so called, because they directed their literary labors
chiefly, though not exclusively, to the defence of Christianity
against the attacks and the slanders of heathen and Jewish
enemies.2 They are distinguished from the apostolic fathers by
greater culture and learning. They were mostly philosophers
A.iToaT6\wv y€v6^ivoi fta^rirfjs, 2 Comp, 8 60—66.
81
482 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
and rhetoricians, wlio embraced Christianity in mature age after
earnest investigation, and found peace in it for mind and heart.
Their writings breathe the same heroism, the same enthusiasm
for the faith, which animated the martyrs in their sufferings and
death.
The most eminent of these is Flavins Justinus, sumamed, so
early as by Tertullian, "Philosopher and Martyr." He was
born towards the close of the first century, or in the beginning
of the second, in the Graeco-Roman colony of Flavia Neapolis,
the ancient Sichem in Samaria (now Nablus), and educated in
the Hellenic heathenism. Thirsting for truth, he went, as he
himself relates, to a Stoic, then to a Peripatetic, then to a Pytha-
gorean, without finding satisfaction. At last he cast himself into
the arms of Platonism, and thought himself already near the
promised goal of this philosophy, the vision of Grod, when an
unknown venerable old man, in a solitary walk on the sea-shore,
shook his confidence in all human wisdom, and pointed him to
the writings of the Old Testament prophets. In these he soon
found the infallible philosophy, which rests upon the firm
ground of divine revelation.
Forthwith he sought the society of the Christians, whose pious
walk and courage in death had already extorted his esteem, and
received instruction from them in the history and doctrine of the
gospel. Thus, in perhaps the thirtieth 3'ear of his age, the
enthusiastic Platonist became a believing Christian. To Tatian
also, and Thcophilus of Antioch, and Hilary, the Jewish pro-
phets were in like manner the bridge to the Christian faith.
After his conversion Justin devoted himself wholly to the
vindication of the Christian religion, as an itinerant evangelist,
with no fixed abode, and no regular office in the church. " Every
one," says he, " who can preach the truth and does not preach
it, incurs the judgment of God." And like Aristides, Athena-
goras, Tertullian, Heraclas, Gregory Thaumaturgus, he retained
his philosopher's cloak,' that lie might the more readily assume
' Toi/?wi, rnijiiftny, pallium.
§ 122. JUSTIN THE PHILOSOPHER AND MARTYR. 483
philosopliical religious discourse. As soon as lie appeared in
early morning, as he Mmself tells us, upon a public walk,
many came to Mm with : ^iXorfo^ps X"-"?- • ^^ Ephesus he made an
effort to gain the Jew Trypho and his friends to the Christian
faith.
He labored last, for the second time, in Rome. Here, by the
instigation of a Cynic philosopher, Crescens, whom he had
beaten in a disputation, he, with six other Christians, about the
year 166, was scourged and executed. Fearlessly and joyfully,
as in life, so also in the face of death, he bore witness to the
truth, and proved by his own example the steadfastness, of which
he had so often boasted in his beieving brethren. His last
words were : " We desire nothing more than to suffer for our
Lord Jesus Christ; for this gives us salvation and joy fulness
before his dreadful judgment seat, at which all the world must
appear."
To his oral testimony Justin added extensive literary labors
on the field of apology and polemics. His principal works are a
dialogue with the Jew Trypho (soon after a.d. 139), in which he
answers the objections of Judaism, and two Apologies for
Christianity against heathenism, a larger, of the year 139, ad-
dressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius, and a smaller, addressed
to Marcus Aurelius, between 161 and 166. Of the other works
which bear his name, an address "To the Grreeks," an "Exhor-
tation to the Greeks," a treatise " On the Unity of Grod," another
"On the Resurrection," and the "Epistle to Diognetus" described
in preceding section, are of more or less doubtful genuineness ;
the " Deposition of the True Faith," the epistle " to Zenas and
Serenus," the "Refutation of some Theses of Aristotle," the
" Questions to the Orthodox," the " Questions of the Christians
to the Heathens," and the " Questions of the Heathens to the
Christians," are decidedly spurious, and belong in some cases to
the third and fourth centuries; and the polemic works "against
all Heresies," mentioned by himself in his first apology, and
" against Marcion," of which Irenaeus gives us fragments, are
lost. Perhaps tlie latter was only a part of the former.
481 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
The works of Justin bring vividly before us tlie time wben
the church was still a small sect, despised and persecuted, but
bold in faith and joyful in death. They everywhere attest his
honesty and earnestness, his enthusiastic love for Christianity,
and his fearlessness in its defence against all assaults from with-
out and perversions from within. Justin was a man of very
extensive reading, enormous memory, inquiring spirit, and many
profound ideas, but wanting in critical discernment. His mode
of reasoning is often ingenious and convincing, but sometimes
loose and rambling, fanciful and puerile. His style is easy and
vivacious, but diffuse and careless. He is the first of the church
fathers to bring classical scholarship and Platonic philosophy in
contact with the Christian theology. He found in Platonism
many responses to the gospel, which he attributed in part to the
fragmentary, germ-like revelation of the Logos before the incar-
nation,^ and in part to an acquaintance with the Mosaic scrip-
tures. With him Christ was the absolute reason,^ and Chris-
tianity the only true philosoph3\^ His sources of theological
knowledge are, partly the living church tradition, partly the
Holy Scriptures, from which he cites most frequently, and gene-
rally from memory, the Old Testament prophets (in the Septua-
gint), and the " Memorials of the Apostles,"^ as he calls the
canonical Gospels. He expressly mentions the Eevelation of
John. But, like the Pastor Hermae, he nowhere notices Paul ;
though several allusions to passages of his Epistles can hardly
be mistaken, and Justin's position towards heathenism was any-
thing but the Ebionistic, and was fixr more akin to that of Paul.
Any dogmatical inference from tliis silence is the less admissible,
since in the genuine writings of this father not one of the apos-
tles or evangelists is expressly named, but reference is alwa3'S
made directly to Christ. Justin's exegesis of the Old Testament
is typological and Messianic throughout, finding references
everywhere to Christ
• Atfyoj OTrepfiaTiKSs, ^ 'O toj Xdyof.
3 Miii /; ifii'^uaoipia d<T,pa\fii re Ka'i avfipopoi. * 'At'i^i. r; <■ i/ci'/i ir i rioy dirooro'Xtoi'.
§ 123. THE OTHER APOLOGISTS OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 485
§ 123. The Other Oreeh Apologists of the Second Century.
Corpus Apologetarum, etc., by Maranus and by Otto, see § 122.
Somewliat earlier than Justin, under Adrian, Quadratus, a
disciple of the apostles and bishop of Athens, Aristides, an
eloquent philosopher of Athens, and Aristo of Pella, wrote
apologies for Christianity ; the first two to the heathens, the
third to the Jews. But their works, a few fragments excepted,
have all disappeared. The same is true of the writings of Me-
LITO of Sardis (of which we have interesting fragments in Euse-
bius), Claudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis, and Miltiades,
who all lived under Marcus Aurelius. The apology of Melito,
one of the most eminent bishops and most prolific authors of his
time, from whom Eusebius enumerates eighteen works, was
composed about the year 170, and has been recently re-dis-
covered in a Syriac translation, and placed in the British Mu-
seum, but not yet published. We have an important fragment
from him on the canon of the Old Testament.
Of the following apologists, who flourished after the middle
of the second century, we possess the works :
1. Tatian, of Assyria, an itinerant philosopher, afterwards a
pupil of Justin, whom he met in Kome. In his " Address to
the Grreeks"^ he vindicates Christianity as the "philosophy of
the barbarians," and exposes the contradictions, absurdities, and
immoralities of the Grreek mythology from actual knowledge
and with much spirit and acuteness, but with vehement con-
tempt and bitterness. He afterwards fell back to Gnosticism,
and became the founder of the ascetic sect of the Bncratites.^
Among his lost works is also the " Diatessaron,"^ a harmony of
the four Gospels, in which, according to Theodoret, he suppresses
the genealogies and all that attests the human descent of Jesus ;
— under the influence, no doubt, of a Gnostic docetistic spirit.
Daniel, in his monograph on Tatian, thinks he only anticipated
Aoyoj 7rpdj"'EXA>7j/af. 2 Comp. § 72, p. 245. ' Aia
reoaapdiv.
486 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
monkery, and, a centuiy later, with tlie same principles, would
have been reckoned among the saints. But even in the second cen-
tury there was a considerable difference between the asceticism of
the catholic church and that of the Gnostic dualistic stamp.
2. Athenagoras, a converted philosopher of Athens, ad-
dressed a irpea^iia (intcrccssio) '^spi xpitfrjav^v to Marcus Aurelius
and his son Commodus (about 177), in which he calmly, clearly,
eloquently, and conclusively refutes the three charges of athe-
ism, incest, and Thyestean feasts. Besi(ies this we have from
him an able treatise " On the Resurrection of the Dead," which
he endeavors to establish from the wisdom, power, and justice
of God, as well as from the destiny of man.
3. Theophilus of Antioch, who died while bishop there in
181, wrote three books in defence of the Christian faith, addressed
to an educated heathen friend, Antolycus;^ evincing extensive
knowledge of Grecian literature, considerable philosophical
talent, and a power of graphic, elegant representation. lie is the
first to use the term " trias" for the divine trinity. His other
works, polemic and exegetical, are lost.
4. Under the name of the philosopher IIermias, otherwise
entirely unknown to us, we have a " Mockery of Heathen Philo-
sophers," ^ which, with the light arms of wit and sarcasm, en-
deavors to prove from the history of philosophy, by exposing
the contradictions of the various systems, the truth of Paul's
declaration, that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with
God. Many scholars, however, assign this small and unimpor-
tant work to a much later period.
Contemporary with these apologists, though not of their class,
were Dionysius, bishop of Corinth (about 170), who wrote eight
Catholic Epistles to the Lacedemonians, the Athenians, the Ro-
mans, and others ; and Hegesippus ( f about 180), an orthodox
Jewish Christian, who collected on his extensive travels "Memo-
rials" ^ of the apostolic and post-apostolic age, particularly of the
' ITpoj Airo'XuffOf. ' Aiiirrvpiiiis Tuv c^o) <fn\oa6<pu>i'.
» ■Y7T»,,i.,i//ara, in fivG books. The Fragments of Hegesippus are collected in
Routh's Reliquiae sacrae, sec. ed. vol i. 205-219.
§ 124. IRENAEUS. 487
Palestinian cliurclies. But nothing remains to us of either, except
some fragments in Eusebius. The work of Hegesippus was the
first effort, though a very imperfect one, towards a history of the
church. His reports on the character and martyrdom of St.
James the Just, Simeon of Jerusalem, the rise of heresies, the
episcopal succession and the preservation of the orthodox doc-
trine in Corinth and Eome, as embodied in the history of Eusebius,
command attention for their antiquity; but as they show that
his object was apologetic and polemical rather than historical,
and as they bear a somewhat Judaizing (though by no means
Ebionistic) coloring, they must be received with critical caution.
§ 124. Irenaeus.
I. S. Irenaei Episcopi Lugdun. quae supersunt omnia, ed. A. Stierex, Lips.
1853. 2 vols. (The second volume " contains the Prolegomena to the
earlier editions by Erasmus, Basel, 1526 ; Gallasius, Gen. 1570 ; Gry-
naeiis, Bas. 1571; Fevardentius, Col. 1596 and often; Grabe, Oxf. 1702;
and, above all, Massuet, Par. 1710, and Ven. 1734, 2 vols. fol. ; also the
disputations of Maffei and Pfaff on the Fragments of Irenaeus.) The
five books Adv. Haereses are also separately edited with comments by
W. WiGAN Harvey, Cambr. 1857, in 2 vols.
II. Ken. Massuet (R. C.) : Dissertationes in Irenaei libros (de hereticis, de
Irenaei vita, gestis et scriptis, de Ir. doctrina), prefixed to his echtion of
the Opera. Deyling : Irenaeus, evangelicae veritatis confessor ac testis.
Lips. 1721 (against Massuet). Stieren: Art. "Irenaeus" in Ersch and
G-ruber's Encykl. II. sect. Vol. XXIII. J. Beaven : Life of Irenaeus.
Lond. 1841. Duncker: Des heil. Irenaeus Christologie. Gott. 1843.
Schaff: Irenaeus (in "Der Deutsche Kirchenfreund," vol. V.) Mer-
cersb. 1852.
Almost simultaneously with the apology against false religions
without arose the polemic literature against the heresies, the
various forms of pseudo- Christianity, especially the Gnostic ; and
upon this was formed the dogmatic theology of the church. At
the head of the old catholic controversialists stand Irenaeus and
Lis disciple Hippolytus, both of Greek education, but both
belonging, in their ecclesiastical relations and labors, to the
West.
Irenaeus sprang from Asia Minor, was born between the years
488 SECOND PERIOD. A.D, 100-311.
120 and 140, and enjoyed in his youth the instruction of the
venerable Polycarp of Smyrna.'' Through this hnk he still was
connected with the Johannean age. The spirit of his preceptor
passed over to him. " What I heard from him," says he, " that
wrote I not on paper, but in my heart, and by the grace of God
I constantly bring it afresh to mind." Perhaps he also accom-
panied Polycarp on his journey to Rome in connexion with the
Easter controversy. During the persecution in South Gaul
under Marcus Aurelius, he was a presbyter there, and was sent
by his people to the Eoman bishop Eleutherus, as a mediator in
the Montanistic disputes. After the death of Pothinus, he took
the place of this aged martyr in 178 as bishop of Lyons, and
labored there with zeal and success, by tongue and pen, for the
restoration of the heavily visited church, for the spread of Chris-
tianity in Gaul, and for the defence and development of the
doctrine of the church. He is supposed to have died as a martyr
in the persecution under Septimius Severus, A.D. 202 (though
the silence of Tertullian and Eusebius makes this point very
doubtful), and was buried under the altar of the church of St
John in Lyons.
L-enaeus was the leading representative of the Asiatic Johan-
nean school in the second half of the second century, the cham-
pion of catholic orthodoxy against Gnostic heresy, and the
mediator between the Eastern and "Western churches. He united
a learned Greek education and philosophical penetration with
practical wisdom and moderation, and a sound sense of the sim-
ple and essential in Christianity. We plainly trace in him the
influence of the spirit of John. " The true way to God," says
he, in opposition to the false Gnosis, "is love. It is better to be
willing to know nothing but Jesus Christ the crucified, than to
fall into ungodliness through over-curious questions and paltry
subtleties." He was an enemy of all error and schism, and, on
the whole, the most orthodox of the ante-Nicene fathers, except
in eschatology. Here, with Papias and most of his contempo-
' Conip. § 120.
§ 124. IRENAEUS. 489
raries, lie maintained the millenarian views whicli were subse-
quently abandoned by the catholic church. But with all liis
zeal for pure and sound doctrine, he was liberal towards subor-
dinate differences, and remonstrated with the bishop of Eome
for his unapostolic efforts to force an outward uniformity in
respect to the time and manner of celebrating Easter.^ " The
apostles have ordained," says he in the third fragment, which
appears to refer to that controversy, " that we make conscience
with no one of food and drink, or of particular feasts, new moons,
and sabbaths. "Whence, then, controversies; whence schisms?
