* 3.3o./^oc. ' PRINCETON, N. J. €VTa, rfj rpiTr) yjp^epa avaaravra ck v€KpC)v, dvajSavra ets tovs ovpavovs, KaO yp.€vov iv oe$ia tov Trarpos, o6ev ep)(CTaL KpXvai ^wvTas koX VKCpovs' Kol ets irvi.vfxa aycov, dyuxv iKKXr)(Tiav, a<^e(rtv dp^apriiov, (rapKos dvdcTTacnv' II. EARLY CHRISTIANITY A CHEERFUL RE- LIGION. When our Lord announced his religion this world was in a condition of unutterable cor- ruption, wretchedness and gloom. Darkness at the Slavery, poverty, vice that the pen Advent. ^g unwilling to name, almost univer- sally prevailed, and even religion partook of the general degfradation. ^ Decadence, depopulation, insecurity of property, person and life, according to Taine, were everywhere. Philosophy taught that it would be better for man never to have been created. In the first century Rome held supreme sway.^ Nations had been destroyed by scores, and the civilized world had lost half of its population by the sword. In the first century forty out of seventy years were years of famine, accompanied by plague and pestilence. There were universal depression and deepest melan- choly. When men were thus overborne with the gloom and horror of error and sin, into their night of darkness came the religion of Christ. Its announce- ments were all of hope and cheer. Its language iMartial, Juvenal. Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, and other heathen writers, describe the well-nigh universal depravity and depressiou of the so-called civilized world. In Corinth the Acrocorinthus was occupied by a temple to the goddess of luet. 2 Uhlhorn's Conflict of Christianity and Paganism. 17 i8 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. was, " Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." "We re- joice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. " Men were invited to accept the tidings of great joy. John, the herald of Jesus, was a recluse, mortifying body and spirit, but Jesus said, "John came neither eat- ing nor drinking, but the Son of Man came eating and drinking. " He forbade all anxiety and care among his followers, and exhorted all to be as trust- ful as are the lilies of the field and the fowls of the air. Says Matthew Arnold, "Christ professed to bring in happiness. All the words that belong to his mission. Gospel, kingdom of God, Savior, grace, peace, living water, bread of life, are brimful of promise and joy. " And his cheerful, joyful religion at once won its way by its messages of peace and tranquillity, and for a while its converts were every- where characterized by their joyfulnessand cheerful- ness. Haweis writes: "The three first centuries of the Christian church are almost idyllic in their simplicity, sincerity and purity. There is less ad- mixture of evil, less intrusion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, more simple-hearted goodness, ear- nestness and reality to be found in the space between Nero and Constantine than in any other three cen- turies from A. D. lootoA. D. 1800."^ De Pressense calls the early era of the church its " blessed child- hood, all calmness and simplicity."^ Cave, in " Lives of the Fathers," states: "The noblest portion of church history * * * ^^q j^^ost considerable age ^Conquering Cross. Forewords. ♦Early Years of the Christian Church. EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 19 of the church, the years from EusEBiusto Basil the Great. " Christianity was everywhere at first, a religion of " sweetness and light. " The Greek fathers exem- plified all these qualities, and Cle- " Sweetness and men T and Origen were ideals of its Light." perfect spirit. But from Augustine downward the Latin reaction, prompt- ed by the tendency of men in all ages to escape the exactions laid upon the soul by thought, and who flee to external authority to avoid the demands of reason, was away from the genius of Christian ty, until Au- gustinianism ripened into Popery, and the beautiful system of the Greek fathers was succeeded by the nightmare of the theology of the mediaeval centuries, and later of Calvinism and Puritanism.^ Had the church followed the prevailing spirit of the ante- Nicene Fathers it would have conserved the best thought of Greece, the divine ideals of Plato, and joined them to the true interpretation of Christian- ity, and we may venture to declare that it would thus have continued the career of progress that had ren- dered the first three centuries so marvelous in their character; a progress that would have continued with accelerated speed, and Christendom would have widened its borders and deepened its sway immeas- urably. With the prevalence of the Latin language the East and the West grew apart, and the latter, more and more discarding reason, and controlled, by the iron inflexibility of a semi-pagan secular gov- ernment, gave Roman Catholicism its opportunity. ^Allen's Continuity of Christian Thought. ao UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. The influence of the ascetic religions of the Asi- atic countries, especially Buddhism, contaminated Christianity, resulting- later in celib- Oriental acy, monasteries, convents, hermits. Asceticism. and all the worser elements of Ca- tholicism in the Middle Ages. ^ At the first contact Christianity absorbed more than it mod- ified, till in the later ages the alien force became su- preme. In fact, orientalism was already beginning to mar the beautiful simplicity of Christianity when John wrote his Gospel to counteract it. Schaff, in his "History of the Christian Church," remarks: All the germs of (Christian) asceticism appear in the third century. * * * The first two Christian hermits were not till Paul of Thebes, A. D. 250, and Anthony of Egypt, A. D. 270, appeared. Asceti- cism was in existence long before Christ. Jews, Nazarites, Essenes, Therapeutae, Persians, Indians, Buddhists, all originated this Oriental heathenism. * * * The religion of the Chinese, Buddhism, Brahmanism, the religion of Zoroaster and of the Egyptians, more or less leavened Christianity in its earliest stages. So did Greek and Roman paganism with which the apostles and their followers came into direct contact. The doctrines of substitutional atonement, resur. rection of the body, native depravity, and endless punishment, are not lisped in the earliest creeds or formulas.' The earliest Christians (Allen: Christian Thought) taught that man is the image of God, and that the in-dwelling Deity will lead him to holiness. 'Milman's Latin Christianity. ^Shedd's History of Christian Doctrine. EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 21 In Alexandria, the center of Greek culture and Chris- tian thought, "more thoroughly Greek than Athens in its days of renown," the theological atmosphere was more nearly akin to that of the Universalist church of the present day than to that of any other branch of the Christian church during the last fifteen centuries. ^ The wonderful progress made during the first three centuries by the simple, pure and cheerful faith Wonderful ^^ early Christianity shows us what Progress of its growth might have been made had Christianity at not the morose spirit of Tertullian, ^'•"st- reinforced by the "dark shadow of Augustine, "transformed it. As early as the beginning of the second century the heathen Pliny, the pro- praetor of Bithynia, reported to the emperor that his province was so filled with Christians that the worship of the heathen deities had nearly ceased. And they were not only of the poor and despised, but of all conditions of life — ouinis ordinis. Milner thinks that Asia Minor was at this time quite thoroughly evan- gelized. As early as the close of the Second Century there were not only many converts from the humbler ranks, but ' 'the main strength of Christianity lay in the middle, perhaps in the mercantile classes." Gibbon says the Christians were not one-twentieth part of the Roman Empire, till Constantine gave them the sanction of his authority, but Robertson 8The early Christians never transferred the rigidity of the Jewish Sab- bath to Sunday. Both Saturday and Sunday were observed religiously till towards the end of the second century — then Sunday alone was kept. Fast- ing and even kneeling in prayer was forbidden on Sunday with the early Christians. Ancient Christian writers always mean Saturday by the word "Sabbath." 22 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. estimates them at one-fifth of the whole, and in some districts as the majority.^ Origen : ' 'Against Celsus" says: "At the present day (A. D. 240) not only rich men, but persons of rank, and delicate and high-born ladies, receive the teachers of Christianity; and the religion of Christ is better known than the teachings of the best philosophers." And Arnobius testifies that Christians included orators, grammarians, rhet- oricians, lawyers, physicians, and philosophers. And it was precisely their bright and cheerful views of life and death, of God's universal fatherhood and man's universal brotherhood — the divinity of its ethical principles and the purity of its professors, that account for the wonderful progress of Christian- ity during the three centuries that followed our Lord's death. The pessimism of the oriental relig- ions ; the corruption and folly of the Greek and Ro- man mythology; the unutterable wickedness of the mass of mankind, and the universal depression of society invited its advance, and gave way before it. Justin Martyr wrote that in his time prayers and thanksgivings were offered in ''the name of the Cru- cified, among every race of men, Greek or barba- rian. " Tertullian states that all races and tribes, even to farthest Britain, had heard the news of»salva- tion. He declared: "We are but of yesterday, and lo we fill the whole empire — your cities, your islands, your fortresses, your municipalities, your councils, nay even the camp, the tribune, the decory, the pal- 'The Emperor Maximin in one of his edicts says that "Almost all had abandoned the worship of their ancestors for the new faith." EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 23 ace, the senate, the forum. "^° Chrysostom testifies that "the isles of Britain in the heart of the ocean had been converted." The talismanic word of the Alexandrian fathers, as of the New Testament, was father. This word, as now, unlocked all mysteries, God's solved all problems, and explained Fatherhood. all the enigmas of time and eternity. Holding- God as Father, punishment was held to be remedial, and therefore restorative, and final recovery from sin universal. It was only when the Father was lost sight of in the judge and tyrant, under the baneful reign of Augustinianism, that Deity was hated, and that Catholics transferred to Mary, and later, Protestants gave to Jesus that su- preme love that is due alone to the Universal Father. For centuries in Christendom after the Alexandrine form of Christianity had waned, the Fatherhood of God was a lost truth, and most of the worst errors of the modern creeds are due to that single fact, more than to all other causes. It was during those happy years more than in any subsequent three centuries, that, as Jerome ob- served, "the blood of Christ was yet warm in the breasts of Christians. " Says the accurate historian. Cave, in his "Primitive Christianity:" "Here he will find a piety active and zealous, shining through the blackest clouds of malice and cruelty; afflicted in- '^''Hesterni sumus et vestra otnnes itnplevimus tirbes, insulas ,castella, municipia, conciliabula, casira ipsa, tribus, dectirias, palathim, senatum, forum. Apol.c. XXXVII. Mosheim, however, thinks that the "African orator," who is inclined to exaggerate, "rhetoricates" a little here. The primitive Christians exulted at the wonderful progress and diffusion of the Gospel, 24 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. nocence triumphant, notwithstanding all the powerful or politic attempts of men or devils; a patience un- conquerable under the biggest temptations ; a charity truly catholic and unlimited ; a simplicity and upright carriage in all transactions; a sobriety and temper- ance remarkable to the admiration of their enemies; and, in short, he will see the divine and holy precepts of the Christian religion drawn down into action, and the most excellent genius and spirit of the Gospel breathing in the hearts and lives of these good old Christians. " ' 'Christianity, " says Milm an, ' 'was almost from the first a Greek religion. Its primal records were all written in the Greek language ; it was „ , promulgated with the greatest rapid- Religion, ^ty ^^^ success among nations either of Greek descent, or those which had been Grecized by the conquest of Alexander. In their polity the Grecian churches were a federation of republics. " At the first, art, literature, life, were Greek, cheerful, sunny, serene. The Latin type of character was morose, gloomy, characterized, says MiLMAN, by "adherence to legal form; severe subor- dination to authority. The Roman Empire extended over Europe by a universal code, and by subordination to a spiritual C^sar as absolute as he was in civil obedience. Thus the original simplicity of the Chris- tian polity was entirely subverted; its pure democ- racy became a spiritual autocracy. The presbyters developed into bishops, the bishop of Rome became pope, and Christendom reflected Rome." But dur- ing the first three centuries this change had not taken place. "It is there, therefore, among the Alexan- EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 25 drine fathers that we are to look to find Christianity in its pristine purity. The language, organization, writers, and Scriptures of the church in the first cen- turies were all Greek. The Gospels were every- where read in Greek, the commercial and literary langaiage of the empire. The books were in Greek, and even in Gaul and Rome Greek was the liturgical language. The Octavius of Minucius Felix, and NovATiAN on the Trinity, were the earliest known works of Latin Christian literature." An Impressive Thought. The Greek Fathers derived their Universalism directly and solely from the Greek Scriptures. Noth- ing to suggest the doctrine existed in Greek or Latin literature, mythology, or theology; all current thought on matters of eschatology was utterly op- posed to any such view of human destiny. And, furthermore, the unutterable wickedness, degrada- tion and woe that filled the world would have in- clined the early Christians to the most pessimistic view of the future consistent with the teachings of the religion they had espoused. To know that, in those dreadful times, they derived the divine optim- ism of universal deliverance from sin and sorrow from the teachings of Christ and his apostles, should predispose every modern to agree with them. On this point Allin, in "Universalism Asserted," elo- quently says: "The church was born into a world of whose moral "Milman's Latin Christianity, "The breadth of the best Greek Fathers, such as Origen, or Clement of Alexandria, is a thousand times superior to the dry, harsh narrowness of the Latins." Athanase Coquerel the Younger, First Hist. Trans, of Christianity, p. 215. 26 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. rottenness few have or can have any idea. Even the sober historians of the later Roman Empire have their pages tainted with scenes impossible to trans- late. Lusts the foulest, debauchery to us happily in- conceivable, raged on every side. To assert even faintly the final redemption of all this rottenness, whose depths we dare not try to sound, required the firmest faith in the larger hope, as an essential part of the Gospel. But this is not all; in a peculiar sense the church was militant in the early centuries. It was engaged in, at times, a struggle, for life or death, with a relentless persecution. Thus it must have seemed in that age almost an act of treason to the cross to teach that, though dying unrepentant, the bitter persecutor, or the votary of abominable lusts, should yet in the ages to come find salvation. Such considerations help us to see the extreme weight attaching even to the very least expression in the fathers which involves sympathy with the larger hope, * * * especially so when we con- sider that the idea of mercy was then but little known, and that truth, as we conceive it, was not then esteemed a duty. As the vices of the early cen- turies were great, so were their punishments cruel. The early fathers wrote when the wild beasts of the arena tore alike the innocent and the guilty, limb from limb, amid the applause even of gently-nur- tured women; they wrote when the cross, with its living burden of agony, was a common sight, and evoked no protest. They wrote when every minister of justice was a torturer, and almost every criminal court a petty inquisition ; when every household of the better class, even among Christians, swarmed EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 27 with slaves liable to torture, to scourging, to mutila- tion, at the caprice of a master or the frown of a mis- tress. Let all these facts be fully weighed, and a conviction arises irresistibly, that, in such an age, no idea of Universalism could have originated unless in- spired from above. If, now, when criminals are shielded from suffering with almost morbid care, men, the best of men, think with very little con- cern of the unutterable woe of the lost, how, I ask, could Universalism have arisen of itself in an age like that of the fathers? Consider further. The larger hope is not, we are informed, in the Bible; it is not, we know, in the heart of man naturally; still less was it there in days such as those we have de- scribed, when mercy was unknown, when the dear- est interest of the church forbade its avowal. But it is found in many, very many, ancient fathers, and often, in the very broadest form, embracing e very fallen spirit. Where, then, did they find it? Whence did they import this idea? Can we doubt that the fathers could only have drawn it, as their writings testify, from the Bible itself?" Testimony of the Catacombs. An illuminating side-light is cast on the opinions of the early Christians by the inscriptions and em- blems on the monuments in the Roman Catacombs. ^^ It is well known that from the end of the First to the end of the Fourth Century the early Christians buried their dead, probably with the knowledge and consent of the pagan authorities, in subterranean gal- leries excavated in the soft rock {tufa) that underlies 1* Cutts, Turning Points of Church History. 28 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Rome. These ancient cemeteries were first uncov- ered A. D. 1 5 78. Already sixty excavations have been made extending five hundred and eighty-seven miles. More than six, some estimates say eight, million bodies are known to have been buried between A. D. 72 andA. D. 410. Eleven thousand epitaphs and inscrip- tions have been found ; few dates are between A. D. 72 and 100; the most are from A. D. 150 to A.D. 410. The galleries are from three to five feet wide and eight feet high, and the niches for bodies are five tiers deep, one above another, each silent tenant in its separate cell. At the entrance of each cell is a tile or slab of marble, once securely cemented and inscribed with name, epitaph or emblem. ^^ Haweis beautifully says in his "Conquering Cross:" " The public life of the early Christian was persecution above ground; his private life was prayer under- ground. " The emblems and inscriptions are most suggestive. The principal device, scratched on slabs, carved on utensils and rings, and seen almost everywhere, is the Good Shepherd, surrounded by his flock and carrying a lamb. But most striking of all, he is found with a goat on his shoulder; which teaches us that even the wicked were at that early date regarded as the objects of the Savior's solici- tude, after departing from this life. ^^ Matthew Arnold has preserved this truth in his immortal verse ;^* " He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save!" So rang Tertullian's sentence on the side "See DeRossi, Northcote, Withrow.etc, on the Catacombs. i*A suggestive thought in this connection is, that our Lord (Matt. xxv. 33), calls those on his left hand "kidlings," "little kids," a term of tender- ness and regard. EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 29 Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried,— "Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave, Whose sins once washed by the baptismal wave!" So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed, The infant Church,— of love she felt the tide Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave. And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs, With eyes suffused but heart inspired true. On those walls subterranean, where she hid Her head in ignominy, death and tombs. She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew And on his shoulders not a lamb, a kid! The picture is a "distinct protest" against the un-Christian sentiment then already creeping into the church from Paganism. Everywhere in the Catacombs is the anchor, em- blem of that hope which separated Christianity from Paganism. Another symbol is the fish, which plays a prominent part in Christian symbolry. It is curious and instructive to account for this ideograph. It is used as a cryptogram of Christ. The word is a sort of acrostic of the name and office of our Lord. The Greek word fish, in capitals — IX0Y2 — would be a secret cypher that would stand for our Lord's name, when men dared not Early Funereal write or speak it; and the word or Emblems. the picture of a fish meant to the Christian the name of his Savior ; and he wore as a charm a fish cut in ivory, or mother- of-pearl, on his neck living, and bore to his grave to be exhumed centuries after his death an effigy of a fish to signify his faith. These and the vine, the sheep, the dove, the ark, the palm and other em- blems in the Catacombs express only hope, faith, cheerful confidence. The horrid inventions of Aug- 30 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES, USTINE, the cruel monstrosities of Angelo and Dante, and the abominations of the mediaeval theology were all unthought of then, and have no hint in the Cata- combs. Still more instructive are the inscriptions. As De Rossi observes, the most ancient inscriptions dif- fer from those of the Pagans "more by what they do not say than by what they do say." While the Pagans denote the rank or social position of their dead as clarissima femine, or lady of senatorial rank, Christian epigraphy is destitute of all mention of distinctions. Only the name and some expression of endearment and confidence are inscribed. Says Northcote: " They proceed upon the assumption that there is an incessant interchange of kindly offices between this world and the next, between the living and the dead." Mankind is a brotherhood, and not a word can be found to show any thought of the mu- tilation of the great fraternity, and the consignment of any portion of it to final despair. Such are these among the inscriptions : '■'■Pax tecum, Urania;" "Peace with thee, Urania;" "-Semper in D. vivas, dulcis aninia;" "Always in God mayest thou live, sweet soul;" "Mayest thou live in the Lord, and pray for us. " They had ' ' emigrated, " had been ' ' translated, " " born into eternity, " but not a word is found ex- pressive of doubt or fear, horror and gloom, such as in subsequent generations formed the staple of the literature of death and the grave, and rendered the Christian graveyard, up to the beginning of the sev- enteenth century, a horrible place. The first Chris- tians regarded the grave as the doorway into a better EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 31 world, and expressed only hope and trust in their emblems and inscriptions. Following are additional specimen epitaphs: "Irene in Pace." "Here lies Marcia put to rest in a dream of peace." ^'Victorina donnit,'' "Victoria sleeps;" '•'•Zoticvs hie ad dormiendvm" "Zoticus laid here to sleep;" '■'•Raptvs eterne domvs," "Snatched home eternally." "In Christ; Alexander is not dead but lives beyond the stars, and his body rests in this tomb." Contrast these with the tone of heathen funereal inscriptions. In general the pagan epitaphs were like that which Sophocles expresses in the CEdiptis, at Colomus : "Happiest beyond compare Never to taste of life; Happiest in order next. Being born, with quickest speed Thither again to turn. From whence we came." "In a Roman monument which I had occasion to publish not long since, a father (Caius Sextus by name, ) is represented bidding farewell to his daugh- ter, and two words — 'Vale yEternam,' farewell for- ever — give an expressive utterance to the feeling of blank and hopeless severance with which Greeks and Romans were burdened when the reality of death was before their eyes." (Mariott, p. 186.) Death was a cheerful event in the eyes of the early Chris- tians. It was called birth. Anchors, harps, palms, crowns, surrounded the grave. They discarded lamentations and extravagant grief. The prayers for the dead were thanksgiving for God's goodness. (ScHAFF, Hist. Christ. Church, Vol. i, p. 342.) Their language is such as could not have been used 32 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. by them had they entertained the views that pre- vailed from the Sixth to the Eighteenth Century, among the majority of Christians ; and their remains all testify to the cheerfulness of early Christianity. "The fathers of the church live in their volumi- nous works ; the lower orders are only represented by these simple records, from which, Cheerful Faith .,, . ,. r xu TT- i. with scarcely an exception, sorrow of the First , , -f , . , ' Christians ^^^ complaint are banished; the boast of suffering, or an appeal to the revengeful passions is nowhere to be found. One expresses faith^ another hope, a third charity. The genius of primitive Christianity — to believe, to love and to suffer — has never been better illustrated. These 'sermons in stones' are addressed to the heart and not to the head — to the feelings rather than to the taste. * * * In all the pictures and scriptures of our Lord's history no reference is ever found to his sufferings or death. No gloomy subjects occur in the cycle of Christian art." (Maitland. ) Chrysos- TOM says: "For this cause, too, the place itself is called a cemetery; that you may know that the dead laid there are not dead, but at rest and asleep. For before the coming of Christ death used to be called death, and not only so, but Hades, but after his com- ing and dying for the life of the world, death came to be called death no longer, but sleep and repose." The word cemeteries, dormitories, shows us that death was regarded as a state of repose and thus a condition of hope. In fact, "in this auspicious word,^^ now for the first time applied to the tomb, i*Maitland'8 Church and the Catacombs. EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 33 there is manifest a sense of hope and immortality, the result of a new religion. A star had arisen on the borders of the grave, dispelling the horror of dark- ness which had hitherto reigned there ; the prospect beyond was now cleared tip, and so dazzling was the view of an 'eternal city sculptured in the sky, ' that num- bers were found eager to rush through the gate of martyrdom, for the hope of entering its starry por- tals. "^^ Says Ruskin: "Not a cross as a symbol in the Catacombs. The earliest certain Latin cross is on the tomb of the Empress Galla Placidia, A. D. 451. No picture of the crucifixion till the Ninth Century, nor any portable crucifix till long after. To the early Christians Christ was living, the one agonized hour was lost in the thought of his glory and triumph. The fall of theology and Christian thought dates from the error of dwelling upon his death instead of his life. " ^^ Farrar adds: "The symbols of the Cata- combs, like every other indication of early teaching, show the glad, bright, loving character of the Chris- tian faith. It was a religion of joy and not of gloom, of life and not of death, of tenderness not of severity. * * * We see in them as in the acts of the apos- tles, that the keynotes of the music of the Christian life were 'exultation' and 'simplicity.' And how far superior in beauty and significance were these early Christian symbols to the meaningless and pagan broken columns and broken rose-buds and skulls and weeping women and inverted torches of our cemeteries. We find in the Catacombs neither the cross of the fifth and sixth centuries, nor the crucifixes i^Maitland. i^Bible of Amiens. 34 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES of the twelfth, nor the torches and martyrdoms of the seventeenth, nor the skeletons of the fifteenth, nor the cypresses and death's heads of the eighteenth. Instead of these the symbols of beauty, hope and peace." ^^ From A. D. 70, the date of the fall of Jerusalem, to about A. D. 150, there is very little Christian lit- erature. It is only with Justin Dean Stanley's Martyr, who was executed A. D. Testimony. i66, that there is any considerable literature of the church. The fa- thers before Justin are "shadows, formless phan- toms, whose writings are uncertain and only partly genuine.'- Speaking of the scarcity of literature pertaining to those times and the changes expe- rienced by Christianity, says Dean Stanley: "No other change equally momentous has ever since affected its features, yet none has ever been so silent and secret. The stream in that most critical mo- ment of its passage from the everlasting hills to the plain below is lost to our view at the very point where we are most anxious to watch it. We may hear its struggles under the overarching rocks; we may catch its spray on the boughs that overlap its course, but the torrent itself we see not or see only by imperfect glimpses. * * * A fragment here, an allegory there; romances of unknown authorship; a handful of letters of which the genuineness of every portion is contested inch by inch ; the sum- mary explanation of a Roman magistrate; the plead- ings of two or three Christian apologists; customs i^Lives of the Fathers. EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 35 and opinions in the very act of change ; last, but not least, the faded paintings, the broken sculptures, the rude epitaphs in the darkness of the Catacombs — these are the scanty, though attractive materials out of which the likeness of the early church must be produced, as it was working its way, in the literal sense of the word, underground, under camp and palace, under senate and forum. "^^ There were eighty years between Paul's latest epis- tle and the first of the writings of the Christian fa- thers. Besides the writings of Tacitus and Pliny, the long hiatus is filled only by the emblems and in- scriptions of the Catacombs. What an eloquent story they tell of the cheerfulness of primitive Christian- ity l^o ''Christian Institutions. soMartlneau's Hours of Thought, p. 155. "In the cycle of Christian em- blems the death of Christ holds no place; it was not till six centuries after his death that artists began to venture upon the representation of Christ crucified. The crucifix dates only from the end of the Seventh Century."— Athanase Coquerel. III. ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. When our Lord spoke, the doctrine of unending torment was believed by many of those who listened to his words, and they stated it in terms and employed others, entirely different, in describing the duration of punishment, from the terms afterward used by those who taught universal salvation and annihila- tion, and so gave to the terms in question the sense of unlimited duration. For example, the Pharisees, according to Josephus, regarded the penalty of sin as torment without end, and they stated the doctrine in unambiguous terms. They called it eirgmos aidios (eternal imprisonment) and timorion adialeipton (endless torment), while our Lord called the punishment of sin aionion kolasin (age-long chastisement). Meaning of Scriptural Terms. The language of Josephus is used by the profane Greeks, but is never found in the New Testament connected with punishment. Josephus, writing in Greek to Jews, frequently employs the word that our Lord used to define the duration of punishment {aionios), but he applies it to things that had ended or that will end. * Can it be doubted that our Lord 'See my " Aion-Aionios," pp. 109-14; also Josephus, "Antiq." and " Jewish Wars." 36 ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 37 placed his ban on the doctrine that the Jews had de- rived from the heathen by never iising- their terms describing it, and that he taught a limited punish- ment by employing words to define it that only meant limited duration in contemporaneous litera- ture? JosEPHus used the word aionios with its cur- rent meaning of limited duration. He applies it to the imprisonment of John the Tyrant; to Herod's reputation; to the glory acquired by soldiers; to the fame of an army as a " happy life and aionian glory." He used the words as do the Scriptures to denote limited duration, but when he would describe end- less duration he uses difiEerent terms. Of the doc- trine of the Pharisees he says : "They believe * * * that wicked spirits are to be kept in an eternal imprisonment (eirgmon aidion). The Pharisees say all souls are incorruptible, but while those of good men are removed into other bodies those of bad men are subject to eternal pun- ishment" {aidios timorid). Elsewhere he says that the Essenes, "allot to bad souls a dark, tempestu- ous place, full of never-ceasing torment {timoria adialeipton)^ where they suffer a deathless torment " (athanaton tiuiorioii). Aidion axi^athanatomxQ his favorite terms for duration, and timoria (torment) for punishment. Philo, who was contemporary with Christ, gen- erally used aidion to denote endless, and aionion tem- porary duration. He uses the exact Philo's Use phraseology of Matt, xxv: 46, pre- of the Words. cisely as Christ used it: " It is bet- ter not to promise than not to give prompt assistance, for no blame follows in the former 38 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. case, but in the latter there is dissatisfaction from the weaker class, and a deep hatred and seonian p an- ishment (chastisement) from such as are more pow- erful. " Here we have the precise terms employed by our Lord, which show that awmon did not mean endless but did mean limited duration in the time of Christ. Philo adopts athanaton, ateleuteton or aidion to denote endless, and aionion temporary du- ration. In one place occurs this sentence concerning the wicked : tpiv aTroOvrja-KOVTa del kol rpoirov Tiva Odvarov aOdvarov ojTro/xetvwv kol aTtXevTrjTov " to live always dying, and to undergo, as it were, an immortal and intermin- able death. "^ Stephens, in his valuable "Thesaurus, " quotes from a Jewish work : " These they called aionios, hearing that they had performed the sacred rites for three entire generations."^ This shows conclusively that the expression "three generations" was then one full equivalent of aionion. Now, these eminent scholars were Jews who wrote in Greek, and who cer- tainly knew the meaning of the words they employed, and they give to the aeonian words the sense of in- definite duration, to be determined in any case by the scope of the subject. Had our Lord intended to in- culcate the doctrine of the Pharisees, he would have used the terms by which they described it. But his word defining the duration of punishment was aion- ion^ while their words are aidion^ adialeipton and athanaton. Instead of saying with Philo and Jo- seph us, thanaton athanaton, deathless or immortal *"De Prjemils" and " Poenis" Tom. II, pp. 19-20. Mangey's edition. Dollinger quoted by Beecher. Philo was learned in Greek philosophy, and especially reverenced Plato. His use of Greek is of the highest authority. '"Solom. Parab." ORIGLN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 39 death; eirgmon aidion, eternal imprisonment; aidion tiniorioii, eternal torment; and tJianaton ateleuteton, interminable death, he used aionioji kolasin^ an ad- jective in universal use for limited duration, and a noun denoting suffering issuing in amendment. The word by which our Lord describes punishment is the word kolasin, which is thus defined : ' ' Chastise- ment, punishment." "The trimming of the luxuri- ant branches of a tree or vine to improve it and make it fruitful." "The act of clipping or pruning — restriction, restraint, reproof, check, chastisement. " "The kind of punishment which tends to the im- provement of the criminal is what the Greek philoso- phers called kolasis or chastisement." "Pruning, checking, punishment, chastisement, correction." "Do we want to know what was uppermost in the minds of those who formed the word for punishment? The Latin poena or punio, to pun- ish, the root pu in Sanscrit, which means to cleanse, to purify, tells us that the Latin derivation was originally formed, not to express mere striking or torture, but cleansing, correcting, delivering from the stain of sin." * That it had this meaning in Greek usage, see Plato: "For the natural or accidental evils of others no one gets angry, or admonishes, or teaches, or punishes {kolazei) them, but we pity those afflicted with such misfortune * * * for if, O Socrates, if you will consider what is the design of punishing {kolazein) the wicked, this of itself will show you that men think virtue something that may be acquired; for no one punishes {kolazei) the wicked, * Donnegan, Grotius, Liddell, Max Miiller, Beecher. Hist. Doc. Fut. Ret. pp. 73-75. 