We keep feasts but with the leaven of wickedness and deceit,
rending asunder the church of God, and we observe the out-
ward, to the neglect of the higher, faith and love." He showed
the same moderation in the Montanistic troubles.
The most important work of Irenaeus is his refutation of
Gnosticism,^ in five books. It was composed in the pontificate
of Eleutherus, therefore between the years 177 and 192. It is at
once the polemic theological masterpiece of the ante-Nicene age,
and the richest mine of information respecting the Gnostic, par-
ticularly the Valentinian heresy, and the church doctrine of
that age.^
His epistle against Florinus on the unity of God and the origin
of evil, a letter to the Eoman bishop Victor on the Easter ques-
tion, and a writing to Blastus on schism,^ are all gone except a
few fragments. So with his treatise on the peculiarity of the
style of the apostle Paul, which he justly traces to the mighty
momentum of thought in that impetuous mind. Perhaps Ire-
naeus is the author also of the letter of the churches of Lyons
1 Comp. § 98.
2 "EAtyxo? Kal dvaTpmrii Tfjg ipevSoviiiov yvasacui (1 Tim. vi. 20) ; cited, since Jerome,
under the simpler title: Adversus haereses. The Greek original of the work has
come down to us only hj fragments (in Euseb., Theodor., and especially Epiphanius:
Haer. xxxi. c. 9-33) ; but we have it complete in a literal Latin translation crowded
with Grecisms. An attempt to translate it back, for the better understanding of it,
has been made on the first four chapters of the 3rd book by H. W. J. Thiersch
("Stud. u. Kritiken," 1842). Semler's objections to its genuineness have been so
thoroughly refuted by Chr. G. F. Walch (De authentia librorum Irenaei, 1774), that
Mohler and Stieren might have spared themselves the trouble.
3 Comp. § 70-74. 4 n^pi <T;^;ia/xaruf.
490 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
and Yienne on the persecution there, — a worthy parallel to the
similar letter of the church of Smyrna.
Finally, we must mention four more Greek fragments of
Irenaeus, which Pfaflf discovered at Turin in 1715, and first pub-
lished. Their genuineness has been called in question by some
Eoman divines, though without sufficient reason. The first
treats of the true knowledge,^ which consists not in the solution
of subtle questions, but in divine wisdom and the imitation of
Christ; the second is on the eucharist;^ the third, on the duty
of toleration in subordinate points of difference, with reference
to the Easter difficulties ; the fourth, on the object of the incar-
nation, which is stated to be the purging away of sin and the
final annihilation of all evil.
§ 125. Hippolytus.
I. S. HippOLYTi Opera, ed. J. A. Fabricius, Hamb. 171G-18. 2 vols. ; ed.
Gallandi in Biblioth. Patrum, Yen. 1760, Vol. II. Comp. Photius: Cod.
121. Euseb. : H. E. VI. 20, 22. Prudentius in the 11th of his Martyr
Hymns {th^I ati^dv^^v). Hieron. : CataL 61.
S. HippOLYTi Episc. et Mart. Refutationes omnium haeresium hbrorum decern
quae supersunt, ed. Duncker et Schneidewin. Gott. 1856. The first
edition of this work, which was discovered at Mt. Athos in Greece in
1842, and is to be found in the hbrary at Paris, appeared under the name
of Origen : 'iiptylvorj ipL'Koaopov/it.ci'a rj xata rtaniLv alpiaiuv tXtyxoi. Origenis
Philosophoumena, &c., ed. Em. Miller, Oxon. 1851. (The first book had
been long known through the works of Origen, but had justly been
already denied to him by Huet and de la Rue ; the second and third,
and beginning of the fourth, are still wanting ; the tenth lacks the con-
clusion. This work is now universally ascribed to Hippolytus, except
by Dr. Baur, who considers the Roman presbyter Caius the author.)
II. E. F. Kimmel : De Hippolyti vita et scriptis. Jen. 1839. Mouler : L c.
p. 584 sqq. Both are confined to the older confused sources of infor-
mation.
Since the discovery of the Philosophoumena several books and tracts on Hip-
polytus have appeared, which present him under a new light. Bunsen :
Hippolytus and his Age. Lond. 1852. 4 vols. (German in 2 vols. Leipz.
1855) ; 2nd ed. with much irrelevant and heterogeneous matter (under
the title : Christianity and ^Mankind). Lond. 1854. 7 vols. Jacobi in the
" Deutsche Zeitschrift," Berl. 1851 and '53 ; and Art. " Hippolytus" in
Herzog's Encykl. VI. 131 sqq. 1856. Baur, in the " Theol. Jahrb."
' Ffuats dXri^inu 2 Comp. § 102.
§ 125. HIPPOLYTUS. 491
Tiib. 1853. Ritschl, ditto, 1854. G-ieseler, in the " Stud. u. Krit."
Hamb. 1853. Dollinger (R. C.) : Hippolytus u. Callistus, oder die rom.
Kirohe in der ersten Halfte des dritten Jahrh. Regensb. 1853 (apologetic
for the Roman church). Wordsworth : S. Hippolytus and his Age.
Lond. 1853. W. E. Taylor : Hippol. and the Christ, Ch. of the third
gent. Lond. 1853. Lenormant: Controverse sur les Philos. d'Orig.
Par. 1853.
The life and labors of Hippolytus had long been shrouded in
a mysterious twilight, until a happy literary discovery in 1851
shed clearer light upon them. Hippolytus was undoubtedly one
of the most learned and eminent scholars and theologians of his
time. The Roman church placed him in the number of her
saints and martyrs, little suspecting that he would come forward
in the nineteenth century as an accuser against her. But the
statements of the ancients respecting him are very obscure and
confused. Certain it is, that he received a thorough Grecian
education, and, as he himself says, in a fragment preserved by
Photius, heard the discourses of Irenaeus in Lyons. His public
life falls in the end of the second century and the first three
decennaries of the third (about 198 to 236), and he belongs to
the western church, though he may have been, like Irenaeus, of
Oriental extraction.
Eusebius is the first who mentions him, and he calls him, inde-
finitely, bishop. Jerome gives a more complete list of his writings,
but no more definite information as to his see. An old catalogue
of the popes, the Catalogus Liberianus (about a.d. 354), calls him
only presbyter. The Chronicon paschale (about 306), and later
accounts, make him bishop of Portus Romanus, the Port of
Rome, at the mouth of the Tiber (now Porto, opposite Ostia).^
Perhaps he was both, at least if we may suppose, with Bun-
sen, that already at that early period the Roman suburban bishops,
the cardinales episcopi, were at the same time members of the
Roman college of presbyters. But more probably he was merely
a schismatic bishop. Equally unsatisfactory are the accounts of
' The opinion of Le Moyne, Cave, and others, that this term must lead us to the
Arabian Portus Romanus (now Aden), which is nowhere else mentioned as an epis-
copal see, rests on an entire misapprehension of Euseb. VI. 50, where Hippolytus is
accidentally collocated with Beryllus, bishop of Bostra in Arabia.
492 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
his martyrdom. The Liberian Catalogue just mentioned says he
was banished, with the Eoman bishop Pontianus, about 235, to
the unhealthy island of Sardinia, and seems also to fix his death
there. Yet he may very possibly have returned to Kome. The
Spanish poet Prudentius (about 400) places his martyrdom at all
events in the neighborhood of that city. According to this poet-
ical description, Hippolytus belonged to the Novatian party,^
but in the prospect of death regretted the schism, exhorted his
numerous followers to return into the bosom of the catholic
church, and then, in bitter allusion to his name and to the mythi-
cal Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, was dragged to death by wild
horses. Here, in spite of the chronological error, there must be
at least somewhat of fact at bottom, which very well suits the
author of the Philosophoumena. For he was not in sympathy
with the Eoman see, and favored strict f)rincipleS in regard to
discipline, like Novatian, who did not appear, however, till some
ten years after the death of Hippolytus. Prudentius also saw
his subterranean grave-chapel in Kome, where his martyrdom
was represented.
In the year 1551, in this chapel on the Via Tiburtina, near
the basilica of the celebrated Roman niartyr Laurentius, a much
mutilated marble statue, now in the Vatican library, was exhumed,
which gave a new impulse to research respecting this father, and
carried it a step forward. This statue is not mentioned indeed
by Prudentius, and was perhaps originally designed for an entirely
different purpose, possibly for a Roman senator ; but it is at all
events very ancient, perhaps even of the third or fourth century,
and represents a venerable man clothed with the Greek pallium
and Roman toga, seated in a bishop's chair. On the back of the
cathedra are engraved the paschal cycle, or easter-table of Hip-
polytus for seven scries of sixteen years, beginning with the first
year of Alexander Severus (222), and a list of his writings, among
which is named a work on the All.^
■ Prudentius calls it schisma Novati instead of Novatiani, as the two names are
often confounded, especially in the Greek fathers.
2 Yltpl Tov navToc,
§ 125. HIPPOLYTUS. 493
But mucli more important is the recent discovery and publica-
tion of one of his works themselves, and that no doubt the most
valuable of them all, viz. the Philosophoumena, or " Eefatation
of all heresies." It is now almost universally acknowledged, that
this work comes not from Origen, as the first editor thought, nor
from the antimontanistic and antichiliastic presbyter Caius, but
from Hippolytus ; because, among other reasons, the author, in
accordance with the Hippolytus statue, himself refers to a work
" On the All," as his own, and because Hippolytus is declared
by the fathers to have written a work " Adversus omnes haere-
ses."^ The entire matter of the work, too, agrees with the scat-
tered statements of antiquity respecting his ecclesiastical position ;
and at the same time places that position in a much clearer light,
and gives us a better understanding of those statements.
The author of the Philosophoumena appears as one of the most
prominent of the clergy in or near Rome in the beginning of the
third century ; probably a bishop, since he reckons himself among
the successors of the apostles and the guardians of the doctrine
of the church. He took an active part in all the doctrinal and
ritual controversies of his time, but fell into ill savor with the
Roman bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus (202-223), on account
of their Patripassian leanings, and their loose penitential disci-
pline. The latter especially, who had given public offence by
his former mode of life,^ he attacked with earnestness and not
without passion. He was, therefore, though not exactly a schis-
matical counter pope (as Dollinger supposes), yet the head of a
disaffected party, orthodox in doctrine, rigoristic in discipline,
and thus very nearly allied to the Montanists before him, and to
the later schism of Novatian. It is for this reason the more
remarkable, that we have no account respecting the subsequent
course of this movement, except the later unreliable tradition,
that Hippolytus finally returned into the bosom of the catholic
' On the chair of the statue, it is true, the Philosophoumena is not mentioned,
unless it be concealed under the title Ilpdg "EXXjjvaf. But this silence is easily ac-
counted for, partly from the greater rarity of the book, partly from its oflfensive
opposition to two Roman popes.
" Comp. § 110.
494 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
church, and expiated his schism by martyrdom, either in Sardinia,
or more probably in Eome (a.d. 235, or rather 236, under the
persecuting emperor Maximinus tlie Thracian).
The Philosophoumena, at least next to the anti -gnostic work
of Irenaeus, is the leading polemic theological production of the
ante-Niceue church, and sheds much new light, not only upon
the ancient heresies, and the development of the church doctrine,
but also upon the history of philosophy and the condition of the
Roman church in the beginning of the third centur3\ It further-
more affords valuable testimony to the genuineness of the Gospel
of John, both from the mouth of the author himself, and through
his quotations from the much earlier Gnostic Basilides, who was
a later contemporary of John (about A.D. 125). The first of the
ten books gives an outline of the heathen philosophies ; hence
the title of the work, which does not answer to the main body
of the contents. The second and third books, which are want-
ing, treated probably of the heathen mysteries, and mathematical
and astrological theories. The fourth is occupied likewise with
the heathen astrology and magic, which must have exercised
great influence, particularly in Eome. In the fifth book the
author comes to his proper theme, the refutation of all the here-
sies from the times of the apostles to his own. He takes up
thirty-two in all, most of which, however, are merely different
branches of Gnosticism and Ebionism. He simply states the
heretical opinion from lost writings, without introducing his own
reflection, and refers them to the Greek philosophy, mysticism,
and magic, thinking them sufficiently refated by being traced to
those heathen sources. The ninth book, in refuting the doctrine
of the Noetians and Callistians, makes remarkable disclosures of
events in the Roman church. The tenth book, made use of by
Theodoret, contains a brief recapitulation, and the author's own
confession of fiiith, as a positive refutation of the heresies. The
composition falls some years after the death of Callistus ; there-
fore between the years 223 and 235.
Hippolytus is rather a learned and judicious compiler, than
an original author. In the philosophical ]")arts of his work he
§ 126. THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. 495
borrows largely from Sextus Empiricus, word for word, without
acknowledgment ; and in tlie theological part from Irenaeus. In
doctrine he agrees, for the most part, with Irenaeus, even to his
chiliasm, but is not his equal in discernment, depth, and mode-
ration. He repudiates philosophy, almost with Tertullian's
vehemence, as the source of all heresies ; yet he employs it to
establish his own views. On the subject of the trinity he assails
Monarchianism, and advocates the hypostasian theory with a zeal
which brought down upon him the charge of dytheism. His
disciplinary princij)les, as already observed, are rigoristic and
ascetic. In this respect also he is akin to Tertullian, though he
places the Montanists, like the Quartodecimanians, but with only
a brief notice, among the heretics.
Several other productions, exegetical, homiletic, historical,
chronological, apologetic, and some smaller polemic works, all
in Greek, have been ascribed to Hippolytus ; but most of them
are lost, and others are extant only in fragments. In exegesis
this father, like his younger contemporary, Origen, pursued the
allegorical method.
§ 126. The Alexandrian School.
J. Gr. MiCHAELis : De scholae Alexandrinae prima origine, progressu, ac prae-
cipuis doctoribus. Hal. 1739. J. Matter: Essai historique sur I'ecole
d' Alexandrie. Par. 1820. 2 vols. Guericke : De schola quae olim Alex,
floruit, catechetica. Hal. 1824. 2 parts. Hasselbach : De schola quae
Alex, floruit, catech. Stett. 1826. P. 1. Ritter: Gesch. der christl.
Philos. I. 421 sqq.
In Alexandria, the metropolis of Egypt, the flourishing seat
of commerce, of Grecian and Jewish learning, and of the greatest
library of the ancient world, there existed, according to tradi-
tion, from the founding of the church in that city by the evan-
gelist Mark, a catechetical schooP under the supervision of the
bishop. It was originally designed only for the practical pur-
pose of preparing willing heathens and Jews of all classes for
EusebiuS calls it ro rri^ Karnx'i^^'^S SiSaaKaXcTov, and 6i6a(TKa\i:tov Twi/ Upwv Xdycjv ',
Sozomen, to kpdv 6i6iaKa\etov T'^v hpcjv jia^niidTuv] Jerome, ecclesiastica schola.
496 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
baptism. But in that home of the Philonic theolog}', of Gnostic
heresy, and of Neo-Platonic philosophy, it soon very naturally
assumed a learned character, and became, at the same time, a
sort of theological seminary, which exercised a powerful influ-
ence on the education of many bishops and church teachers, and
on the development of Christian science. It had at first but a
single teacher, afterwards two or more, but no fixed salar}^, nor
special buildings. The teachers gave their instructions in their
dwellings, generally after the style of the ancient philosophers.
The first superintendent of this school known to us was Pan-
taenus, a converted Stoic philosopher, about a.d. 180. He after-
wards labored as a missionary in India, and left several com-
mentaries, of which, however, nothing remains but some scanty
fragments. He was followed by Clement, to A.D. 202 ; and Cle-
ment, by Origen., to 232, who raised the school to the summit
of its prosperity. The institution was afterwards conducted by
Origen's pupils, Heraclas (f 248) and Dionysius (f 265), and
last by the blind but learned Didymus (f 395), until, at the end
of the fourth century, it sank for ever amidst the commotions of
the Alexandrian church.
From this school proceeded a peculiar theology, the most
learned and genial representatives of which were Clement and
Origen. This theology is, on the one hand, a regenerated Chris-
tian form of the Alexandrian Jewish religious philosojjliy of
Philo ; on the other, a catholic counterpart, and a positive refuta-
tion of the heretical Gnosis, which reached its height also in
Alexandria, but half a century earlier. The Alexandrian theo-
logy aims at a reconciliation of Christianity with philosophy, or,
subjectively speaking, of pistis with tlie gnosis; but it seeks this
union upon the basis of the Bible, and the doctrine of the church.
Its centre, therefore, is the Logos, viewed as the sum of all rea-
son and all truth, before and after the incarnation. Clement
came from the Hellenic philosophy to the Christian fiiith ; Origen,
conversely, was led by faith to speculation. The former was an
aphoristic thinker, the latter a systematic. The one borrowed
ideas from various systems; the other followed more the track
§ 126. THE ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL. 497
of Platonism. But both, are Christian philosophers and churchly
gnostics. As Philo, long before them, in the same city, had
combined Judaism with Grecian culture, so now they carried the
Grecian culture into Christianity. This, indeed, the apologists
and controversialists of the second century had already done, as
far back as Justin the " philosopher." But the Alexandrians
were more learned and liberal-minded, and made much freer use
of the Greek philosophy. They saw in it not sheer error, but in
one view a gift of God, and a theoretical schoolmaster for Christ,
like the law in the practical sphere. Clement compares it to a
wild olive tree, which can be ennobled by faith ; Origen (in the
fragment of an epistle to Gregory Thaumaturgus), to the jewels,
which the Israelites took with them out of Egypt, and turned
into ornaments for their sanctuary, though they also wrought
them into the golden calf. It is not necessarily an enemy to the
truth, but may, and should be its handmaid, and at least neutral-
ize the attacks against it. The elements of truth in the heathem
pliilosophy they attributed partly to the secret operation of the
Logos in the world of reason, partly to acquaintance with the
Jewish philosophy, the writings of Moses and the prophets.
So with the Gnostic heresy. The Alexandrians did not sweep-
ingly condemn it, but recognised the desire for deeper religious
knowledge, which lay at its root, and sought to meet this desire
with a wholesome supply from the Bible itself. To the /vwtfi?
■l^svS'^vviiog they opposed a yvuxfig dXii&iv^. Their maxim was-, in
the words of Clement : " No faith without knowledge, no know-
ledge without faith;" or: "Unless you believe you will not
understand."^ Faith and knowledge have the same substance,,
the saving truth of God, revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and
faitlifully handed down by the church ; they diifer only in form.
Knowledge is our consciousness of the deeper ground and con-
sistency of faith. The Christian knowledge, however, is also a
gift of grace, and has its condition in a holy life. The ideal of a
Christian gnostic includes the perfect love, as well as the perfect
' Is. viL 9, according to the LXX. 'Kav jin TrtarciariTC, oHi nfj awflTe.
32
498 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311,
knowledge, of God. Clement describes him as one " who, grow-
ing grej in the study of the Scriptures, and preserving the ortho-
doxy of the apostles and the church, lives strictly according to
the gospel."
The Alexandrian theology is intellectual, profound, stirring,
and full of fruitful germs of thought, but rather unduly idealistic
and spiritualistic, and, in exegesis, loses itself in arbitrary alle-
gorical fancies. In its efforts to reconcile revelation and philo-
sophy it took up, like Philo, many foreign elements, especially
of the Platonic and Gnostic stamp, and wandered into views,
whicli a later and more orthodox, but more narrow-minded and
less productive age condemned as heresies, not appreciating the
immortal service of this school to its own and after times.
§ 127. Clement of Alexandria.
I. Clementis Alex. Opera omnia Gr. et Lat. ed. Potter (bishop of Oxford).
Oxon. 1715. 2 vols. Reprinted Venet. 1757. 2 vols. (The edition of
Klotz, Leipz. 1831-34, in 4 vols., is very incorrect.)
II. HoFSTEDE DE Groot : Disscrt. de Clem. Alex. Groning. 1826. A. F.
Daeiine: De ynjTft Clem. Al. Hal. 1831. F. R. Eylert: Clem. v. Alex,
als Philosoph imd Dichter. Leipz. 1832. Bishop Kate : Some Account
of the Writings and Opinions of Clement of Alex. Lond. 1835. Kling:
Die Bedeutung des Clem. Alex, fiir die Enstehung der Theol. ("Stud.
u. Krit." for 1841, No. 4). Reinkens : De Clem. Alex, homine, scrip-
tore, philosopho, theologo. Wratisl. 1851. Laemmer: Clem. Al. de
Logo doctrina. Lips. 1855.
Titus Flavins Clemens^ sprang either from Athens or from
Alexandria, and was brought up in heathenism. He was versed
in all branches of Hellenic literature, and in all the existing sys-
tems of philosophy ; but in these he found nothing to satisfy his
thirst for truth. In his adult years, therefore, he embraced the
Christian religion, and by long journeys East and West he
sought the most distinguished teachers, " who preserved the tra-
dition of pure saving doctrine, and implanted that genuine apos-
§ 127. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 499
tolic seed in tlie hearts of their pupils." He was captivated by
Pantaenus in Egypt, who, says he, " like the Sicilian bee,
plucked flowers from the apostolic and prophetic meadow, and
filled the souls of his disciples with genuine, pure knowledge."
He became presbyter in the church of Alexandria, and about
A.D. 189 succeeded Pantaenus as president of the catechetical
school of that city. Here he labored benignly some twelve years
for the conversion of heathens and the education of the Chris-
tians, until, as it appears, the persecution under Septimius Se-
verus in 202 compelled him to flee. After this we find him in
Antioch, and last (211) with his former pupil, the bishop Alex-
ander, in Jerusalem. Whether he returned thence to Alexandria
is unknown. He died before the year 220, about the same time
with Tertullian. He never, any more than Origen, was enrolled
among the saints of the Roman church, though he frequently
bore this title of honor in ancient times.
Clement was the father of the Alexandrian Christian philoso-
phy. He united thorough biblical and Hellenic learning with
genius and speculative thought. He rose, in many points, far
above the prejudices of his age, to more free and spiritual views.
His system, however, is not a unit, but a confused eclectic mix-
ture of true Christian elements, with many foreign Stoic, Platonic,
and Philonic ingredients. His writings are full of repetition, and
quite lacking in clear, fixed method. He throws out his sugges-
tive and often profound thoughts in fragments, or purposely
veils them, especially in the Stromata, in a mysterious darkness,
to conceal them from the exoteric multitude, and to stimulate
the study of the initiated or philosophical Christians. He shows
here an affinity with the heathen mystery cultus, and the Gnostic
arcana. His extended knowledge of Grecian literature and rich
quotations from the lost works of poets, philosophers, and his-
torians, give him importance also in investigations regarding
classical antiquity.
The three leading works which he composed during his resi-
dence as teacher in Alexandria, between the years 190 and 194,
represent the three stages in the discipline of the human race by
500 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
the divine Logos, corresponding to the three degrees of kno\r-
ledge required bj the ancient mystagogues,^ and are related to
one another very much as apologetics, ethics, and dogmatics, or
as faith, love, and mystic vision, or as the stages of the Christian
cultus up to the celebration of the sacramental mysteries. The
"Exhortation to the Greeks,"^ in three books, with almost a
waste of learning, points out the unreasonableness and immo
rality, but also the nobler prophetic element, of heathenism, and
seeks to lead the sinner to repentance and faith. The " Tutor"
or "Edufcator"^ unfolds the Christian morality with constant
reference to heathen practices, and exhorts to a holy walk, the
end of which is likeness to God. The "Stromata" or "Miscel-
lanies,"'* in seven books (the eighth, containing an imperfect
treatise on logic, is spurious), furnishes a guide to the deeper
knowledge of Christianity, but is without any methodical ar-
rangement, a heterogeneous mixture of curiosities of history,
beauties of poetry, reveries of philosophy. Christian truths
and heretical errors (hence the name). He compares it to
a thick-grown, shady mountain or garden, where fruitful and
barren trees of all kinds, the cypress, the laurel, the ivy, the
apple, the olive, the fig, stand confasedly grouped together,
that many may remain hidden from the eye of the plunderer
without escaping the notice of the laborer who might transplant
and arrange them in pleasing order. It was, probably, only a
prelude to a more comprehensive theology. At the close the
author portrays the ideal of the true gnostic, that is, the perfect
Christian, assigning to him, among other traits, a stoical elevation
above all sensuous affections.
Besides these principal works we have, from Clement also, an
able ascetic and yet liberal treatise, on the right use of wealth."^
' Tho amKa^apmi, tllO ^v/jcrij, and tho inonretn.
' Aiiyot TrpoTpenriKUi, Coliortatio.
3 IlairJaywydj.
* Erpoj/iartTj, Stromata, or pieces of tapestry, which, when curiously woren, and'in
divers colors, present an apt picture of such miscellaneous composition.
5 Ti{ 0 ao>^6fievt}f rtUvrrtrx, quip divcs salvus, or salvctur? an excellent commentary on
the words of the Lord in Mk. x. 17 sqq. Comp. § 95.
§ 128. ORIGEX. 501
His exegetical works,^ as well as a controversial treatise on
prophecy, against the Montanists, and another on the passover,
against the Judaizing practice in Asia Minor, are all lost, except
some inconsiderable fragments.
To Clement we owe also the oldest Christian hymn that has
come down to us ; an elevated but somewhat turgid song of
praise to the Logos, as the divine educator and leader of the
human race.^
§ 128. Origen.
L Origenis Opera omnia Gr. et Lat. ed. Car. et Car. Vino, de la Rue
(Congr. S. Mauri), Par. 1740-59, 4 vols. fol. ; new ed. 1857, in 8 vols. ;
small ed. by Lommatsch, Berol. 1831-48. 25 vols. 8vo. Comp. Eubeb.
H. E. VI. 1-6 et passim. Hieron. : Cat. c. 54 and Ep. 29, 41. Gre-
GORius TnAUMAT. : Oratio panegyrica in Origeuem. Pamphilus : Apo-
logia Orig. (all in the last vol. of De la Rue).
II. P. D. HuETius : Origeniana, Par. 1679, 2 vols, (also in De la Rue, voL 4).
G-. Thomasius: Origines, Niirnb. 1837. R. Redepenning: Origines.
Sein Leben u. seine Lelire. Bonn, 1841, 2 vols.
Origen, surnamed Adamantius,^ for his iron industry and
perhaps also his pure and firm character, was born of Christian
parents at Alexandria, in the year 185, and baptized in child-
hood. Under the direction of his father, Leonides, who was
probably a rhetorician, and of the celebrated Clement at the
catechetical school, he received a pious and learned education.
While yet a boy, he knew whole sections of the Bible by
memory, and not rarely perplexed his father with questions on
the deeper sense of Scripture. The father reproved his curiosity,
but thanked God for such a son, and often, as he slept, reveren-
tially kissed his breast as a temple of the Holy Ghost. Under
I 'YfforvTTwrrtif, Adumbrationes, Outlines, or a condensed survey of the contents
of the Old and New Testament Scriptures.
2 In the Paedag. III. 12 (p. 311 ed. Pott.; also in Daniel's Thesaurus hymnolo-
gicus III. p. 5). It has been often translated into German, by Miinter (in Rambach's
Anthologie christl. Gosange I. p. 35) ; Dorner (Christologie I. 293) ; Fortlage
(Gesauge christl. Yorzeit. 1844, p. 38) ; and in rhyme by Hagenbach (Die K. G. der
3 crsten Jahrb. p. 222 sq.). An English translation may be found in the anony-
mous book: Tlie Voice of Clu-istian Life in Song. N. Tork, 1858, p. 44 sq.
^ 'AJa/zii/TDj, Xa>k£iT£oos.
502 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
the persecution of Septimius Severus in 202, he wrote to his
father in prison, beseeching him not to deny Christ for the sake
of his family, and strongly desired to give himself up to the
heathen authorities, but was prevented by his mother, who hid
his clothes. Leonides died a martyr, and, as his property was
confiscated, he left a helpless widow with seven children. Origen
was for a time assisted by a wealthy matron, and then supported
himself by giving instruction in the Greek language and litera-
ture, and by copying manuscripts.
In the year 203, though then only eighteen years of age,
he was nominated by the bishop Demetrius, afterwards his
opponent, president of the catechetical school of Alexandria, left
vacant by the flight of Clement. To fill this important office,
he made himself acquainted with the various heresies, especially
the Gnostic, and with the Grecian philosophy ; he was not even
ashamed to study under the heathen Ammonius Saccas, the
celebrated founder of Neo-Platonism. He learned also the
Hebrew language, and made journeys to Eome (211), Arabia,
Palestine (215), and Greece. After a time he gave the lower
classes into the charge of his pupil Heraclas, and devoted him-
self wholly to the more advanced students. He was successful
in bringing many eminent heathens and heretics to the catholic
church ; among them a wealthy Gnostic, Ambrosius, who
became his most liberal patron, furnishing him a costly library
for his biblical studies, seven stenographers, and a number of
copyists (some of whom were young Christian women), the
former to note down his dictations, the latter to engross them.
His fame spread far and wide over Egypt. Julia Mammaea,
mother of the Emperor Alexander Severus, brought him to
Antioch in 218, to learn from liim the doctrines of Christianity.
An Arabian prince honored him with a visit for the same pur-
pose.
His mode of life during the whole period was strictlj* ascetic.
He made it a matter of principle to renounce every earthly thing
not indispcnsaV)ly necessary. He refused the gifte of his pupils,
and in literal obedience to the Saviour's injunction he had but
§ 128. ORIGEN. 503
one coat, no slioes, and took no thought of the morrow. He
rarely ate flesh, never drank wine ; devoted the greater part of
the night to prayer and study, and slept on the bare floor. Nay,
in his youthful zeal for ascetic holiness, he even committed the
act of self-emasculation, partly to fulfil literally the mysterious
words of Christ, in Matt. xix. 12, for the sake of the kingdom of
God, partly to secure himself against all temptation and calumny,
which might arise from his intercourse with many female cate-
chu meng,^ By this inconsiderate and misdirected heroism, which
he himself repented in his riper years, he incapacitated himself,
according to the canons of the church, for the clerical office.