40 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. looking to the past only simply for the wrong he has done — that is, no one does this thing who does not act like a wild beast ; desiring only revenge, without thought. Hence, he who seeks to punish {kolazein) with reason does not punish for the sake of the past wrong deed, * * * but for the sake of the future, that neither the man himself who is punished may do wrong again, nor any other who has seen him chastised. And he who entertains this thought must believe that virtue may be taught, and he punishes {kolazei) for the purpose of deterring from wicked- ness?"^ So of the place of punishment {Gehenna) the Jews at the time of Christ never understood it to denote endless punishment. The reader of Farrar's "Mercy and Judgment, "and Use of Gehenna. ^£^^^^^1 Hope," and Windet's " De Vita functorum statu," will find any number of statements from the Talmudic and other Jewish authorities, afHrming in the most explicit language that Gehenna was understood by the people to whom our Lord addressed the word as a place or condition of temporary duration. They employed such terms as these: "The wicked shall be judged in Gehenna until the righteous say concerning them, 'We have seen enough.' " ^ " Gehenna is nothing but a day in which the impious will be burned." "After the last judgment Gehenna exists no longer." * ' There will hereafter be no Gehenna. " ® These quo- tations might be multiplied indefinitely to demon- *This important passage maybe found more fully quoted in "Aion- Aionios." •Targum of Jonathan on Isaiah, xvi; 24. See also " Aion— Aionios" and "Bible Hell.'^ ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 41 strate that the Jews to whom our Lord spoke regarded Gehenna as of limited duration, as did the Christian Fathers. Origen in his reply to Celsus (VI, xxv) gives an exposition of Geheiina, explaining its usage in his day. He says it is an analogue of the well- known valley of the Son of Hinnom, and signifies the fire of purification. Now observe: Christ carefully avoided the words in which his auditors expressed endless punishment {aidios, timoria and adialciptos), and used terms they did not use with that meaning {aionios kolasis), and employed the term which by universal consent among the Jews has no such mean- ing {Gehenna) ; and as his immediate followers and the earliest of the Fathers pursued exactly the same course, is it not demonstrated that they intended to be understood as he was understood ? ^ Professor Plumptre in a letter concerning Canon Farrar's sermons, says: "There were two words which the Evangelists might have used — kolasis, timoria. Of these, the first carries with it, by the definition of the greatest of Greek ethical writers, the idea of a reformatory process, (Aristotle, Rhet. I, X, 10-17). It is inflicted 'for the sake of him who suffers it. ' The second, on the other hand, describes a penalty purely vindictive or retributive. St. Matthew chose — if we believe that our Lord spoke Greek, he himself chose — the former word, and not the latter." All the evidence conclusively shows that the terms defining punishment — "everlasting," "eternal," 'Farrar's "Mercy and Judgment," pp. 380-381, where quotations are given from the Fourth Century, asserting that punishment must be limited because an flioMWM correction {aionion ko/asin), a.s in Matt, xxv, 46, must be terminable. 42 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. "Gehenna," etc., in the Scriptures teach its limited duration, and were so regarded by sacred and pro- fane authors, and that those outside of the Bible who taught unending torment always employed other words than those used by our Lord and his disciples. Professor Allen concedes that the great promi- nence given to "hell-fire" in Christian preaching is a modern innovation. He says: "There is more 'blood-theology' and 'hell-fire, ' that is, the vivid set- ting-forth of everlasting torment to terrify the soul, in one sermon of Jonathan Edwards, or one harangue at a modern 'revival,' than can be found in the whole body of homilies and epistles through all the dark ages put together. * * * Set beside more mod- ern dispensations the Catholic position of this period (middle ages) is surprisingly merciful and mild. "^ Whence Came the Doctrine ? When we ask the question: Where did those in the primitive Christian church who taught endless punishment find it, if not in the Of Heathen Bible? — we are met by these facts: — Origin. i. The New Testament was not in existence, as the canon had not been arranged. 2. The Old Testament did not contain the doctrine. 3. The Pagan and Jewish religions, the latter corrupted by heathen accretions, taught it (Hagenbach, I, First Period; Clark's Foreign Theol. Lib. I, new series.) Westcott tells us: "The written Gospel of the first period of the apostolic age was the Old Testament, interpreted by the vivid recollection of the Savior's ministry. * * * The *" Christian Hist, in its Three Great Periods," pp. 257-8. ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 43 knowledge of the teachings of Christ * * * to the close of the Second Century, were generally de- rived from tradition, and not from writings. The Old Testament was still the great store-house from which Christian teachers derived the sources of con- solation and conviction." ^ Hence the false ideas must have been brought by converts from Judaism or Paganism. The immediate followers of our Lord's apostles do not explicitly treat matters of eschatology. It was the age of apologetics and not of polemics.'" The new revelation of the Divine Fa- therhood through the Son occupied the chief atten- tion of Christians, and the efforts seem to have been almost exclusively devoted to establish the truth of the Incarnation, "God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." We may reasonably conclude that if this great truth had been kept constantly in the fore- ground, uncorrupted by pagan error and human in- vention, there would have been none of those false conceptions of God that gave rise to the horrors of mediaeval times, — and no occasion in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries for the renascence of orig- inal Christianity in the form of Universalism. The first Christians, however, naturally brought heathen increments into their new faith, so that very early the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked, or their endless torment, began to be avowed. Here and there these doctrines appeared from the very first, but the early writers generally either state the ^Introduction to Gospels, p. 181. loThe opinions of the Jews were modified at first by the captivity in Egypt fifteen centuries before Christ, and later by the Babylonian captivity, ending four hundred years before Christ, so that many of them, the i'hari- sees especially, no longer held the simple doctrines of Moses. 44 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. great truths that legitimately result in universal good, or in unmistakable terms avow the doctrine as a revealed truth of the Christian Scriptures. "Num- bers flocked into the church who brought their heathen ways with them. " (Third Century, "Neo- platonism, " by C. Bigg, D. D., London: 1895, p. 160.) At first Christianity was as a bit of leaven buried in foreign elements, modifying and being modified. The early Christians had individual opinions and idio- syncracies, which at first their new faith did not eradicate; they still retained some of their former errors. This accounts for their different views of the future world. At the time of our Lord's advent Ju- daism had been greatly corrupted. During the captiv- ity^^ Chaldsean, Persian and Egyptian doctrines, and other oriental ideas had tinged the Mosaic religion, and in Alexandria, especially, there was a great mix- ture of borrowed opinions and systems of faith, it being supposed that no one form alone was complete and sufficient, but that each system possessed a por- tion of the perfect truth. "The prevailing tone of mind was eclectic," and Christianity did not escape the influence. More than a century before the birth of Christ'^ appeared the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which con- tains, so far as is known, the earliest The Apocryphal statement extant of the doctrine of Book of Enoch. endless punishment in any work of Jewish origin. It became very popu- lar during the early Christian centuries, and modi- I'Robertson's History of the Christian Church, vol. 1, pp 38-39. ^^The Book of Enoch, translated from the Ethiopian, with Introduction and Notes. By Rev. George H. Schodde. ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 45 fied, it may safely be supposed, the views of Tatian, MiNucius Felix, Tertullian, and their followers. It is referred to or quoted from by Barnabas, Jus- tin, Clement of Alexandria, Iren^us, Origen, Ter- tullian, EusEBius, Jerome, Hilary, Epiphanius, Augustine, and others. Jude quotes from it in verses 14 and 15, and refers to it in verse 6, on which ac- count some of the fathers considered Jude apocry- phal ; but it is probable that Jude quotes Enoch as Paul quotes the heathen poets, not to endorse its doc- trine, but to illustrate a point, as writers nowadays quote fables and legends. Cave, in the "Lives of the Fathers, " attributes the prevalence of the doctrine of fallen angels to a perversion of the account (Gen. vi: 1-4) of "the sons of God and the daughters of men." He refers the prevalence of the doctrine to "the authority of the 'Book of Enoch,' (highly valued by many in those days) wherein this story is related, as appears from the fragments of it still extant." The entire work is now accessible through modern discovery. A little later than Enoch appeared the Book of Ezra, advocating the same doctrine. These two books were popular among the Jews before the time of Christ, and it is supposed, as the Old Testament is silent on the subject, that the corrupt traditions of the Pharisees, of which our Lord warned his disciples to beware, " were obtained in part from these books, or from the Egyptian and Pagan sources whence they were derived. At any rate, though the Old i3Mark vii, 13; Matthew xvi, 6, 12; Luke xii, 1; Mark viii, 15. 46 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Testament does not contain the doctrine, " Josephus, as has been seen, assures us that the Pharisees of his time accepted and taught it. Of course they must have obtained the doctrine from uninspired sources. As these and possibly other similar books had already corrupted the faith of the Jews, they seem later to have infused their virus into the faith of some of the early Christians. Nothing is better established in history than that the doctrine of endless punishment, as held by the Christian church in me- diaeval times, was of Egyptian origin, '^ and that for purposes of state it and its accessories were adopted by the Greeks and Romans. Montesquieu states that ** Romulus, Tatius and Numa enslaved the gods to politics, " and made religion for the state. Classic scholars know that the heathen hell was early copied by the Catholic church, and that almost its entire details afterwards entered into the creeds of Catholic and Pro- ied from Heathen ^ ^11 testant churches up to a century ago. Any reader may see this who will consult Pagan literature^® and writers on the opinions of the ancients. And not only this, but the heathen writers declare that the doctrine was invented to awe and control the multitude. Polybius writes: *' Since the multitude is ever fickle * * * there is no other way to keep them in order but by fear of the invisible world ; on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously when they "Milman Hist. Jews; Warburton's Divine Legation; Jahn, Archaeology. i^Warburton. Leland's Necessity of Divine Revelation. I'Virgil's .(Eneid. Apollodorus, Hesiod, Herodotus, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, etc. ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 47 contrived to bring into the popular belief these no- tions of the gods and of the infernal regions. " Sen- eca says: "Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, etc., are all a fable." LivY declares that Numa invented the doc- trine, * ' a most efBcacious means of governing an ignorant and barbarous populace." Strabo writes: ' ' The multitude are restrained from vice by the pun- ishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, * * * for it is impossible to govern the crowd of women and all the common rabble by philosophical reasoning: these things the legislators used as scare- crows to terrify the childish multitude." Similar language is found in Dionysius Halicarnassus, Plato, and other writers. History records nothing more distinctly than that the Greek and Roman Pagans borrowed of the Egyptians, and that some of the early Christians unconsciously absorbed, or studi- ously appropriated, the doctrines of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans concerning post-mortem punish- ment, and gradually corrupted the " simplicity that is in Christ" " by the inventions of antiquity, as from the same sources the Jews at the time of Christ had already corrupted their religion. '^ What more nat- ural than that the small reservoir of Christian truth should be contaminated by the opinions that converts from all these sources brought with them into their new religion at first, and later that the Roman Cath- ini Cor. xi, 3. i^Milman's Gibbon, Murdock's Mosheim, Enfield's Hist. Philos., Univer- salist Expositor, 1853. 48 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. olic priests and Pagan legislators should seize them as engines of power by which to control the world? CoQUEREL describes the effect of the irruption of Pagans into the early Christian church: "The, at first, gradual entrance and soon rapid irruption of an idolatrous multitude into the bosom of Christian- ity was not effected without detriment to the truth. The Christianity of Jesus was too lofty, too pure, for this multitude escaped from the degrading cults of Olympus. The Pagans were not able to enter efi masse into the church without bringing to it their habits, their tastes, and some of their ideas. " '' Mil- man and Neander think^° that old Jewish prejudices could not be extirpated in the proselytes of the in- fant church, and that latent Judaism lurked in it and was continued into the darker ages. Chrysostom complains that the Christians of his time (the Fourth Century) were "half Jews." Enfield^* declares that converts from the schools of Pagan philosophy inter- wove their old errors with the simple truths of Chris- tianity until * ' heathen and Christian doctrines were still more intimately blended * * * and both were almost entirely lost in the thick clouds of ignor- ance and barbarism which covered the earth. * * * The fathers of the church departed from the sim- plicity of the apostolic church and corrupted the purity of the Christian faith. " Hagenbach reminds us that^^ " There were two errors which the new- born Christianity had to guard against if it was not wCoquerel's First Historical Transformations of Christianity. 80 See Conybeare's " Paul," Vol. I, Chapters 14, 15. «i See also Priestley's " Corruptions of Christianity." 2«Hist. Doct. ISec. 22. ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 49 to lose its peculiar religious features, and disappear in one of the already existing religions : against a re- lapse into Judaism on the one side, and against a mix- ture with Paganism and speculations borrowed from it, and a mythologizing tendency on the other. " The Sibylline Oracles, advocating universal restoration ; Philo, who taught annihilation, and Enoch and Ezra, who taught endless punishment, were all read by the early Christians, and no doubt exerted an influence in forming early opinions. The Edinburgh Review concedes that "upon a full inspection it will be seen that the corruption of Christianity was itself the effect of Early Christianity that vitiated state of the human mind, Adulterated. of which the vices of the government were the great and primary cause. " " That the Christian religion suffered much from the influence of the Gentile philosophy is unquestiona- ble."^^ Dr. Middleton, in a famous "Letter from Rome, " shows that from the pantheon down heathen temples, shrines and altars were taken by the early church, and so used that Pagans could employ them as well as Christians, and retain their old supersti- tions and errors while professing Christianity. In other words, that much of Paganism, after the First Century or two, remained in and corrupted Christian- ity. MosHEiM writes that " no one objected (in the Fifth Century) to Christians retaining the opinions of their Pagan ancestors ;" and T ytler describes the con- fusion that resulted from the mixture of Pagan phi- losophy with the plain and simple doctrines of the *8 Vaughan's Causes of the Corruption of Christianity; also Casaubon and Blunt's "Vestiges." 50 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Christian religion, from which the church in its in- fant state "suffered in a most essential manner." The Rev. T. B. Thayer, D. D.,'* thinks that the faith of the early Christian church *' of the orthodox party was one-half Christian, one-quarter Jewish, and one-quarter Pagan; while that of the gnostic party was about one-quarter Christian and three-quarters philosophical Paganism. " The purpose of many of the fathers seems to have been to bridge the abyss between Paganism and Christianity, and, for the sake of proselytes, to tolerate Pagan doctrine. Says Merivale: In the Fifth Century, "Paganism was assimilated, not extirpated, and Christendom has suffered from it more or less ever since. * * * The church * * * was content to make terms with what survived of Paganism, content to lose even more than it gained in an unholy alliance with superstition and idolatry; enticing, no doubt, many of the vul- gar, and some even of the more intelligent, to a nom- inal acceptance of the Christian faith, but conniving at the surrender by the great mass of its own bap- tized members of the highest and purest of their spiritual acquisitions. "^^ It is difficult to learn just how much surrounding influences affected ancient or modem Christians, for, asScHAFF says (Hist. Apos. Ch. p. 23): "The theological views of the Greek Fathers were modified to a considerable extent by Platonism ; those of the mediaeval schoolmen, by the logic and dialectics of Aristotle; those of the later times by the system of Descartes, Spinoza, Bacon, Locke, Leibnitz, Kant, Fries, Fichte, Schelling, 2* Hist. Doct. Endless Punishment, pp. 192-193. « Early Church History, pp. 159-160. ORIGIN OF ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 51 and Hegel. Few scientific divines can absolutely emancipate themselves from the influence of the phi- losophy and public opinion of their age, and when they do they have commonly their own philosophy, etc. " That the Old Testament does not teach even post- mortem punishment is universally conceded by schol- ars, as has been seen; and that the Original Greek Egyptians, and Greek and Roman New Testament. Pagans did, is shown already. That the doctrine was early in the Christian church, is equally evident. As the earlv Christians did not obtain it from the Old Testament, which does not contain it, and as it was already a Pagan doctrine, where could they have procured it except from heathen sources? And as Universalism was nowhere taught, and as the first Universalist Christians after the apostles were Greeks, perfectly familiar with the language of the New Testament, where else could they have found their faith than where they declare they found it, in the New Testa- ment? How can it be supposed that the Latins were correct in claiming that the Greek Scriptures teach a doctrine that the Greeks themselves did not find therein? And how can the Greek fathers in the primitive church mistake when they understand our Lord and his apostles to teach universal restoration? "It maybe well to note here, that after the third century the descent of the church into errors of doc- trine and practice grew more rapid. The worship of Jesus, of Mary, of saints, of relics, etc. , followed each other, Mary was called 'the Mother of God,' 'the Queen of Heaven. ' As God began to be rep- resented more stern, implacable, cruel, the people 52 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. worshiped Jesus to induce him to placate his Father's wrath; and then as the Son was held up as the severe judge of sinners and the executioner of the Father's vengeance, men prayed Mary to mollify the anger of her God-child ; and when she became un- feeling or lacked influence, they turned to Joseph and other saints, and to martyrs, to intercede with their cold, implacable superiors. Thus theology became more hard and merciless — hell was intensi- fied, and enlarged, and eternized — heaven shrunk, and receded, and lost its compassion — woman (de- spite the deification of Mary) was regarded as weak and despicable — the Agapae were abolished and the Eucharist deified, and its cup withheld from the peo- ple — and woman deemed too impure to touch it! As among the heathen Romans, faith and reverence decreased as their gods were multiplied, so here, as objects of worship were increased, familiarity bred only sensuality, and sensuous worship drove out virtue and veneration, until, in the language of Mrs. Jameson's "Legends of the Madonna," (Int. p. xxxi) : One of the frescoes in the Vatican repre- sents GiULiA Farnese (a noted impure woman and mistress of the pope !) in the character of the Ma- donna, and Pope Alexander VI. (the drunken, un- chaste, beastly !) kneeling at her feet in the charac- ter of a votary! Under the influence of the Medici, the churches of Florence were filled with pictures of the Virgin in which the only thing aimed at was a meretricious beauty. Savonarola thundered from his pulpit in the garden of S. Marco against these impieties. " ^^ *• Universalist Quarterly, January, 1883. IV. DOCTRINES OF "MITIGATION" AND OF " RESERVE " There was no controversy among Christians over the duration of the punishment of the wicked for at least three hundred years after the death of Christ. Scriptural terms were used with their Scriptural meanings, and while it is not probable that univer- sal restoration was polemically or dogmatically an- nounced, it is equally probable that the endless duration of punishment was not taught until heathen corruptions had adulterated Christian truth. God's fatherhood and boundless love, and the work of Christ in man's behalf were dwelt upon, accompa- nied by the announcement of the fearful consequences of sin; but when those consequences, through Pagan influences, came to be regarded as endless in dura- tion, then the antidotal truth of universal salvation assumed prominence through Clement, Origen, and other Alexandrine fathers Even when some of the early Christians had so far been overcome by heathen error as to accept the dogma of endless torment for the wicked, they had no hard words for those who believed in universal restoration, and did not even controvert their views. The doctrines of Prayer for the Dead, and of Christ Preaching to those in Hades, and of Mitigation, were humane teachings of the primitive Christians that were subsequently dis- carded. S3 54 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. The doctrine of Mitigation was, that for some good deed on earth, the damned in hell would occa- sionally be let out on a respite or "Mitigation" furlough, and have surcease of tor- Explained, ment. This doctrine of mitigation was quite general among the fathers when they came to advocate the Pagan dogma. In fact, endless punishment in all its enormity, desti- tute of all benevolent features, was not fully de- veloped until Protestantism was born, and prayers for the dead, mitigation of the condition of the "lost," and other softening features were repudi- ated. ' It was taught that the worst sinners — Judas him- self, even — had furloughs from hell for good deeds done on earth. Matthew Arnold embodies one of the legends in his poem of St. Brandon. The saint once met, on an iceberg on the ocean, the soul of Judas Iscariot, released from hell for awhile, who explains his respite. He had once given a cloak to a leper in Joppa, and so he says — " Once every year, when carols wake On earth the Christmas night's repose, Arising from the sinner's lake I journey to these healing snows. " I stanch with ice my burning breast. With silence calm my burning brain; O Brandon, to this hour of rest. That Joppan leper's ease was pain." It remained for Protestanism to discard all the softening features that Catholicism had added to the bequest of heathenism to Christianity, and to give 1 Christian History in Three Great Periods, pp. 257, 8, DOCTRINES OF MITIGATION AND OF RESERVE. 55 the world the unmitigated horror that Protestantism taught from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. We cannot read the patristic literature under- standingly unless we constantly bear in mind the early fathers' doctrine of "CEcono- The Doctrine my," or " Reserve. "^ Plato dis- of "Reserve." tinctly taught it,^ and says that error may be used as a medicine. He jus- tifies the use of the * ' medicinal lie. " The resort of the early fathers to the esoteric is no doubt derived from Plato. Origen almost quotes him when he says that sometimes fictitious threats are necessary to secure obedience, as when Solon had purposely given imperfect laws. Many, in and out of the church, held that the wise possessor of truth might hold it in secret, when its impartation to the igno- rant would seem to be fraught with danger, and that error might be properly substituted. The object was to save ' ' Christians of the simpler sort" from waters too deep for them. It is possible to defend the practice if it be taken to represent the method of a skillful teacher, who will not confuse the learner with principles beyond his comprehension.* Giese- ler remarks that **the Alexandrians regarded a cer- tain accommodation as necessary, which ventures to make use even of falsehood for the attainment of a good end; nay, which was even obliged to do so." N E AND ER declares that "the Orientals, according to their theory of oeconomy, allowed themselves many * Bigg's Platonists of Alexandria, p. 58. « Grote's Plato, Vol. Ill, xxxiii, pp. 56, 7. ♦ J. H. Newman, Arians; Apologia Pro Vita Sua 56 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. liberties not to be reconciled with the strict laws of veracity. "^ Some of the fathers who had achieved a faith in Universalism, were influenced by the mischievous notion that it was to be held esoterically, cherished in secret, or only communicated to the chosen few, — withheld from the multitude, who would not appre- ciate it, and even that the opposite error would, with some sinners, be more beneficial than the truth. Clement of Alexandria admits that he does not write or speak certain truths. Origen claims that there are doctrines not to be communicated to the ignorant. Clement says: "They are not in reality liars who use circumlocution ^ (rvfxirepi<}>€p6fxevoi because of the oeconomy of salvation. " Origen refers to truths that must not be written.' Gieseler declares that the Alexandrians taught that falsehood could be used to accomplish the good of men. Origen said that "all that might be said on this theme is not expedient to explain now, or to all. For the mass need no further teaching on account of those who hardly through the fear of seonian punishment restrain their reckless- ness. " The reader of the patristic literature sees this opinion frequently, and unquestionably it caused many to hold out threats to the multitude in order to restrain them ; threats that they did not themselves believe would be executed.^ I" Allin, Univ. Asserted, shows at length the prevalence of the doctrine of "reserve" among the early Christians. *Stromata. 'Against Celsus I, vii; and on Romans ii. *"St. Basil distinguishes in Christianity between Kr^pvy/xaTa what is openly proclaimed and Soy/Aara which are kept secret." Max MiilJer, Theosophy or Psychology, Lect. xiv. DOCTRINES OF MITIGATION AND OF RESERVE. 57 The gross and carnal interpretation given to parts of the Gospel, causing some, as Origen said, to "be- lieve of God what would not be believed of the crud- est of mankind," caused him to dwell upon the duty of reserve, which he does in many of his homilies. He says that he can not fully express himself on the mystery of eternal punishment in an exoteric state- ment.' The reserve advocated and practised by Origen and the Alexandrians was, says Bigg, "the screen of an esoteric belief." Beecher reminds his readers that while it was common with Pagan philoso- phers to teach false doctrines to the masses with the mistaken idea that they were needful, ' 'the fathers of the Christian church did not escape the infection of this leprosy of pious fraud;" and he quotes Nean- DER to show that Chrysostom was guilty of it, and also Gregory Nazianzen, Athanasius, and Basil the Great. The prevalence of this fraus pia in the early centuries is well known to scholars. After saying that the Sibylline Oracles were probably forged by a gnostic, Mosheim says: "I cannot yet take upon me to acquit the most strictly orthodox from all participation in this species of criminality ; for it appears from evidence superior to all excep- tion that a pernicious maxim was current, * * * namely, that those who made it their business to de- ceive with a view of promoting the cause of truth, were deserving rather of commendation than cen- sure." It seems to have been held that ' 'faith, the foun- eAg. Cels.; De Prin. 58 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. dation of Christian knowledge, was fitted only for the rnde mass, the animal men, who What Was Held were incapable of higher things. as to Doctrine. Far above these were the privileged natures, the men of intellect, or spiritual men, whose vocation was not to believe but to know."^'' The ecclesiastical historians class as esoteric believers, Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen; and Beecher names Athanasius and Basil the Great as in the same category; and Beech- er remarks: "We cannot fully understand such a proclamation of future endless punishment as has been described, while it was not believed, until we consider the influence of Plato on the age. * * * Socrates is introduced as saying in Grote's Plato: ' It is indispensable that this fiction should be circulated and accredited as the fundamental, con- secrated, unquestioned creed of the whole city, from which the feeling of harmony and brotherhood among the citizens springs. ' Such principles, as a leprosy, had corrupted the whole community, and especially the leaders. In the Roman Empire pagan magistrates and priests appealed to retribution in Tartarus, of which they had no belief, to affect the masses. This does not excuse, but it explains the preaching of eternal punishment by men who did not believe it. They dared not entrust the truth to the masses, and so held it in reserve — to deter men from sin. " General as was the confession of a belief in univer- 1" Dean Mansell's Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second Centuries. Introduction, p. 10. DOCTRINES OF MITIGATION AND OF RESERVE. 59 sal salvation m the church's first and best three cen- turies, there is ample reason to believe that it was the secret belief of more than gave expression to it, and that many a one who proclaimed a partial salva- tion, in his secret "heart of heart" agreed with the greatest of the church's fathers during the first four hundred years of our era, that Christ would achieve a universal triumph, and that God would ultimately reign in all hearts. There can be no doubt that many of the fathers threatened severer penalties than they believed would be visited on sinners, impelled Modern Theolo- to utter them because they consid- gians Equivocal. ered them to be more salutary with the masses than the truth itself. So that we may believe that some of the patristic writers who seem to teach endless punishment did not believe it. Others, we know, who accepted uni- versal restoration employed, for the sake of deterring sinners, threats that are inconsistent, literally interpre- ted, with that doctrine. This disposition to conceal the truth has actuated many a modem theologian. In Ser- mon XXXV, on the eternity of hell torments. Arch- bishop TiLLOTSoN, while he argues for the endless duration of punishment, suggests that the Judge has the right to omit inflicting it if he shall see it incon- sistent with righteousness or goodness to make sin- ners miserable forever, and Burnet urges: " What- ever your opinion is within yourself, and in your breast, concerning these punishments, whether they are eternal or not, yet always with the people, and when you preach to the people, use the received doc- trine and the received words in the sense in which 6o UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. the people receive them, " It is certainly allowable to think that many an ancient timid teacher dis- covered the truth without daring to entrust it to the mass of mankind. Theophilus of Alexandria proposed making Sy- NESius of Cyrene, bishop. The latter said: "The philosophic intelligence, in short, Even Lying while it beholds the truth, admits the Defended. necessity of lying. Light corresponds to truth, but the eye is dull of vision ; it can not without injury gaze on the infinite light. As twilight is more comfortable for the eye, so, I hold, is falsehood for the common run of people. The truth can only be harmful for those who are unable to gaze on the reality. If the laws of the priesthood permit me to hold this position, then I can accept con- secration, keeping my philosophy to myself at home, and preaching fables out of doors."" " Neoplatonism, by C. Bigg, D. D. London: 1895, p. 339. V. TWO KINDRED TOPICS. The early Christian church almost, if not quite, universally believed that Christ made proclamation of the Gospel to the dead in Hades. Gospel Preached Says Huidekoper; " In the Second to the Dead. and Third Centuries every branch and division of Christians believed that Christ preached to the departed."* Dietelmaier declares^ this doctrine was believed by all Christians. Of course, if souls were placed where their doom was irretrievable salvation would not be offered to them ; whence it follows that the early Christians be- lieved in post-mortem probation. Allin says that " some writers teach that the apostles also preached in Hades. Some say that the Blessed Virgin did the same. Some even say that Simeon went before Christ to Hades." All these testimonies go to show that the earliest of the fathers did not regard the grave as the dead-line which the love of God could not cross, but that the door of mercy is open hereafter as here. "The Platonic doctrine of a sep- arate state, where the spirits of the departed are purified, and on which the later doctrine of purga- 1 An excellent resume of the opinions of the fathers on Christ's descent into Hades, and preaching the gospel to the dead, is Huidekoper's "The Belief of the First Three Centuries Concernins Christ's Mission to the Un- derworld;" also Huidekoper's "Indirect Testimony to the Gospels;" also Dean Pluraptre's "Spirits in Prison." London: 1884. ^Historia Dogmatis de Descensu Christi ad Inferos. J. A. Dietelmaier. 