Nevertheless, a long time afterwards, in 228, he was ordained
presbyter by two friendly bishops, Alexander of Jerusalem, and
Theoctistus of Caesarea in Palestine, who had, even before this,
on a former visit of his, invited him while a layman, to teach
publicly in their churches and to expound the Scriptures to their
people.
But this foreign ordination itself, and the growing reputation
of Origen among heathens and Christians, stirred the jealousy
of the bishop Demetrius of Alexandria, who charged him be-
sides, and that not wholly without foundation, with corrupting
Christianity by foreign speculations. This bishop held two
councils, A.D. 231 and 232, against the great theologian, and
enacted, that he, for his false doctrine, his self-mutilation, and
his violation of the church laws, be deposed from his ofiices of
presbyter and catechist, and excommunicated. This unright-
eous sentence, in which envy, hierarchical arrogance, and zeal
for orthodoxy joined, was communicated, as the custom was, to
other churches. The Eoman church, always ready to anathema-
tize, concurred without further investigation, while the churches
of Palestine, Arabia, Phenicia, and Achaia, which were better
informed, decidedly disapproved it.
In this controversy Origen showed a genuine Christian meek-
' This fact rests on the testimony of Eusebius (vi. 8), who was very well informed
respecting Origen ; and it has been defended by Engelhardt, Redepenning, and
Neander, against the unfounded doubts of Baur and Schnitzer.
604 SECOXD PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
.ness. "TTe must jjity tliem," said he of his enemies, "rather
than hate them ; j^ray for them, rather than curse them ; for we
are made for blessing, and not for cursing." He betook himself
to his friend, the bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, prosecuted his
studies there. ojDened a new philosopliical and theological school,
which soon outshone that of Alexandria, and labored for the
spread of the kingdom of God. The persecution under Maximi-
nus (235) drove him for a time to Cappadocia. Thence he went
to Grreece, and then back to Palestine. He was called into con-
sultation in various ecclesiastical disputes, and had an extensive
correspondence, in which were included even the emperor Phi-
lip the Arabian and his wife. Though thrust out as a heretic
from his home, he reclaimed the erring in foreign lands to the
faith of the church. At an Arabian council, for example, he
convinced the bishop Beryllus of his christological error, and
persuaded him to retract (a.d. 214).
At last he received an honorable invitation to return to Alex-
andria, where, meantime, his pupil Dionysius had become bishop.
But in the Decian persecution he was cast into prison, cruelly
tortured, and condemned to the stake ; and though he regained
his liberty by the death of the emperor, yet he died some time
after, at the age of sixty-nine, in the year 253 or 254, at Tyre,
probably in consequence of that violence. He belongs, therefore,
at least among the confessors, if not among the martyrs.
It is impossible to deny a respectful sympathy to this extra-
ordinary man, who, with all his brilliant talents and a host
of enthusiastic friends and admirers, was driven from his coun-
try, stripped of his sacred office, excommunicated from a part
of the church, then thrown into a dungeon, loaded with chains,
racked by torture, doomed to drag his aged frame and dislocated
limbs in pain and poverty, and long after his death to have liis
memory branded his name anathematized, and his salvation
denied; but who nevertheless did more than all his enemies
combined to advance the cause of sacred learning, to refute and
convert heathens and heretics, and to make the church respected
in the e3'e3 of the world.
§ 128. ORiGE^. 505
Origen was the greatest scholar of liis age, and the most
learned and genial of all the ante-Nicene fathers. Even hea-
thens and heretics admired or feared his brilliant talents. His
knowledge embraced all departments of the philology, philoso-
phy, and theology of his day. With this he united profound
and fertile thought, keen penetration, and glowing imagination.
As a true divine, he consecrated all his studies by prayer, and
turned them, according to his best convictions, to the service of
truth and piety.
He may be called in many respects the Schleiermacher of the
Greek church. He was a guide from the heathen philosophy
and the heretical Grnosis to the Christian faith. He exerted an
immeasurable influence in stimulating the development of the
catholic theology and forming the great Nicene fathers, Atha-
nasius, Basil, the two Gregories, Hilary, and Ambrose, who
consequently, in spite of all his deviations, set great value on
his services. But his best disciples proved unfaithful to many
of his most peculiar views, and adhered far more to the reigning
faith of the church. For — and in this too he is like Schleierma-
cher— he can by no means be called orthodox, either in the
Catholic or in the Protestant sense. His leaning to idealism,
his predilection for Plato, and his noble effort to reconcile
Christianity with reason, and to commend it even to educated
heathens and Gnostics, led him into many grand and fascinating
errors. Among these are his extremely ascetic and almost doce-
tistic conception of corporeity, his doctrine of the pre-existence
and the pre-temporal fall of souls, of eternal creation, of the
extension of the work of redemption to the inhabitants of the
stars and to all creatures, and of the final restoration of all
men and angels, including Satan himself. Also in regard to the
dogma of the divinity of Christ, though he powerfully supported
it, and was the first to teach expressly the eternal generation of
the Son, yet he may be almost as justly considered a forerunner
of the Arian heterousion, or at least of the semi-Arian homoi-
ousion, as of the Athanasian homoousian.
These and similar views provoked more or less contradiction
506 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. ] 00-311.
during his lifetime, and were afterwards, at a local council in
Constantinople in 544,^ even solemnly condemned as heretical.
But such a man might in such an age hold heretical opinions
without being a heretic. For Origen propounded his views
always with modesty and from sincere conviction of their agree-
ment with Scripture, and that in a time when the church doc-
trine was as yet very indefinite in many points. For this reason
even unprejudiced Roman divines, such as Tillemont and Moh-
ler, have shown Origen the greatest respect and leniency ; a fact
the more to be commended, since the Roman church has refused
him, as well as Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, a place
among the saints and the fathers in the stricter sense.
Origen's greatest service was in exegesis. He is father of the
scientific and critical investigation of Scripture, though his doc-
trine of a threefold sense is untenable, and his allegorical expo-
sition often degenerates into the merest caprice,^ or gives way at
times to the opposite extreme of a carnal literalism, by which
he justifies his ascetic extravagance. Gregory Thaumaturgus
says, he had " received from God the greatest gift, to be an
interpreter of the word of God to men." For that age this
judgment' is perfectly just. Origen remained the exegetical
oracle until Chrysostom far surpassed him, not indeed in vigor
of mind and extent of learning, but in sound, sober tact, in sim-
ple grammatical and historical analysis, and in practical appli-
cation of the text.
Origen was an uncommonly prolific author, but by no means
an idle bookmaker. Jerome says, he wrote more than other
men can read. Epiphanius, an opponent, states the number of
his works as six thousand, which is perhaps not much be3-ond
the mark, if we include all his short tracts, homilies, and letters,
and count them as separate volumes. Many of them arose
without his cooperation, and sometimes against his will, from
the writing down of his oral lectures by others. Of his books
• Not at the fiflli ecumenical council of 553, as has been o.lcn, through confusion,
asserted.
' Comp. § 75.
§ 128. ORIGEN. 507
wMcli remain, some have come down to us only in Latin trans-
lations, and with many alterations in favor of the later ortho-
doxy. They extend to all branches of the theology of that day.
1. His biblical works were the most numerous, and may be
divided into critical, exegetical, and hortatory.
Among the critical were the Hexapla^ and the shorter Te-
trapla, on which he spent eight-and-twenty years of the most
unwearied labor. The Hexapla was the first polyglott bible,
but covered only the Old Testament, and was designed not for
the critical restoration of the original text, but merely for the
improvement of the received Septuagint, and the defence of it
against the charge of inaccuracy. It contained, in six columns,
the orig-inal text in two forms, in Hebrew and in Greek charac-
ters, and the four Greek versions of the Septuagint, of Aquila,
of Symmachu.s, and of Theodotion. To these he added, in seve-
ral books, two or three other anonymous versions,'-* The de-
partures from the standard he marked with the critical signs
asterisk (if;) and obelos ('-^), The voluminous work was placed
in the library at Caesarea, was still much used in the time of
Jerome, but doubtless never transcribed, except in certain por-
tions, most frequently the Septuagint columns (which were
copied, for instance, by Pamphilus and Eusebius), and was pro-
bably destroyed by the Saracens in 653. We possess, therefore,
only some fragments of it, the most complete collection of which
is that of Montfaucon, in two volumes, published in 1714.
. His commentaries covered almost all the books of the Old
and New Testaments, and contained a vast wealth of profound
suggestions, with the most arbitrary allegorical and mystic fan-
cies. They were of three kinds : — (a) Short notes on single dif-
ficult passages for beginners f all these are lost, (b) Extended
expositions of whole books, for higher scientific study •* of these
' Hence also the name t« oKmnXa, Octapla (but never Enneapla), when the quinta,
sexta, and septima are included. The Tetrapla contains only the four Greek ver-
sions mentioned, without the original Hebrew.
' Tirj/jicttjjdiis, scholia. * TSjxoi, commentariL
508 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
we have a number in the original, (c) lEortatorj or practical
applicatiorns of Scripture for the congregation ;^ which are im-
portant also to the history of pulpit oratory. But we have
them only in part, as translated by Jerome and Rufinus, with
many unscrupulous retrenchments and additions, which perplex
and are apt to mislead investigators.
2. Apologetic and polemic works. The refatation of Celsus
against Christianity,^ in eight books, written in the last years of
his life, about 249, is preserved complete in the original, and
is one of the ripest and most valuable productions of Origen,
and of the whole ancient apologetic literature. His numerous
polemic writings against heretics are all gone.
3. Of his dogmatic writings we have, though only in the
inaccurate Latin translation of Rufinus,^ his juvenile production,
De principiis,* on the fundamental doctrines of the Christian
faith, in four books. This was the first attempt at a complete
dogmatic, but full of the author's peculiar Platonizing and Gnos-
ticizing errors, some of which he retracted in his riper years.
In this work Origen treats, first, of God ; in the second book of
creation and the incarnation ; in the third of freedom, which he
very strongly sets forth and defends against the Gnostics ; in
the fourth, of the Holy Scriptures, their inspiration and author-
ity, and the interpretation of them ; concluding with a recapi-
tulation of the doctrine of the trinity.
4. Among his practical works may be mentioned a treatise on
prayer, with an exposition of the Lord's Prayer, and exhortation
to martyrdom, written during the persecution of Maximin.
6. Of his letters, of which Busebius collected over eight hun-
dred, we have, besides a few fragments, only an answer to Ju-
lius Africanus on the authenticity of the history of Susanna.
Among the works of Origen is also usually inserted the " Phi-
« 'OixMai. ' Comp. § 60.
3 He himself confesses that he altered or omitted several pap;es, pretending that
it had been more corrapted by heretics than any other wo.!- of Origen. Tillemont
well remarks that Rufinus miglit have spared himself the trouble of alteration, as
we care much less about his views than those of the original
§ 129. OTHER GREEK THEOLOGIANS. 509
localia," or a collection of extracts from his writings on various
exegetical questions, made by Gregory Nazianzen and Basil the
Great.
§ 129. The other Greek Theologians of the Third Century.
1. Disciples of Origen, Most of the Greek fathers of the third
and fourth centuries stood more or less under the influence of
the spirit and the works of this great divine, without adopting
all his peculiar speculative views.
Heraclas of Alexandria was first a pupil of Origen, then his
assistant and successor in the catechetical school, and after 233
bishop of Alexandria. He died in 248. He also studied the
Neo-Platonic philosophy under Anunonius Saccas.
DiONYSius of Alexandria, surnamed "the Great," originally
a heathen rhetorician, was won to the faith by Origen, became
catechist in the year 233, and bishop of Alexandria in 248, and
died in 265. He labored zealously for the conversion of here-
tics, and to aid himself studied their writings. He took active
part in the christological, chiliastic, and disciplinary controver-
sies of his time, showing in them little independence and consis-
tency, but moderation, an amiable spirit of concession, and prac-
tical churchly tact. Of his numerous writings Eusebius and
Athanasius have preserved valuable fragments.
His successors in the catechetical school, Pierius (called " the
younger Origen)" and Theognostus (after 282 ?), stood likewise
in high repute in their day as scholars and authors.
Gregory, surnamed Thaumaturgus, "the wonder-worker,"
was converted from heathenism in his youth by Origen at Caesa-
rea, spent eight years in his society, and then, after a season of
contemplative retreat, labored' as bishop of Neo-Caesarea in
Pontus from 244 to 270 with extraordinary success. He could
boast on his death-bed, that he had left to his successor no more
unbelievers in his diocese, than he had found Christians in it at
his accession ; and those were only seventeen. Later story has
made him a "second Moses," and attributed great miracles to
510 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
him. But these are not mentioned till a century after his time,
by Gregory of Nyssa and Basil. Eusebius knows nothing of
them, nor of the trinitarian creed, which is said to have been
communicated to him in a vision by St. John at the request of
the Virgin Mary. We have from him a glowing eulogy on his
beloved teacher Origen, which ranks as a masterpiece of Grecian
eloquence ; also a simple paraphrase of the book of Ecclesiastes.
Pampiiilus, a presbyter of Caesarea in Palestine and teacher
in the theological school founded by him there, who died a
martyr in 309, did great service with his careful transcript of the
Septuagint from the Hexapla of Origen, his gratuitous distribu-
tion of the Bible, and the collection of a large theological, library,
whence Eusebius, Jerome, and many others drew or increased
their learning. He wrote in prison a defence of Origen, which
his disciple and intimate friend Eusebius completed. But we
have only the first of its six books.
HiERACAS (Hierax), from Leontopolis in Egypt, towards the
end of the third century, belongs only in the wider sense to the
school of Origen, and perhaps had no connexion with it at all.
Epiphanius reckons him among the Manichaean heretics. lie
was, at all events, a perfectly original phenomenon, distinguished
for his varied learning, allegorical exegesis, poetical talent, and
still more for his eccentric asceticism. He is said to have denied
the historical reality of the fall and the resurrection of the body,
and to have declared celibacy the only sure way to salvation.
2. Kindred theologians.
Julius Africanus, an older friend of Origen, who probably
sprang from Asia Minor, but labored in Palestine, and died in
232, deserves honorable mention as the first Christian chrono-
grapher and the forerunner of Eusebius, who has made copious
use of his learned labor. The fragments of his chronography in
five books, which commenced with the creation and came down
to the year 221, are collected by Gallandi and Kouth.
The Antiochan presbyters Dorotheus (f about 290) and
LuciAN (t a martyr in 811) may have received their first scienti-
fic impulse from the works of Origen, but founded a new thcolo-
§ 130. TERTULLIAN AND THE AFRICAN SCHOOL. 511
gical school at Antiocb, wliich afterwards became the seat of an
independent, literal, grammatico-historical treatment of scrip-
ture, and formed a beneficial offset to the unlimited allegorizing
of the Alexandrians. This school produced Chrysostom and
Theodoret ; but from the same school proceeded also Arius and
Nestorius. Lucian prepared a careful critical edition of the
Septuagint, and perhaps also of the New Testament. — By a
similar labor the Egyptian bishop Hesychius made himself
known in the same period.