6i 62 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. tory was founded, was approved by all the expositors of Christianity who were of the Alexandrian school, as was the custom of performing religious services at the tombs of the dead. Nor was there much differ- ' ence between them and Tertullian in these particu- lars." In the early ages of the church great stress was laid on I Pet. iii. 19: * He (Christ) went and preached unto the spirits in prison. " That this doc- trine was prevalent as late as Augustine's day is evi- dent from the fact that the doctrine is anathematized in his list of heresies — number 79. And even as late as the Ninth Century it was condemned by Pope Bon- iface VI. It was believed that our Lord not only proclaimed his Gospel to all the dead but that he lib- erated them all. How could it be possible for a Christian to entertain the thought that all the wicked who died before the advent of our Lord were released from bondage, and that any who died after his ad- vent would suffer endless woe? Eusebius says: "Christ, caring for the salvation of all * * * opened a way of return to life for the dead bound in the chains of death." Athanasius* "The devil * * * cast out of Hades, sees all the fettered be- ings led forth by the courage of the Savior. "^ Origen on I Kings, xxviii:32: " Jesus descended into Hades, and the prophets before him, and they proclaim be- forehand the coming of Christ. " DiDYMus observes "In the liberation of all no one remains a captive ; at the time of the Lord's passion he alone (Satan) was in- jured, who lost all the captives he was keeping. " » De Passione et Cruce Domini. Migne, XXVIII, 186-240. TWO KINDRED TOPICS. 63 Cyril of Alexandria . ' ' And wandering down even to Hades he has emptied the dark, secret, invisible treasuries." Gregory of Nazianzus:* *' Until Christ loosed by his blood all who groaned under Tartarian chains." Jerome on Jonah ii: 6: " Our Lord was shut up in aeonian bars in order that he might set free all who had been shut up. " Such passages might be multiplied, demonstrating that the early church regarded the conquest by Christ of the departed as universal. He set free from bonds all the dead in Hades. If the primitive Christians believed that all the wicked of all the aeons preceding the death of Christ were released, how can we suppose them to have regarded the wicked subsequent to his death as destined to suffer interminable torments? Clement of Alexandria is explicit in declaring that the Gospel was preached to all, both Jews and Gen- tiles, in Hades; — that "the sole cause of the Lord's descent to the underworld was to preach the gospel. " (Strom. VL) O rig en says: "Not only while Jesus was in the body did he win over not a few only, * * * but when he became a soul, without the covering of the body, he dwelt among those souls (in Hades) which were without bodily covering, con- verting such of them as were fit for it. " About a century after the death of John appeared the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, valuable as set- ting forth current eschatology. It The Gospel of describes the effect of Christ's preach- Nicodemus. ing in Hades: "When Jesus arrived in Hades, the gates burst open, and taking Adam by the hand Jesus said, ' Come all with ♦ Carm. XXXV, v. 9. 64 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. me, as many as have died through the tree which he touched, for behold I raise you all up through the tree of the cross. ' " This book shows conclusively that the Christians of that date did not regard seonian punishment as interminable, inasmuch as those who had been sentenced to that condition were released. "If Christ preached to dead men who were once dis- obedient, then Scripture shows us that the moment of death does not necessarily involve a final and hope- less torment for every sinful soul. Of all the blunt weapons of ignorant controversy employed against those to whom has been revealed the possibility of a larger hope than is left to mankind by Augustine or by Calvin, the bluntest is the charge that such a hope renders null the necessity for the work of Christ. * * * We thus rescue the work of redemption from the appearance of having failed to achieve its end for the vast majority of those for whom Christ died. * * * In these passages, as has been truly said, 'we may see an expansive paraphrase and exuberant variation of the original Pauline theme of the univer- salism of the evangelic embassage of Christ, and of his sovereignty over the world;' and especially of the passage in the Philippians (ii. 9-1 1) where all they that are in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, are enumerated as classes of the subjects of the ex- alted Redeemer. " ^ And Alford observes : "The in- ference every intelligent reader will draw from the fact here announced: it is not purgatory; it is not universal restitution; but it is one which throws blessed light on one of the darkest enigmas of divine 'Farrar's "Early Days of Christianity," ch. vii. TWO KINDRED TOPICS. 65 justice." TiMOTHEUS II., patriarch of the Nestorians, wrote that "by the prayers of the saints the souls of sinners may pass from Gehenna to Paradise, " (Asse- man. IV. p. 344). See Prof. Plumptre's "Spirits in Prison," p. 141; Diet. Christ. Biog. Art. Eschatol- ogy, etc. Says Uhlhorn (Book I, ch. iii) : "For de- ceased persons their relatives brought gifts on the anniversary of their death, a beautiful custom which vividly exhibited the connection between the church above and the church below." " One fact stands out very clearly from the pages of patristic literature, viz. : that all sects and divisions of the Christians in the second and third centuries united in the belief that Christ went down into Hades, or the Underworld, after his death on the cross, and re- mained there until his resurrection. Of course it was natural that the question should come up , What did he do there? As he came down from earth to preach the Gospel to, and save, the living, it was easy to infer that he went down into Hades to preach the same glad tidings there, and show the way of salva- tion to those who had died before his advent."^ Prayers for the Dead. It need not here be claimed that the doctrine that Christ literally preached to the dead in Hades is true, or that such is the teaching of I Pet. iii: 19 but it is perfectly apparent that if the primitive Chris- tians held to the doctrine they could not have be- lieved that the condition of the soul is fixed at death. That is comparatively a modern doctrine. There can be no doubt that the Catholic doctrine ^Universalist Quarterly. 66 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. of purgatory is a corruption of the Scriptural doctrine of the disciplinary character of all God's punishments. Purgatory was never heard of in the earlier centuries.' It is first fully stated by Pope Gregory the First, "its inventor," at the close of the Sixth Century. ** For some light faults we must believe that there is before judgment a purgatorial fire. " This theory is a perversion of the idea held anciently, that all God's punishments are purgative; what the Catholic re- gards as true of the errors of the good is just as true of the sins of the worst, — indeed, of all. The word rendered punishment in Matt, xxv; 46, {kolasin) im- plies all this. That the condition of the dead was not regarded as imalterably fixed is evident from the fact that prayers for the dead were customary Condition of the anciently, and that, too, before the Dead not Final. doctrine of purgatory was formulated. The living believed — and so should we believe — that the dead have migrated to another country, where the good offices of survivors on earth avail. Perpetua begged for the help of her brother, child of a Pagan father, who had died unbaptized. In Tertullian the widow prays for the soul of her departed husband. Repentance by the dead is con- ceded by Clement, and the prayers of the good on earth help them. The dogma of the purificatory character of future punishment did not degenerate into the doctrine of punishment for believers only, until the Fourth Cen- tury; nor did that error crystallize into the Catholic 'Archs. Usher and Wake, quoted by Farrar, "Mercy and Judgment," TWO KINDRED TOPICS. (>n purgatory until later. Hagenbach says: "Com- paring Gregory's doctrine with the earlier, and more spiritual notions concerning the efficacy of the purify- ing fire of the intermediate state, we may adopt the statement of Schmidt that the belief in a lasting de- sire of perfection, which death itself cannot quench, degenerated into a belief in purgatory." Plumptre ("Spirits in Prison," London, p. 25) has a valuable statement: "In every form; from the solemn liturgies which embodied the belief of her profoundest thinkers and truest worshipers, to the simple words of hope and love which were traced over the graves of the poor, her voice (the church of the first ages) went up without a doubt or misgiving, in prayers for the souls of the departed;" showing that they could not have regarded their condition as unalterably fixed at death. Prof. Plumptre quotes from Lee's "Christian Doctrine of Prayer for the De- parted," to show the early Christians' belief that inter- cessions for the dead would be of avail to them. Even Augustine accepted the doctrine. He prayed after his mother's death, that her sins might be for- given, and that his father might also receive pardon. ( "Confessions," ix, 13.)^ " The Platonic doctrine of a separate state where the spirits of the departed are purified, and on which the later doctrine of purgatory was founded, was ap- proved by all the expositors of Christianity who were of the Alexandrian school, as was the custom of per- 8That these ideas were general in the primitive church, see Nitzsch, "Christian Doctrine," Sec. Ill; Dorner, "System of Christian Doctrine," Vol. IV, (Eschatology). Also Vaughan's "Causes of the Corruption of Christianity," p. 319. 68 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. forming religious services at the tombs of the dead. " Uhlhorn gives similar testimony: "For deceased persons their relatives brought gifts on the anniver- sary of their death, a beautiful custom, which vividly exhibited the connection between the church above and the church below. " Origen's tenet of Catharsis or Purification was absorbed by the growing belief in purgatory. ^ Important Thoughts. Let the reader reflect (i) that the Primitive Christians so distrusted the effect of the truth on the popular mind that they withheld it, and only cher- ished it esoterically, and held up terrors for effect, in which they had no faith; (2) that they prayed for the wicked dead that they might be released from suffering; (3) that they universally held that Christ preached the Gospel to sinners in Hades; (4) that the earliest creeds are entirely silent as to the idea that the wicked dead were in irretrievable and endless torment; (5) that the terms used by some who are accused of teaching endless torment were precisely those employed by those acknowledged to have been Universalists ; (6) that the first Christians were the happiest of people and infused a wonderful cheerful- ness into a world of sorrow and gloom; (7) that there is not a shade of darkness nor a note of despair in any one of the thousands of epitaphs in the Cata- combs; (8) that the doctrine of universal redemption was first made prominent by those to whom Greek was their native tongue, and that they declared that they derived it from the Greek Scriptures, while end- ""Neoplatonism," by C. Bigg, p. 334. TWO KINDRED TOPICS. 69 less punishment was first taught by Africans and Latins, who derived it from a foreign tongue of which the great teacher of it confessed he was ignorant. (See "Augustine " later on.) Let the reader give to these considerations their full and proper weight, and it will be impossible to believe that the fathers re- garded the impenitent as consigned at death to hopeless and endless woe. Note.— After giving the emphatic language of Clement and Origen and other ancient Christians declarative of universal holiness, Dr. Bigg, in his valuable book, "The Christian Platonists of Alexandria," frequently quoted in these pages, remarks (pp. 292-3): "Neither Clement nor Origen is, prop- erly speaking, a Universalist. Nor is Universalism the logical result of their principles." The reasons he gives are two: (l) They believed in the freedom of the will; and (2) they did not deny the eternity of punishment, because the soul that has sinned beyond a certain point can never become what it might haye been ! To which it is only necessary to say (1) that Universalists generally ac- cept the freedom of the will, and (2) no soul that has sinned, as all have sinned, can ever become what it might have been, so that Dr. Bigg's prem- ises would necessitate Universalism, but universal condemnation! And, as if to contradict his own words Dr. Bigg adds in the very next paragraph: "The hope of a general restitution of all souls through suffering to purity and blessedness, lingered on in the East for some time;" and the last words in his book are these: "It is the teaching of St. Paul, — Then Cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father. Then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all." And these are the last words of his last note: "At the end all will be one because the Father's will is all in all and all in each. Each will fill the place which the mystery of the economy assigns to him." It would be interesting to learn what sort of a monstrosity Dr. Bigg has constructed, and labeled with the word which he declares could not be ap- plied to Clement and Origen. VI. THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. As we read the writings of the immediate suc- cessors of the apostles, we discover that matters of eschatology do not occupy their The First Chris- thought. They dwell on the advent tians not Explicit of our Lord, and dilate on its blessings in Eschatological to the world; they give the proofs Matters. of his divinity, and appeal to men to accept his religion. Most of the surviving documents of the First Century are hortatory. It was an apologetic, not a polemic age. A very partisan author, anxious to show that the doctrine of endless punishment was bequeathed to their immediate successors by the apostles, concedes this. He says that the first Christians "touched but lightly and incidentally on points of doctrine," but gave ' ' the doctrines of Christianity in the very words of Scripture, giving us often no certain clew to their interpretations of the language.^" The first Chris- tians were converted Jews, Greeks, Egyptians, Ro- mans, differing in their theologies, and only agreeing in accepting Christ and Christianity; their ideas of our Lord's teaching concerning human destiny and on other subjects were tinctured by their antecedent pre- iDr. Alvah Hovey, State of the Impenitent Dead, pp. 131, 2, 70 THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. ^\ dilections. Their doctrines on many points were col- ored by Jewish and Pagan errors, until their minds were clarified, when the more systematic teachers came, — Clement, Origen and others, who eliminated the errors Christian converts had brought with them from former associations, and presented Christianity as Christ taught it. The measures of meal were more or less impure until the leaven of genuine Christianity transformed them. But it is conceded that there is little left of the apostolic age, out of the New Testament, to tell us what their ideas of human destiny were. It is probable, however, that the Pharisaic notion of a partial resurrection and the annihilation of the wicked was held by some, and the heathen ideas of endless punishment by others. We know that even while the apostles lived some of the early Christians had accepted new, or retained ancient errors, for which they were reprimanded by the apostles. " False teachers " and "philosophy and vain deceit " were alleged of them, and it is the testimony of schol- ars that errors abounded among them, errors that Christianity did not at first exorcise. But the ques- tions concerning human destiny were not at all raised at first. True views and false ones undoubtedly prevailed, brought into the new communion from former associations. And it is conceded that while very little literature on the subject remains, there is enough to show that they differed, at first, and until wiser teachers systematized our religion, and sifted out the wheat from the chaff. The first of the apostolic fathers was Clement of Rome, who was bishop A, D. 85. Eusebius and 72 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Origen thought he was Paul's fellow laborer. His famous (first) epistle of fifty-nine chapters is about the length of Mark's Gospel. He appeals Views of Clement to the destruction of the cities of the of Rome. plains to illustrate the divine punish- ments, but gives no hint of the idea of endless woe, though he devotes three chapters to the resurrection. He has been thought to have held to a partial resurrection, for he asks : " Do we then deem it any great and wonderful thing for the maker of all things to raise up again those who have proudly served him in the assurance of a good faith?" But this does not prove he held to the annihilation of the wicked, for Theophilus and Origen use similar language. He says: " Let us reflect how free from wrath he is towards all his creatures. " God ** does good to all, but most abundantly to us who have fled for refuge to his compassions," etc. God is ** the all- merciful and beneficent Father. " Neander affirms that he had the Pauline spirit," with love as the mo- tive, and A. St. J. Chambre, D. D.,^ thinks "he probably believed in the salvation of all men," and Allin^ refers to Rufinus and says, "from which we may, I think, infer, that Clement, with other fathers, was a believer in the larger hope." It cannot be said that he has left anything positive in relation to the subject, though it is probable that Chambre and Allin have correctly characterized him. He wrote a Greek epistle to the Corinthians which was lost for centuries, but was often quoted by subseqent writers, and whose contents were therefore only known in »Anc. Hist. Univ., Note. 'Univer. Asserted, p. 105. THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 73 fragments. It was probably written before John's Gospel. It was at length found complete, bound with the Alexandrian codex. It was read in church be- fore and at the time of Eusebius, and even as late as the Fifth Century. PoLYCARP was bishop of the church in Smyrna, A. D. 108-117. He is thought to have been John's disciple. Iren^us tells us that he Polycarp a and Ignatius were friends of Peter Destructionist. and John, and related what they had told them. His only surviving epistle contains this passage : To Christ ' ' all things are made subject, both that are in heaven and that are on earth; whom every living creature shall worship; who shall come to judge the quick and dead; whose blood God shall require of them that believe not in him." He also says in the same chapter: " He who raised up Christ from the dead, will also raise us up if we do his will," implying that the resurrection de- pended, as he thought, on conduct in this life. It seems probable that he was one of those who held to the Pharisaic doctrine of a partial resurrection. And yet this is only the most probable conjecture. There is nothing decisive in his language. When the pro- consul Statius Quadratus wrote to Polycarp, threatening him with burning, the saint replied ' ' Thou threatenest me with a fire that burns for an hour, and is presently extinct, but art ignorant, alas ! of the fire of aionian condemnation, and the judg- ment to come, reserved for the wicked in the other world." After Polycarp there was no literature, that has descended to us, for several years, except a few quotations in later writings, which, however, 74 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES, contain nothing bearing- on our theme, from Papias, QUADRATUS, AgRIPPA, CaSTOR, CtC. " The Martyrdom of Polycarp" purports to be a letter from the church of Smyrna reciting the par- ticulars of his death. But though it is the earliest of the Martyria, it is The Martyria. supposed to have a much later date than it alleges, and much has been interpolated by its transcribers. Eusebius omits much of it. It speaks of the fire that is '•'■ aionion punishment," and it is probable that the writer gave these terms the same sense that is given them by the Scriptures, Origen, Gregory and other Universalist writings and authors. Tatian states the doctrine of endless punishment very strongly. He was a philosophical Platonist more than a Christian. He was a heathen convert and repeats the heathen doctrines in language un- known to the New Testament though common enough in heathen works. He calls punishment " death through punishment in immortality,"* terms usedby JosEPHUs and the Pagans, but never found m the New Testament. His " Diatessaron, " a collection of the Gospels, is of real value in determining the ex- istence of the Gospels in the Second Century. The Epistle of Barnabas was written by an Alex- andrian Gnostic, probably about A. D. 70 to 120, not, as has been claimed, by Paul's com- Barnabas's "Way of panion, and yet some of the best Death." authorities think the author of the Epistle was the friend of Paul. Though often quoted by the ancients, the first four THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 75 and a half chapters of the Epistle were only known in a Latin version until the entire Greek was discov- ered and published in 1863. It is the only Christian composition written while the New Testament was being written, except the *' Wisdom of Solomon." It is of small intrinsic value, and sheds but little light on eschatology. The first perfect manuscript was found with the Sinaitic manuscript of Tischen- DORF, a translation of which is given by Samuel Sharpe. (Williams & Norgate, London, 1880. ) It was the first document after the New Testament to apply aionios to punishment; but there is nothing in the connection to show that it was used in any other than its Scriptural sense, indefinite duration. It is quoted by Origen in Cont. Cels., and by Clement of Alexandria. It is chiefly remarkable for standing alone among writings contemporary with the New Testament. The phrase, eis ton aiona, "to the age," mistranslated in the New Testament "forever" (though correctly rendered in the margin of the Revision), is employed by Barnabas and applied to the rewards of goodness and the evil consequences of ill doing. He says, " The way of the Black one is an age-lasting way of death and punishment," but the description accompanying shows that the Way and its results are confined to this life, for he pre- cedes it by disclaiming all questions of eschatology. He says: " If I should write to you about things that are future you would not understand." And when he speaks of God he says: " He is Lord from ages and to ages, but he (Satan) is prince of the present time of wickedness. " Long duration but not strict eternity seems to have been in his mind when he re- 76 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. f erred to the consequences of wickedness. This is confirmed by the following language ' ' He that chooseth those (evil) things will be destroyed to- gether with his works. For the sake of this there will be a resurrection, for the sake of this a repay- ment. The day is at hand in which all things will perish together with the evil one. The Lord is at hand and his reward. " Barnabas probably held the Scriptural view of punishment, long-lasting but limited, though he employs tinioria (torment) instead of kolasis (correction) for punishment. In the middle of the Second Century, say A. D. 141 to 156, a book entitled the "Shepherd," or '* Pastor of Hermas, " was read in the The Shepherd or churches, and was regarded as al- Pastor of Hermas. most equal to the Scriptures. The author was commissioned to write it by Clemens Romanus. Iren^us, Clement of Alex- andria, Origen, Eusebius and Athanasius quote from it, and rank it among the sacred writings. Clement says it is "divinely expressed," and Origen calls it "divinely inspired." Iren^eus designates the book as " The Scripture." According to Rothe, Hefele, and the editors of Bib. Max. Patrum, Her- mas teaches the possibility of repentance after death, but seems to imply the annihilation of the wicked. Farrar says that the parable of the tower "certainly taught a possible amelioration after death : for a pos- sibility of repentance and so of being built into the tower is granted to some of the rejected stones." The "Pastor" does not avow Universalisni, but he is much further from the eschatology of the church for the last fifteen centuries, than from universal THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS, m restoration. Only fragments of this work were pre- served for a long time, and they were in a Latin translation, until 1859, when one-fourth of the orig- inal Greek was discovered. This, with the frag- ments previously possessed, and the Ethiopia ver- sion, give us the full text of this ancient document. The book is a sort of Ante-Nicene Pilgrim's Prog- ress — an incoherent imitation of Revelation.^ The theology of the " Shepherd " can be gauged from his language: " Put on, therefore, gladness, that hath always favor before God, and is acceptable unto him, and delight thyself in it ; for every man that is glad doeth the things that are good, but thinketh good thoughts, despising grief." How different this sen- timent from that which prevailed later, when saints mortified body and soul, and made religion the apotheosis of melancholy and despair. Of some fifteen epistles ascribed to Ignatius, it has been settled by modern scholarship that seven are genuine. There are passages in these that seem to indicate that he believed in the annihilation of the wicked. He was probably a convert from heathen- ism who had not gotten rid of his former opinions. He says: "It would have been better for them to love that they might rise." If he believed in a par- tial resurrection he could not have used words that denote endless consequences to sin any more than did Origen, for if annihilation followed those conse- quences, they must be limited. When Ignatius and Barnabas speak of "eternal" punishment or death, we might perhaps suppose that they regarded ^Bunsen, Hipp, and His Age, Vol. I, p. 182. 78 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. the punishment of sin as endless, did we not find that Origen and other Universalists used the same terms, and did we not know that the Scriptures do the same. To find aionion attached to punishment proves nothing as to its duration. In his Epist. ad Trail. , he says that Christ descended into Hades and cleft the aionion barrier. It seems on the whole probable that while Igna- tius did not dogmatize on human destiny, he re- garded the resurrection as conditional. Ignatius Probably But here, as elsewhere, the student a Destructionist. should remember that the pernicious doctrine of "reserve" or "oecon- omy " continually controlled the minds of the early Christian teachers, so that they not only withheld their real views of the future, lest ignorant people should take advantage of God's goodness, but threat- ened consequences of sin to sinners, in order to sup- ply the inducements that they thought the masses of people required to deter them from sin. Dr. Ballou thinks that this father held that the wicked *'will not be raised from the dead, but exist hereafter as incorporeal spirits. " He was martyred A. D. 107. Justin Martyr, A. D. 89-166, is the first scholar produced by the Church, and the first conspicuous father the authenticity of whose Justin Martyr's writings is not disputed. His sur- Views. viving works are his two Apologies, and his Dialogue with Trypho. It IS difficult to ascertain his exact views. Cave says: "Justin Martyr maintains that the souls of good men are not received into heaven until the resurrec- tion * * * that the souls of the wicked are thrust THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 79 into a worse condition, where they expect the judg- ment of the great day." Justin himself says that *'the punishment is age-long chastisement {aionion kolasin) and not for a thousand years as Plato says," (in Phoedra) . ' 'It is unlimited ; men are chastised for an unlimited period, and the kingdom is aioyiion and the chastening fire {kolasis puros) aionion, too. * * * *' God delays the destruction of the world, which will cause wicked angels and demons and men to cease to exist, in order to their repentance. * * * Some which appeared worthy of God never die, others are punished as long as God wills them to exist and be punished. * * * Souls both die and are punished." He calls the fire of punishment unquenchable {asdes- ion). He sometimes seems to have taught a pseudo- Universalism, that is, the salvation of all who should be permitted to be immortal ; at other times endless punishment. Again he favors universal salvation. He not only condemned those who forbade the read- ing of the Sibylline Oracles, but commended the book. His language is, "We not only read them without fear, but offer them for inspection, knowing that they will appear well-pleasing to all." As the Oracles distinctly advocate universal salvation, it is not easy to believe that Justin discarded their teach- ings. And yet he says: " If the death of wicked men had ended in insensibility, " it would have been a "god-send" to them. Instead, he says, death is followed by aionion punishment. If he used the word as Origen did, the two statements are re- concilable with each other. Justin taught a "general and everlasting resurrection and judg- ment. Body and soul are to be raised and the 8o UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. wicked with the devil and his angels, and de- mons, sent to Gehenna.^ * * * Christ has de- clared that Satan and his host, together with those men who follow him, shall be sent into fire, and pun- ished for an endless period.^ " But it may be that he speaks rhetorically, and not literally. It is the gen- eral opinion, however, that he regarded punishment as limited, to be followed by annihilation. He him- self says: "The soul, therefore, partakes of life, be- cause God wills it should live; and, accordingly, it will not partake of life whenever God shall will that it should not live. " And yet he says that bodies are consumed in the fire, and at the same time remain immortal. Justin was a heathen philosopher before his con- version, and his Christianity is of a mongrel type. He wore a pagan philosopher's robe, or pallium, after his conversion, calls himself a Platonist, and always seems half a heathen. His effort appears to be to fuse Christianity and Paganism, and it is not easy to harmonize his statements. His Pagan idiosynocra- sies colored his Christianity. But, as Farrar says, the theology of the first one or two centuries had not been crystallized, the ' ' language was fluid and un- technical, and great stress should not be laid on the expressions of the earliest fathers. He nowhere calls punishment endless, but aionion; and yet it can not be proved that he was at all aware of the true philo- sophic meaning of aionios as a word expressive of 6Apol. 1, 8. ^But Gregory Nyssen thi Universalist par excellence, says that Gehenna is a purifying agency. So does Origen. THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 8i quality, and exclusive of — or rather the absolute an- tithesis to— time. He says that demons and wicked men will be punished for a boundless age {apcranto aiona), but in some passages he seems to be at least uncertain whether God may not will that evil souls should cease to exist. "^ When Justin says that trans- gressors are to remain deathless {athanata) while de- voured by the worm and fire, may he not mean that they cannot die while thus exposed? So, too, when he uses the word aionios, and says the sinner must undergo punishment during that period, why not read literally "for ages, and not as Plato said, for a thousand years only? " When, therefore, these terms are found unex- plained, as in Justin Martyr, they should be read in the bright light cast upon them by the interpretations of Clement and O rig en, who employ them as forcibly as does Justin, but who explain them — "eternal fire " and " everlasting punishment" — as in perfect harmony with the great fact of universal restoration. Doctor Farrar regards Justin Martyr as holding " views more or less analogous to Universalism.^ " We cannot do better here than to quote H. Ballou, 2d D. D.: "The question turns on the construction of a sin- gle passage. Justin had argued that souls are not, in their own nature, immortal, since they were cre- ated, or begotten; and whatever thus begins to exist, may come to an end. ' But, still, I do not say that souls wholly die ; for that would truly be good f or- 8Lives of the Fathers, p. 112. ^Eternal Hope, p. 84. 82 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. tune to the bad. What then? The souls of the pious dwell in a certain better place; but those of the un- just and wicked, in a worse place, expecting the time of judgment. Thus, those who are judged of God to be worthy, die no more ; but the others are punished as long as God shall will that they should exist and be punished. * * * Yov, whatever is, or ever shall be, subsequent to God, has a corruptible nature, and is such as may be abolished and cease to exist, God alone is unbegotten and incorruptible, and, therefore, he is God ; but everything else, subse- quent to him, is begotten and corruptible. For this reason, souls both die and are punished. " ^'^ The Epistle to Diognetus. — This letter was long ascribed to Justin Martyr, but it is now generally regarded as anonymous. It was writ- Punishment ten not far from A. D. loo, perhaps Not Endless. by Marcion, possibly by Justin Martyr. It is a beautiful composi- tion, full of the most apostolic spirit. It has very little belonging to our theme, except that at the close of Chapter X it speaks of *' those who shall be con- demned to the awn ion fire which shall chastise those who are committed to it even unto an end, " '^{jnecJiri telous). Even if aionion usually meant endless, it is limited here by the word "unto" which has the force of until, as does aidios in Jude 6, — " aidios chains under darkness, unto (or until) the judgment of the great day." Such a limited chastisement, it would seem, could only be believed in by one who loUnlver. Quar., July. 1846. pp. 299, 800. "Migne, II. p. 1184. THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 83 regarded God as Diognetus's correspondent did, as one who ' * still is, was always, and ever will be kind and good, and free from wrath. " This brief passage shows us that at the beginning of the Second Century Christians dwelt upon the severity of the penalties of sin, but supplemented them by restoration wherever they had occasion to refer to the ultimate outcome. A few years later (as will appear further on) when Christianity was system- atized by Clement and Origen, this was fully shown, and explains the obscurities, and sometimes the apparent incongruities of earlier writers. The lovely spirit and sublime ethics of this epistle fore- shadow the Christian theology so soon to be fully devel- oped by Clement and Origen. Bunsen thinks( Hipp, and His Age, I, pp. 170, 171) the letter "indisputa- bly, after Scripture, the finest monument we know of sound Christian feeling, noble courage, and manly eloquence. " Iren^us(A. D. 120, died 202) was a friend of Igna- tius, and says that in his youth he saw Polycarp, . who was contemporary with John. He had known several who had personally listened to the apostles. His principal work, "Against Heresies," was written A. D. , 182 to 188. No complete copy of it exists in the original Greek: only a Latin translation is extant, though a part of the first book is found in Greek in the copious quotations from it in the writings of Hip- poLYTus and Epiphanius. Its authority is weakened by the wretched Latin in which most of it stands. One fact, however, is incontrovertible: he did not regard Universalism as among the heresies of his times, for he nowhere condemns it, though the doc- 84 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. trine is contained in the " Sibylline Oracles," then in general use, and though he mentions the doctrine without disapproval in his description of the theology of the Carpocratians. Iren^us has been quoted as teaching that the Apostles' creed was meant to inculcate endless pun- ishment, because in a paraphrase of Interesting ^■^q^^ document he says that the Judge, Exposition of ^^ ^^^g ^^^j assize, will cast the wicked into "eternal" fire. But the terms he uses are " igncni cBtenmni" {aionion pur.) As just stated, though he reprehends the Carpocratians for teaching the transmigration of souls, he declares with- out protest that they explain the text "imtil thou pay the uttermost farthing, " as inculcating the idea that " all souls are saved." Iren^us says: " God drove Adam out of Paradise, and removed him far from the tree of life, in compassion for him, that he might not remain a transgressor always, and that the sin in which he was involved might not be immortal, nor be without end and incurable. He prevented further transgression by the interposition of death, and by causing sin to cease by the dissolution of the flesh * * * that man ceasing to live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live to God. " Iren^us states the creed of the church in his day, A, D. 1 60, as a belief in ' 'one God, the Father Aim ighty. Maker of heaven and earth, and the The Creed of sea, and all things that are in them ; Irenasus. and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensation of God, and THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 85 the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and his manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father 'to gather all things in one,' (Eph. i: lo) and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Savior, and King, ac- cording to the will of the invisible Father, ' every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess to him, '(Phil, ii: 10, 11) and that he should execute just judgment towards all; that he may send ' spiritual wickednesses, ' (Eph. vi : 12) and the angels who transgressed and became apos- tates, together with the ungodly and unrighteous, and wicked and profane among men, into aionion fire; and may in the exercise of his grace, confer im- mortality upon the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept his commandments, and have perse- vered in his love, some from the beginning, and others from their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory. " The reader must not forget that the use of the phrase, aiojiion fire, does not give any color to the idea that lRENif:us taught endless punishment, for Origen, Clement, Gregory Nyssen, and other Uni- versalists conveyed their ideas of punishment by the use of the same terms, and held that salvation is be- yond, and even by means of the aionion fire and pun- ishment. ScHAFF admits that the opinions of Iren^eus are 86 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. doubtful from his (Schaff's) orthodox standpoint and says : ^2 "In the fourth Pf affian frag- Probably a ment ascribed to him (Stieren I, 889) Universalist. he says that ' Christ will come at the end of time to destroy all evil — Trai/ TO KaKov — and to reconcile all things — ets to dTroKaraX- Aa^at Ta TTui/Ta from Col. i:20 — that there maybe an end of all impurity. * This passage, like I. Cor. xv: 28, and Col. i : 20, looks toward universal restoration rather than annihilation, " but good, orthodox Dr. Schaff admits thatit,like the Pauline passages,allows an inter- pretation consistent with eternal punishm-ent. (See the long note in Stieren.) Dr. Beecher writes that Iren^us " taught a final restitution of all things to unity and order by the annihilation of all the finally impenitent. * * * The inference from this is plain. He did not understand aionios in the sense of eternal ; but in the sense claimed by Prof. Lewis, that is, 'pertaining to the world to come,'" not endless. iRENiEus thought " that man should not last forever as a sinner and that the sin which was in him might not be immortal and infinite and incurable. " Says BuNSEN : ' ' The eternal decree of redemption, is, to Iren/eus, throughout, an act of God's love. The atonement, is, according to him, , ... a satisfaction paid, not to God, but Bunsen s View. ^ ' ' to the Devil, under whose power the human mind and body were lying. But the Devil himself only serves God's purpose, for nothing can resist to the last, the Almighty power of divine love, which works not by constraint (the '2Vol. I, p. 493, THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 87 Devil's way), but by persuasion. " ^^ The different statements of- Iren^-us are hard to reconcile with each other, but a fair inference from his language seems to be that he hovx^red between the doctrines of anni- hilation and endless punishment, and yet leaned not a little hopefully to t'hat of restoration. He certainly says that death ends sin, which forecloses all idea of endless torments. It is probable that the fathers differed, as their successors have since differed, ac- cording to antecedent and surrounding influences, and their own idiosyncrasies. Of Christian writers up to date, all assert future punishment, seven apply the word rendered ever- lasting (ai&nws) to it; three, certainly did not regard it as endless, two holding to annihilation and one to universal restoration. Remembering, however, the doctrine of Reserve, we can by no means be certain that the heathen words used denoting absolute end- lessness were not used " pedagogically, " to deter sin- ners from sin. QuADRATUS. — QuADRATus, A. D. 131, addrcsscd an Apology to the Emperor Adrian, a fragment of which survives, but there is no word in it relating to the final condition of mankind. The Clementine Homilies, once thought to have been written by Clement of Rome, but properly enti- tled by Baur "Pseudo Clementine," the work of i^Longfellow gives expression to the same thought: " It is Lucifer, Son of Mystery And since God suffers him to be, He, too, is God's minister And labors for some good By us not understood." 88 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. some Gnostic Christian — teach the final triumph of good. One passage speaks of the The Clementine destruction of the wicked by the pun- Hornilies. ishment of fire, "punished with rt'/^«- ion fire," but this is more than can- celed by other passages in which it is clearly taught that the Devil is but a temporal evil, a servant of good, and agent of God, who, with all his evil works, are finally to be transformed into good. On the one hand, the Devil is not properly an evil, but a God- serving being; on the other, there is a final trans- formation of the Devil, of the evil into good. The sentiments of the Homilies seem, however, somewhat contradictory. It is an important consideration not always real- ized, when studying the opinions that prevailed in the primitive church, that the earliest copies of the Gospels were not in existence until A. D. 60; that the first Epistle written by Paul — ist Thessalo- nians — was not written till A. D. 52; that the New Testament canon was not completed until A. D. 170; that for a long time the only Chris- tian Bible was the Old Testament ; ^* that the ac- count of the judgment in Matt, xxv is never re- ferred to in the writings of the apostolic fathers, who probably never saw or heard of it- till towards the end of the Second Century; and, therefore, when considering the opinions of the fathers for at least a century and a half, we must in all cases interpret them by the Old Testament, which scholars of all churches concede does not reveal the doctrine of end- "Westcott Int. to Gospels, p. 181. THE APOSTLES' IMMEDIATE SUCCESSORS. 89 less woe. Probably not a single Christian writer heretofore quoted ever saw a copy o£ the Gospels. Athenagoras wrote an "Apology," about A. D, 178, and a " Treatise on the Resurrection." He was a scholar and a philosopher, and made Athenagoras great efforts to convert the heathen and Theophilus. to Christianity. He declared that there shall be a judgment, the award of which shall be distributed according to conduct ; but he nowhere refers to the duration of punishment. He was, however, the head of the Catechetical school in Alexandria, ^before Pant^enus, and must have shared the Umiversalist views of Pant^nus, Clement and Origen, his successors. Theophilus (A. D. 180). This author has left a "Treatise "-in behalf of Christianity, addressed to AuTOLYcus, a learned heathen. He uses current lan- guage on the subject of punishment, but says: "Just as a vessel, which, after it has been made, has some flaw, is remade or remodeled, that it may become new and right, so it comes to man by death. For, in some way or other he is broken up, that he may come forth in the resurrection whole, I mean spotless, and right- eous, and immortal. " The preceding writers were "orthodox," but there were at the same time Gnostic Christians, none of whose writings remain except in quotations contained in orthodox authors, with the exception of a few frag- ments. They seem to. have amalgamated Christian- ity with Orientalism. But they have been so mis- represented by their opponents that it is very diffi- cult to arrive at their real opinions on all subjects. Happily they speak distinctly on human destiny. VII. THREE GNOSTIC SECTS. Three Gnostic sects flourished nearly simultane- ously in the Second Century, all which accepted uni- versal salvation: the Basilidians, the Valentinians, and the Carpocratians. The Basilidians were followers of Basilides, who lived about A. D. 117- 138. He was a Gnostic Chris- tian and an Egyptian philosopher. He wrote an alleged Gospel — exegetical rather than historical — no trace of which remains. As some of his theo- ries did not agree with those generally advocated by Christians, he and his followers were regarded as heretics and their writings were destroyed, though no evidence exists to show that their view of hiiman destiny was obnoxious. Greek philosophy and Christian faith are mingled in the electicism of the Basilidians. Basilides taught that man's univer- sal redemption will result from the birth and death of Christ. According to the " Dictionary of Chris- tian Biography,"^ Hippolytus gives an exposition of this mystic Christian sect. Basilides himself was a sincere Christian, and "the first Gnostic teacher who has left an individual, personal stamp upon the age. "^ He accepted the entire Gospel narrative, and taught >Vol.I, pp, 271,2. 2 BuDsen's Hipp, and His Age, Vol. I. p. 107. 90 THREE GNOSTIC SECTS. 91 that the wicked will be condemned to migrate into the bodies of men or animals until purified, when they will be saved with all the rest of mankind. He did not pretend that his ideas of transmigration were ob- tained from the Scriptures but affirmed that he de- rived them from philosophy. He held that the doc- trines of Christianity have a two-fold character — one phase simple, popular, obtained from the plain read- ing of the New Testament; the other sublime, secret, mysteriously imparted to favored ones. His system was a sort of Egyptian metempsychosis grafted on Christianity, an Oriental mysticism endeavoring to stand on a Christian foundation, and thus solve the problem of human destiny. Man and nature are rep- resented as struggling upwards. "The restoration of all things that in the beginning were established in the seed of the universe shall be restored in their own season." Iren^us charges the Basilidians with immorality, but Clement, who knew them better, denies it, and defends them ^ The Carpocratians were followers of Carpocrates, a Platonic philosopher, who incorporated some of the elements of the Christian religion into his system of philosophy. The sect •^ "^ ' ■ flourished in Egypt and vicinity early in the Second Century. Like the Ba- silidians they called themselves Gnostics, and incul- cated a somewhat similar set of theories. Iren^us says that the Carpocratians explained the text: "Thou shalt not go out thence until thou hast paid *The standard authorities on the subject of Gnosticism are Neander, Baur, Matter, Bigg, Mansel (Gnostic Heresies). 92 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. the uttermost farthing, " as teaching ' ' that no one can escape from the power of those angels who made the world, but that he must pass from body to body until he has experience of every kind of action which can be practised in this world, and when nothing is want- ing longer to him, then his liberated soul should soar iipwards to that God who is above the angels, the makers of the world. In this way all souls are saved, " etc. But while Iren^us calls the Carpocratians a heretical sect, and denounces some of their tenets, he had no hard words for their doctrine of man's final destiny. The Valentinians (A. D. 130) taught that all souls will be finally admitted to the realms of bliss. They denied the resurrection of the body. Their doctrines were widely dissemi- e a en inians. ^ated in Asia, Africa and Europe, after the death of their Egyptian founder, Valentine. They resembled the teachings of Basilides in efforts to solve the problem of human destiny philosophically. Valentine flourished in Rome from A. D. 129 to 132. A devout Christian, and a man of the highest genius, he was never ac- cused of anything worse than heresy. He was "a pioneer in Christian theology. " His was an attempt to show, in dramatic form, how ' * the work of uni- versal redemption is going on to the ever- increasing glory of the ineffable and unfathomable Father, and the ever-increasing blessedness of souls." There was a germ of truth in the hybrid Christian theogony and Hellenic philosophizing that made up Valentinian- ism. It was a struggle after the only view of human destiny that can satisfy the human heart. THREE GNOSTIC SECTS. 93 These three sects were bitterly opposed by the "orthodox " fathers in some of their tenets, bnt their Universalism was never condemned. It would be interesting- to give an exposition of the Gnosticism that for some of the earlier centuries agitated the Christian Church; it will Phases of suffice for our purpose here to say Gnosticism. that its manifold phases were at- tempts to reach satisfactory conclu- sions on the great subjects of man's relations to his Maker, to his fellow-men, to himself, and to the uni- verse — to solve the problems of time and eternity. The Gnostic philosophies in the church show the re- sults of blending the Oriental, the Jewish, and the Platonic philosophies with the new religion. "Gnos- ticism,* was a philosophy of religion," and Christian Gnosticism was an effort to explain the new revela- tion philosophically. But there were Gnostics and Gnostics. Some of the Christian Fathers used the term reproachfully, and others appropriated it as one of honor. Gnosis, knowledge, philosophy applied to religion, was deemed all-important by Clement, Ori- GEN, and the most prominent of the Fathers. Mere Gnostics were only Pagan philosophers, but Chris- tian Gnostics were those who accepted Christ as the author of a new and divine revelation, and inter- preted it by those principles that had long antedated the religion of Jesus. ^ ' ' The Gnostics were the first regular commentators on the New Testament. * * * The Gnostics were also the first practition- «Baur, Ch. Hist. First Three Cent., I, pp. 184-200. Baring Gould's Lost and Hostile Gospels, p. 278. ^Mansel, Baur, etc. 94 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. ers of the higher criticism. * * * j^ (Gnos- ticism) may be regarded as a half-way house, through which many Pagans, ,like Ambrosius or St. Augustine, found their way into the church. " (*' Neoplatonism, " by Rev. Dr. Charles Bigg.) The Valentinians, Basilidians, Carpocratians, Manichae- ans, Marcionites and others were Christian Gnostics; but Clement, Origen and the great Alexandrians and their associates were Gnostic Christians. In fact, the Gnostic theories sought a solution of the problem of evil; to answer the question, " Can the world as we know it have been made by God?" "Cease," says Basilides,^ " from idle and curious variety, and let us rather discuss the opinions which even barbarians have held on the subject of good and evil. * * * j will say anything rather than admit Providence is wicked. " Valentinus declared, ' ' I dare not affirm that God is the author of all this. " Tertullian says that Marcion, like many men of our time, and especially the heretics, "is bewildered by the question of evil. " The generally accepted Gnostic view was that while the good would at death ascend to dwell with the Father, the wicked would pass through transformations until purified. Says Prof. Allen : ' ' Gnosticism is a genuine and legitimate outgrowth of the same general movement of thought that shaped the Christian dogma. Quite evidently it regarded itself as the true interpreter of the Gospel. " Baur quotes a German writer as giv- ing a full exposition of one of the latest attempts ' ' to bring back Gnosticism to a greater harmony •Stieren's Ireiiffius V, 901-3. Clem. Strom. IV, 12. THREE GNOSTIC SECTS. 95 with the spirit of Christianity." Briefly, sophia (wis- dom), as the type of mankind, falls, rises, and is united to the eternal Good. Baur says that Gnos- ticism declares that "either through conversion and amendment, or through utter annihilation, evil is to disappear, and the final oroal of the whole world- pro- cess is to be reached, viz., the purification of the universe from all that is unworthy and perverted. " H ARNACK says that Gnosticism * 'aimed at the winning of a world-religion. The Gnostics were the theolo- gians of the First Century; they were the first to transform Christianity into a system of doctrines (dogmas). They essayed * * * to conquer Chris- tianity for Hellenic culture and Hellenic culture for Christianity."^ Differing from the so-called "orthodox " Chris- tians on many points, the three great Gnostic sects of the Second Century were in full Noteworthy Facts, agreement with Clement and Ori- GEN and the Alexandrine school, and probably with the great majority of Christians, in their views of human destiny. They taught the ultimate holiness and happiness of the human family, and it is noteworthy that though the Gnostics advocated the final salvation of all souls, and though the orthodox fathers savagely attacked them on many points, they never reckoned their Uni- versalism as a fault. This doctrine was not obnox- ious to either orthodox or heterodox in the early centuries. 'Outlines ot the Hist, of Dogma, pp. 68, 9. VIII. THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES. The oldest Christian document since the New- Testament, explicitly avowing the doctrine of universal restoration, is the "Sibylline Oracles. '"^ Different portions of this composition were written at different dates, from i8i B. C. to 267 A. D. The portion expressing- universal salvation was written by an Alexandrine Christian, about A. D. 80, and the " Oracles " were in general circulation from A. D. 100 onward, and are referred to with great consider- ation for many centuries subsequently. After describing the destruction of the world, which the Sibyl prophesies, and the consignment of the wicked to aionion torment, such The Righteous ,. , ^ , • ,, ^ Pray for the ^^ °^^ Lord teaches m Matt, xxv : 46, Wicked. '^^ blessed inhabitants of heaven are represented as being made wretched by the thought of the sufferings of the lost, and as be- seeching God with united voice to release them. God accedes to their request, and delivers them from their torment and bestows happiness upon them. The "Oracles" declare: "The omnipotent, incorruptible God shall confer another favor on his worshipers, when they shall ask him. He shall save mankind from the pernicious fire and immortal {athanaton) 12IBYAAIAK0I XPH2M0I. 96 THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES. 97 agonies. * * * Having gathered them and safely secured them from the imwearied flame, * * * he shall send them, for his people's sake, into another and seonian life with the immortals on the Elysian plain, where flow perpetually the long dark waves of the deep sea of Acheron. "^ The punishments of the wicked are here described in the strongest possible terms; they are " eternal," {aionion), ''immortal" {athanaton), and yet it is de- clared that at the request of the righteous, God will deliver them from those torments. The Sibyl anticipates the poet Whittier: "Still thy love, O Christ arisen, Yearns to reach those souls in prison; Through all depths of sin and loss Drops the plummet of thy cross; Never yet abyss was found Deeper than that cross could sound; Deep below as high above Sweeps the circle of God's love." Holmes expresses the same sentiment: " What if (a) spirit redeemed, amid the host Of chanting angels, in some transient lull Of the eternal anthem heard the cry Of its lost darling. * * * Would it not long to leave the bliss of heaven Bearing a little water in its hand, To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With him we call Our Father?" This famous document was quoted by Athe- NAGORAS, Theophilus, Justin Martyr, Lactantius, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius and Au- gustine. Clement calls the author "the prophet- «B. VIII. inverses 195-340 Ed. Opsopoei. Paris: 1667. qS universalism in the early centuries. ess." As late as the Middle Ages the " Oracles " was well known, and its author was ranked with David. When Thomas of Celano composed the great Hymn of the Judgment, he said: "Dies Irae, dies ilia, Solvet saeclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sibylla," — * ' the dreadful day of wrath shall dissolve the world into ashes, as David and the Sibyl testify. " The best scholars concede the Universalism of the "Oracles." Says Musardus,^ the " Oracles " teach " that the damned shall be liberated after they shall have endured infernal punishments for many ages, * * * which was an error of Origen." And Opsopceus adds* " that the ' Oracles ' teach that the wicked suffering in hell (Gehenna) after a certain period, and through expiations of griefs, would be released from punishments, which was the opinion of Origen," etc. Hades, and all things and persons are cast into unquenchable fire for purification; that is, the fire is unquenchable until it has accomplished its purpose of purification. Gehenna itself, as Origen afterwards insisted, purifies and surrenders its pris- oners. The wicked are to suffer " immortal " ago- nies and then be saved. Dr. Westcott remarks of the "Oracles:" " They 'Historia Deorum Fatidicorum, Vatum Sibyllorum, etc., p. 184: (1675.) Dicit damnatos liberandos postquam pcenas infernales per aliquot secula erunt perpessi, qui Origenis fuit error. *Notes (p. 27) to Bib. Orac (Paris: 1607). " Impii gehennae supplicio addicti post certi temporis metas et peccatorum per dolores expiationem, ex poenis liberentur. Quae sententia fuit Origenis, etc." THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES. 99 stand alone as an attempt to embrace all history, even in its details, in one great, theo- The Oracles are cratic view, and to regard the king- r y ns lan ^oms of the world as destined to form provinces in a future Kingdom of God." While the views of retribution are not elevated, and represent the punishment of the wicked as in literal fire, and not a moral discipline, such as O bi- GEN taught, they clearly teach universal salvation beyond all asonian, even athanaton suffering. A noted writer^ declares: "The doctrine of Univer- salism is brought forward in more than one passage of this piece;" though elsewhere Dr. Deane mis- states, inconsistently enough, the language of the Sibyl, thus: " God, hearkening to the prayers of the saints, shall save some from the pains of hell. " He mistranslates antJiropois into "some" instead of "mankind," the meaning of the word, in order to show that the Sibyl "does not, like Origen, believe in universal salvation. " And yet he is forced to add : ' ' This notion of the salvation of any is opposed to the sentiment elsewhere expressed * * * where in picturing the torments of hell the writer asserts that there is no place for repentance or any mercy or hope." But Dr. Deane forgets that the acknowl- edged Universalists of the early church employed equally strong terms concerning the duration of pun- ishment. The use of the terms signifying endless torment employed by the Sibyl, as by Origen and others, did not preclude the idea of the ultimate sal- fiWilliam J. Deane, Pseudepigrapha, p. 329. loo UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. vation of those thus punished. Origen taught that the most stubborn sins will be "extinguished" by the " eternal fire," just as the Sibyl says the wicked perish in "immortal" fire and are subsequently saved. In line with Deane's strange contradictions may be mentioned another of the many curiosities of criti- cism. An English prose version of Sir John Floyer's the Sibyl's Homeric hexameters was Blunder. made in 1713 by Sir John Floyer.^ He denies that the " Oracles" teach universal salvation at all, but in order to sustain his position he omits to translate one word, and mis- translates another! He renders the entire passage thus: "The Almighty and incorruptible God shall grant this also to the righteous when they shall pray to him ; that he will preserve them (literally save man- kind, anthropois sosai) from the pernicious fire and everlasting gnashing of teeth; and this will he do when he gathers the faithful from the eternal fire, placing them in another region, he shall send them by his own angels into another life, which will be eternal to them that are immortal, in the Elysian fields," etc. It is only by rendering the words denoting " save mankind," "deliver them," that he make? his point. A correct rendering coincides with the declarations of most scholars, that universal salvation is taught in this unique document. The Sibyl declares that the just and the unjust pass through "unquenchable fire," and that all ®"The Sibylline Oracles, Translated from the Best Greek Copies and Compared with the Sacred Prophecies." THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES. loi things, even Hades, are to be purified by the divine fire. And after the unjust have been released from Hades, they are committed to Gehenna, and then at the desire of the righteous, they are to be removed thence to "a life eternal for immortals." (B. H, vv: 211-250-340). Augustine (De Civ. Dei. B., XVIH) cited the famous acrostic on the Savior's name as a proof that the Sibyl foretold the coming of Jesus. And it is curious to note that in his ' ' City of God, " when stat- ing tha.t certain "merciful doctors" denied the eter- nity of punishment, he gives the same reasons they assign for their belief that the Sibyl names. He quotes the " merciful doctors " as saying that Chris- tians in this world possess the disposition to forgive their enemies, that they will not lay aside those traits at death, but will pity, forgive, and pray for the wicked. The redeemed will unite in this prayer and will not God feel pity, and answer the prayer in which all the saved unite? Augustine presents these unanswerable objections, and devotes many pages to a very feeble reply to them. So fully did the Christians of the First Century recognize the "Oracles," and appeal to them, that they were frequently styled the Sibylists. Celsus applied the word to them, and Origen, though he ac- cepted the Sibyl's teachings concerning destiny, ob- jected that the term was not justly applied. This he does in " Ag. Cels." V. 61. Clement of Alexandria not only calls the Sibyl a prophetess, but her "Ora- cles " a saving hymn. Lactantius cited fifty passages from the Sibyl in his evidences of Christianity. 102 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. No book, not even the New Testament, exerted a wider influence on the first centuries of the church, than the " Sibylline Oracles. " Quite a literature of the subject exists in the peri- odical publications of the past few years, but there are very few references to the Universalism of the " Oracles. " The " Edinburgh Review" (July, 1867) is an exception. It states that the "Oracles" de- clare "the Origenist belief of a universal restoration (V. 3s) of all men, even to the unjust, and the devils themselves." The " Oracles " are specially valuable in showing the opinions of the first Christians after the apostles, and, as they aim to convert Pagans to Christ, and employ this doctrine as one of the weap- ons, it must at that time have been considered a prominent Christian tenet, and the candid student is forced to conclude that they give expression to the prevalent opinion of those days on the subject of human destiny. The reader must not fail to observe that the "Sib- ylline Oracles " explicitly state the deliverance of the damned from the torments of hell. They repeat- edly call the suffering everlasting, even "immortal," yet declare that it shall end in the restoration of the lost. IX. PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. There is nothing known to exist from the pen of PANTiENUs, but we Icam from Eusebius that this dis- tinguished scholar and teacher was at the head of the Catechetical school in Alexandria as early as A D. 179, having succeeded Anaxagoras. This celebrated in- stitution had been in existence since A. D. 100-120. Tradition asserts that it was founded by the apos- tles.^ Jerome says, " a Marco Evangelista semper ecclesiastici fuere doctores. " It had been up to the time of Pant^enus a school for proselytes, but he made it a theological seminary, and so was the real founder of the Catechetical institution. .2 PANT^NUswasa convert from Stoicism, and is de- scribed by Clement, Jerome, and others as a man of superior learning and abilities. Cle- ,„. .' ' „ MENT calls him "that Sicilian bee "Sicilian Bee. gathering the spoil of the flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow;" "the deepest Gnostic," by which he means "the deepest philo- sophical Christian, the man who best understood and practised Scripture. " It could not be otherwise than that the teacher of Clement cherished the religious iRobertson Hist. Ch., Vol. I, p. 90: Bingham, VoL HI, x, 5; Neander, Hist.. Ch. ii, 227; Mosheim Com. I. p. 263; Butler's Lives of the Saints VH pp. 55-59. ^Similar institutions were in Antioch, Athens, Edessa, Nisibis and Caesarea. 103 104 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. views with which his great disciple was graduated, for of Pant^enus, Clement says: " I know what is the weakness of these reflections, if I compare them with the gifted and gracious teaching I was privileged to hear. " Some of his writings are alluded to, but though nothing remains, yet in Clement, who was inspired by him, he gave to the church a priceless legacy. A. D. 189 Pant^nus went on a missionary tour to India, and Eusebius says that while there he found the seeds of the Christian faith that had been sown by previous missionaries, and that he brought home with him the Gospel of Matthew, in Hebrew, that had been carried to India by Bartholomew. May it not be that some of the precepts of Buddhism re- sembling those of Christ, which the best Oriental scholars admit are of later origin than Buddha, were caught from the teachings of early Christian mission- aries? PANTiENus was martyred A. D. 216. The Universalism of Clement, Origen and their successors must, beyond question, have been taught by their great predecessor, Pant^enus, and there is every reason to believe that the Alexandrine school had never known any contrary teaching, from its foundation. The Alexandrine School. At this time Alexandria was the second city in the world, with a population of 600, 000 ; its great library contained from 400,000 to Alexandria and its 700,000 volumes; at one time 14,000 Famous School. students are said to have been assem- bled; and it was the center of the world's learning, culture, thought; the seekers for PANTi^NUS AND CLEMENT. 105 truth and knowledge from all climes sought inspira- tion at its shrines, and it was most of all in its inter- est to us, not only the radiating center of Christian influence, but its teachers and school made universal salvation the theme of Christian teaching. "To those old Christians a being who was not seeking after every single creature, and trying to raise him, could not be a being of absolute righteous- ness, power, love; could not be a being worthy of respect or admiration, even of philosophic specula- tion. The Alexandrian Christians expounded and corroborated Christianity, and adapted it to all classes and conditions of men, and made the best, perhaps the only, attempt yet made by man to proclaim a true world-philosophy * * * embracing the whole phenomena of humanity, capable of being understood and appreciated by every human being from the highest to the lowest. " The result was, ' 'they were enabled to produce, in the lives of millions, generation after generation, a more immense moral improvement than the world had ever seen before. Their disciples did actually become righteous and good men, just in proportion as they were true to the lessons they learnt. They did for centuries work a distinct and palpable deliverance on the earth. " * Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great, 332 B. C. , and it speedily became a great city. After two centuries, however, it declined, until B. C. 30 when Augustus made it an imperial city. In 196 A. D. its municipality, which had been lost for two centuries, was restored; from this time on it resumed *Kingsley's Alexandria and Her Schools, io6 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. its old prosperity, which continued until internal dissensions weakened it, and A. D. 640, after a siege of fourteen months, it was taken by the Arabs under Amru, and among other disasters the great library was destroyed. This library contained the precious manuscripts of Origen and multitudes of others that might shed great light on our theme. Abulphara- Gius relates that John the Grammarian, a famous peripatetic philosopher, begged Amru to give him the library. Amru forwarded the request to Omar, who replied that if the books contained the same doctrines as the Koran they were not needed; if con- trary to it they ought not to be preserved, and they were therefore ordered to be burnt. Accordingly they were distributed among the 4, 000 public baths of the city, where they furnished the fuel for six months! Alexandria continued to decline until the discovery of the route to the East in 1497 ruined its commerce, and it sank to a population of 6,000. But the open- ing of the Mahmoudieh canal in 1820 has increased its prosperity, and it is now one of the most impor- tant cities of the world. In 1 871 it had a population of 219,602. At the time of Christ, and for two hun- dred years after, Alexandria was at the height of its greatness. From the time of Ptolemy Soter (306- 285 B. C), the books, scholars and learning of the world were centered in this great city. The relig- ions and philosophies of the world met here and cre- ated an intense life of thought. Jews, Christians, Pagans were gathered and met in intellectual con- flict as nowhere else. It was here that Clement, Origen, and their followers exerted their best influ- PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 107 ence, and that Christianity preserved its purity for centuries. " The north of Africa was then crowded with rich and populous cities, and formed with Egypt the granary of the world. * * * In no part of the empire had Christianity taken more deep and per- manent root. * * * Africa, rather than Rome, was the parent of Latin Christianity. Tertullian was at this period the chief representative of African Christianity * * * still later Cyprian, and later still Augustine. To us, preoccupied with the mod- ern insignificance of the Egyptian town, it requires an effort of the mind to realize that Alexandria was once the second largest city in the world, and the sec- ond greatest patriarchate of the church, the church of Clement, Origen, Athanasius and Cyril. It gives us a kind of mental shock when we recall that the land of Tertullian, Cyprian and Augustine is the modem Tunis and Algiers." "The seat and center of Christianity during the first three centuries was Alexandria. West of Alex- andria the influence of the Latins, Alexandria the Tertullian, Cyprian, MiNucius Fe- Christian , . -i j j M troDolis ^^^ ^ Augustine prevailed, and their type of Christianity was warped and developed by the influence of Roman law. Maine says that in going from East to West theo- logical speculation passed from Greek metaphysics to Roman law. The genius of Augustine, thus controlled, gave rise to Calvinism. The gloomy and precise Tertullian, the vigorous and austere Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, and Augustine, the gloomiest and most materialistic of theologians, who io8 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. may almost be said to have invented the hell of the Middle Ages, contributed the forces that later adul- terated the genuine Christian faith. Even yet the Greek population of the Eastern church, who read the Greek Gospels as we read the English, are like the Greek fathers of the first ages of the church; they know nothing of the doctrine invented by the Latin theologians." (Stanley's Eastern Church, p. 49.) "In such a city as Alexandria — with its museum, its libraries, its lectures, its schools of philosophy, its splendid synagogue, its avowed atheists, its deep- thinking Oriental mystics — the Gospel would have been powerless if it had been unable to produce teach- ers who were capable of meeting Pagan philosophers and Jewish Philoists on their own ground. Such thinkers would refuse their attention to men who could not understand their reasonings, sympathize with their perplexities, refute their fundamental ar- guments, and meet them in the spirit of Christian courtesy.