8. Opponents of Origen.
The opposition of Demetrius proceeded chiefly from personal
feeling, and had no theological significance. Yet it made a
pretext at least of zeal for orthodoxy, and in subsequent oppo-
nents this motive took the principal place. This was the case, so
early as the third century, with
Methodius, bishop of Tyre, who died a martyr in 811, or
earlier. He was not speculative enough to appreciate the system
of Origen, and was not always consistent, it would seem, in his
opposition to it. But he exposed its errors in the doctrine of
the creation and of the resurrection of the body, w^th considera-
ble learning and discernment. He also wrote an eloquent, but
verbose, extravagant, and somewhat indelicate eulogy on the ad-
vantages of virginity, in the Platonic dialogue form.^ We have
fragments of this " Banquet of Virgins" in Epiphanius and Pho-
tius. Eusebius, probably from party prejudice, which ill be-
comes a historian, passes over him in silence.
§ 130. Tertullian and the African School.
I. Tertulliani quae supersunt omnia. Ed. Franc. Oehlkr. Lips. 1853, 3
vols. Earlier editions by Beatus Bhenanus, Bas. 1521 ; Pamelius, Ant-
werp, 1579 ; Rigaltius (Rigault), Par. 1634 and Venet. 1744 ; Semkr,
Halle, 1770-73. 6 vols. ; Oberthur, 1780 ; Leojyold, in Gersdorf 's Bib-
lioth. patrum eccles. Latinorum selecta (IV- VII..), Lips. 1839-4] ; and
Migne, Par. 1844. Tert.'s Apology has often been separately edited and
translated into modern languages.
II. Neander: Antignosticus, Geist des Tertullianus u. Einleitung in dessen
* Sv/iirdo-ioK roiv ftixa irap^ifioi/] Convivium decem virginum.
512 SECOND PEHIOD. A.i). lUU-oll.
Schriften. Berl. 1825, 2d ed. 1849. Hesselbero : TertuUian. Dorpat,
1848. 2 pts. J. Kaye : Eccles. Hist, of the second and third Centuries,
illustrated from the Writings of TertuUian. 3d ed. Lond. 1845. A num-
ber of special treatises by Hefele, Engelhardt, Leopold, Uhlhorn, &c.
Comp. also the works on Montanism, § 97.
The Western churcli in this period exhibits no such scientific
productiveness as the Eastern. If we leave out of view Clement
of Rome, Hermas, and Irenaeus, who belong by education to the
Greek church and wrote only in Greek, her literary career does
not begin till the end of the second century, and then, very cha-
racteristically, not with a converted philosoj^hcr, but with two
vigorous practical lawyers and rhetoricians. It does not gradu-
ally unfold itself, but appears at once under a fixed, clear stamp,
with a strong realistic tendency.
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus is the father of the
Latin theology and church language, and one of the greatest
men of Christian antiquity. He was bom about the year 160,
at Carthage, the ancient rival of Eomc, where his father was
serving as captain of a Roman legion under the proconsul of
Africa. He received a liberal Graeco-Roman secular education ;
his writings manifest an extensive acquaintance with historical,
philosophical, polite, and antiquarian literature, and with juridi-
cal terminology and all the arts of an advocate. He seems to
have devoted himself to politics and forensic eloquence, either
in Carthage or in Rome. Eusebius calls him "a man accurately
acquainted with the Roman laws,"^ and many regard him as
identical with the Tertyllus, or Tertullianus, who is the author
of several fragments in the Pandects.
To Ills thirtieth or fortieth year he lived in heathen blindness
and licentiousness.^ Towards the end of the second century he
embraced Christianity, we know not exactly on what occasion,
but evidently from deepest conviction, and with all the fiery
energy of his soul ; defended it thenceforth with fearless decision
' H. E. II. 2.
' De resurr. cam. c. 59, he confesses: Ego me scio neque Ju!a came adulteria com
misisse, neque nunc alia came ad contincntiam eniti. Comp. also Apolog. c. 18 and
25. De anima, c. 2. Do poeuit. c. 4 and 12. Ad Scapul. c. 5.
§ 130. TERTULLIAN AND THE AFRICAN SCHOOL, 513
against heathens, Jews, and heretics; and studied the strictest
morahtj of hfe. His own words may be applied to himself:
" Fiant, non nascuntur Christiani." He was married, and gives
us a glowing picture of Christian family life, to which we have
before referred ; but in his zeal for every form of self-denial, he
set celibacy still higher, and advised his wife, in case he should
die before her, to remain a widow, or, at least, never to marry
an unbelieving husband; and he afterwards put second mar-
riage even on a level with adultery. He entered the ministry
of the Catholic church,^ first probably in Carthage, perhaps
in Eome, where at all events he spent some time f but, like
Clement of Alexandria and Origen, he never rose above the
rank of presbyter.
Some years after (about 202), he joined the puritanic, though
orthodox, sect of the Montanists. Jerome attributes this chansre
to personal motives, charging it to the envy and insults of the
Roman clergy, from whom he himself experienced many an
indignity.^ But Tertullian was inclined to extremes from the
first, especially to moral austerity. He was no doubt attracted
by the radical contempt for the world, the strict asceticism, the
severe discipline, the martyr enthusiasm, and the chiliasm of the
Montanists, and repelled by the growing conformity to the world
in the Roman church. This church, we now accurately know
from the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus, just at that period,
under Zephyrinus and Callistus, openly took under its protec-
tion a very lax penitential discipline, and at the same time,
though only temporarily, favored the Patripassian error, which
Praxeas, an opponent of the Montanists, brought to Rome. Of
this man Tertullian therefore says, in his sarcastic way : He has
executed in Rome two works of the devil ; has driven out pro-
phecy (the Montanistic) and brought in error (the Patripassian) ;
' This fact, however, rests only on the authority of Jerome, and does not appear
from Tertulhan's own writings.
' De cultu femin. c. 7. Comp. Euseb. II 2.
3 De vir. illustr. c. 53: Hie (Tert.) cum usque ad mediam aetatem presbyter eccle-
siae permansisset, invidia et contumeliis clericorum Romanae ecclesiae ad Montani
dogma delapsus in multis libria novae prophetiae meminit.
33
51i SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
has turned off the Holy Ghost and crucified the Father,' Tertul-
lian now fought the cathohcs, or the psychicals, as he frequently
calls them, with the same inexorable sternness with which he
had combated the heretics. The departures of the Montanists,
however, related more to points of morality and discipline than
of doctrine ; and with all his hostility to Eome, Tertullian
remained a zealous advocate of the catholic faith, and wrote,
even from his schismatic position, several of his most effective
works against the heretics, especially the Gnostics. Indeed, as
a divine, he stood far above this fanatical sect, and gave it by
his writings an importance and an influence on the church itself
which it certainly would never otherwise have attained.
He labored in Carthage as a Montanist presbyter and an
author, and died, as Jerome says, in decrepit old age, according
to some about the year 220, according to others not till 240 ; for
the exact time, as well as the manner of his death, are unknown.
His followers in Africa propagated themselves, under the name
of " Tcrtullianists," down to the time of Augustine in the fifth
century, and took perhaps a middle place between the proper
Montanists and the catholic church. That he ever returned
into the bosom of Catholicism, as Hippolytus, according to the
later story of Prudentius, did, is an entirely groundless opinion.
Nor has the Eoman church ever received him into the number
of her saints and fathers.
Strange that this most powerful defender of old catholic ortho-
doxy and the teacher of the high-churchly C^'prian, should have
been a schismatic and an antagonist of Rome. But with the
Roman spirit he united in his constitution the acerbity of the
Punic character. The same bold independence played in him,
in which his native city Carthage once resisted, through more
than a hundred years' war,^ the rising power of the seven-hilled
city on the Tiber. But in this he truly represents the African
church, in which a similar antagonism continued to reveal
itself, not only among the Donatists, but even among the leading
' Adv. Prax. c. 1. * B.C. 264-146.
§ 130. TERTULLIA^ AND THE AFRICAN SCHOOL. 515
advocates of Catliolicism. Cj^prian died at variance witli Eome
on the question of heretical baptism ; and Augustine, with all
his great services to the catholic system of faith, became at the
same time, through his anti-Pelagian doctrine, the father of
evangelical Protestantism and of semi-Protestant Jansenism.
Tertullian was a rare genius, perfectly original and fresh,
but angular, boisterous, and eccentric ; full of glowing fantasy,
pointed wit, keen discernment, polemic dexterity, and moral
earnestness, but wanting in logical clearness, calm consideration,
and symmetrical development. His vehement temper was
never fully subdued, although he struggled sincerely against it.^
Like almost all great men, he combined strong contrarieties of
character. He reminds one, in many respects, of Luther;
though the reformer had nothing of the ascetic gloom and rigor
of the African father, and exhibits instead, with all his gigantic
energy, a kindly serenity and childlike simplicity altogether
foreign to the latter. Tertullian dwells enthusiastically on the
divine foolishness of the gospel, and has a noble contempt for
the world, for its science and its art, and for his own ; and yet
are his writings a mine of antiquarian knowledge, and novel,
striking, and fruitful ideas. He calls the Grecian philosophers
the patriarchs of all heresies, and scornfully asks : " What has
the academy to do with the church ? what has Christ to do with
Plato — Jerusalem with Athens?" And yet reason does him
invaluable service against his antagonists. He vindicates the
principle of church authority and tradition with great force and
ingenuity against all heresy ; yet, when a Montanist, he claims
for himself with equal energy the right of private judgment and
of individual protest. He has a vivid sense of the corruption
of human nature and of the absolute need of moral res:eneration :
yet he declares the soul to be born Christian, and unable to find
rest except in faith. " The testimonies of the soul," says he,
" are as true as they are simple ; as simple as they are popular ;
as popular as they are natural ; as natural as they are divine."
' Comp. his own painful confession in De patient, c. 1: Miserri mus ego semper
aeger caloribus impatientiae.
516 SECOND PEEIOD. A.D. 100-811.
He is just the opposite of tlie equally genial, less vigorous, but
more learned and comprehensive Origen. He adopts the strictest
supranatural principles, and shrinks not from the "credo quia
absurdum est." At the same time he is a most decided realist,
and attributes body, that is, as it were, a corporeal, tangible sub-
stantiality, even to Grod and to the soul; while the idealistic
Alexandrian cannot speak spiritually enough of God, and can
conceive the human soul without and before the existence of
body. Tertullian's theology revolves about the great Pauline
antithesis of sin and grace, and breaks the road to the Latin
anthropology and soteriology afterwards developed by his like-
minded, but clearer, calmer, and more considerate countryman,
Augustine. For his opponents, be they heathens, Jews, heretics,
or catholics, he has as little indulgence and regard as Luther.
With the adroitness of a special pleader he entangles them in
self-contradictions, pursues them into every nook and corner,
overwlielms them with arguments, sophisms, apophthegms, and
sarcasms, drives them before him with unmerciful lashings, and
almost always makes them ridiculous and contemptible. His
polemics everywhere leave marks of blood.
His style is exceedingly characteristic, and corresjwnds with
his thouglit. It is extremely condensed, abrupt, laconic, senten-
tious, nervous, figurative, full of hyperbole, sudden turns, legal
technicalities, African provincialisms, or rather* antiquated
Latinisms, Latinized Greek words, and new expressions ; there-
fore abounding also in roughnesses, angles, and obscurities;
sometimes like a grand volcanic eruption, belching precious
stones and dross in strange confusion ; or like the foaming tor-
rent tumbling over the precipice of rocks and sweeping all before
it. His mighty spirit wrestles with the form, and breaks its way
through the primeval forest of nature's thinldng. He had to
create the church language of the Latin tongue.
In short, we see in this remarkable man, both intellectually and
• Acooriling to Niebulir, a most competent judge of Latin antiquities. Comp. also
what Ruhnkcn sa3-s of Tertullian's style in Praofiitio ad Scliellori Lexic. aud Bishop
Kaye, 1. c. p. 67 (in OlIiKt, III. 720).
§ 130. TERTULLIAN" AND THE AFRICAN SCHOOL. 517
morally, tlie fermenting of a new creation, not yet quite set free
from the bonds of chaotic darkness, and brought into clear and
beautiful order.
The writings of TertuUian are mostly short; but they are
numerous and touch almost all departments of religious life.
They present a graphic picture of the church of his day. The
earlier ones, wliich were written in Greek, are entirely lost, or
extant only in Latin reproductions. Most of his works, ac-
cording to internal evidence, fall in the first quarter of the third
century, in the Montanistic period of his life ;' and among these
many of his ablest writings against the heretics ; while, on the
other hand, the gloomy moral austerity, which predisposed him
to Montanism, comes out quite strongly even in his earliest pro-
ductions.
His works may be grouped in three classes : apologetic ; po-
lemic or anti-heretical ; and ethic or practical ; to which may be
added as a fourth class the expressly Montanistic tracts against
the catholics. We can here only mention the most important : ^
1. Pre-eminent among the ajDologetic works against heathens
and Jews is the Apologeticus, which was composed probably in
the reign of Septimius Severus, about a.d. 200, and is unques-
tionably one of the most beautiful monuments of the heroic age
of Christianity. In this work Tertullian enthusiastically and
' The chronological order of Tertullian's works can be only proximately fixed.
Bishop Kaye divides them into four classes, according to their relation to Montanism
(comp. Oehler: Tertull. Opera, III., p. 717):
(a) Those which probably belong to the author's catholic period ; viz. : De
poeuitentia; De oratione ; De baptisrao ; Ad uxorem ; Ad martyras, or martyres ;
De patientia ; Adv. Judaeos ; De praescriptione haereticorum.
(b) Those which were certainly not composed till after his transition to Mon-
tanism ; viz. : Adv. Marcionem (5 libri) ; De anima ; De carne Christi ; De resurrec-
tione camis; Adv. Praxean ; Scorpiace (i.e. antidote against the poison of the
Gnostic heresy); De corona mihtis; De virginibus velandis; De exhortatione
castitatis ; De fuga in persecutione ; De monogamia ; De jejuniis ; De pudicitia.
(c) Those which probalaly belong to the Montanistic period ; viz. : Adv. Valen-
tinianos; Ad Scapulam; De spectaculis; De idololatria; De cultu feminarura
(2 libri).
{d) Those of which it cannot be certainly decided whether they are catholic or
Montanistic ; viz. : Apologeticus (probably of the catholic period) ; Ad nationes ;
De restimonio animae ; De pallio (probably Montanistic) ; Adv. Hermogenem.
518 SECOND PEEIOD. A.D. 100-311.
triumpliantly repels the attacks of the heathens upon the new
rehgion, and demands for it legal toleration and equal rights
with the other sects of the Eoman empire ; — the first plea for
religious liberty.