* Different instruments are needed for dif- ferent ends. Where Clement of Rome might have been useless, Clement of Alexandria became deeply influential. Where a Tertullian would only have aroused contempt and indignation, an Origen won leading Pagans to the faith of Christ. From Alex- andria came the refutation of Celsus; from Alexan- dria the defeat of Arius. It was the cradle of Chris- tian theology.^ "There can be no doubt that the won- derful advance of Christianity among the cultivated, during the First and Second Centuries, was made by ^Matter's Hist, de I'Ecole d'Alexandrie; Kingsley's Alexandria and Her Schools. fiFarrar's Lives ol the Fathers, I, pp. 262, 263. PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 109 the remarkable men who founded and maintained the Alexandrian school of Christian thought. While the common people heard gladly the simple story of the Gospel, the world's scholars were attracted and won by the consummate learning and genius of Clement andORiGEN, and their coadjutors." * 'Pagan thinkers would have paid attention to Clement when he spoke of Plato as truly noble and half- inspired; they would have looked on the African father as an ignorant railer, who had nothing better to say of Socrates than that he was ' the Attic buffoon,' of Aristotle than * miseriun Aristotelem!' Such arguments as Tertullian's It is credible because it is absurd, it is certain because it is impossible, would have been regarded as worse than useless in reasoning with philosophers." The Alexandrine Universalists met philosophers and scholars on their own ground and conquered them with their own weapons. Under God, the agency that gave Christianity its standing and wonderful progress during the first three centu- ries, was the Catechetical school of Alexandria, and the saintly scholars and Christian philosophers who immortalized the famous city that was the scene of their labors. They met and surpassed the apostles of culture, and proved at the very beginning that Christianity is no less the religion of the wise and learned than of the unlettered and simple. The Universalist Church has never sufficiently recalled and celebrated the great labors and marvelous suc- cesses of their progenitors in the primitive years of Christianity. "Those who are truly called the fathers and no UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. founders of the Christian church were not the simple- minded fishermen of Galilee, but men The Alexandrine who had received the highest educa- Teachers. tion which could be obtained at the time, that is Greek education. * * * In Alexandria, at that time the very center of the world, it had either to vanquish the world or to vanish. * * * Christianity came no doubt from the small room in the house of Mary, where many were gath- ered together praying, but as early as the Second Century it became a very different Christianity in the Catechetical school of Alexandria, * * * What Clement had most at heart was not the letter but the spirit, not the historical events, but their deeper meaning in universal history."^ MiJLLER points out the fact that the Alexandrine ' 'current of Christian thought was never entirely lost, but rose to the surface again and Max MuUer's again at the most critical periods in Words. the history of the Christian religion. Unchecked by the Council of Nicaea, A. D. 325, that ancient stream of philosophical and religious thought flows on, and we can hear the dis- tant echoes of Alexandria in the writings of St. Ba- sil (A. D. 329-379), Gregory of Nyssa (A. D. 332- 395), Gregory of Nazianzus (A. D. 328-389), as well as in the works of St. Augustine (A. D. 364-430)." The reader of the history of those times cannot help deploring the subsequent siibstitution of Latin Augustinianism and its long train of errors and evils for Greek Alexandrianism, nor can the Christian stu- «Max Miiller, Theosophy or Psychological Religion, Lecture XIII. PANTiENUS AND CLEMENT. in dent avoid wishing that the Alexandrine Christians could have been permitted to transmit their benefi- cent principles uncorrupted. How different would have been the Middle Ages! How far beyond its present condition would be the Christendom of today ! Clement of Alexandria. Titus Flavius Clemens, Clemens Alexandri- Nus, or Clement of Alexandria — born A. D. 150, died A. D. 220 — was reared in heathenism. Before his conversion to Christianity he had been thor- oughly educated in Hellenic literature and philoso- phy. It is uncertain whether he was born in Athens or Alexandria. He became a Christian early in his adult years; was presbyter in the church in Alexan- dria, and in 189 he succeeded Pant^nus as president of the celebrated Catechetical school in Alexandria. During the persecution by Septimius Severus in 202 he fled, and was in Jerusalem in 211. He never re- turned to Alexandria, but died about 220. This is all that is known of his life. He was the father of the Alexandrine Christian Philosophy, or ancient Philosophical Christianity. Many of his works have perished ; the principal ones that survive are his " Exhortation to the Heathen," the " Teacher," or " Pedagogue, " and "Stromata," or " Miscellanies," literally " Tapestries," or freely translated "Carpet Bag. "^ It is the verdict of scholars that Clement's " Stro- mata" is the greatest of all the Christian apologies 'The edition of Clemens used in preparing this work Is Bibliotheca Sacra Patrum Bcclesiae Grfficorum, Pars. HI. Titi Flaui Clementis Alex- andrini Opera Omnia Tom. I, IV. Recognouit Reinholdus Klotz. Lipsise, Sumptibus, E. B. Schwickerti, 1, 182. Also Migne's Patrologiae. 112 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. except Origen's. It starts "from the essential affin- ity between man and God, (and) goes on to show- how, in Christianity, we have the complete restora- tion of the normal relation between the creature and the Creator." The influence of the Greek philosophers, and es- pecially of Plato, on the Alexandrine fathers, is con- ceded.^ Clement held that the true Gnostic was the perfect Christian. The Alexandrine fathers had no hostility to the word Gnostic, properly imderstood; to them it signified the Christian who brings reason and philosophy to bear on his faith, in contradistinc- tion from the ignorant believer. Iren^eus had de- clared "genuine gnosis," or Gnosticism, to be "the doctrine of the apostles," insisting on " the plenary use of Scripture, admitting neither addition nor cur- tailment, and the reading of Scripture, and legiti- mate and diligent preaching, according to the word of God." And Justin had bequeathed to the Alex- andrine school the central truth that the Divine Word is in the germ in every human being. This great fact was never lost sight of, but was more and more developed by the three great teachers — Pan- TyENUs, Clement and Origen. The materialistic philosophy of Epicureanism, that happiness is the highest good and can best be procured in a well-regulated enjoyment of the pleas- 8Norton's Statement of Reasons, pp, 94, 95; Cudworth; Brucker. The extent to which early Cliristians appealed to the Pagan philosophers may be gauged from the fact that in Origen thirty-five allusions are made to the Stoics, six to the Epicureans, fifteen tothe Platonists, and six to the Pythagoreans; in Tertullian five to the Stoics and five to the Epicureans; ia Clement of Alexandria, repeatedly. Huidekoper's Indirect Testimony to the Gospels. PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 113 ures of life; the Pantheistic system of Stoicism, that one should live within himself, Clement's superior to the accidents of time; Philosophy. the logical Aristotelianism, and the Platonism that regarded the universe as the work of a Supreme Spirit, in which man is a permanent individuality possessing a spark of the divinity that would ultimately purify him and elevate him to a higher life; and that virtue would acceler- ate and sin retard his upward progress — these differ- ent systems all had their votaries, but the noblest of all, the Platonic, was most influential with the Alex- andrine fathers, though, like Clement, they exercised a wise and rational eclecticism, in adopting the best features of each system. This Clement claimed to do. He says: " And by philosophy I mean not the Stoic, nor the Platonic, nor the Epicurean, nor that of Aristotle ; but whatever any of these sects had said that was fit and just, that taught righteousness with a divine and religious knowledge, this I call eclectic philosophy."^ Matters of speculation he solved by philosophy, but his theology he derived from the Scriptures. He was not, therefore, a mere philosopher, but one who used philosophy as a help to the interpretation of the religion of Christ. He says; "We wait for no human testimony, but bring proof of what we assert from the Word of the Lord, which is the most trust- worthy, or, rather, the only evidence." The thoroughly Greek mind of Clement, with his great imagination, vast learning and research, splen- sStrom. i;7. 114 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. did ability, and divine spirit, could scarcely misin- terpret or misunderstand the New Testament Scrip- tures, written as they were in his mother tongue, and it is not difficult to believe with Bunsen, that in this seat and center of Christian culture and Chris- tian learning, he became ' ' the first Christian philoso- pher of the history of mankind. He believed in a universal plan of a divine education of the human race. * * * This is the grand position occupied by Clemens, the Alexandrian, in the history of the church and of mankind and the key to his doctrine about God and his word, Christ and his spirit, God and man. * * * A profound respect for the piety and holiness of Clemens is as imiversal in the an- cient church as for his learning and eloquence. I rejoice to find that Reinkins, a Roman Catholic, ex- presses his regret, not to say indignation, that this holy man and writer, the object of the unmixed ad- miration of the ancient Christian, should have been struck out of the catalogue of saints by Benedict XIV. "10 When Clement, wrote Christian doctrine was passing from oral tradition to written definition, and he avers when setting forth the .^ .,. „ . . Christian religion, that he is "repro- A Transition Period. . , . . ducmg an ongmal, unwritten tradi- tion," which he learned from a disciple of the apostles. This had been communi- cated by the Lord to the apostles, Peter and James and John and Paul, and handed down from father to son till, at length, Clement set forth accu- wHipp. and His Age, I. PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 115 rately in writing-, what had been before deliv- ered orally. We can, therefore, scarcely hope to find unadulterated Christianity anywhere out of the New Testament, if not in the writings of Clement. Max MiJLLER (Theosophy or Psychological Religion, Preface, p. xiv) declares that Clement, having been born in the middle of the Second Century, may pos- sibly have known Papias. or some of his friends who knew the apostles, and therefore he was most competent to represent the teachings of Christ. Farrar writes: "There can be no doubt that after the date of the Clementine Recognitions, and unceasingly during the close of the third and during the fourth and following centuries, the ab- stract idea of endlessness was deliberately faced, and from imperfect acquaintance with the meaning and history of the word aionios it was "used by many writers as though it were identical in meaning with aidios or endless. " Which is to say that ignorance of the real meaning of the word on the part of those who were not familiar with Greek, subverted the current belief in universal restoration, cherished, as we shall directly show, by Clement and the Alexan- drine Christians. Passages from the works of Clement, only a few of which we quote, will sufficiently establish the fact that he taught universal restoration. Clement's "For all things are ordered both Language. universally and in particular by the Lord of the universe, with a view to the salvation of the universe. * * * But needful corrections, by the goodness of the great, overseeing judge, through the attendant angels, through various Ii6 UNIVEKSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. prior judgments, through the final judgment, com- pel even those who have become more callous to re- pent." "So he saves all; but some he converts by penalties, others who follow him of their own will, and in accordance with the worthiness of his honor, that every knee may be bent to him of celestial, ter- restrial and infernal things (Phil, ii: lo), that is an- gels, men, and souls who before his advent migrated from this mortal life." "For there are partial cor- rections {padciai) which are called chastisements [kolaseis), which many of us who have been in trans- gression incur by falling away from the Lord's peo- ple. But as children are chastised by their teacher, or their father, so are we by Providence. But God does not ^unish.{tinioriaita),iov punishment {tiniorid) is retaliation for evil. He chastises, however, for good to those who are chastised collectively and indi- vidually."^^ This important passage is very instructive in the light it sheds on the usage of Greek words. The word from which " corrections " is rendered is the same as that in Hebrews xii: 9, "correction" "chastening" {paidcid)\ "chastisement" is from kolasis , translated punishment in Matt, xxv: 46, and "punishment" is timoria^ with which Josephus defines punishment, but a word our Lord never em- ploys, and which Clement declares that God never "Strom, VII, ii; Pedag. I, 8; on I John ii, 2; Comments on sed etiam pro totoniundo, etc. ("Proinde universos quidem salvat, sed alios per supplicia convertens, alios autem spontanea, assequentes, voluntate; et cum honoris dignitate (Phil, ii, 10) ut omne genu flectatur ei, caelestium, terrestrium et infernorum; hoc est angeli, homines, et animae quae ante adventum ejus de hac vita migravere temporali.") Strom. VII, 16. PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 117 inflicts. This agrees with the uniform contention of Universalist scholars. "The divine nature is not angry but is at the farthest from it, for it is an excellent artifice to frighten in order that we may not sin. * * * Noth- ing is hated by God.''^^ So that even iiaionios meant endless duration, Clement would argue that it was used pedagogically — to restrain the sinner. It should be said, however, that Clement rarely uses aionion in connection with suffering. Clement insists that punishment in Hades is re- medial and restorative, and that punished souls are cleansed by fire. The fire is spiritual, purifying ^ the soul. " God's punishments are saving and disciplinary (in Hades) leading to conversion, and choosing rather the repentance than the death of the sinner, ( Ezek. xviii, 23, 32; xxxiii: 11, etc. ,) and especially since souls, although darkened by passions, when released from their bodies, are able to perceive more clearly because of their being no longer obstructed by the paltry flesh, "i* He again defines the important word kolasis our Lord uses in Matt, xxv : 46, and shows how it differs from the wholly different word timoria used by Jo- sephus and the Greek writers who believed in irreme- diable suffering. He says: " He (God) chastises the disobedient, for chastisement (kolasis) is for the good and advantage of him who is punished, for it is the amendment of one who resists ; I will not grant that he wishes to take vengeance. Vengeance {timoria) is a i2Paed I, viii. ^^IIup (ftpovL/JiOV- Strom. VII, vi, "VI, vi; VII. xvi; VI, xiv; VII, ii. Ii8 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. requital of evil sent for the interest of the avenger. He (God) would not desire to avenge himself on us who teaches us to pray for those who despitefully use us (Matt, v: 44).^^ * * * Therefore the good God punishes for these three causes: First, that he who is pun- ished {paidenomenos) may become better than his former self; then that those who are capable of being saved by examples may be drawn back, being ad- monished; and thirdly, that he who is injured may not readily be despised, and be apt to receive injury. And there are two methods of correction, the in- structive and the punitive, ^^ which we have called the disciplinary." The English reader of the translations of the Greek fathers is misled by the indiscriminate render- ing of different Greek words into "punish." Ti- moria should always be translated ' ' vengeance, " or "torment;" kolasis, "punishment," and paideia " chastisement," or "correction." " If in this life there are so many ways for purifi- cation and repentance, how much more should there be after death! The purification of souls, when sep- arated from the body, will be easier. We can set no limits to the agency of the Redeemer; to redeem, to rescue, to discipline, is his work, and so will he con- tinue to operate after this life. " ^^ Clement did not deem it well to express himself more fully and frequently respecting this point of doctrine, because he considered it a part of the Gnostic or esoteric knowledge which it might not be '^Poedag. I, viii. "Strom. IV, xxiv. "Quoted by Neander. PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 119 well for the unenlightened to hear lest it should re- sult in the injury of the ignorant; hence he says: " As to the rest I am silent and praise the Lord." He " fears to set down in writing what he would not venture to read aloud. " He thinks this knowledge not useful for all, and that the fear of hell may keep sinners from sin. And yet he can not resist declar- ing: "And how is he Savior and Lord and not Savior and Lord of all? But he (Christ) is the Savior of those who have believed, because of their wishing to know, and of those who have not believed he is Lord, until by being brought to confess him they shall receive the proper and well-adapted bless- ing for themselves which comes by him. " This extension of the day of grace through eter- nity is also expressed in the ' ' Exhortation to the Heathen " (ix) : "For great is the grace of his prom- ise, ' if today we hear his voice. ' And that today is lengthened out day by day, while it is called today. And to the end the today and the instruction continue ; and then the true today, the never ending day of God, extends over eternity. " His reference to the resurrection shows that he regarded it as deliver- ance from the ills of this state of being. Before the final state of perfection the purifying fire which makes wise ^^^ill separate errors from the soul; the purgating punishment will heal and cure. Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, wrote to Ori- GEN on the death of Clement, says Eusebius, "for we know these blessed fathers who have gone before us and with whom we shall shortly be, I mean Pantae- nus, truly blessed and my master; and the sacred Clement, who was my master and profitable to me. " 120 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. This passage would indicate the fraternity of feeling between these three, and seems to show that there was no suspicion of the heresy of the others on the part of Alexander. Clement distinctly shows that the perversion of the truth so long taught, that the coming of Christ placated ■ the Father, had no place Further Words in primitive Christianity. He says: of Clement. God is good on his own account, and just also on ours, and he is just because he is good, * * * for before he became Creator he was God. He was good. And therefore he wished to be Creator and Father. And the nature of that love was the source of righteousness; the cause too of his lighting up his sun, and sending down his own son. * * * The feeling of an- ger (if it is proper to call his admonition anger) is full of love to man, God condescending to emotion on man's account, etc. (Paed. I, lo. Strom. I, 27.) He represents that God is never angry ; he hates sin with unlimited hatred, but loves the sinner with illimitable love. His omnipotence is directed by om- niscience and can and will overcome all evil and transform it to good. His threats and punishments have but one purpose, and that the good of the pun- ished. Hereafter those who have here remained ob- durate will be chastened until converted. Man's freedom will never be lost, and ultimately it will be converted in the last and wickedest sinner. Fire is an emblem of the divine punishments which purify the bad.^^ "Punishment is, in its opera- ^8ia 7ri)/30S KaOapaiv twv kukms- PANTyENUS AND CLEMENT. I2i tion, like medicine; it dissolves the hard heart, purges away the filth of uncleanness, and reduces the swellings of pride and haughtiness; thus restor- ing its subject to a sound and healthful state." • ' The Lord is the propitiation, not only for our sins, that is of the faithful, but also for the whole world (i John ii: 2); therefore he truly saves all, converting some by punishments, and others by gaining their free will, so that he has the high honor that unto him every knee should bow, angels, men and the souls of those who died before his advent." That the foregoing passages from Clement dis- tinctly state the sublime sentiments we have sup- posed them to express, will fully appear from those who have made the most careful study of his opin- ions, and whose interpretations are unprejudiced and just. Says one of the most thoughtful of modern writers, the candid Hagenbach: "The works of Clement, in particular, abound with passages referring to the love and mercy of God. He loves men because they are kindred with God. God's love follows men, seeks them out, as the bird the young that has fallen from its nest."^^ Clement, like Tertullian, denied original de- pravity, and held that ' 'man now stands in the same relation to the tempter in which Adam stood before the Fall. " Clement's doctrine of the Resurrection was like that of Paul ; it is not a mere rising from death, but a standing up higher, in a greater full- ness of life, and a better life, as the word anastasis properly signifies. i^Christian Doct., Period I. Sec. 39. 122 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. ALLENinhis valuable work, "Continuity of Chris- tian Thought," epitomizes the teachings of Clement in language that describes the Uni- .„ , ^ , , versalistic contention. "The judg- AUen's Statement. . . . , r- , ment is not conceived as the final as- size of the universe in some remote future, but as a present, continuous element in the process of human education. The purpose of the judgment, as of all the divine penalties, is always remedial. Judgment enters into the work of re- demption as a constructive factor. God does not teach in order that he may finally judge, but he judges in order that he may teach. The censures, the punishments, the judgments of God are a neces- sary element of the educational process in the life of humanity, and the motive which underlies them is goodness and love. * * * The idea of life as an education under the immediate superintendence of a Divine instructor who is God himself indwelling in the world, constitutes the central truth in Clement's theology. * * * There is no necessity that God should be reconciled with humanity, for there is no schism in the divine nature between love and justice which needs to be overcome before love can go forth in free and full forgiveness. The idea that justice and love are distinct attributes of God, differing widely in their operation, is regarded by Clement as having its origin in a mistaken conception of their nature. Justice and love are in reality the same at- tribute, or, to speak from the point of view which distinguishes them, God is most loving when he is most just, and most just when he is most loving. * * * God works all things up to what is better. PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 123 Clement would not tolerate the thought that any soul would continue forever to resist the force of redeem- ing love. Somehow and somewhere in the long run of ages, that love must prove weightier than sin and death, and vindicate its power in one universal tri- umph. " One of the best modern statements of the views of the Alexandrine fathers is given by Bigg in Chris- tian Platonists, pp. 75,89,112: Cle- ment regarded the object of kolasis Bigg on Clement. . , r -.j j ^ 1 as "threefold; amendment, example, and protection of the weak. Strom, i: 26, 168; iv:24, 154; vi:i2, 99. The distinction be- tween kolasis and timoria, Strom. iv:i4, 153; Paed. i:8, 70, the latter is the rendering of evil for evil and this is not the desire of God. Both kolasis and timoria are spoken of in Strom. v:i4, 90, but this is not to be pressed, for in Strom. vi:i4, 109, the distinc- tion between the words is dropped and both signify purgatorial chastisement. * * * Fear he has handled in the truly Christian spirit. It is not the fear of the slave who hates his master; it is the rever- ence of a child for its father, of a citizen for the good magistrate. Tertullian, an African and a lawyer, dwells with fierce satisfaction on terrible visions of torment. The cultivated Greek shrinks not only from the gross materialism of such a picture, but from the idea of retribution which it implies. He is never tired of repeating that justice is but another name for mercy. Chastisement is not to be dreaded but to be embraced. " * * * Here or hereafter God's desire is not vengeance but correction. Though Clement's view of man's destiny is called restorationism(«/(?>^«/«^- 124 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. tasis) it was "not as the restitution of that which was lost at the Fall, but as the crown and consummation of the destiny of man leading to a righteousness such as Adam never knew, and to heights of glory and power as yet unsealed and undreamed. * * * His books are in many ways the most valuable mon- ument of the early church ; the more precious to all intelligent students because he lived, not like Origen, in the full stream of events, but in a quiet backwater where primitive thoughts and habits lingered longer than elsewhere." "Clement had no enemies in life orm death." The great effort of Clement and Ori- gen seems to have been to reconcile the revelation of God in Christ with the older revelation of God in nature. Says De Pressense: " That which strikes us in Clement is his serenity. We feel that he himself enjoys that deep and abiding peace which he urges the Corinthians to seek. It is impressed on every page he writes, while his thoughts flow on like a broad and quiet stream, never swelling into a full impetuous tide. * * * We feel that this man has a great love for Jesus Christ. " Compare, con- trast rather, his serenity and peacefulness with the stormy tempestuousness of Tertullian, his "narrow and passionate realism, " and we see a demonstration of the power and beauty of the Restorationist faith. Frederick Denison Maurice declares •}^ "I do not s^Lectures on theEcc. Hist, of the First and Second Centuries, pp. 230- PANTvENUS AND CLEMENT. 125 know where we shall look for a purer or a truer man than this Clemens of Alexandria. Frederick Denison * * * He seems to me that one Maurice's Eulogy, of the old fathers whom we should all have reverenced most as a teacher, and loved best as a friend. " Baur remarks; "Alexandria, the birthplace of Gnosticism, is also the birthplace of Christian theol- ogy, which in fact in its earliest forms, aimed at be- ing nothing but a Christian Gnosticism. Among the fathers, Clement of Alexandria and Origen stand nearest to the Gnostics. They rank gnosis (knowl- edge) aboYQ pistis (faith), and place the two in such an immanent relation to one another that neither can exist without the other. Thus they adopt the same point of view as the Gnostics. It is their aim, by drawing into their service all that the philosophy of the age could contribute, to interpret Christianity in its historical connection, and to take up its sub- ject-matter into their thinking consciousness."" A candid historian observes: "Clemens may, per- haps, be esteemed the most profoundly learned of the fathers of the church. A keen desire for infor- mation had prompted him to explore the regions of universal knowledge, to dive into the mysteries of Paganism, and to dwell upon the abstruser doctrines of Holy Writ. His works are richly stored and vari- egated with illustrations and extracts from the poets and philosophers with whose sentiments he was fa- miliarly acquainted. He lays open the curiosities of history, the secrets of motley superstitions, and the siChurch Hist. First Three Centuries. 126 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. reveries of speculative wanderers, at the same time that he develops the cast of opinions and peculiari- ties of discipline which distinguished the members of the Christian state." 22 Daille writes: "It is manifest throughout his works that Clement thought all the punishments that God inflicts upon men are salutary. Of this kind he reckons the torments which the damned in hell suf- fer. * * * Clemens was of the same opinion as his scholar Origen, who everywhere teaches that all the punishments of those in hell are purgatorial, that they are not endless, but will at length cease when the damned are sufficiently purified by the fire. "23 Farrar gives Clement's views, and shows that the great Alexandrian really anticipated substan- tially the thought for which our church has con- tended for a century : "There are very few of the Christian fathers whose fundamental conceptions are better suited to correct the narrowness, the rigidity and the formal- ism of Latin theology. * * * It is his lofty and wholesome doctrine that man is made in the image of God ; that man's will is free ; that he is redeemed from sin by a divine education and a corrective disci- pline ; that fear and punishment are but remedial in- struments in man's training; that Justice is but an- other aspect of perfect Love ; that the physical world is good and not evil ; that Christ is a Living not a 32Hist. Christ. Church, Second and Third Centuries, Jeremie.p, 38. 2*Hom. VI., 4, in Exod. Qui salvus fit per ignem salvus fit, ut, si quid forte de specie plumbi habuerit admixtum, id ignis decoquat et resolvat, ut efficiantur omnes aurum purum. PANT^NUS AND CLEMENT. 127 Dead Christ ; that all mankind form one great broth- erhood in him ; that salvation is an ethical process, not an external reward; that the atonement was not the pacification of wrath, but the revelation of God's eternal mercy. * * * That judgment is a con- tinuous process, not a single sentence; that God works all things up to what is better ; that souls may be purified beyond the grave. " Lamson says that Clement declares: "Punish- ment, as Plato taught, is remedial, and soiils are ben- efited by it by being amended. Far from being in- compatible with God's goodness it is a striking proof of it. For punishment is for the good and benefit of himwho is punished. It is the bringing back to rectitude of that which has swerved from it."^^ It may be stated that neither original sin, deprav- ity, infant guilt and damnation, election, vicarious atonement, and endless punishment as the penalty of human sin, in fact, "none of the individual doctrines or tenets which have so long been the object of dis- like and animadversion to the modern theological mind formed any constituent part in Greek theol- Qg-y " 25 They were abhorrent to Clement, Origen, and their associates. The views held by Clement and taught by his predecessor, Pant^nus, and, as seems apparent, by Anathegoras and his predecessors back to the apostles themselves, and by their successor Origen, and, as will appear on subsequent pages by others down to Didymus, (A. D. 395), the last president 2*Church of the First Three Centuries, p. 158. s^Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 19. 128 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. of the greatest theological school of the Second and Third Centuries, were substantially those taught by the Universalist church of today, so far as they in- cluded the character of God, the nature and final destiny of mankind, the effect of the resurrection, the judgment, the nature and end of punishment, and other cognate themes. In fact Clement stands on the subject of God's purpose and plan, and man's ultimate destiny, as substantially a representative of the Universalist church of the Nineteenth Century, as well as a type of ancient scholarship. X. ORIGEN. Origen Adamantius was born of Christian pa- rents, in Alexandria, A. D. 185. He was early taught the Christian religion, and when a mere boy could recite long passages of Scripture from memory. During the persecution by Septimus Severus, A. D. 202, his father, Leonides, was imprisoned, and the son wrote to him not to deny Christ out of tenderness for his family, and was only prevented from surren- dering himself to voluntary martyrdom by his mother, who secreted his clothes. Leonides died a martyr. In the year 203, then but eighteen years of age, Ori- gen was appointed to the presidency of the theolog- ical school in Alexandria, a position left vacant by the flight of Clement from heathen persecution. He made himself proficient in the various branches of learning, traveled in the Orient and acquired the He- brew language for the purpose of translating the Scriptures. His fame extended in all directions. He won eminent heathens to Christianity, and his in- structions were sought by people of all lands. He renounced all but the barest necessities of life, rarely eating flesh, never drinking wine, slept on the naked floor, and devoted the greater part of the night to prayer and study. Eusebius says that he would not live upon the bounty of those who would have been glad to maintain him while he was at work for the I2g 130 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. world's good, and so he disposed of his vahiable library to one who would allow him the daily pittance of four obols; and rigidly acted on our Lord's pre- cept not to have * ' two coats, or wear shoes, and to have no anxiety for the morrow." ^ Origen is even said to have mutilated himself (though this is dis- puted) from an erroneous construction of the Savior's command (Matt. xix. 12), and to guard himself from calumny that might proceed from his association with female catechumens. This act he lamented in later years. If done it was from the purest motives, and was an act of great self- sacrifice, for, as it was forbidden by canonical law, it debarred him from clerical promotion. He was ordained Early Opposition presbyter A. D. 228, by two bishops to Origen. outside his diocese, and this irregular act performed by others than his own diocesan gave grounds to Demetrius of Alexandria, in whose jurisdiction he lived, to manifest the envy he had already felt at the growing reputation of the young scholar; and in two councils composed and controlled by Demetrius, A. D. 231 and 232, Origen was deposed. ^ Many of the church authorities con- demned the action. In this persecution Origen proved lEusebius Eccl. Hist. VI. Butler's Lives of the Saints, Vol. IV. pp. 224- 231, contains quite a full sketch of Origen's life, though as he was not can- onized he is only embalmed in a foot note. 'Demetrius is entitled to a paragraph in order to show the kind of men who sometimes controlled the scholarship and opinions of the period. When the patriarch Julian was dying he dreamed that his successor would come next day, and bring him a bunch of grapes. Next day this Demetrius came with his bunch of grapes, an ignorant rustic, and he was soon after seated in the episcopal chair It was this ignoramus who tyran- nically assumed control of ecclesiastical affairs, censured Origen, and com- pelled bishops of his own appointing to pass a sentence of degradation oa Origen, which the legitimate presbyters had refused. ORIGEN. 131 himself as grand in spirit as in mind. To his friends he said: " We must pity them rather than hate them (his enemies), pray for themrather than curse them, for we were made for blessing, not for cursing." Ori- GEN went to Palestine A. D. 230, opened a school in Csesarea, and enjoyed a continually increasing fame. The persecutions imder Maximinus in 235, drove him away. He went to Cappadocia, then to Greece, and finally back to Palestine. Defamed at home he was honored abroad, but was at length called back to Alexandria, where his pupil DiONYSiushad succeeded Demetrius as bishop. But soon after, during the persecution under Decius, he was tortured and con- demned to die at the stake, but he lingered, and at length died of his injuries and sufferings, a true mar- tyr, in Tyre, A. D. 253 or 254, at the age of sixty- nine. His grave was known down to the Middle Ages. The historian Schaff declares: " It is impossible to deny a respectful sympathy to this extraordinary man, who, with all his brilliant tal- Professor Schaff ents, and a host of enthusiastic on Origen. friends and admirers, was driven from his country, stripped of his sa- cred 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 his 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 eyes of the world 132 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. * * * Origen was the greatest scholar of his age, and the most learned and genial of all the ante- Nicene fathers. Even heathens and heretics ad- mired 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 conse- crated all his studies by prayer, and turned them, ac- cording to his best convictions, to the service of truth and piety. "^ While chained in prison, his feet in the stocks, his constant theme was: " I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me. " His last thought was for his brethren. " He has left the memory of one of the greatest theologians and greatest saints the church has ever possessed. One of his own words strikes the key-note of his life : ' Love, ' he says again and again, ' is an agony, a passion ; ' ' Caritas est pas- sio. ' To love the truth so as to suffer for it in the world and in the church , to love mankind with a ten- der sympathy; to extend the arms of compassion ever more widely, so as to over-pass all barriers of dog- matic difference under the far-reaching impulse of this pitying love ; to realize that the essence of love is sacrifice, and to make self the unreserved and will- ing victim, such was the creed, such was the life of Origen."'* He described in letters now lost, the sufferings he endured without the martyrdom he so longed for, and yet in terms of patience and Christian forgive- SHlst. Christ. Church, I, pp. 54, 55. *De Pressense Martyrs and Apologists II, p. 340. ORIGEN. 133 ness. Persecuted by Pagans for his Christian fidelity, and by Christians for heresy, driven from home and country, and after his death his morals questioned, his memory branded, his name anathematized, and even his salvation denied,^ there is not a character in the annals of Christendom more unjustly treated. EusEBius relates how Origen bore in his old age, as in his youth, fearful sufferings for his fidelity to his Master, and carried the scars of persecution into his grave. No nobler witness to the truth is found in the records of Christian fidelity. And, as though the terrible persecutions he suffered during life were not enough, he has for fifteen hundred years borne obloquy, reproach, and denunciation from professing Christians who were unworthy to loosen his shoe latchets. Most of those who decried him during his lifetime, and for a century after, were men whose characters were of an inferior, and some of a very low order; but the candid Nicephorus, a hundred and fifty years after his death, wrote that he was ' 'held in great glory in all the world. " This greatest of all Christian apologists and exe- getes, and the first man in Christendom since Paul, was a distinctive Universalist. He could not have misunderstood or misrepresented the teachings of his Master. The language of the New Testament was his mother tongue. He derived the teachings of Christ from Christ himself in a direct line through his teacher Clement ; and he placed the defense of Christianity on Universalistic grounds. When Cel- sus, in his ' 'True Discourse, " the first great assault on Christianity, objected to Christianity on the ground ^Bayle, Diet. Hist. Art. Origene. 134 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. that it taught punishment by fire, Origen replied that the threatened fire possessed a disciplinary, puri- fying quality that will consume in the sinner what- ever evil material it can find to consume. Origen declares that Gehenna is an analogue of the Valley of Hinnom and connotates a purifying fire ^ but intimates that it is not pru- Gehenna Denotes a dent to go further, showing that the Purifying Fire. idea of * 'reserve" controlled him from saying what might not be judicious. That God's fire is not material, but spiritual remorse ending in reformation, Origen teaches in many pas- sages. He repeatedly speaks of punishment as aion- ion (mistranslated in the New Testament "everlast- ing," "eternal") and then elaborately states and de- fends as Christian doctrine universal salvation be- yond all aionion suffering and sin. Says the candid historian Robertson: " The great object of this emi- nent teacher was to harmonize Christianity with philosophy. He sought to combine in a Christian scheme the fragmentary truths scattered throughout other systems, to establish the Gospel in a form which should not present obstacles to the conversion of Jews, of Gnostics, and of cultivated heathens; and his errors arose from a too eager pursuit of this idea. 7" The effect of his broad faith on his spirit and treatment of others, is in strong contrast to the bitter and cruel disposition exhibited by some of the early Christians towards heretics, such as Tertullian and Augustine. In reply to the charge that Christians «Cont. Cels. VI. 25. 'Consult also, Mosheim, Dorner and De Pressense. ORIGEN. 135 of different creeds were in enmity, he said, "Such of us as follow the doctrines of Jesus, and endeavor to be conformed to his precepts, in our thoughts, words and actions; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat. Nor do we say injurious things of those who think differently of us. They who consider the words of our Lord, Blessed are the peaceable, and Blessed are the meek, will not hate those who corrupt the Chris- tian religion, nor give opprobrious names to those who are in error. " When a young teacher his zeal and firmness vin- dicated his name Adamantius, man of steel or ada- mant. Says De Pressense: "The example of Ori- gen was of much force in sustaining the courage of his disciples. He might be seen constantly in the prison of the pious captives carrying to them the consolation they needed. He stood by them till the last moment of triumph came, and gave them the parting kiss of peace on the very threshold of the arena or at the foot of the stake." One day he was carried to the temple of Serapis, and palms were placed in his hands to lay on the altar of the Egyp- tian god. Brandishing the boughs, he exclaimed, '• Here are the triumphal palms, not of the idol, but of Christ. " In a work of Origen's now only existing in a Latin translation is this characteristic thought: "The fields of the angels are our hearts; each one of them therefore out of the field which he cultivates, offers first fruits to God. If I should be able to pro- duce today some choice interpretation, worthy to be presented to the Supreme High Priest, so that out of all those things which we speak and teach, there 136 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. should be somewhat considerable which may please the great High Priest, it might possibly happen that the angel who presides over the church, out of all our words, might choose something, and offer it as a kind of first fruits to the Lord, out of the small field of my heart. But I know I do not deserve it; nor am I conscious to myself that any interpretation is discovered by me which the angel who cultivates us should judge worthy to offer to the Lord, as first fruits, or first born. " ^ Origen's critics are his eulogists. Gieseler re- marks: "To the wide extended influence of his writ- ings it is to be attributed, that, in the His Critics are midst of these furious controversies his Eulogists. (in the Fifth Century) there remained any freedom of theological specula- tion whatever. " Bunsen: "Origen's death is the real end of free Christianity and, in particular, of free intellectual theology." Schaff says: " Origen is father of the scientific and critical investigation of Scripture." Jerome says he wrote more than other men can read. Epiphanius, an opponent, states the number of his works as six thousand. His books that survive are mostly in Latin, more or less muti- lated by translators. EusEBius says that his life is worthy of being re- corded from "his tender infancy." Even when a child " he was wholly borne away by the desire of becoming a martyr," and so divine a spirit did he show, and such devotedness to his religion, even as a child, that his father, frequently, "when standing ^Homily XI in Numbers, in Migne. ORIGEN. 137 over his sleeping boy, would uncover his breast, and as a shrine consecrated by the Divine Spirit, rever- ently kiss the breast of his favorite offspring. * * * As his doctrine so was his life; and as his life, so also was his doctrine. " His Bishop, Demetrius, praised him highly, till "seeing him doing well, great and illustrious and celebrated by all, was overcome by human infirmity," and traduced him throughout the church. Origen was followed as teacher in the Alexan- drine school by his pupil Heraclas, who in turn was succeeded by Dionysius, another pupil, so that from Pant^nus, to Clemens, Origen, Heraclas and Dionysius, to Didymus, from say A. D. 160 to A. D. 390, more than two centuries, the teaching in Alex- andria, the very center of Christian learning, was Universalistic. The struggles of such a spirit, scholar, saint, phi- losopher, must have been a martyrdom, and illustrate the power of his sublime faith, not only to sustain in the terrific trials through which he passed, but to preserve the spirit he always manifested — akin to that which cried on the cross , ' ' Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." The death of Origen marks an epoch in Christ- ianity, and signalizes the beginning of a period of decadence. The republicanism of The Death of Christianity began to give way before Origen. the monarchical tendencies that ripened with Constantine (A. D. 313) and the Nicean council (A. D. 325). Clement and Origen represented freedom of thought, and a rational creed founded on the Bible, but the evil 138 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. change that Christianity was soon to experience, was fairly seen, says Bunsen, about the time of Origen's death. ' ' Origen, who had made a last attempt to preserve liberty of thought along with a rational be- lief in historical facts based upon the historical rec- ords, had failed in his gigantic efforts; he died of a broken heart rather than of the wounds inflicted by his heathen torturers. His followers * * * re- tained only his mystical scholasticism, without pos- sessing either his genius or his learning, his great and wide heart, or his free, truth-speaking spirit. More and more the teachers became bishops, and the bishops absolute governors, the majority of whom strove to establish as law their speculations upon Christianity." His comprehensive mind and vast sympathy, and his intense tendency to generalization, caused Origen to entertain hospitably in his philosophical system many ideas that now are seen to be inconsistent and untenable ; but his fantastic, allegorical interpretation of Scripture, his vagaries concerning pre-existence, and his disposition to include all themes and theories in his system, did not swerve him from the truths and facts of Christian revelation. His defects were but as spots on the sun. And his vagaries were by no means in excess of those of the average theologian of his times, Origen considered philosophy as necessary to Chris- tianity as is geometry to philosophy ; but that all things essential to salvation are plainly A Christian taught- in the Scriptures, within the Philosopher. comprehension of the ordinary mind. "Origen * * * was the prince of schoolmen and scholars, as subtle as Aquinas, as ORIGEN. 139 erudite as Routh or Tischendorf. He is a man of one book, in a sense. The Bible, its text, its expo- sition, furnished him with the motive for incessant toil." (Neoplatonism, by C. Bigg, D. D., London, 1895, p. 163. ) The truths taught in the Bible may be made by philosophers themes on which the mind may indefinitely expatiate; and those competent will find interior, spiritual, recondite meanings not seen on the surface. Yet he constantly taught " that such affinity and congruity exist between Christianity and human reason, that not only the grounds, but also the forms, of all Christian doctrines may be ex- plained by the dictates of philosophy. * * * That it is vastly important to the honor and advantage of Christianity that all its doctrines be traced back to the sources of all truth, or be shown to flow from the principles of philosophy; and consequently that a Christian theologian should exert his ingenuity and his industry primarily to demonstrate the harmony between religion and reason, and to show that there is nothing taught in the Scriptures but what is founded in reason. " He held to the " most scrupulous Biblicism and the most conscientious regard for the rule of faith, conjoined with the philosophy of religion. " * * * He " was the most influential theologian in the Oriental church, the father of theological science, the author of ecclesiastical dogmatics. * * * An orthodox traditionalist, a strong Bib- A oui ,, • I- i lical theologian, a keen idealistic A Bible Universahst. , , , , philosopher who translated the con- tent of faith into ideas, completed the structure of the world that is within, and finally I40 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. let nothing pass save knowledge of God and of self, in closest union, which exalts us above the world, and conducts unto deification. * * * Ljfe is a disci- pline, a conflict under the permission and leading of God, which will end with the conquest and destruc- tion of evil. * * * According to Origen, all spirits will, in the form of their individual lives, be finally rescued and glovihed {aJ>okatasfas2s)." ^ Mos- HEiM considered these fatal errors, while we should regard them as valuable principles. The famous historian assures us that Origen was entirely igno- rant of the doctrine of Christ's substitutional sacrifice. He had no faith in the idea that Christ suffered in man's stead, but taught that he died in man's be- half. The known works of Origen consist of brief " Notes on Scripture, " only a few fragments of which are left; his " Commentaries," many The Works of which are in Migne's collection; of Origen. his "Contra Celsum," or "Against Celsus, " which is complete and in the original Greek; " Stromata," only three fragments of which survive in a Latin translation; a fragment on the " Resurrection; " practical " Essays and Let- ters," but two of the latter remaining, and "Of Principles, " " De Principiis," or UeprApx^ov. Nearly all the original Greek of this great work has per- ished. The Latin translation by Rufinus is very loose and inaccurate. It is frequently a mere para- phrase. Jerome, whose translation is better than that of Rufinus, accuses the latter of unfaithfulness in his ^Harnack's Outlines, pp. 150-154. ORIGEN. 141 translation, and made a new version, only small por- tions of which have come down to modern times, so that we cannot accurately judge of the character of this great work. A comparison of the Greek of Ori- gen's '' Against Celsus " with the Latin version of RuFiNus exhibits great discrepancies Indeed, Ru- FiNUS confesses that he had so " smoothed and cor- rected " as to leave "nothing which could appear discordant with our belief. " He claimed, however, that he had done so because " his (Origen's) books had been corrupted by heretics and malevolent per- sons, " and accordingly he had suppressed or enlarged the text to what he thought Origen ought to have said ! And having acknowledged so much he adjures all by their ' ' belief in the kingdom to come, by the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, and by that everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels " to make no further alterations ! He reiter- ates his confession elsewhere, and says he has trans- lated nothing that seems to him to contradict Ori- gen's other opinions, but has passed it by, as " inter- polated and forged. " For the sake of " brevity, " he says he has sometimes * ' curtailed. " Says De Pressense : *' Celsus collected in his quiver all the objections possible to be made, and there is scarcely one missing of all the arrows which in sub» sequent times have been aimed against the supernat- ural in Christianity. " To every point made by Cel- sus, Origen made a triumphant reply, anticipating, in fact, modern objections, and " gave to Christian antiquity its most complete apology. * * * Many centuries were to elapse before the church could pre- sent to the world any other defense of her faith com- 142 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. parable to this noble book." "It remains the master- piece of ancient apology, for solidity of basis, vigor of argument, and breadth of eloqtient exposition. The apologists of every age were to find in it an inex- haustible mine, as well as incomparable model of that royal, moral method inaugurated by St. Paul and St. John." An illustration of his manner may be given in his reference to the attack of Celsus on the miracles of Christ. Celsus dares not deny them, only a hun- dred years after Christ, and says: " Be it so, we ac- cept the facts as genuine," and then proceeds to rank them with the tricks of Egyptian sorcerers, and asks: "Did anyone ever look upon those impostors as di- vinely aided, who for hire healed the sick and wrought wonderful works? If Jesus did work miracles it was through sorcery, and deserves therefore the greater contempt. " In reply Origen insists on the miracles, but places the higher evidence of Christianity on a moral basis. He says: " Show me the magician who calls upon the spectators of his prodigies to reform their life, or who teaches his admirers the fear of God, and seeks to persuade them to act as those who must appear before him as their judge. The magi- cians do nothing of the sort, either because they are incapable of it, or because they have no such desire. Themselves charged with crimes the most shameful and infamous, how should they attempt the reforma- tion of the morals of others? The miracles of Christ, on the contrary, all bear the impress of his own holi- ness, and he ever uses them as a means of winning to the cause of goodness and truth those who witness them. Thus he presented his own life as the perfect ORIGEN. 143 model, not only to his immediate disciples, but to all men. He taught his disciples to make known to those who heard them, the perfect will of God; and he re- vealed to mankind, far more by his life and works than by his miracles, the secret of that holiness by which it is possible in all things to please God. If such was the life of Jesus, how can he be compared to mere charlatans, and why may we not believe that he was indeed God manifested in the flesh for the salvation of our race?"^" The historian Cave says: " Celsus was an Epi- curean philosopher contemporary with Lucian, the witty atheist, * * * a man of wit and parts, and had all the advantages which learning, philosophy, and eloquence could add to him; but a severe and incurable enemy to the Christian religion, against which he wrote a book entitled A\r]dr)0apTov) , together with your soul" (i/'vx^, life). Now had Hippolytus intended to teach the absolutely interminable duration of the "tartarean fire," would he not have used these stronger terms, aphtharton and athaiiaton, which are never employed in the New Testament to teach lim- ited duration, and is not the fact that he used the weaker word to describe punishment, evidence that he did not in this passage in the "Philosophumena" intend to teach the sinner's endless torment? Not less surprising is the language of Dean Wordsworth, and his misreading of the facts of his- tory, when he comments on the harsh and bitter tone of Hippolytus, in his treatment of heretics, in the "Philosophumena." Contrasting the acrid temper of Hippolytus with the sweetness of Origen, Dean Wordsworth says: "The opinion of Origen with regard to future punishments is well known. The same feelings which induced him to palliate the errors of heretics, A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 191 beguiled him into exercising his ingenuity in tam- pering with the declarations of Scripture concerning the eternal duration of the future punishment of sin. Thus false charity betrayed him into heresy."^ This is a sad reversal of cause and effect. Why not say that the sublime fact of God's goodness re- sulting in universal salvation, created in Origen's heart that generous charity and divine sweetness that caused him to look with pity rather than with anger on human error, in imitation of the God he wor- shiped ? Theophilus. Theophilus of Antioch, who wrote about A. D. 180, and was bishop of Antioch, speaks of aionian torments, and aionian fire, but he must have used the terms as did Origen and the other ancient Uni- versalists, for he says: "For just as a vessel which, after it has been made, has some flaw, is remade or remolded, that it may become new and bright, so it comes to man by death For in some way or other he is broken up, that he may come forth in the res- urrection whole, I mean spotless, and righteous, and immortal."* Tertullian. Tertullian (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertul- lianus) was born in Carthage, Africa, about A. D. 160, and died A. D. 220. He had a fine Pagan edu- cation in Roman law and rhetoric, but lived a ^Hippolytus followed up at Rome the Alexandrine doctrine and position of Pantaenus and Clemens, and was the predecessor of Origen, etc. Bunsen. *Ad Autolicum, lib. II, cap. 26, Vol. VI, Migne's Patrologiae. 192 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. heathen into mature manhood, and confesses that his life had been one of vice and licentiousness.* Converted to Christianity he became in later years a presbyter. He lived a moral and religious life af- ter his conversion, but the heathen doctrines he re- tained rendered his spirit harsh and bitter. About A. D. 202 he joined the Montanists, a schismatic, as- cetic sect. Those who sympathized with him were known as Tertullianists as late as the Fifth Century. His abilities were great, but, as Schaff says, he was the opposite of the equally genial, less vigorous, but more learned and comprehensive Origen. Tertullian was the first of the Africo-Latin writers who commanded the public ear, and there is strong ground for supposing that Advocates End- since Tertullian quotes the sacred less Torment. writings perpetually and copiously, the earliest of those many Latin ver- sions noticed by Augustine and on which Jerome grounded his vulgate, were African. * * * < 'Af- rica, not Rome, gave birth to Latin Christianity." A learned writer states: "His own authority is small, he was not a sound divine, became heterodox, and fell away into one of the heresies of his times."® The fountain of Paganism in the heart of Tertul- lian discharged its noxious waters into into the lar- ger reservoir in the mighty brain of Augustine, and thence in the Sixth Century it submerged Christen- dom with a deluge that lasted for a thousand years, — now happily subsiding, to give place to those ^De resur. earn., chap 59. "Ego me scio neque alia carne adulteria commisse, neque nunc alia carne ad continentian eniti." «Oxford Tracts for the Times, No. XVII. A THIRD CENTURY GROUP 193 primal Christian truths that were in the hearts of Clement and Origen. Tertullian and Origen were as unlike as the churches they represent, — the Latin and the Greek. Narrow, Pagan, cruel, un- christian, the dark path of the Tertullian- Augustine type of Christianity through the centuries is strewn with the wrecks of ignorance and sorrow. He re- tained his heathen notions and gave them a Christian label. He makes the Underworld, like the heathen, divided by an impassable gulf into two parts. The abode of the righteous is sinus Abrahcs, that of the wicked ignis or inferi. Tertullian was probably the first of the fathers to assert that the torments of the lost will be of equal duration with the happiness of the saved. "God will recompense his worshipers with life eternal; and cast the profane into a fire equally perpetual and unintermitted. " ' In Tertullian's Apology are fifty arguments for the Christian religion, but not once does he state that endless punishment was one of the doctrines of the church. He seems to have been half- inclined to the truth, for he speaks of the sinner as being able, after death, to pay "the uttermost farthing." Tertullian illustrates the effect of the doctrine he advocated in his almost infernal exultations over the future torments of the enemies of the church. " How I shall admire, how I shall laugh, how exult," he cries with fiendish glee, "to see the torments of the wicked." * * * "I shall then have a better chance of hearing the tragedians call louder in their own distress ; of seeing the actors more lively in the ^ApoL, cap. 18. 194 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. dissolving flame; of beholding- the charioteer glow- ing in his fiery chariot; of seeing their wrestlers toss- ing on fiery waves instead of in their gymnasium, " etc. 8 Referring to the " spectacles " he anticipates, he says: " Faith grants us to enjoy them even now, by lively anticipation ; but what shall the reality be of those things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive? They may well compensate, surely, the circus and both amphitheatres and all the spectacles the world can offer." No wonder DePressense says, "This joy in the anticipation of the doom of the ene- mies of Christ is altogether alien to the spirit of the Gospel ; that mocking laugh, ringing across the abyss which opens to swallow up the persecutors," etc. But why "alien," if a God of love ordained, and the gentle Christ executes, the appalling doom? Was not Tertullian nearer the mood a Christian should cultivate than are those who are shocked by his description, if it is true? Max Mxjller calls at- tention to the fact that Tertullian and the Latin fathers were obliged to cripple the Greek Christian thought by being destitute of even words to express it. He has to use two words, verbum and ratio, to express Logos. " Not having Greek tools to work with, "he says, "his verbal picture often becomes blurred. " Hase says that Tertullian was a " gloomy, fiery character, who conquered for Christianity, out of the Punic Latin, a literature in which ingenious rhetoric, a wild imagination, a gross, sensuous perception of 8Quid admirer? quid rideam? ubi gaudeam, ubi exsultem, spectans tot ettantos.etc. De Spectaculis. xxx. A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 195 the ideal, profound feeling, and a juridical under- standing struggled with each other. " Ambrose of Alexandria. Ambrose of Alexandria, A. D. 180-250, was of a noble and wealthy family. Meeting O rig en he ac- cepted Christianity as taught by the magister orien- tis, and urged and stimulated his great teacher to write his many books, and used his fortune to further them. Thus we owe generally, it is said, nearly all the exegetical works of Origen to Ambrose's influ- ence and money; and especially his commentary on St. John. It was at his request also that Origen composed his greatest work, the answer to Celsus. He left no writings of his own except some letters, but his devotedness to Origen, and his agency in promoting the publication of his works, should con- vince us that Origen's views are substantially his own.^ The Manich^eans. The Manichaeans, followers of Mani, were a con- siderable sect that had a following over a large part of Christendom from A. D. 277 to 500. Eusebius is very bitter in describing the sect and its founder. "He was a madman," and his "ism, patched up of many faults and impious heresies, long since extinct. " Socrates calls it "a kind of heathenish Christianity," and says it is composed of a union of Christianity with the doctrines of Empedocles and Pythagoras. Lardner quotes the evident misrepresentations of Eusebius and Socrates and exposes their inaccura- •Euseb. Hist. Eccl. B. vi. 196 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. cies. A large amount of literature was expended on some of their doctrines, but not on their denial of endless torment. In fact, Didymus the Blind, as well as Augustine, seems to have opposed their er- rors, though the "merciful doctor" gives them, as Lardner says, "no hard names," while the father of Calvinism treats them with characteristic severity, ignoring what he himself acknowledges elsewhere, that for eight or nine years he accepted their tenets. Referring to the vile practices and doctrines with which they are charged, Lardner says: "The thing is altogether incredible, especially when re- lated of people who by profession were Christians ; who believed that Jesus Christ was a perfect model of all virtues; who acknowledged the reasonableness and excellence of the precepts of the Gospel, and that the essence of religion lies in obeying them." The consensus of ancient authorities proves the Manichaeans to have been an unpopular but reputa- ble Christian sect. Mani was a Persian, a scholar, and a Christian. Beginning his debate with Archelaus, he says: "I, brethren, am a disciple and an Manichsan apostle of Jesus Christ;" and he Doctrines, and his followers everywhere claim to be disciples of our Lord. Among their dogmas, was one that denied endless exist- ence to the devil, who was then considered to be almost the fourth person in the popular Godhead, — they repiidiated the resurrection of the body and clearly taught universal restoration. Lard- ner quotes Mani in his dispute with Archelaus, as saying : ' 'All sorts of souls will be saved, and the A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 197 lost sheep will be brought back to the fold." And after quoting their adversaries as stating that the Manichaeans taught the eternity of hell torments, Lardner says, quoting Beausobre: "All which means no more than a privation of happiness, or a labor and task, rather than a punishment. Indeed it is reasonable to think the Manichaeans should allow but very few, if any, souls to be lost and perish for- ever. That could not be reckoned honorable to the Deity, considering how souls were sent into matter."^*' Lardner is certainly within bounds when he says : "But it is doubtful whether they believed the eter- nity of hell torments." The astonishing way in which, as Wendell Phil- lips once said, "what passes for history, " is written, may be seen in Professor William G. Prof. Shedd's His- T. Shedd's "History of Christian Doc- torical Inaccuracy, trine." He says: *' The punishment inflicted upon the lost was regarded by the fathers of the ancient church, with very few exceptions, as endless. * * * The only excep- tion to the belief in the eternity of future punish- ment in the ancient church appears in the Alexan- drine school. Their denial of the doctrine sprang logically out of their anthropology. Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, we have seen, asserted with great earnestness the tenet of a plenary and inalien- able power in the human will to overcome sin. The destiny of the soul is thus placed in the soul itself. The power of free will cannot be lost, and if not ex- erted in this world, it still can be in the next ; and wBeausobre, Hist, de Manich. 1,9, chs. 7-9. See the remarkable quota- tions concerning Mani in Lardner Vol. III. igS UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. under the full light of the eternal world; and undei the stimulus of suffering- there experienced, nothing is more probable than that it will be exerted. The views of Origen were almost wholly confined to this school. Faint traces of a belief in the remission of punishments in the future world are visible in the writings of Didymus of Alexandria, and in Gregory of Nyssa. * * * With these exceptions, the an- cient church held that the everlasting destiny of the human soul is decided in this earthly state. " ^^ The reader who will turn to the sketches of Didymus and Gregory will discover what Prof. Shedd denominates "faint traces," and in the multitudes of quotations from others of the fathers who were not of the Alex- andrine school, he will see how utterly inaccurate is this religious historian. Numerous quotations flatly contradict his assertion. The verbal resemblance or Dr. Shedd's language to that of Hagenbach, cannot be wholly due to accident. ^^ Prof. Shedd, however, contradicts what Schaff and Hagenbach declare to be the truth of history. He says that the Alex- andrine school was the only exception to a univer- sal belief in endless punishment, except the faint traces in Gregory of Nyssa; while Hagenbach insists that Gregory is more explicit, and Neander afSrms that the school of Antioch as well as that of Alexan- dria, were Universalistic. Furthermore, Prof. Shedd does not seem to have remembered the words he had written with his own pen in his translation of Guer- ike's Church History :^^ "It is noticeable that the "Vol. II, pp. 414-416. J2Hist. Doct. II, Sec. 142. Edin. Ed. 1884. isp. 349, note. A THIRD CENTURY GROUP. 199 exegetico-grammatical school of Antioch, as well as the allegorizing Alexandrian, adopted and maintained the doctrine of restoration." Says Hagenbach, "Some faint traces of a belief in the final remission of punishments in the world to come are to be found in those writings of Didymus of Alexandria, which are yet extant. * * * Gregory of Nyssa speaks more distinctly upon this point, pointing out the cor- rective design of the punishments inflicted upon the wicked. " Hagenbach expressly places Greg- ory and Didymus as differing, while Shedd makes them agree. But Neander declares: "From two theological schools there went forth an opposition to the doctrine of everlasting punishment, which had its ground in a deeper Christian interest ; inasmuch as the doctrine of a universal restoration was closely connected with the entire dogmatic systems of both these schools, namely, that of Origen, and the school of Antioch." " "Vol. II. p. 676. XIV. MINOR AUTHORITIES. Among the celebrated fathers who have left no record of their views of human destiny, biit who, from their positions, and the rela- Several Fathers. ^^'^^^ ^^^^ sustained, must, beyond all rational doubt, have been Univer- salists, may be mentioned Atheno- DORUS, who was a student of Origen's, and a bishop in Pontus; Heraclas, a convert of Origen's, his as- sistant and successor in the school at Alexandria, and bishop of Alexandria; Firmilian, a scholar of Origen's, and bishop of Caesarea; and Palladius, bishop in Asia Minor. Firmilian, though he wrote little, and is therefore not much known, was certainly very conspicuous in his day. His theology may be gauged from the fact that "he held Origen in such high honor that he sometimes invited him into his own district for the benefit of the churches, and even journeyed to Judea to visit him, spending long periods of time with him in order to improve in his knowledge of the- ology. " * He was a warm friend of Dionysius, Cyprian, and Gregory Thaumaturgus, and was chosen president of the Council of Antioch. Dionysius — styled by Eusebius "the great bishop »Eusebius, VI:.26. 