2. His polemic works are occupied chiefly with the refutation
of the Gnostics, particularly of Marcion (a.d. 208) and the
Yalentinians. In the ingenious and truly catholic tract, "On
the Prescription of Heretics,"^ he cuts off all errors and neologies
at the outset from all right of legal contest and appeal to the
holy scriptures, which belong only to the cathohc church as the
legitimate heir and guardian of Christianity. Tliis forensic
argument, however, turns also against Tertullian's own secession ;
for the difference between heretics and schismatics is really only
relative, at least in Cyprian's view. Tertullian afterwards
asserted, in contradiction with this book, that in religious mat-
ters not custom nor long possession, but truth alone, was to be
consulted. The works "On Baptism," "On the Soul," "On
the Flesh of Christ," "On the Eesurrection of the Flesh,"
"Against Hermogenes," "Against Praxeas," are concerned
with particular errors, and are important to the doctrine of bap-
tism, to Christian psychology, to eschatology and christology.
8. His numerous practical or ascetic treatises throw much light
on the moral life of the early church, as contrasted with the im-
morality of the heathen world. Among these belong the books
" On Prayer," " On Penance," " On Patience," — a virtue, which
he extols with honest confession of his own natural impatience
and passionate temper, and which he urges upon himself as well
as others, — the consolation of the confessors in prison (Ad
martyres), and the admonition against visiting theatres (De spec-
taculis), which he classes with the pomp of the devil, and against
all share, direct or indirect, in the worship of idols (De idolo-
latria).
4. His strictly Montanistic or anti-catholic writings, in which
the peculiarities of this sect are not only incidentally touched, as
' Praescriptio, in legal terminology, means an exception made before the merits
of a case are discussed, showing in limine that the plaintiff ought not to be heard.
§ 131. CYPRIAN. 519
in many of the works named above, but vindicated expressly
and at large, are likewise of a practical nature, and contend, in
fanatical rigor, against tbe restoration of tlie lapsed (De pudi-
citia), flight in persecutions, second marriage (De monogamia, and
De exhortatione castitatis), display of dress in females (De cultu
feminarum), and other customs of the psychicals, as he com-
monly calls the catholics in distinction from the sectarian pneu-
matics. His plea, also, for excessive fasting (De jejuniis), and
his justification of a Christian soldier, who was discharged for
refusing to crown his head (De corona militis), belong here.
Tertullian considers it unbecoming the followers of Christ, who,
when on earth, wore a crown of thorns for us, to adorn their
heads with laurel, myrtle, olive, or with flowers or gems, "We
may imagine what he would have said to the tiara of the
pope in his mediaeval splendor.
§ 131. Cyp'ian.
I. S. Ctpriani Opera omnia, recogn. et illustr. per Jo. Fell (bishop of
Oxford). Oxon. 1682. Amstel. 1700; and often. Other editions by
Erasmus, Bas. 1520; Manutius, Rome, 1563; Rigaltius, Par. 1648;
particularly the Benedictine edition, begun by Baluzius and completed
by Prud. Maranus, Par. 1726, reprinted at Venice, 1758; and the con-
venient manual ed. of Goldhorn, Leipz. 1838 sq. (in Gersdorfs BibL
Patr. Lat. P. II. & III.).
II. J. Pearson : Annales Cyprianici, Oxon. 1682 ; and H. Dodwell : Disser-
tationes Cyprianicae, Oxon. 1684; Amst. 1700 (both in the edd. of
Fell). F. W. Rettberg : Cyprianus nach seinem Leben u. Wirken. Gott.
1831. G. A. Poole : Life and Times of Cyprian. Oxf. 1840. J". W. Nevin:
Cyprian; four arts, in the " Mercersburg Review" for 1852 (comp.
Varien : Nevin on Cyprian ; in the same, 1853, p. 555 sqq.).
Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, bishop and martyr, and the im-
personation of the cathohc church of the middle of the third
century, sprang from a wealthy and noble heathen family of
Carthage, where he was born about the year 200. His deacon
and biographer, Pontius, considers his earlier life not worthy of
notice in comparison with his subsequent greatness in the church.
Jerome tells us, that he stood in high repute as a teacher of
620 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
rhetoric.^ lie was, at all events, a man of commanding literary,
rhetorical, and legal culture, and of eminent administrative
ability, which afterwards proved of great service to him in the
episcopal office. He lived in worldly splendor to mature age,
nor was he free from the common vices of heathenism, as we
must infer from his own confessions. But the story, that he
practised arts of magic, arises perhaps from some confusion, and
is at any rate unattested. Yet, after he became a Christian, he
believed, like Tertullian and others, in visions and dreams, and
had some only a short time before his martyrdom.
A worthy presbyter, Caecilius, who lived in Cyprian's house,
and afterwards at his death committed his wife and children to
him, first made him acquainted with the doctrines of the Chris-
tian religion and moved him to read the Bible. After long
resistance Cyprian forsook the world, entered the class of cate-
chumens, sold his estates for the benefit of the poor,^ took a vow
of chastity, and in 2-45 or 246 received baptism, adopting, out of
gratitude to his spiritual father, the name of Caecilius.
He himself, in a tract soon afterwards written to a friend,'
gives us the following oratorical description of his conversion :
" While I languished in darkness and deep night, and tossing
and doubtful upon the sea of a troubled world, I floated about in
wandering ways, ignorant of my destination, and far from truth
and light, I thought it, according to my then habits, altogether
a difficult and hard thing, which the indulgence of God promised
me for salvation, that a man could be born anew, and that, being
quickened to new life by the bath of saving water, he might put
off the past, and, while preserving the identity of the body, might
transform the man in mind and heart. How, said I, is such a
change possible ? How can one at once divest himself of all that
' Catal. c. 67 : Cyprianus Afcr primnm gloriose rlietoricrin docuit.
2 Pontius, in his Vita, a very unsatisfactory sketcli, prcQxcd to tlie editions of the
works of Cyprian, phicos tliis act of renunciation (Matt. xix. 21) before his baptism,
"hitcr fidei prima riKlimonta." Cyprian's gardens, however, together witli a villa,
were afterwards restored to him, "Dei indulgentia," that is, very probably, through
the liberality of his Christian friends.
3 De gratia Dei, ad Donatuin, c. 3, i.
§ 181. CYPRIAN. 521
was either innate or acquired and grown upon him ? . . . Whence
does he learn frugality, who was accustomed to sumptuous feasts ?
And how shall he who shone in costly apparel, in gold and pur-
ple, come down to common and simple dress ? He who has lived
in honor and station, cannot bear to be private and obscure. . . .
But when, by the aid of the regenerating water,^ the stain of my
former life was washed away, a serene and pure light poured
from above into my purified breast. So soon as I drank the
spirit from above, and was transformed by a second birth into a
new man, then the wavering mind became wonderfully firm;
what had been closed opened ; the dark became light ; strength
came for that which had seemed difficult ; what I had thought
imjDOssible became practicable ; it could be seen, that had been
earthly, which was formerly born of the flesh and lived at the
service of sin, and that that was of God, which now the Holy
Spirit animated."
Cyprian now devoted himself zealously, in ascetic retirement,
to the study of the scriptures and the church teachers, especially
Tertullian, whom he called for daily with the words : " Give me
the master !"2 The influence of Tertullian on his theological
formation is unmistakable, and appears at once, for example, on
comparing the tracts of the two on prayer and on patience, or
the work of the one on the vanity of idols with the apology of
the other. It is therefore rather strange that in his own writings
we find no acknowledgment of his indebtedness, and, as far as I
recollect, no express allusion whatever to Tertullian and the Mon-
tanists.
Such a man could not long remain concealed. Only two years
after his baptism, spite of his earnest remonstrance, Cyprian was
raised to the bishopric of Carthage by the acclamations of the
people, and was thus at the same time placed at the head of the
whole North African clergy. This election of a neophyte was
■ " Undae genitalis auxilio," which refers of course to baptism.
2 "Da magistrura!" So Jerome relates, Cat. c. 53, on the testimony of an old
man, who had heard it in his youth from the "notarius beati Cyprianl" As to the
time, Cyprian might have personally known Tertullian, who lived at least till the
year 220.
522 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
contrary to the letter of the ecclesiastical laws,^ and led after-
wards to the schism of the party of Novatus. But the result
proved, that here, as in the similar elevation of Ambrose, Augus-
tin, and other eminent bishops of the ancient church, the voice of
the people was the voice of God.
For the space of ten years, ending with his triumphant mar-
tyrdom in 258, Cyprian administered the episcopal office in
Carthage with exemplary energy, wisdom, and fidelity, and that
in a most stormy time, amidst persecutions from without and
schismatic agitations within, of which we have already spoken
in their proper place.^
As Origen was the greatest scholar, Cyprian was the greatest
bishop, of the third century. He was born to be a prince in the
church, and, in executive talent, he even surpassed all the popes
of his time; and he bore himself towards them, also, as "frater"
and " collcga," in the spirit of full equality. Augustine calls
him by eminence, "the catholic bishop and catholic martyr;"
and Vincentius of Lirinum, "the light of all saints, all martyrs,
and all bishops." His stamp of character was more that of Peter
than either of Paul or John. His peculiar importance fiills not
so much in the field of theology, where he lacks originality and
depth, as in church organization and discipline. "While Tertul-
lian dealt mainly with heretics, Cyprian directed his polemics
against schismatics, among whom he had to condemn, though he
never does in fact, his venerated teacher, who died a Montanist.
Yet his own conduct was not perfectly consistent with his posi-
tion; for in the controversy on heretical baptism he himself
exhibited his master's spirit of opposition to Rome. He set a
limit to his own exclusive catholic j^rinciple of tradition by the
truly Protestant maxims: "Consuetudo sine veritate vetustas
erroris est," and, " Non est de consuetudine pracscribcndum, scd
ratione vinccndum." In him the idea of the old catholic hierar-
chy and episcopal autocracy, both in its affinity and in its conflict
with the idea of the papacy, was personally embodied, so to speak,
and became flesh and blood. The unit}^ of the church, as the
' Comp. 1 Tim. iii. 5. " Conip. ^g 5G, 10-4, aud 115.
§ 131. CYPRIAN. 523
veMcle and medium of all salvation, was the thought of his life
and the passion of his heart. But he contended with the same
zeal for an independent episcopate as for a Roman primacy ; and
the authority of his name has been therefore as often employed
against the papacy as in its favor.^ On both sides he was the
faithful organ of the churchly spirit of the age.
It were great injustice to attribute his high churchly principles
to pride and ambition, though temptations to this spirit unques-
tionably beset a prominent position like his. Such principles are
entirely compatible with sincere personal humility before God.
It was the deep conviction of the divine authority, and the heavy
responsibility of the episcopate, which lay at the bottom both of
his first " nolo episcopari," and of his subsequent hierarchical feel-
ing. He was as conscientious in discharging the duties, as he was
jealous in maintaining the rights, of his office. Notwithstanding
his high conception of the dignity of a bishop, he took counsel
of his presbyters in everything, and respected the rights of his
people. He knew how to combine strictness and moderation,
dignity and gentleness, and to inspire love and confidence as well
as esteem and veneration. He took upon himself, like a father, the
care of the widows and orphans, the poor and sick. During the
great pestilence of 252 he showed the most self-sacrificing fidelity
to his flock, and love for his enemies. He forsook his congre-
gation, indeed, in the Decian persecution, but only, as he ex-
pressly assured them, in pursuance of a divine admonition, and
in order to direct them during his fourteen months of exile by
pastoral epistles. In the Yalerian persecution he completely
washed away the stain of that flight with the blood of his dig-
nified and cheerful martyrdom. He exercised rigid discipline,
though at a later period — not in perfect consistency — he mode-
rated his disciplinary principles in prudent accommodation to
the exigencies of the times. With Tertullian he prohibited all
display of female dress, which only deformed the work of the
Creator; and he warmly opposed all participation in heathen
amusements, — even refusing a converted play-actor permission
> Comp. §§ 108-111, and § 104.
524 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
to give instruction in declamation and pantomime. He lived in
a simple, ascetic way, under a sense of the perisliableness of all
earthly things, and in view of the solemn eternity, in which alone
also the questions and strifes of the church militant would be
perfectly settled. " Only above," says he in his tract De morta-
litate, which he composed during the pestilence, "only above
are true peace, sure repose, constant, firm, and eternal security ;
there is our dwelling, there our home. Who would not fain
hasten to reach it? There a great multitude of beloved awaits
us ; the numerous host of fathers, brethren, and children. There
is the glorious choir of apostles ; there the number of exulting
prophets; there the countless multitude of martyrs, crowned
with victory after warfare and suffering ; there triumphing vir-
gins ; there the merciful enjoying their reward. Thither let us
hasten with longing desire ; let us wish to be soon with them,
soon with Christ. After the earthly comes the heavenly ; after
the small follows the great ; after perishableness, eternity."
As an author, Cyprian is far less original, fertile, and vigorous,
than Tertullian, but is clearer, more moderate, and more elegant
and rhetorical in his style. He really produced only on the doc-
trines of the church, the priesthood, and sacrifice.
1. His most important works relate to practical questions on
church government and discipline. Among these is his tract on
the Unity of the Church (a.d. 251), that " magna charta" of the
old catholic high-church spirit, the commanding importance of
which we have already observed.^ Then eighty-one Epistles,^
some very long, to various bishops, to the clergy and the
churches of Africa and of Rome, to the confessors, to the lapsed,
&c. ; comprising also some letters from others in reply, as from
Cornelius of Rome and Firmilian of Caesarea, and giving us a
very graphic picture of his pastoral labors aud of the whole
church life of that day. To thQ same class belongs also his trea-
tise : De lapsis (a.d. 250) against loose penitential discipline.
' Com. § 111.
2 The ordei of them varies in different editions, occasioning frequent confusion in
citation.
§ 182. THE OTHER LATIN DIVINES. 625
2. Besides these he wrote a series of moral works on the grace
of God (246) ; on the Lord's prayer (252) ; on mortality (252) ;
against worldly-mindedness and pride of dress in consecrated
virgins (De habitu virginum) ; a glowing call to martyrdom ; an
exhortation to liberality (De opere et eleemosynis, between 254
and 256), with a touch of the " opus operatum " doctrine ; and
two beautiful tracts written during his controversy with pope
Stephanus : De bono patientiae, and De zelo et livore (about
256), in which he exhorts the excited minds to patience and
moderation.
3. Least important are his two apologetic works, the product
of his Christian pupilage. One is directed against heathenism
(De idolorum vanifate), and is borrowed in great part, often
verbally, from Tertullian and Minucius Felix. The other,
against Judaism (Testimonia adversus Judaeos), also contains no
new thoughts, but furnishes a careful collection of Scriptural
proofs of the Messiahship and divinity of Jesus.
§ 132. The other Latin Divines of the Third Century.
Comp. particularly Mohler : Patrologie I. 790-808 and 894-933.
Marcus Minucius Felix, a prominent jurist, but hardly of
the celebrated Eoman family of the Minucii, and probably of
North African descent, a younger contemporary of Tertullian,^
embraced Christianity in adult life, and wrote one of the ablest
and most attractive apologies, which was, in part, imitated from
TertuUian's Apologeticus, and formed the model of Cyprian's
work against idolatry. It is entitled : Octavius,^ and is clothed
in the form of a dialogue between two friendly lawyers, Cae-
cilius Natalis and Januarius Octavius, the former of whom
defends heathenism, while the latter advocates Christianity, and
' Jerome (Catal. c. 58) places him between Tertullian and Cyprian. Later wri-
ters differ as to the chronology.
* It well deserves to be read through, and has been often edited, e. g. ; by Bal-
duinus, 1560; Gronovius, 1709; Davis, Cambridge, 1712 ; Lindner, 1773; Liibkert,
1836 ; de Muralt, 1836 ; Oeliler (in Gersdorf a Bibhoth, P. Lat.) Leipz. 1847.
526 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
at last gains the victory and brings over his friend. The argu-
ments on both sides are clearly and forcibly stated in a tone of
flowing declamation and poignant raillery, as we may expect
from an intelligent and well read Eoman rhetorician.
The Eoman presbyter Caius, who died about the year 220, is
known to us only from a few Greek fragments as an opponent of
Montanism and Chiliasm. Perhaps he was also the author of the
corrupted Latin canon, which Muratori has discovered ; but he
certainly was not the author of the Philosophoumena.i'
NoYATiAN, the schismatic bishop of Eome and advocate of the
strict penitential discipline,^ was a contemporary of Cyprian, a
man of learned education, and well versed in the Greek philoso-
phy. He is the only important writer of this period in the
Eoman church, except the somewhat older Hippolytus, who
wrote, however, as Caius also did, in Greek. We have from
him a work on the Trinity,^ composed about 256, in which he
skilfully refutes the error of the Monarchians, especially of Sabel-
lius, and strives to reconcile the divine threeness with unity.-* In
his treatise on the Jewish laws of food,^ he proves by allegorical
interpretation, that those laws are no longer binding upon Chris-
tians, and that Christ has substituted temperance and abstinence
for the prohibition of unclean animals, with the exception of
meat offered to idols, which is forbidden by the Apostolic coun-
cil. The circular letter of the Eoman clergy, which is ascribed
to him, contains his earlier milder penitential principles.
ViCTORiNUS, probably of Greek extraction, bishop of Peta-
vium in the present Styria, who died a martyr in 303, wrote
several commentaries on books of the Old and New Testaments ;
but only some inconsiderable fragments of them have come down
to us. Several poems also are attributed to him, but without
sufficient grounds.
» Comp. § 126.
2Comp. § 115. The Greek writers often confound him with the contemporary
Novatus of Carthage.
'Liber do trinitate, in Gallandi, torn, ill. This book has been attributed also to
TertuHian and Cyprian.
* Conip. § 81. 5 l>e oibis Judaicis Epistola.
§ 132. THE OTHER LATI?!" DIVINES. 527
CoMMODiAJsr, a layman, wlio probably lived in Africa in tlie
second half of the tliird century, was converted from lieatlienism
by reading tbe Bible, and wrote, in uncouth versification and
barbarian hexameter, " Instructions for the Christian Life,"^ in
which he seeks to convert heathens and Jews, and gives excel-
lent exhortations to catechumens, believers, and penitents. It is
divided into eighty strophes, each of which is an acrostic, the
initial letters of the lines composing the title or subject of the
section. This book is not unimportant to the history of practical
Christianity, and, under a rude dress in connexion with many
superstitious notions, reveals an humble and fervent Christian
heart. Like Victorinus and most of the ante-Nicene fathers,
except the Alexandrians, Commodian was a millenarian.
Arnobius, of Sicca in Numidia, a teacher of rhetoric, was
for a long time a decided opponent of Christianity, and embraced
it in consequence of a vision in a dream — such visions appear to
have been a frequent cause of conversions, especially in Africa —
and wrote, about the year 304, an apologetic and polemic work,^
which shows more address in the refutation of heathenism, than
in the demonstration of Christianity ; never cites the holy scrip-
tures ; hardly brings out in any way the specifically Christian
element ; and with many clever thoughts, propounds also erratic
views, such as the destructibility of the soul and the final anni-
hilation of the wicked, without method and in swelling rhetoric,
but with a certain freshness and vigor. His own conversion he
thus describes : ^ " O blindness ! But a short time ago I was
worshipping images just taken from the forge, gods shaped upon
the anvil and by the hammer. . . . When I saw a stone made
smooth and smeared with oil, I prayed to it and addressed it, as
if a living power dwelt in it, and implored blessings from the
senseless stock, and offered grievous insult even to the gods,
whom I took to be such, in that I considered them wood, stone,
1 Instructiones adversus gentium Deos, in eighty chapters ; first edited by Rigal-
tius, 1650, and sometimes also as an appendix to the works of Cyprian.
2 Disputationum adversus gentes libri vii. Published by Canter, Antw, 1582; by
Salmasius, 1651; Orelli, 1816; Oehler (in the Bibl. P. Lat. vol. xii.) 1846.
= L. I. c. 39 (p. 26, ed. Oehler).
528 SECOND PERIOD. A.D. 100-311.
and bone, or fancied that they dwelt in the stuff of such things.
Now that I have been led by so great a teacher into the way of
truth, I know what all that is, I think worthily of the Worthy,
offer no insult to the Godhead, and give every one his due."
Upon this public confession of faith the bishop of Sicca, who at
first did not trust him, administered baptism to him. "What
afterwards became of him, we know not.
From his rhetorical school proceeded Lactantius (fSSO),
called for his elegant Latin, the Christian Cicero. But, as a
contemporary of Constantine the Great, he belongs rather, like
Eusebius, to the following period.
ALPHABETICAL INDEX.
The writers mentioned in the Bibliographical Apparatus at the head of sections, and in the
notes, are not included in this Index, but may be easily found by referring to the subject. The
figures indicate the page.
Abraxas, 238.
Achamoth, 229, 230.
Acolyths, 412.
Acts of the Apostles, 16, 98 sq.
Adresianes, 242.
Aelia Capitolina, 157.
Aeschylus, 337.
Africa, Christianity ia, 153.
Agape, 126, 395.
Agnes, St., 176.
Alexander the Great, 46.
Alexander of Abonoteichos, 191.
Alexander Severus, 170, 193, 371.
Alexandrian School, 495 sqq.
Allegorical interpretation, 194, 222 sq.,
227, 258.
Alogiaus, 288.
Alzog, 19.
American historians, 25.
Ammonius Sarras, 192.
Ananias and Sappbira^ 138.
Ancient Church, 11.
Angels of the Apocalypse, 135.
Anicet of Rome, 375.
Antioch, congregation of, 67, 69, 70, 76,
464.
Antitactes, 245.
Antitrinitarians, 287 sqq.
Antoninus Pius, 165.
Apelles, 24.5.
Apocalypse, 107 sq.
ApoUinaris of Hierapolis, 375, 485.
ApoUiuaris of Laodicea, 193.
ApolloniusofTyana, 191, 193, 195.
Apollos, 108, 133.
Apologists, 196 sqq., 455.
Apostles, 132 sq.
Apostles' Creed, 83, 121, 261 sq.
Apostolic Church, 29 sqq., 138.
Apostolic Canons, 442 sq.
Apostolic Constitutions, 441 sq.
ApostoUc Fathers, 456 sqq.
Aristides, 197, 485.
Aristo, 485.
Aristotle, 46, 222, 317, 325, 329, 337.
Arnobius, 335, 527 sq.
Arnold, 21.
Arnold, Thomas, 181.
Art, Christian, 377 sqq.
Artemon and Artemonites, 289.
Asceticism, of the Gnostics, 231, 349; of
the Catholic Church, 345 sqq.
Asia, Christianity in, 152.
Athanasius, 287, 296.
Athenagoras, 197, 201, 333, 486.
Augustine, 193, 205, 209, 225, 284, 453,
515.
Aurelian, 174.
Axionicos, 242.
B.
Baptism, nature and subject of, 122, 395
sqq. ; mode of, 123 ; of infants, 124,
401 sqq. ; of heretics, 404 sqq.
Bar-Cochba, 157.
Bardesanes, 233, 242.
Barnabas, 70, 300 ; epistle of) 475.
Baronius, 17, and often.
BasUides, 227, 229, 237 sqq.
Baur, 24, and passim
Beausobre, 222.
BeryUus, 292.
Bible, 82.
Bishops, 134, 414 sqq.
Blandina, 167.
Beroea, 71.
530
ALPHABETICAL INDEX.
Bossuet, 18.
Branches of history, 4 sqq.
Britain, Cliristianity in, 155.
Buddhism, 222.
Bunsen, 470.
Burial of the dead, 341 sqq.
c
Cabbala, 223, 224
Caecihus, 520.
Cainites, 237.
Cajus, 300, 526.
CaUgula, 305.
CaUistus or Calixtus I, 291, 431, 447.
Canon, 255 sq.
Caracalla, 170.
Carpocratcs, 240.
Carthage, 153, 109.
Cassiodorus, 17.
Catacombs, 343 sqq.
Cataphrygians, see Montanists.
Catechists, Catechumens, Catechumenate,
397 sqq.
CathoHc Unity, 432 sqq.
CathoHc Epistles, 99 sqq.
Catholic Theology, 251 sqq.
Celibacy, 353 sqq., 358 sqq.
Celsus, 187 sq.
Cerdo, 243.
Cerinthus, 236.
Charisms, 114 sqq.
Charity, 117, 336 sqq.
Chiliasm and Chiliasts, 299 sqq.
Christ, Jesus, his position in history, 32 ;
his life and character, 53 sqq.
Christian name, 67.
Christmas, 377.
Christology, 266 sqq.
Chrysostom, 318, 453, 454.
Church, doctrine of the, 138 sqq., 432 sqq.
Church Buildings, 127, 370 sqq.
Church Discipline, see Discipline.
Church Father, 454 sqq.
Church History, 1 sqq.
Cicero, 15, 311, 336, 337.
Claudius, 162.
Clement of Rome, 409, 416 sq., 431, 441,
455 ; his life and writings, 458 sqq.
Clementine Homilies, 216 sqq.
Clementine Recognitions, 220.
Clement of Alexandria, on Greek philo-
sophy, 205; on Gnosticism, 232; on
inspiration, 257 ; on tradition, 261 ;
on the logos, 209, 275 ; on the Holy
Ghost. 279; on the Christian family,
330 ; on asceticism, 350 ; on voluntary
poverty, 352 ; on celibacy, 355 sq. ;
on the appearance of Christ, 378 ; on
the eucharist, 389 ; his life and writ-
ings, 498 sqq.
Clergy and Laity, 131, 136,407 sqq., 439.
Colo.ssians, 105.
Commodus, 168, 311.
Commodian, 301, 527
Communion, the holy, 125 sqq., 386 sqq.
Confessors, 178, 183.
Confirmation, 400 sq.
Constantino, 177, 451.
Corinth, 71, 72.
Corinthians, 103.
Cornelius of Caesarea, 66.
Cornelius of Rome, 413, 450, 451.
Council of Jerusalem, 71, 136.
Creation, doctrine of the, 263 sqq.
Creed, the Apostles', 261 sq.
Cureton, 470.
Cyprian, his martyrdom, 172, 173; on
martyrdom, 183; on tradition, 260
on Christian life, 310; on mixed mar
riages, 332; on charity, 340; on cell
bacy, 357 ; on the eucharist, 388, 394
on penance, 396 sq. ; on baptism, 399
404 sqq. ; on episcopacy, 423 sqq. ,
on the papacy, 429 sq. ; on catholic
unity, 436 ; on discipline, 445 sqq.,
450 ; his life and writings, 519 sqq.
D
Damascus, 68, 69.
Deacons, 134 sq.
Deaconesses, 135.
Decian persecution, 171 sq.
Demetrius, 503, 511.
Demiurge, 229.
Demons, 399 sq.
Dioclesian persecution, 147 sqq.
Diodorus, 15.
Diognetus, epistle to, 146, 480 sq.
Dionysius of Alexandria, 274, 450, 509
Dionysius of Corinth, 486.
Dionysius of Rome, 273 sq., 286 sq.
Discipline, 136 sqq , 443 sqq.
Discipline arcani, 384 sq.
Docetism, 227, 232, 297.
Dollinger, 19.
Dodwell, 180.
Domitian, 78, 163, 305.
Domitian persecution, 78, 163.
Dorotheas, 510.
Dositheus, 235.
Duty of the historian, 7 sqq.
E
Easter, 129, 373 sqq.
ALPHABETICAL INDEX.
531
Easter controversies, 374 sqq.
Ebionism, 88, 211 sqq.
Egypt, 153.
Elders, see Presbyters.
Elkesaites, 215.
Elxai, 215.
Elymas, 71.
Encratites, 245.
English historians, 25.
Ephesus, 72.
Ephesians, 105.
Epiphanes, 240.
Epiphanius, 213, 226, 232.
Epiphany, 376 sq.
Episcopacy, origin of, 414 sqq. ; develop-
ment of, 421 sqq.
Essenes, 37, 215.
Eucharist, 125 sqq., 386 sqq.
Eusebius, 16, 193, and often.
Eutychius, 419.
Exorcism, 399.
Exorcists, 413.
F
FabianusofRome, 172.
Fabianus of Antioch, 450.
Family, the Christian, 111, 325 sqq.
Fathers of the church, 454 sqq.
Fasting, 120, 324 sqq.
Fehcissimus, 448 sq.
FeUcitas, 170.
Felix, 73.
Festivals, 128 sq., 372 sqq.
Festrus, 73.
FirmiUan, 405.
Flavins, 20.
Flavins Clement, 216.
Fleury, 18.
Fortunatus, 448.
Foulkes, 25.
Fricke, 24.
Friday, celebration ofj 373.
G
Galatians, 104.
Galerius, 174, 176.
GalUenus, 174.
GaUus, 173.
Gamaliel, 68.
GauL 154.
Gentile Christianity, 74 sqq., 84, 86.
Germans, 155,
Gervasius, 176.
Gibbon, 180, 316, 327, 328, 329.
Gieseler, 23, and often.
Gladiatorial shows, 311.
Gnosticism and Gnostics, 88 sq, 211, 221
sqq-
God, doctrine of, 263 sqq. ; Gnostic con-
ception of, 227.
GorcUanus, 171.
Gospels, 94 sqq.
Grecian Uterature, 45 sqq.
Gregory of Nyssa, 359.
Gregory Thaumaturgos, 509 sq.
Guericke, 24.
H
Hadrian, 165, 197.
Hard wick, 25.
Harmonius, 242.
Hase, 24.
Heathenism, 42 sqq.
Hebrews, epistle to the, 106.
Hegesippus, 486 sq.
Heliogabalus, 170, 305.
Henke, 22.
Heracleon, 242.
Heraclas, 509.
Heresies, 87 sqq., 210 sqq., 251 sq.
Heretical baptism, 404 sqq.
Hermas, 350, 357, 477 sqq.
Hermias, 486.
Herod I., 36.
Herod Agrippa, 72.
Hesychius, 511.
Hieracas (Hierax), 510.
Hierocles, 194 sq.
Hippo, council o^ 256.