200 MINOR AUTHORITIES. 201 of Alexandria," born A. D. 195 — died 265 — became the head of the Catechetical school in Alexandria A. D. 231, and suc- Dionysius. ceeded Heraclas as bishop of Alex- andria, A. D. 248. He was a con- stant friend of Origen, and after the opposition to him had begun, Dionysius addressed him **0n Per- secution," — A. D. 259 — and wrote a letter in his praise after his death, to Theotecnus, bishop of Csesarea, A. D. 265. Neale says: "The loss of the writings of Dionysius is one of the greatest that had been suffered by ecclesiastical history."^ Theognostus and Pierius were Alexandrine cate- chists after the death of Dionysius, The fact that Photius reprobates the doctrine, while he praises the eloquence, of Theognostus, asdoes Athanasius, indicates that these eminent scholars were of the faith of their master. Pierius, in fact, must have been, for he was called the "Second Origen," (Ori- genes Junior). Gregory Thaumaturgus — A. D. 210-270 — in his panegyric on Origen, ascribes his own intellectual and religious birth and life to his master, and gives the best description extant of the methods and abil- ity of that most eminent of all the Christian teachers and fathers. Their mutual regard is shown by sur- viving letters from both. If nothing were in exist- ence from Gregory, expressive of his Universalian sentiments, the fact that he was Origen's pupil for five years, and delivered his famous encomium on his teacher, would go far to establish his acceptance SHoly Eastern Church, I: 84. Eusebius repeatedly speaks of him in the loftiest terms. 202 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTUKIES. of the doctrine. He says: "My guardian angel, on our arrival at Csesarea, handed us over to the care and tuition of Origen, that leader of all, who speaks in undertones to God's dear prophets, and suggests to them all their prophecy and their mystic and di- vine word, has so honored this man Origen as a friend, as to appoint him to be their interpreter." As Origen spoke, Gregory tells us he kindled a love "in my heart I had not known before. This love in- duced me to give up country and friends, the aims which I had proposed to myself, the study of law of which I was proud. I had but one passion, one philosophy, and the god-like man who directed me in the pursuit of it." He became bishop of Csesarea, and was regarded as the incarnation of the ortho- doxy of his times. Almost nothing of his writings has survived, but Rufinus, the apologist and de- fender of Origen, gives a passage, says Allin, show- ing that he taught the divine truth he learned from his master. Pamphilus, a. D. 250-309, was one of the great- est scholars of his times. He founded the famous library of Csesarea, which contained some of the most ancient codices of the New Testament, and also Ori- gen's books in their original Greek. Pamphilus wrote an "Apology" and defense of Origen, with whom he was in full sympathy. Eusebius wrote the biography of Pamphilus in three books. Unfortunately it has been lost, so that nothing survives of the works of this eminent Christian writer and scholar. The es- teem in which he was held by Eusebius may be gauged from the fact that after his death Eusebius, "the father of ecclesiastical history," changed his MINOR AUTHORITIES. 203 own name to " Pamphilus's Eiisebius. " The "Apol- ogy" contained ''very -many testimonies of fathers earlier than Origen in favor of restitution. " ^ How- lamentable that these "testimonies " are lost! What light they would shed on early opinion on the great theme of this book. As Origen was born about ninety years after St. John's death, these very nu- merous "testimonies" would carry back these doc- trines very close, or altogether to the apostolic age. "With Pamphilus, the era of free Christian theol- ogy of the Eastern church ends. " PAMPHiLUS,according to EusEBiuSjWas ' ' a man who excelled in every virtue through his whole life, whether by a renunciation and contempt of the world, by distributing his sub- stance among the needy, or by a disregard of worldly expectations, and by a philosophical deportment and self-denial. But he was chiefly distinguished above the rest of us by his sincere devotedness to the sa- cred Scriptures, and by an indefatigable industry in what he proposed to accomplish, by his great kind- ness and alacrity to serve all his relatives, and all that approached him." He copied, for the great library in Caesarea, most of Origen's manuscripts, with his own hands. EusEBiuswas probably born in Caesarea. Hewasa friend of Origen, and fellow-teacher with him in the Caesarean school, and published with Pamphilus a glowing defense of Origen in six books, of which five are lost. He also copied and edited many of his works. Dr. Beecher, in his " History of Future Retribution," asserts the Universalism of Eusebius, sRouth. Rel. Sac, III, p. 498. O.xford ed., 1846. 204 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. though Dr. Ballou, in his "Ancient History" does not quote him. On I Cor. XV: 28, Eusebius says: ** If the subjec- tion of the Son to the Father means imion with him, then the subjection of all to the Son means union with him. * * * Christ is to subject all things to him- self. We ought to conceive of this as such a salutary subjection as that by which the Son will be subject to him who subjects all to him."* Again on the second psalm : " The Son breaking in pieces his ene- mies for the sake of remolding them as a potter his own work, as Jer. xviii: 6, is to restore them once more to their former state. " Jerome distinctly says of Eusebius: "He, in the most evident manner, acquiesced in Origen's tenets." His understanding of terms is seen where he twice calls the fire that consumed two martyrs "unquenchable" {asbesto puri). Eusebius is as severe in describing the sinner's woes as Augustine himself. He says: "Who those were (whose worm dieth not) he showed in the be- ginning of the prophecy, *I have nourished and brought up children and they have set me at nought.' He spoke darkly then of those of the Jews who set at nought the saving grace. Which end of the un- godly our Savior himself also appoints in the Gospel, saying to those who shall stand on the left hand, ' Go ye into the aionian fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. ' As then the fire is said to be aionian^ so here 'unquenchable,' one and the same substance encircling them according to the Scriptures. " In varied and extensive learning, and as a theolo- «De Eccl. Theol., Migne, Vol. XXIV, pp. 1030-38. MINOR AUTHORITIES. 205 gian and writer, and most of all as an historian, EusEBius was far before most of those of his times; and though high in the confidence of his Emperor, CoNSTANTiNE, he did not make his influence contri- bute to his own personal aggrandizement. He was so kind toward the Arians, with whom he did not agree, that he was accused of Arianism by such as could not see how one could differ from another without hating him. Most of his writings have per- ished. Of course his name is chiefly immortalized by his "Ecclesiastical History." Athanasius (A. D. 296-373). This great man was a student of Origen and speaks of him with favor, defends him as orthodox, and quotes him as authority. He argues for the possibility of repent- ance and pardon for even the sin against the Holy Ghost. He says: "Christ captured over again the souls captured by the devil, for that he promised in saying, ' I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.'" On Ps. Ixviii, 18: "When, then, the whole creation shall meet the Son in the clouds, and shall be subject to him, then, too, shall the Son himself be subject to the Father, as being a faithful Apostle, and High Priest of all creation, that God may be all in all. "^ Athanasius nominated Didymus the Blind as president of the Catechetical school of Alexan- dria, where he presided sixty years, an acknowl- edged Universalist, which is certainly evidence of the sympathies, if not of the real views of Athana- sius. He called Origen a "wonderful and most la- borious man, " and offers no condemnation of his eschatology. sSermon Major de fide. Migne, vol. XXVl. pp. 1263-1294. 2o6 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. DiDYMUS, "the illustrious," the Blind, was born, it is supposed, in Alexandria, A. D. 309. He be- came entirely blind when four years of age, and learned to write by using tablets of wood. He knew the Scriptures by heart, through hearing them read. He died, universally esteemed, A. D. 395. He was held to be strictly orthodox, though known to cher- ish the views of Origen on universal restoration. After his death, in the councils of A. D. 553, 680, and 787, he was anathematized for advocating Ori- gen's "abominable doctrine of the transmigration of souls," but nothing is said in condemnation of his pronounced Universalism. Of the Descent of Christ into Hades, he says, — as translated by Ambrose: "In the liberation of all no one remains a captive ; at the time of the Lord's passion, he alone (the devil) was injured, who lost all the captives he was keeping. "^ Didymus argues the final remission of punishment, and universal sal- vation, in comments on I Timothy and I Peter. He was condemned by name in the council of Constanti- nople and his works ordered destroyed. Were they in existence no doubt many extracts might be given. Jerome and Rufinus state that he was an advocate of universal restoration. Yet he was honored by the best Christians of his times. Schaff says: " Even men like Jerome, Rufinus, Palladius, and Is- adore sat at his feet with admiration." After Jerome turned against Origen (See sketch of Jerome) he declares that Didymus defended Origen's words as pious and Catholic, words that " all churches con- «DeSpir. Saact., Ch. «. MINOR AUTHORITIES. 207 demn." And he adds: "In Didymus we extol his great power of memory, and his purity of faith in the Trinity, but on other points, as to which he unduly trusted Origen, we draw back from him. " Schaff declares him to have been a faithful follower of Ori- gen. Socrates calls him "the great bulwark of the true faith," and quotes Antony as saying: "Didy- mus, let not the loss of your bodily eyes distress you; for although you are deprived of such organs as con- fer a faculty of perception common to gnats and flies, you should rather rejoice that you have eyes such as angels see with, by which the Deity himself is discerned, and his light comprehended." Accord- ing to the great Jerome, he "surpassed all of his day in knowledge of the Scriptures. " He wrote volu- minously, but very little remains. He says: "For although the Judge at times in- flicts tortures and anguish on those who merit them, yet he who more deeply scans the reasons of things, perceiving the purpose of his goodness, who desires to amend the sinner, confesses him to be good." Again he says: ''As men, by giving up their sins, are made subject to him (Christ), so too, the higher intelligences, freed by correction from their willful sins, are made subject to him, on the comple- tion of the dispensation ordered for the salvation of all. God desires to destroy evil, therefore evil is (one) of those things liable to destruction. Now that which is of those things liable to destruction will be destroyed." He is said by Basnage to have held to universal salvation. These are samples of a large number of extracts that might be made from the most celebrated of the 2o8 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Alexandrine school, representing the type of theol- ogy that prevailed in the East, during almost four hundred years. They are not from a few isolated authorities but from the most eminent in the church, and those who gave tone to theological thought, and shaped and gave expression to public opinion. There can be no doubt that they are true exponents of the doctrines of their day, and that man's universal de- liverance from sin was the generally accepted view of human destiny, prevalent in the Alexandrine church from the death of the apostles to the end of the Fourth Century. And in this connection it may be repeated that the Catechetical school in Alexandria was taught by Anaxagoras, Pan- T^Nus, Origen, Clement, Heraclas, Dionysius, PiERius, Theognostus, Peter Martyr, Arius and DiDYMUs, all Universalists, so far as is known. The last teacher in the Alexandrine school was Didymus. After his day it was removed to Sida in Pamphylia, and soon after it ceased to exist. '^ The historian Gieseler records that "the belief in the inalienable capability of improvement in all rational beings, and • the limited duration of future punishment, was so general, even in the West, and among the opponents of Origen that, whatever may be said of its not having risen without the influence of Origen's school, it had become entirely indepen- dent of his system. " So that the doctrine may be said to have prevailed all over Christendom, East 'Neander, Hist. Christ. Dogmas, I, p. 265 (London, 1866), who cites Nieder (Klrchengeschichte), for full description of the different theological schools. MINOR AUTHORITIES. 209 and West, among * * orthodox " and heterodox aHke. Epiphanius. Epiphanius, a narrow-minded, credulous, violent- tempered, but sincere man, A. D. 310-404, was bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, A. D. 367. He bit- terly opposed Origen, and denounced him for a mul- titude of errors, but he does not hint that his views of restoration were objectionable to himself^ or to the church, at the time he wrote. He " began those miserable Origenistic controversies in which monkish fanaticism combined with personal hatreds and jeal- ousies to brand with heresy the greatest theologian of the primitive church. " ^ To his personal hatred and bitterness is due much, if not most, of the oppo- sition to Origenism that began in the latter part of the Fourth Century. In an indictment of eighteen counts, published A. D. 380, we find what possibly may have been the first intended censure of Univer- salism on record, though it will be observed that its animus is not against the salvation of all mankind, but against the salvability of evil spirits. Epipha- nius says : * * That which he strove to establish I know not whether to laugh at or grieve. Origen, the re- nowned doctor, dared to teach that the devil is again to become what he originally was — to return to his former dignity. Oh, wickedness! Who is so mad and stupid as to believe that holy John Baptist, and Peter, and John the Apostle and Evangelist, and that Isaiah also and Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets, are to become fellow-heirs with the devil ■Diet. Christ. Biog., II, p. 15CI 210 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. in the king-dom of Heaven!" ^ The reader can here see the possible origin of the familiar argument of recent times. In his book against heresies, "The Panarion," this "hammer of heretics" names eighty; but uni- versal salvation is not among them. The sixty- fourth is "Origenism," but, as is seen elsewhere in this vol- ume, that stood for other dogmas of Origen and not for his Universalism. Methodius, bishop of Tyre (A. D. 293). His writings, like so many of the works of the early fa- thers, have been lost, but Epiphanius and Photius have preserved extracts from his work on the resur- rection. He says : ' ' God, for this cause, pronounced him (man) mortal, and clothed him with mortality, that man might not be an undying evil, in order that by the dissolution of the body, sin might be destroyed root and branch from beneath, that there might not be left even the smallest particle of root, from which new shoots of sin might break forth." Again, "Christ was crucified that he might be adored by all created things equally, for 'unto him every knee shall bow,' " etc Again: " The Scriptures usually call * destruc- tion ' the turning to the better at some future time. " Again : * ' The world shall be set on fire in order to purification and renewal. " ^"^ The general drift, as well as the definite state- ments of the minor authorities cited in this chapter, show the dominant sentiment of the times. »Epiph. Epist. ad Johan. inter Hieron. 0pp. IV, part, ii.in Ballou's Anc. Hist , p. 194, lODe Resurr., VIII. XV. GREGORY NAZIANZEN. Gregory of Nazianzus, born A. D. 330, was one of the greatest orators of the ancient church. Gib- bon sarcastically says: "The title Bishop of of Saint has been added to his name, Constantinople. but the tenderness of his heart, and the elegance of his genius, reflect a more pleasing luster on the memory of Gregory Naz- ianzen." The child of a Christian mother, Nonna, he was instructed in youth in the elements of relig- ion. He enjoyed an early acquaintance with Basil, and in Alexandria with Athanasius. With Basil his friendship was so strong that Gregory says it was only one soul in two bodies. A. D. 361, he be- came presbyter, and in 379 he was called to the charge of the small, divided orthodox church in Con- stantinople, which had been almost annihilated by the prevalence of Arianism. He so strengthened and increased it, that the little chapel became the splen- did "Church of the Resurrection." A. D. 380 the Emperor Theodosius deposed the Arian bishop, and transferred the cathedral to Gregory. He was elected bishop of Constantinople in May, 381, and was president of the CEcumenical council in Constan- tinople, while Gregory Nyssa added the clauses to the Nicene creed. He resigned because of the hos- tility of other bishops, and passed his remaining days 211 212 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. in religious and literary pursuits. He died A. D. 390 or 391. He was second to Chrysostom as an orator in the Greek church. More than this, he was one of the purest and best of men, and his was one of the five or six greatest names in the church's first five hundred years. Prof. Schaff styles him "one of the champions of Orthodoxy. " Gregory says: " God brings the dead to life as partakers of fire or light. But whether even all shall hereafter partake of God, let it be elsewhere dis- cussed. " Again he says : "I know also of a fire not cleansing {KadapTrjpiov) but chastising (KoXaarTypiov), * * * unless anyone chooses even in this case to regard it more humanely, and creditably to the Chas- tiser. " This is a remarkable instance of the esoteric, and well may Petavius say: " It is manifest that in this place St. Gregory is speaking of the punishments of the damned, and doubted whether they would be eternal, or rather to be estimated in accordance with the goodness of God, so as at some time to be termi- nated." And Farrar well observes: " If this last sentence had not been added the passage would have been always quoted as a most decisive proof that this eminently great father and theologian held, without any modification, the severest form of the doctrine of endless torments." Gregory tells us: "When you read in Scripture of God's being angry, or threatening a sword against the wicked * * * understand this The Penalties rightly, and not wrongly * * * of Sin. how then are these metaphors used? Figuratively. In what way? With a view to terrifying minds of the simpler sort." GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 213 He writes again: "A few drops of blood renew the whole world, and become for all men that which rennet is for milk, uniting- and drawing us into one. " Christ is "like leaven for the entire mass, and hav- ing made that which was damned one with himself, frees the whole from damnation." And yet Gregory describes the penalties of sin in language as fearful as though he did not teach restoration beyond it. He says: "That sentence after which is no appeal, no higher judge, no defense through subsequent work ; no oil from the wise virgins or from those who sell, for the failing lamps; * * * but one last fearful judgment, even more just than formidable, yea, rather the more formidable because it is also just; when thrones are set and the Ancient of Days §itteth, and books are open, and a stream of fire sweepeth * * * and they who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment * * * (where) the torment will be, with the rest, or rather above all the rest, to be cast off from God, and chat shame in the conscience which hath no end. " ^ The character of Gregory shows us the kind of mind that leans to the larger hope, or, perhaps, the disposition that the larger hope produces. Says Farrar: "Poet, orator, theologian; a man as great theologically as he was personally winning 2 * * * the sole man whom the church has suffered to share that title (Theologian) with the Evangelist St. John, * * * the most learned and the most eloquent bishop in one of the most learned ages of the church, whom St. Basil called *a vessel of election, a deep »Orat. xl, Carm. xxi, Drat, xlii.; Migne, Vols. XXXVI, XXI. 'See N«wman's Hist. Essays, Vol. III. 214 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. well, a mouth of Christ;' whom Rufinus calls 'in- comparable in life and doctrine.' Gregory of Nazi- anzus deserved the honor of sainthood if any man has ever done, being as he was, one of the bravest men in an age of confessors, one of the holiest men in an age of saints." * * * "In questions of es- chatology he seems more or less to have shared, though with wavering language, in some of the views of Origen, which the church has partly adopted and partly uncondemned — the view, especially, that there shall be hereafter a probatory and purifying fire, and that we may indulge a hope in the possible cessation, for many, if not for all, of the punish- ments which await sin beyond the grave. He speaks indeed far less openly than Gregory of Nyssa, of a belief in the final restoration of all things, but even this belief lies involved in his remarks on the proph- ecy of St. Paul, concerning that day when ' God shall be all in all.' " When Gregory and his congregation had been attacked in their church, while celebrating our Lord's baptism, by the Arian rab- _ , c- • -i. ble of Constantinople, in conse- Gregory's Spirit. ^ ' quence of the report that they were Tritheists, Gregory heard that The- ODORUS was about to appeal for redress to Theodo- sius, whereupon the good man wrote that while pun- ishment might possibly prevent recurrence of such conduct, it was better to give an example of long- suffering. "Let us," said he, "overcome them by gentleness, and win them by piety; let their punish- ment be found in their own consciences, not in our resentment. Dry not up the fig-tree that may yet GREGORY NAZIANZEN, 215 bear fruit." The Seventh General Council called him "Father of Fathers." That he regarded punishment after death as lim- ited, is sufficiently evident from his reference to the heretical Novatians: "Let them, if they will, walk in our way and in Christ's. If not, let them walk in their own way. Perchance there they will be bap- tized with the fire, with that last, that more laborious and longer baptism, which devours the substance like hay, and consumes the lightness of all evil. "^ Neander says: "Gregory Nazianzen did not venture to express his own doctrine so openly (as Gregory Nyssen) but allows it sometimes to escape when he is speaking of eternal punishment. The An- tiochan school were led to this doctrine, not by Ori- gen but by their own thinkings and examination of the Scripture. They regarded the two-fold division of the development of the creature as a general law of the universe. This led to the final result of univer- sal participation in the unchangeable divine life. Hence the dTroKaTao-Tao-is was taught by Diodorus of Tarsus, in his treatise on the Incarnation of God, and also by Theodorus. He applied Matt, v: 26, to prove a rule of proportion, and an end of punish- ment. God would not call the wicked to rise again if they must endure punishment without amend- ment."* 'AssemaniBibl. Orient. Tom. Ill, p. 323. *Hist. Christ. Dogmas, Vol. II. Hagenbach testifies to the same. Dog- mas, Vol. I. XVI. THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA AND THE NESTORIANS. Theodore of Mopsuestia was born in Antioch, A. D. 350, and died 428 or 429. He ranked next to Origen in the esteem of the ancient church. For nearly fifty years he maintained the cause of the church in controversy with various classes of assail- ants, and throughout his life his orthodoxy was re- garded as unimpeachable. He was bishop for thirty- six years, and died full of honors; but after he had been in his grave a hundred and twenty-five years, the church had become so corrupted by heathenism that it condemned him for heresy. He was anathe- matized for Nestorianism, but his Universalism was not stigmatized. His great renown and popularity must have caused his exalted views of God's charac- ter and man's destiny to prevail more extensively among the masses than appears in the surviving lit- erature of his times. His own words are: "The wicked who have committed evil the whole period of their lives shall be punished till they learn that, by continuing in sin, they only continue in misery. And when, by this means, they shall have been brought to fear God, and to regard him with good will, they shall obtain the enjoyment of his grace. For he never would have said, 'until thou hast paid the uttermost 216 THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 217 farthing, ' unless we can be released from suffering after having suffered adequately for sin; nor would he have said, ' he shall be beaten with many stripes, ' and again, * he shall be beaten with few stripes,' un- less the punishment to be endured for sin will have an end. "^ Professor E. H. Plumptre writes: "Theodore of Mopsuestia teaches that in the world to come those who have done evil all their life long Views Defined by will be made worthy of the sweetness Great Scholars. of the divine beauty. " And in the course of a statement of Theodore's doctrine, Prof. Swete observes ^ that Theodore teaches that "the punishments of the condemned will indeed be in their nature eternal, being such as be- long to eternity and not to time, but both reason and Scripture lead us to the conclusion that they will be remissible upon repentance. * Where, ' he asks, ' would be the benefit of a resurrection to such persons, if they were raised only to be punished without end? * Moreover, Theodore's fundamental conception of the mission and person of Christ tells him to believe that there will be a final restoration of all creation."^ Theodore writes on Rom. vi, 6: "All have the hope of rising with Christ, so that the body having obtained immortality, thenceforward the proclivity to evil should be removed. God recapitulated all things in Christ * * * as though making a com- pendious renewal and restoration of the whole crea- tion to him. Now this will take place in a future > AssemaniBib. Orient. Tom. III. SDict. Christ. Biog. II, p. 194. •Ibid. IV, p, 946. 2i8 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. age, when all mankind, and all powers possessed of reason, look up to him as is right, and obtain mutual concord and firm peace. " ^ Theodore is said to have introduced universal restoration into the liturgy of the Nestorians, of which sect he was one of the foun- Author of Nes- ders. His words were translated torian Declarations, into the Syriac, and constituted the office of devotion among that re- markable people for centuries. His works were circulated all through Eastern Asia, through which, says Neander, the Nestorians diffused Christianity. This great body of Christians exerted a mighty in- fluence until they were nearly annihilated by the merciless Tamerlane. He is still venerated among the Nestorians as the "Interpreter." In Theodore's confession of faith he says, after stating that Adam began the first and mortal state, ' ' But Christ the Lord began the second state. He in the future, revealed from heaven, will restore us all into communion with himself. For the apostle says: 'The first man was of the earth earthy, the second man is the Lord from heaven, ' that is, who is to ap- pear hereafter thence, that he may restore all to the likeness of himself."^ The moderate and evangelical Dorner becomes *" Omnia * * * recapitulavit in Christo quasi quandam compendio- sani renovationem et adintegrationem totius faciens creaturae per eum * * * hoc autem in futuro saeculo erit, quando homines cuncti necnon et rationabiles virtutes ad ilium inspiciant, ut fas exigit, et coacordiam inter sepacemque firmam obtineant " ''" The doctrine of universal restoration in the Nestorian churches dis- appeared by a nearly universal extermination of those churches." Beecher, Hist. Doc. Fut. Ret., p. 290. THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 219 eulogistic when referring to this eminent Universal- ist: •* Theodore of Mopsuestia was Dorner on the crown and climax of the school Theodore. of Antioch. The compass of his learning, his acuteness, and as we must suppose also, the force of his personal charac- ter, conjoined with his labors through many years as a teacher both of churches and of young and talented disciples, and as a prolific writer, gained for him the title of Magister Orientis.''^ He *'was regarded with an appreciation the more widely extended as he was the first Oriental theologian of his time. " The- odore held that evil was permitted by the Creator, in order that it might become the source of good to each and all. He says: *'God knew that men would sin in all ways, but permitted this result to come to pass, knowing that it would ultimately be for their advantage. For since God created man when he did not exist, and made him ruler of so extended a system, and offered so great blessings for his enjoyment, it was impos- sible that he should not have prevented the en- trance of sin, if he had not known that it would be ultimately for his advantage." He also says that God has demonstrated that "the same result (that is seen in the example of Christ) shall be effected in all his creatures." * * * God has determined "that there should be first a dispensation including evils, and that then they should be removed and universal good take their place. " He taught that Christ is an illustration of universal humanity, which will ulti- mately achieve his status. «Doct. and Per. of Christ., Div. II, Vol. 1, p. 50. 220 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. It may be mentioned that though Origen and Theodore were Universalists, they reached their conclusions by different processes. ,, ., . p.. ., Origen exalted the freedom of the Unity in Diversity. will, and taught that it could never be trammeled, so that reformation could never be excluded from any soul. He held to man's pre-existence, and that his native sinfulness resulted from misconduct in a previous state of be- ing. He was also extremely mystical, and allegor- ized and spiritualized the Scripture. Its literal meaning was in his eyes of secondary account. The- odore, on the other hand, developed the grammati- cal and historical meaning of the Word, and dis- carded Origen's mysticism and allegorizing, and his doctrine of man's pre-existence, and instead of re- garding man as absolutely free, considered him as part of a divine plan to be ultimately guided by God into holiness. Both were Universalists, but they pursued different routes to the same divine goal. It is interesting to note the emphasis the early Univer- salists placed iipon different points. The Gnostics argued universal salvation from the disciplinary pro- cess of transmigration; the Sibylline Oracles from the prayers of the good who could not tolerate the sufferings of the damned; Clemens Alexandrinus proved it from the remedial influence of all God's punishments; Origen urged the foregoing, but added the freedom of the will, which would ultimately embrace the good; Diodorus put it on the ground that God's mercy exceeds all the desert of sin; The- odore of Mopsuestia, that sin is an incidental part of human education, etc. THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 22i After the condemnation of Origen, Theodore and Gregory, most of their works were destroyed by their bigoted enemies. The loss to the worJd by the destruction of their writings is irreparable. Some of Theodore's works are thought to exist in Syriac, in the Nestorian literature. The future may recover some of them, as the recent past has rescued the Sinaitic codex, the "Book of Enoch," and other an- cient manuscripts. The liturgies of the Nestorians, largely com- posed by Theodore, breathe the spirit of the uni- versal Gospel. In the sacramental liturgy he intro- duces Col. i: 19, 20, to sustain the idea of universal restoration : * ' For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell; and having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. " ^ The Nestorians. The creed of the Nestorians never did, and does not in modern times, contain any recognition of end- less punishment. MosHEiM says: "It is to the hon- or of this sect that, of all the Christian residents of the East, they have preserved themselves free from the numberless superstitions which have found their way into the Greek and Latin churches." A. D. 431, Nestorius and his followers were ex- communicated from the orthodox church for holding that Christ existed in two persons instead of two natures. They denied the accusation, but their ene- mies prevailed. Nestorius refused to call Mary TRenaudot's Oriental Liturgies, Vol. II, p. 610. 222 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. "The Mother of God," but was willing to compro- mise between those who held her to be such, and those who regarded her as ' 'Mother of man," by calling her "Mother of Christ."^ The wonderful preservation and Christian zeal of the Nestorians imder the yoke of Islam is one of the marvels of history. The worse than heathen Athanasian creed is not contained in any Nestorian ritual. Nor is the so- called Apostles' creed. But the Ni- The Nestorian cene is recognized. Among those Liturgies. immortalized in the "Gezza" are Gregory, Basil, Theodore of Mop- suestia, and Diodore, all Universalists. In the lit- urgy, said to be by Nestorius himself, but in which Theodore probably had a hand, occurs this lan- guage: "All the dead have slept in the hope of Thee, that by thy glorious resurrection Thou wouldest raise them up in glory. " ^ Subsequent hands have corrupted the faith of Nestorius and Theodore. For example, the "Jewel," written by Mar Abd Yeshua, A. D. 1298, says that the wicked "shall remain on the earth" af- ter the resurrection of the righteous, and "shall be consumed with the fire of remorse * * * this is the true Hell whose fire is not quenched and whose worm dieth not." But the earlier faith did not con- tain these ideas. The litany in the Khudra, for Easter eve, has these words: "O Thou Living One 8Theodoret, Hist, of Ch., pp. 2, 3. Theodore wrote two works on Here- sies in which he professes to condemn all the heresies of his times, but he does not mention Universalism. ^Badger's Nestorians and their Rituals, Vol. II.; Gibbon, Chap, XLVII. Draper, Hist. Int. Dev. Europe; Layard's Nineveh, THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 223 who descendedst to the abode of the dead and preachedst a good hope to the souls which were de- tained in Sheol, we pray Thee, O Lord, to have mercy upon us." "Blessed is the king who hath de- scended into Sheol and hath raised us up, and who, by his resurrection, hath given the promise of regen- eration to the human race. " After giving numerous testimonials to the educa- tional, missionary and Christian zeal of the Nes- torians and other followers of The- Dr. Beecher on odore, Beecher says that these ad- Theodore, vocates of ancient Restorationism were "in all other respects Ortho- dox," and that their views did not prevent them "from establishing wide-spread systems of educa- tion, from illuminating the Arabs, and through them the dark churches who had sunk into midnight gloom." The Universalism of Theodore was salu- tary in its effects on himself and his followers. It did not " cut the nerve of missionary enterprise." Instructive Facts. It is then apparent in the writings of the fathers, during the first centuries of the Christian Era, that whatever views they entertained of human destiny, — whether they inculcate endless punishment, the anni- hilation of the wicked, or universal salvation, they use the word aionios to describe the duration of pun- ishment, showing that for half a millennium of years the word did not possess the sense of endlessness. And it is noticeable that there is no controversy on the apparent difference of opinion among them on the subject of man's destiny. And it is probable that 224 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. many of the writers who say nothing explicit, held to the doctrine of universal restoration, as it is seen that as soon as an author unmistakably accepts end- less punishment he warmly advocates it. And can the fact be otherwise than significant, that, while Tertullian and other prominent defend- ers of the doctrine of endless punish- Character of Early ment were reared as heathen, and Universalists. even confess to have lived corrupt and vicious lives in their youth, Ori- GEN, the Gregories, Basil the Great, Didymus, Theodore, Theodorus and others were not only the greatest among the saints in their maturity, but were reared from birth by Christian parents, and grew up "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? " Dr. Beecher pays this remarkable testimony: '■'■ I donot knozv an unworthy, loiv, or mean character in any prominent, open, and avowed Restoratiojiist of that age of freedom of inquiry which was inaugurated by the AIexa?idriue school, and defended by Origen. But besides this it is true * * * that these an- cient believers in final restoration lived and toiled and suffered, in an atmosphere of joy and hope, and were not loaded with a painful and crushing burden of sorrow in view of the endless misery of inumera- ble multitudes. * * * j^ j^^y ^q<^ ■\qq xxmq that these results were owing mainly to the doctrine of universal restoration. It may be that their views of Christ and the Gospel, which were decidedly Ortho- dox, exerted the main power to produce these re- sults. But one thing is true : the doctrine of univer- sal restoration did not hinder them. If not, then the inquiry will arise, Why should it now?" **In THEODORE AND THE NESTORIANS. 