Hippolytus, on Gnosticism, 222 ; on Basi-
lides, 237 sqq.; on the Yalentiniaus,
242 ; on freedom, 265 ; on Christ's
person, 273, 275 ; on Zephyrinus, 289 ;
on Callistus and the Patripassians, 291
sqq. ; on the Easter controversy, 375 ;
on the papacy, 429, 431 ; on discipline,
447 ; his life and writings, 490 sqq.
Historiography, 13 sqq.
Holy Ghost, doctrine of the, 277 sqq.
Hottinger, 21.
Ignatius of Antioch, 165, 331, 339, 455 ;
on the divinity of Christ, 267 ; on his
humanity, 274 ; on celibacy, 355 ; on
the eucharist, '386; on the priest-
hood, 409; on episcopacy, 416, 422
sq., 428 ; on catholic unity, 434 ; his
character and epistles, 463 sqq.
Immersion, see Baptism.
Incarnation, 53, 89, 267 sqq.
Infant baptism, see Baptism.
632
ALPHABETICAL INDEX.
International relations as affected by
Christianity, 113 sq.
Interpretation, of tongues, 116; of tlie
bible, 257 sq.
Irenaeus, on the number of martyrs, 1 80 ;
on miracles, 207 ; on Gnosticism, 253 ;
on the scriptures, 255 sqq. ; on tradi-
tion and the creed, 259 sq. ; on the
doctrine of God, 263 ; on creation, 265;
on freedom, 265 ; on the person of
Christ, 271 sqq., 274, 276 sq. ; on the
Holy Ghost, 281 ; on the Trinity, 285
sq. ; on redemption, 297 ; on the
millennium, 300 ; on the Easter contro-
versy, 375; on the eucharist, 387,
391, 393 ; on infant baptism, 402 ; on
the general priesthood, 410; on epis-
copacy, 416, 418, 423; on the Roman
church, 428 sq. ; on the catholic
church, 435 ; his life and writings,
487 sqq.
Jacobi, 24.
Jaldabaoth, 229.
Jamblichus, 191, 192, 193.
James the Just, 64 sq., 76, 99, 41-5.
Janitors, 413.
Jerome, 343, 411, 416; on episcopacy,
419.
Jerusalem, congregation of, 61 sqq.;
council of, 71, 75, 136; destruction of,
77, 200.
Jesus Christ, see Christ.
Jewish Christianity, 74 sqq., 84 sqq., 86.
Jewish persecution, 156 sqq., 197 sqq.
Jewish proselytes, 50.
Jews and Judaism, 35, 185, 198 sqq.
John, the apostle, his life and labors, 78
sqq. ; his theology, 87 ; his gospel, 96
sqq. ; his epistles, 101 ; the revelation,
107 sq.
John of Damascus, 284, 354, 442.
Josephus, and his testimony on Christ,
58 sq.
Jude. 100.
Judaizing tendency, 88, 211 sqq.
Julia Mammaea, 170, 502.
Julius Africanus, 510.
Justin Martyr, on the spread of Christian-
ity, 152; on prophecies and types,
199 sq. ; on idolatry, 203 ; on Greek
philosophy, 204 ; on miracles, 207 ; on
the Logos, 268 sq. ; on the Holy
Ghost, 278 sq.; on the Trinity, 285;
on redemption, 297 ; on Chiliasm, 300 ;
on Christian worship, 382 sq. ; on the
eucharist, 387, 391 sq. ; on baptism.
395 sq., 397 sq. ; his life and writings,
481 sqq.
Justin the Gnostic, 242 sq.
K
Kaye, 207, and pasaiiu.
Kurtz, 24.
Lactantius, 301, 335, 372, 528.
Lapsi, 172, 178, 444 sqq.
Laurentius, 173.
Law of the Old Testament, 38.
Leouides, 169, 50L
Libellatici, 178.
Lindner, 24.
Literature of the apostles, 90 sqq. ; of
the early fathers, 452 sqq.
Liturgy of Clement, 392.
Logos, 268 sqq.
Lucanus, 245.
Lucian, 189 sq., 340.
Lucian of Antioch, 510.
Luke, gospel of; 96 ; acts of, 98 sq.
Lycurgus, 326.
Lydia, 71.
Lyons, 167.
M
Magdeburg Centuries, 20.
Mammaea, Julia, 170, 502.
Mani or Manichaeus, 246 sqq.
Manichaean and Manichaeism, 228, 246
sqq.
Marcia, 168.
Marciou, 227, 231, 243 sqq.
Marcus and Marcosians, 232, 242.
Marcus Aurelius, 166, 337.
Mark, gospel of, 96.
Marriage, 325 sqq.
Martyrs and Martyrdom, 177 sqq., 182
sqq.
Marj-, the Virgin, 110 sq.
Massuet, 223.
Matter, 228 sq.
Mauritius, 176.
Maximilla, 362.
Maxiniinus, 176, 177.
Ma.ximus Thrax, 170.
Melciiizedekians, 289.
Meletius. 451.
Melito, 166, 197, 376, 486.
Menandor, 235.
Methodius, 356 sq., 611.
ALPHABETICAL INDEX.
533
Metropolitans, 425.
Middle Ages, 12.
Milleunium, Millenariai]S, 299 sqq.
Milman, 25.
Miluer, 24.
Miltiades, 197, 485.
Ministerial office, 130 sqq.
Minucius Felix, 197, 308, -^09 sq., 335,
525.
Miracles, lit, 206 sqq.
Missions, 61 sqq., 148 sqq.
Mohler, 224 sq. and passim.
Monarchians, 287 sqq.
Montanism and Montanists, 300, 325,
332, 333, 359, 361 sqq.
Mosheim, 22, 223, and parSsim.
N
Naassenes, 236.
Natalis Alexander, 18.
Nazarenes, 212.
Neander, 23 and passim.
Neo-Platonism, 190 sqq., 224.
Nerva, 163.
Nero, 162, 305.
Neronian persecution, 64, 73, 162.
New Testament, 92 sqq.
Nice, councU of, 360 sq., 376, 438.
Nicolaitans, 231, 232, 235 sq.
Noetus, 291.
Novatus, 448 sq.
Novatianus and Novatianists, 450 sq.,
526.
o
Old Testament, 35 sqq.
Ophites, 229, 232, 233, 236 sq.
Origen, on persecution, 180, 182 ; on the
Christian morality, 202 ; on heathen
mythology, 203 sq. ; on Greek philo-
sophy, 204 ; on miracles, 206 ; on the
spread of Christianity, 207; on Ebion-
ism, 213 ; on inspiration and interpre-
tation, 257 sq. ; on freedom, 265 ; on
Christ's divinity, 270 sq. ; on Christ's
humanity, 275 sq. ; on the Holy
Ghost, 280 ; on the Trinity, 285 ; on
redemption, 298 ; on asceticism, 351 ;
on celibacy, 356; on the eucharist,
389 ; on infant baptism, 403 ; on the
catholic church, 435 ; his life and
writings, 501 sqq.
Orthodoxy and heresy, 251 sqq.
Pamphilus, 510.
Pantaenus, 496.
Papacy, 426 sqq.
Papias, 300, 479 sq.
Parsism, 223, 228, 248.
Patmos, 78.
Patriarchs, 426.
Patripassians, 257, 290 sqq.
Patristic literature, 452 sqq.
Paul, the apostle, his hfe and labors, 67
sqq.; his theology, 86; his epistles,
101 sqq.
Paul of Samosata, 289 sq.
PauUanists, 290.
Penance, 396 sq.
Pentecost, 59 sqq., 3f6.
Peputians, see Montanists.
Perates, Peraticans, 237.
Periods, 14.
Perpetua, 169.
Persecution, 156 sqq.
Peter, the apostle, his life and labors, 60,
63 sqq. ; his collision with Paul, 76
sq. ; his theology, 89 ; his epistles, 100.
Peter of Alexandria, 451.
Pharisees, 37, 75.
Philemon, 105.
PhOippi, 70, 71.
Philippians, 105.
Philip the Arabian, 171.
Philo, 51, 192, 223, 268.
Philostratus, 193.
PhUosophoumena, see Hippolytus.
Pierius, 509.
Plato and Platonism, 46, 191 sqq., 203,
204, 222, 325, 329.
Pliny, 164, 186, 309, 372, 381 sq.
Plotinus, 192 sqq.
Plutarch, 46, 186, 192, 337, 338.
Polycarp, 166 sqq., 244, 285, 376, 416,
455 ; his life and epistle, 47 1 sqq.
Polycrates, 375.
Ponticus, 167.
Porphyry, 193 sq.
Potamiaena, 169.
Pothinus, 167.
Praxeas, 273, 290 sq.
Prayer, 120, 321 sqq.
Preaching, 119.
Precentors, 413.
Presbyters, 134, 413 sqq.
Priscilla, 362.
Proclus, 192.
Prodicians, 245.
Prophecy, of the bible, 39 .sq., 199, 205 ;
of the SibyUine oracles, 205; of Mon-
tanism, 36 sqq.
Prophets, 133.
53-i
ALPHABETICAL INDEX.
Protasius, 176.
Protestant historiography, 19 sqq.
Ptolemy, 242.
Pythagoras, 193, 204.
Q
Quadragesimal fasts, 324, 373 sq.
Quadratus, 197, 485.
Quatemporal fasts, 326.
Quartodecimani, 374 sq.
R
Rationalistic historiography, 22.
Readers, 412.
Recognitions of Pseudo-Clement, 220.
Redemption, 294 sqq.
Relics, 183.
Resurrection, 201, 462.
Ritter, 19.
Robertson, 25.
Rohrbacher, 19.
Roman Empire, 47 sqq.
Romans, epLstle to the, 104 sq.
Rome, church of; 104, 154, 447.
Rothe, 416, 417, 469.
Rufinus, 262.
Sabbath, 128.
Sabellius, 292 sqq.
Sacraments. 122, 386 sqq.
Sacrifice, 389 sqq.
Saddncees, 37.
Samaritans, 51, 66.
Samosatenians, 290.
Saturninus, 231, 240.
Schisms, 447 sqq.
Schroeckh, 22.
Seraisch, 269.
Seneca, 305, 306, 337, 338.
Septimius Severus, 169, 192.
Sergius Paulus, 7 1 .
Sethites, 237.
Sibylline Oracles, 205, 456.
Silas, 71.
Simon Magus, 51, 66, 89, 217, 234 sqq.
Simonians, 235 sq.
Slavery, 112 sq., 315 sq.
Socrates, 56, 325, 326.
Socrates, the church historian, 17.
Song, 1 20 sq.
Spain, 154 sq.
Speaking with tongties, 116.
Spiritual gifts, 114 sqq.
Stephen, the protomartyr, 62 sq.
Stephen of Rome, 405 sq.
Stoics, 337.
Stolberg, 19.
Sub-deacons, 412.
Sunday, 128, 312.
Support of the ministry, 70, 410.
Symbols, Christian, 377 sqq.
Symeon of Jerusalem, 05, 165.
Tacitus, 64, 162, 181, 307.
Talmud, 157.
Taiian, 197, 201, 231, 245, 311; his life
and writings, 485 sq.
Tertullian, on persecution, 149 ; on
religious freedom, 159 ; on martyr-
dom, 178, 179, 182, 183; on the resur-
rection, 201 ; on heathen mythology,
203 : on miracles, 207 ; on the testi-
mony of the soul, 208 sq. ; on gnos-
ticism, 233 ; on the scriptures, 255
sqq. ; on tradition and the creed, 259
-sq. ; on the existence and attributes
of God, 263 sq. ; on creation, 265; on
man, 266 sq. ; on Christ, 273, 275; on
the Holy Ghost, 281 ; on the Trinitj-,
286; on Christian life, 308 sq., 311,
312, 313; on slavery, 318; on the
Christian family, 331 ; against mixed
marriages, 332 ; against second mar-
riage, 333; on charity, 338, 341;
on celibacy, 359; his relation to Mon-
tanism, 363 sqq. ; on development of
religion, 365 ; on discipline, 367, 443
sq. ; on Sunday, 372; on the appear-
ance of Chri.st, and on art, 378; on
secret discipline, 384; on the eucha-
rist, 388 ; on the agape, 395 ; on bap-
tism, 395 sq. ; against infant baptism,
408 ; on clergy and laity, 410 sq. ; on
episcopacy, 423 ; on the Roman
church, 429 ; on Catholic unity, 435 :
his life, character and writings, 511 sqq.
Theatre, 312.
Thcodotus, 288.
Thcognostus, 509.
TheophOus of Antioch, 201, 285, 333,
486.
Therapeutae, 51.
Tlics.salonica. 71.
Thundering Legion, 168.
Thurificati. 178.
Tiberius, 162, 304.
Tilleniout, 18.
Timothy, 133; epistles to, 105.
Titu-s 133; epistle to, 105.
Toleration, religious, 159, 176 sqq.
ALPHABETICAL INDEX.
585
Tongues, gift of, 60.
Tradition, 226.
Traditores, 175, 178.
Trajan, 163 sq., 465.
Trinity, 281 sqq.
Trypho, 198.
u
UUhorn, 469, 471.
Unitarians, 287 sqq.
Ursula, 170.
Uses of church history, 15.
V
Valentine and the Valentinians, 228,
229, 233, 240 sqq.
Valerian, 173.
Victor of Rome, 362, 375. .
Victorinus, 310, 526.
Vienne, 167.
VirgU, 205.
w
"Waddington, 24.
"Wisdom, gift of, 115.
Woman, influence of Christianity upon,
110 sq., 325 sqq.
Worship, 118 sq., -381 sqq.
X
Xerophagiae, 325.
Zephyrinus, 273, 290, 292, 431.
Zoroastrian dualism, 223.
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which has fallen under my notice. I have advised all my pupils to procure it; saying to
them what I have intimated above of its value, and further, that the points in it which
do not agree with our Presbyterian views, will, I hope, only serve to awaken inquiry and
attention. I regard it as invaluable to the theological stiulent."
From Rev. IK. G. T. Sliedd, D. D., Professor at Theological Seminary, Andover,
Massachusetts.
" I am very much obliged to you for the copy of a work written with such freedom and
vigor, and published in such a handsome style as Dr. Schaff's Apostolic Church. 1 have
been reading it with much interest. Though not composed on the method of a manual,
and teerefore unsuited for a text-book, it is eminently fitted to exert a genial and ferti-
lizing influence upon the mind of a student of this department; and it will give me great
pleasure to recommend it to students as a valuable accession to the literature of Church
history."'
From Prof. C. E. Stance, Theological Seminary, Andover, dfass.
" 1 have received the volume of Prof. SchafTs History. I shall certainly do what in mg
lies to promote its circulation ; for on the toi)ic of which it treats, it is beyond all ques-
tion the most valuable work in the English language. I am far from acquiescing in every
view and statement which it contains, but it is a book of the first order for scholarship,
good toste, and christian feeling."
From Rev. Alvah Hovey, Profeasor of Ecclesiastical History, Theological Institution,
Newtowji.
" Without being able to adopt all the views expressed in it— especially in the Introduc-
tion—I esteem it a work of marked ability and excellence, destined to be read more thni
any other similar history in our language."
"'Story oMieTlinstian church : From
IHli"llll Hllllif n?'?''"' Seminary-Speer L.brary
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