225 that famous age of the church's story, the period embracing the Fourth and the earlier years of the Fifth Century, Universalism seems to have been the creed of the majority of Christians in East and West alike; perhaps even of a large majority * * * and in the roll of its teachers * * * were * * * most of the greatest names of the greatest age of primitive Christianity. * * * And this teaching, be it noted, is strongest where the language of the New Testament was a living tongue; i. e., in the great Greek fathers ; it is strongest in the church's greatest era, and declines as knowledge and purity decline. On the other hand, ejidless penalty is most strongly taught precisely in those quarters where the New Testament was less read in the original, and also in the most corrupt ages of the church. " '° icUniversalism Asserted, p. 148. Note.— Olshausen declares that the opposition to the doctrine of end- less punishment and the advocacy of universal restoration has always been found in the church, and that it has " a deep root in noble minds." His language is (Com. I., on Matt, xii: 32.:) „T>aS ©efiiljl aber, roeldjeiS fid) in ben a3ertf)etbigetn etnet apokatas- tasis ton panton (bcren eS ju ader 3eit Biele gab iinb in unferet ^eit meOr alg in irgenb elner friifjern) gegen bie £et)re won bet (Snblofigfeit bet Strafen ber (Sottlofen auSfptld)t, mag oft in einem erfd)Iafften fittUdjen Seiuiifjlfe^n begriinbet feijn, bod) t)at eS ol)ne ^'''ei'e' fl""^ «'"s *'^f^ SDutjel in ebeln sologus. ' and that Christ "followed the one, seeks the one, in order that in the one he may restore all. " Stephan Bar-sudaili, Abbot of Edessa, in Meso- potamia, at the end of the Fifth Century, taught Uni- versalism, — the termination of all punishments in the future world, and their purifying character. The fallen angels are to receive mercy, and all things are to be restored, so that God may be all in all. ^s He was at the head of a monastery. Attacked as a her- etic he left Edessa and repaired to Palestine, which in those days seems to have been the refuge of those who desired freedom of opinion. How many might have sympathized with him in Mesopotamia or in Palestine cannot be known. Maximus, the Confessor. As late as the Seventh Century, in spite of the power of Roman tyranny and Pagan error, the truth survived. «<• • r-or. /r/r., Maximus — A. D. =; 80-662 — was sec- Maximus. 580-662 ^ retary of the Emperor Heraclius, and confidential friend of Pope Mar- tin I. He opposed the Emperor Constans II, in his attempts to control the religious convictions of his subjects, and was banished, A. D. 653, and died of ill treatment. He was both scholar and saint. Neander says: •^Assemani Bibl, Orient., II, p. 291. ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES. 259 "The fundamental ideas of Maximus seem to lead to the doctrine of a final imiversal restoration, which in fact is intimately connected also with the system of Gregory of Nyssa, to which he most closely adhered. Yet he was too much fettered by the church system of doctrine distinctly to express anything of the sort. " Neander adds, that in his aphorisms " the reunion of all rational essences with God is established as the final end." "Him who wholly unites all things in the end of the ages, or in eternity. " Ueberweg states that "Maximus taught that God had revealed himself through nature and by his Word. The incarnation of God in Christ was the culmination of revelation, and would there- fore have taken place even if man had not fallen. The Universe will end in the union of all things with God. " XIX. THE DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. The great transition from the Christianity of the Apostles to the pseudo-Christianity of the patriarchs and emperors — the transformation Transition of of Christianity to Churchianity — may Christianity. be said to have begun with Con- STANTiNE, at the beginning of the Fourth Century. Its relations to the temporal power experienced an entire change. Heathenism surrendered to it. As the stones of the heathen temples were rebuilt into Christian churches, so the Pagan principles held by the masses modified and corrupted the religion of Christ ; while the worldli- ness of secular interests derived from the union of church and state, exerted a debasing influence, and the Christianity of the Catacombs and of Origen be- came the church of the popes, of the Inquisition, and of the Middle Ages. "The writers of the Fourth Century generally contradict those of the Second, who were in part wit- nesses, or reported credible evidence and plausible traditions, whereas those later fathers were only critics, and most of them very indifferent and biased ones. For they often proceed from systems, histor- ical and doctrinal, which strongly impair their quali- fications for being judges. " There seems an entire 260 DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 261 change in the church after the Nicene Council. "The Anti-Nicene age was the World against the Church; the Post-Nicene age is the history of the World in the Church. As an antagonist the World was powerless; as an ally it became dangerous and its influence disastrous. " ^ "From the time of Constantine, " says Schaff, " church discipline declines; the whole Roman world having become nominally Christian, and the host of hypocritical professors multiplying beyond all con- trol." It was during Constantine's reign that, among other foreign corruptions, monasticism came into Christianity, from the Hindoo religions and other sources, and gave rise to those ascetic organizations so foreign to the spirit of the author of our religion, and so productive of error and evil. Perhaps the de- terioration of Christian doctrine and life may be dated from the edict of Milan (A. D. 313), when " unhappily, the church also entered on an altogether new career— that of patronage and state protection. That which it was about to gain in material power it would lose in moral force and independence." It is probable that the beginning of the conventual life of women from which grew the nunneries and con- vents that covered Christendom in the succeeding centuries, was with Helen, the mother of the Em- peror Constantine, who A. D. 331 closed a pious life at the age of eighty years. She was accustomed to gather the virgins of the church to repasts, serv- ing them with her own hands at table and praying in their company. Robertson says: " Theophilus succeeded Tim- 'Hipp. and his Age. 262 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. othy at Alexandria A. D. 385, and held the see till 412. He was able, bold, crafty, unscrupulous, cor- rupt, rapacious, domineering. In the first contro- versy between Jerome and Rufinus he had acted the creditable part of a mediator. His own inclinations were undoubtedly in favor of Origen; he had even deposed a bishop named Paul for his hostility to that teacher, but he now found it expedient to adopt a different line of conduct. " Jerome and Theophilus subsequently joined hands and united in a bitter and relentless warfare against the great Alexandrian. There seems to have been very little principle in the course they pursued. Jerome — A. D. 331-420 — was one of the ablest of the fathers of the century in which he lived — " the most learned except Origen," up to his time. He wrote in Latin, and Jerome— 331-420. . , ;, was contemporary with Augustine, but did not accept all the Paganism of the great corruptor of Christianity. He stood in line with his Oriental predecessors. At first he was an enthusiastic partisan of Origen, but later, when opposition to the great Alexandrian set in, he be- came an equally violent opponent. Schaff says he was a great trimmer and time server, and at length seemed to acquiesce in the growing influence of Au- gustinianism. Jerome had ''originally belonged, like the friend of his youth, Rufinus, and John, Bishop of Jerusalem, to the warmest admirers of the great Alexandrian father. ^ But attacked as he now was, with remonstrances from different sides, he be- 2Canon Freemantle in Diet. Christ. Biog. Vol. III., 1 Art. Hieronymus. DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 263 gan out of anxiety for his own reputation for ortho- doxy, to separate himself with the utmost care from the heresies with which he was charged." One of Origen's works, in the handwriting of Pamphilus, came into Jerome's possession, who says, owning it, he "owns the wealth of Croesus; it is signed, as it were, with the very blood of the martyr. " Jerome translated fourteen homilies of Origen on Jeremiah, and fourteen on Ezekiel, and quotes DiDYMUs as saying that Origen was the greatest teacher of the church since St. Paul. During his residence in Rome Jerome highly praised Origen, but soon after, when he found himself accused of heresy for so doing, he declared that he had only read him as he had lead other heretics. In a letter to ViGiLANTius he says: " I praise him as an inter- preter, not as a dogmatic teacher; for his genius, not for his faith; as a philosopher, not as an apostle. * * * If you believe me, I never was an Origenist; if you do not believe me, I have now ceased to be one. "3 But when in Csesarea he borrowed the manu- script of Origen's Hexapla and collated it, and in Alexandria he passed a month with the great Uni- versalist, the blind Didymus. It is curious to notice, however, that Jerome does not oppose Origen's universal restoration, but erro- neously accuses him of advocating the universal equality of the restored — of holding that Gabriel and the devil, Paul and Caiaphas, the virgin and the prostitute, will be alike in the immortal world. The idea of the universal restoration of mankind, divested 'Epist. xxxiii. Migne Vol. XXII. 264 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. of pre-existence, universal equality, the salvability of evil spirits, etc., does not seem to have been much objected to in the days of Jerome, even by those who did not accept it. Jerome's later language is: " And though Origen declares that no rational being will be lost, and gives penitence to the evil one, what is Jerome's Politic that to us who believe that the evil Course. one and his satellites, and all the wicked will perish eternally, and that Christians, if they have been cut off in sin, shall after punishment be saved.'' This, however, was after the cautious and politic churchman had begun to hedge in order to conciliate the growing influence of Augus- tinianism. And the words italicised above show that his endless punishment was very elastic. Jerome uses the word rendered eternal in the Bible {aionios) in the sense of limited duration, as that Jerusalem was burnt with aionian fire by Ha- drian; that Israel experienced aionian woe, etc. In his commentary on Isaiah his language is: "Those who think that the punishment of the wicked will one day, after many ages, have an end, rely on these testimonies: Rom. xi. 25; Gal. iii. 22; Mic. vii. 9; Isa. xii. i; Ps. xxx. 20," which he quotes, and adds: "And this we ought to leave to the knowledge of God alone, whose torments, no less than his compassion, are in due measure, and who knows how and how long to punish. This only let us say as suiting our human frailty, * Lord, rebuke me not in thy fury, nor chasten me in thine anger. ' "* *Plumptre, Diet. Christ Biog. II, Art. " Eschatology." DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 265 Commenting- on Isaiah xxiv, he says: "This seems to favor those friends of mine who grant the g^race of repentance to the devil and to demons after many- ages, that they too shall be visited after a time. * * * Human frailty cannot kno-w the judgment of God, nor venture to form an opinion of the greatness and the measure of his punishment. " Jerome frequently exposes his sympathy -with the doctrine of restora- tion, as when he says: " Israel and all heretics, be- cause they had the works of Sodom and Gomorrah, are overthrown like Sodom and Gomorrah, that they may be set free like a brand snatched from the burn- ing. And this is the meaning of the prophet's words, * Sodom shall be restored as of old, ' that he who by his vice is as an inhabitant of Sodom, after the works of Sodom have been burnt in him, may be restored to his ancient state. " ^ In quoting from this father, Allin says, in Uni- versalism Asserted: " Nor are these isolated in- stances ; I have found nearly one hundred passages in his works (and there are doubtless others) indi- cating Jerome's sympathy with Universalism. Fur- ther, we should note that when towards the year 400 A. D., Jerome took part with Epiphanius and the disreputable Theophilus against Origen (whom he had hitherto extravagantly praised), he, as Huet points out, kept a significant silence on the question of hu- man restoration. ' Though you adduce, ' says Huet, * six hundred testimonies, you thereby only prove that he changed his opinion. ' But did he ever change his opinion? And if so, how far? Thus in his ' Epis. "Com. on Amos. 266 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. ad Avit. ,' where he goes at length into Origen's errors, he says nothing of the larger hope ; and when charged with Origenism he refers time over to his commentaries on Ephesians, which teach the most outspoken Universalism. As a specimen of his praise of Origen, he says, in a letter to Paula that Origen was blamed, ' not on account of the novelty of his doctrines, not on account of heresy, as now mad dogs pretend, but from jealousy,' so that to call Ori- gen a heretic is the part of a mad dog! Note this, from the most orthodox Jerome," Translating Origen's " Homilies, " which affirm Universalism continually, he said in his preface, that Origen was only inferior to the Apos- A M' bi St ^^^^ — "alterum post apostolum ec- clesiarum magistrum. " The man- ner in which he retracted these sentiments, and became the detractor and enemy of the man to whom he had admitted his indebtedness is disgraceful to his memory. Farrar accurately calls the record of his behavior " a miserable story. " Jerome's morbid dread of being held to be heretical, led him, it is feared, to deny some of his real opin- ions, and to violently attack those who held them, in order to divert attention from himself.^ A few of his expressions are here given out of the many quotable. On Eph. iv; i6: "In the end of things, the whole body which had been dissipated and torn into divers parts shall be restored. Let us understand the whole number of rational creatures under the figure of a single rational animal. Let us •He calls Origen "that immortal intellect." DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 267 imagine this animal to be torn so that no bone ad- heres to bone, nor nerve to nerve. * * * in the restitution of all things when Christ the true physi- cian shall have come to heal the body of the univer- sal church * * * every one * * * shall re- ceive his proper place. * * * What I mean is, the fallen angel will begin to be that which he was created, and man who has been expelled from Para- dise will be once more restored to the tilling of Para- dise. * * * These things then will take place uni- versally."* * * On Mic. v:8: "Death shall come as a visitor to the impious ; it will not be perpetual it will not annihilate them; but will prolong its visit till the impiety which is in them shall be consumed. " * * * On Eph. iv: 13, he says: "The question should arise who those are of whom he says that they all shall come into the unity of the faith? Does he mean all men, or all the saints, or all rational beings? He appears to me to be speaking of all men." On Johnxvii: 21: "In the end and consummation of the Universe all are to be restored into their original harmonious state, and we all shall be made one body and be imited once more into a perfect man, and the prayer of our Savior shall be fulfilled that all may be one. " In his homily on Jonah he says: "Most persons {pleriqice, very many), regard the story of Jonah as teaching the ultimate forgiveness of all rational creatures, even the devil. " This shows us the prevalence of the doctrine in the Fourth Cen- tury. His words are: "The apostate angels, and the prince of this world, and Lucifer, the morning star, though now ungovernable, licentiously wander- ing about, and plunging themselves into the depths 268 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. of sin. shall in the end, embrace the happy dominion of Christ and his saints. " Gieseler quotes the fol- lowing sentence from Jerome's comments on Gal. v: 22: " No rational creature before God will per- ish forever," and from this language the historian not only classes Jerome as a Universalist, but con- siders it proof that the doctrine was then prevalent in the West. " The learned, the famous Jerome (A. D. 3S0-390), was at this time a Universalist of Origen's school. He was, indeed, a Latin writer; but it may- be more proper to introduce him with the Greek fathers, since he completed his theological ed- ucation in the East, and there spent the larger part of his manhood and old age. A follower of Origen, from whose works he borrowed without reserve, he nevertheless modified his scheme of universal sal- vation with little amendment. * * At a later period he was led, by a theological and personal quarrel, to take sides against this doctrine." ^ John Chrysostom, A. D. 347-407, was born of Christian parentage in Antioch, and became the golden-mouthed orator and one of the most cele- brated of the fathers. He was the intimate friend of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Diodore of Tarsus, and a pupil of the latter for six years. He was no controversialist, his works are chiefly expository and hortatory. His praise of his Universalist friends, Theodore and Diodore, should predispose us to re- gard him as cherishing their view of human destiny, notwithstanding his lurid descriptions of the horrors of future torments. 'Univ. Quar. May, 1838. DETERIORATION OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 269 In answer to the question, "Whether hell fire have any end, " Chrysostom says, "Christ declares that it hath no end. Well," he adds, Chrysostom's ' ' I know that a chill comes over you ^'^^^- on hearing these things, but what am I to do? For this is God's own com- mand, * * * that it hath no end Christ hath de- clared. Paul also saith, in pointing out the eternity of punishment, that the sinner shall pa)^ the penalty of destruction, and that forever. "^ The reasonable- ness of the apparently disproportioned penalty he feebly argues. A specimen of the utter inadequacy of his argument is seen where he comments on the language, "If any man's work be burned he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire." He says it means " that while the sinner's works shall perish, he shall be preserved in fire for the purpose of torment." And he gives the very details: "A river of fire, and a poisonous worm, and darkness interminable, and undying tortures"^ And yet he asks with a significant emphasis that seems to preclude the thought of the sinner's irreme- diably suffering : ' ' Tell me on what account do you mourn for him that is departed? Is it because he was wicked? But for that very reason you ought to give thanks, because his evil works are put a stop to. " " God is equally to be praised when he chastises, and when he frees from chastisement. For both spring from goodness. * * * It is right, then, to praise him equally both for placing Adam in Paradise, and for expelling him ; and to give thanks not alone for 8Hom. IX on I Cor. iii: 12-16. 9Hom. XI on I Cor. iv: 3. 270 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. the kingdom, but for Gehenna as . well. * * * Christ went to the utterly black and joyless portion of Hades, and turned it into heaven, transferring all its wealth, the race of man, into his royal treasury. "^*^ Dr. Schaff informs us that " Nitzsch includes Gregory Nazianzen and possibly Chrysostom among Universalists, and says that Chrysos- Neander and tom praised Origen and Diodorus, Schaff. Qj^^ ^jjg^^ j^^g comments on I. Cor. xv. 28, looked toward an apokalastasis." Dr. Beecher ranks him among the " esoteric believers." Neander thinks he believed in UniveT- salism, but felt that the opposite doctrine was nec- essary to alarm the multitude. On the words, " At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow," Chrysos- tom says: "What does this mean of 'things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth?' It means the whole world, and angels, and men, and demons. Or, it signifies both the holy and sinners. " A pupil of DiODORE, of Tarsus, for six years, and a fellow- student with Theodore of Mopsuestia, both Univer- salists, he cannot be regarded as otherwise than in sympathy with them on this theme of themes. He must have been one of those esoteric believers else- where described, for he says according to Neander, that he had found the doctrine of endless punishment necessary to the welfare of sinners, and on that ac- count had preached it. The influence of the Alex- andrians was waning, and the heathen environment was leavening Christianity, which soon assumed a phase wholly foreign to its primal purity. loSermon xx.xiv; on Ps. cxlviii; Ser. xxx. XX. AUGUSTINE— DETERIORATION CONTINUED. AuRELius AuGUSTiNUS WES bom in Tagaste, Numidia, November 13, 354, and died in 420. He was the great fountain ot error destined to adulter- ate Christianity, and change its character for long ages. In disposition and spirit he was wholly un- like the amiable and learned fathers who proclaimed an earlier and purer faith. He fully developed that change in opinion which was destined to influence Christianity for many centuries. He himself informs us that he spent his youth in the brothels of Carthage after a mean, thieving boyhood. ^ He cast off the mother of his illegitimate son, Adeodatus, whom he ought to have married, as his sainted mother, Monica, urged him to do. It is an interesting indication of the Latin type of piety to know that his mother allowed him to live at home during his shameless life, but that when he adopted the Man- ichaean heresy she forbade him her house. And afterward, when he became "orthodox," though still living immorally, she received him in her home. His life was destitute of the claims of that paternal rela- tion on which society rests, and which our Lord makes the fundamental fact of his religion, Father- hood. He transferred to God the characteristics of ^Confessions, III, Chap, i-iii. 271 272 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. semi- Pagan kings, and his theology was a hybrid born of the Roman Code of Law and Pagan Mythology. The contrast between Origen's system and Au- gustine's is as that of light and darkness; with the first, Fatherhood, Love, Hope, Joy, Augustine and Or- Salvation ; with the other, Ven- igen Contrasted. geance. Punishment, Sin, Eternal Despair. With Origen God tri- umphs in final unity ; with Augustine man contin- ues in endless rebellion, and God is defeated, and an eternal dualism prevails. And the effect on the be- liever was in the one case a pitying love and charity that gave the melting heart that could not bear to think of even the devil unsaved, and that antedated the poet's prayer, — " Oh, wad ye tak a thought and mend," and that believed the prayer would be answered; and in the other a stony-hearted indifference to the misery of mankind, which he called " one damned batch and mass of perdition. " ^ Augustine brought his theology with him from Manichaeism when he became a Christian, only he added perpetuity to the dualism that Augustine's Mani made temporal. " The doctrine Acknowledgment, of endless punishment assumed in the writings of Augustine a prominence and rigidity which had no parallel in the earlier his- tory of theology * * * and which savors of the teaching of Mohammed more than of Christ.^ Hith- erto, even in the West, it had been an open question whether the punishment hereafter of sin unrepented «Conspersio damnata, massa perditionis. sAUen, Cont. Christ. Thought. AUGUSTINE— DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 273 of and not forsaken was to be endless. Augustine has left on record the fact that some, indeed very- many, still fell back upon the mercy and love of God as a ground of hope for the ultimate restoration of humanity * * * * he is the first writer to under- take a long and elaborate defense of the doctrine of endless punishment, and to wage a polemic against its impugners. * * * j-je rallies the 'tender- hearted Christians, ' as he calls them, who cannot accept it." About 420 he speaks of his "merciful brethren,"^ or party of pity, among the orthodox Christians, who advocate the salvation of all, and he challenges them, like Origen, to advocate also the redemption of the devil and his angels. Thus though the virus of Roman Paganism was extending, the truth of the Gospel was yet largely held. And it was the immense power Augustine came to wield that so dominated the church that it afterwards stamped out the doctrine of universal salvation. Augustine assumed and insisted that the words defining the duration of punishment, in the New Testament, teach its endlessness, and Augustine's Criti- the claim set up by Augustine is the cisms and Mistakes, one still held by the advocates of " the dying belief," that est emus in the Latin, and aionios in t he original Greek, mean interminable duration. It seems that a Spanish presbyter, Orosius, visited Augustine in the year 413, and besought him for arguments to meet the ^Enchiridion cxii: " Frustra itaque nonulli, imo quam plurimi, ffiter- nam damnatorum poenam et cruciatus sine intermissione perpetuos hu- mano miserantur affectu, atque ita futurum esse non credunt. " ^Misericordibus nostris. De Civ. Dei., xxi: 17. 274 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. position that punishment is not to be without end, because aionios does not denote eternal, but limited duration. Augustine replied that though aion sig- nifies limited as well as endless duration, the Greeks only used aionios for endless; and he Augustine's originated the argument so much re- Ignorance, sorted to even yet, based on the fact that in Matt, xxv: 46, the same word is applied to "life," and to "punishment." The student of Greek need not be told that Augustine's argument is incorrect, and he scarcely needs to be assured that Augustine did not know Greek. This he confesses. He says he "hates Greek," and the " grammar learning of the Greeks. " ^ It is anoma- lous in the history of criticism that generations of scholars should take their cue in a matter of Greek definition from one who admits that he had "learned almost nothing of Greek," and was "not competent to read and understand " the language, and reject the positions held by those who were born Greeks! That such a man should contradict and subvert the teachings of such men as Clement, Origen, the Gregories and- others whose mother-tongue was Greek, is passing strange. But his powerful influ- ence, aided by the civil arm, established his doctrine ^Graecae autem linguae non sit nobis tantus habitus, ut talium rerum libris legendis et intelligendis ullo modo reperiamur idonei, (De Trin. lib III ); and, et ego quidem grsecse linguae perparum assecutus sum, et prope nihil. (Oontra litteras Petiliani, lib Il.xxxviii, 91. Migne, Vol. XLIII.) Quid autem erat causae cur graecas litteras oderam quibus puerulus imbuebar ae nunc quidem mihi satis exploratum est: " But what was the cause of my dislike of Greek literature, which I studied from my boyhood, I cannot even now understand. " Conf. 1: 13 . This ignorance of the original Scriptures was a poor outfit with which to furnish orthodox critics for a thousand years. See RosenmuUer, Hist. Interp., iii„ 40. AUGUSTINE— DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 275 till it came to rule the centuries. Augustine al- ways quotes the New Testament from the old Latin version, the Itala, from which the Vulgate was formed, instead of the original Greek. See Preface to ' * Confessions. " It seems that the doctrine of Ori- GEN prevailed in Northeastern Spain at this time, and that Jerome's translation of Origen's ** Principiis " had circulated with good effect, and that Augustine, to counteract the influence of Origen's book, wrote in 415, a small work, "Against the Priscillianists and Origenists. " From about this time began the efforts of Augustine and his followers that subsequently entirely changed the character of Christian theology. Says Milman: " The Augustinian theology coin- cided with the tendencies of the age towards the growth of the strong sacerdotal sys- Milman on tern; and the sacerdotal system rec- Augustinianism. onciled Christendom with the Augus- tinian theolo^. " And it was in the age of Augustine, at the maturity of his powers, that the Latin church developed its theological sys- tem, ' ' differing at every point from the earlier Greek theology, starting from different premises, and actu- ated throughout by another motive, " '^ and from that time, for nearly fifteen centuries it held sway, and for more than a thousand years the sentiment of Christendom was little more or less than the echo of the voice of Augustine. " When Augustine appeared the Greek tongue was dying out, the Greek spirit was waning, the Paganism of Rome and its civil 7Latin Christ. I, 276 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. genius were combined, and a Roman emperor usurped the throne of the God of love. " ^ Augustine declared that God had no kind pur- pose in punishing; that it would not be unjust to torment all souls forever; a few are saved to illus- trate God's mercy. The majority "are predes- tinated to eternal fire with the devil." He held, however, that all punishments beyond the grave are not endless. He says, " Non autem omnes veniunt in sempiternas poenas, quae post illud judicium sunt futurae, qui post mortem sustinent temporales. " ^ Augustine, however, held the penalties of sin in a much milder form than do his degenerate theologi- cal descendants in modern times. He Augustine Less Se- teaches that the lost still retain good- vere Than Mod- ^ i i i ^ x, j , j „ , . ness, — too valuable to be destroyed, and on that account the worst are not in absolute evil, but only in a lower degree of good. ' ' Grief for lost good in a state of punishment is a witness of a good nature. For he who grieves for the lost peace for his nature, grieves for it by means of some remains of peace, by which it is caused that nature should be friendly to itself. " He taught that while unbaptized children must be damned in a Gehenna of fire, their torments would be light {Icvissimd) compared with the torment of other sinners, and that their condition would be far preferable to non-existence, and so on the whole a blessing. In a limbus infantuui they would only receive a initissima damnatio. He also taught that death did not necessarily end probation, as is sAlIen, Cont. Christ. Thought, p. 156. 9De Civ. Dei. AUGUSTINE -DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 277 quite fully shown under "Christ's Descent into Ha- des. " Augustine's idea was reduced to rhyme in the sixteenth century by the Rev. Michael Wig- GLESWORTH, of Maiden, Mass., who was the Puritan pastor of the church in that place. A curious fact in the history of the parish is this, — that the church in which these ridiculous sentiments were uttered became, in 1828, by vote of the parish, Universalist, and is now the Universalist church in Maiden. The poem represents God as saying to non-elect infants : "You sinners are, and such a share As sinners may expect, Such you shall have, for I do save None but my own elect. Yet to compare your sin with theirs Who lived a longer time, I do confess yours is much less Though every sin's a crime. A crime it is, therefore in bliss You may not hope to dwell, But unto you I shall allow The easiest room m hell!" Augustine thought that the cleansing fire might burn away venial sins between death and the resur- rection. He says: " I do not refute it, because, perhaps, it is true; " ^'^ and that the sins of the good may be eradicated by a similar process. He was certainly an example that might advan- tageously have been copied by opponents of Univer- salism in very recent years. Though he said the church "detested" it, he kindly added: "They who believe this, and yet are Catholics, seem to me to be deceived by a certain human tenderness, " and he lODe Civ. Dei. " non redarguo, quia forsitan verum est." 278 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. urged Jerome to continue to translate Origen for the benefit of the African church ! " Under such malign influences, however, the broad and generous theology of the East soon passed away; the language in which Decadence and it was expressed — the language of Deterioration. Clement, Origen, Basil, the Greg- ORiES, became unknown among the Christians of the West; the cruel doctrines of Au- gustine harmonized with the cruelty of the bar- barians and of Roman Paganism amalgamated, and thus Africa smothered the milder spirit of Christen- dom, and Augustine riveted the fetters that were to manacle the church for more than ten long centu- ries. " The triumph of Latin theology was the death of rational exegesis. " But before this evil influence prevailed, some of the great Latin fathers rivaled the immortal leaders in the Oriental church. Among these was Ambrose, of whom Jerome says, "nearly all his books are full of Origenism," which Huet repeats, while the " Dic- tionary of Christian Biography" tells us that he teaches that " even to the wicked death is a gain." Thus the genial thought of Origen was still potent, even in the West, though a harder theology was over- coming it. Says Hagenbach: •' In proportion to the devel- opment of ecclesiastical orthodoxy into fixed and systematic shape was the loss of individual freedom in respect to the formation of doctrines, and the in- creased peril of becoming heretical. The more lib- »Ep. 8. AUGUSTINE— DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 279 eral tendency of former theologians, such as Origen, could no longer be tolerated, and was at length con- demned. But, notwithstanding this external con- demnation, the spirit of Origen continued to animate the chief theologians of the East, though it was kept within narrower limits. The works of this great" teacher were also made known in the West by Jerome and Rufinus, and exerted an influence even upon his opponents. " After Justinian the Greek empire and influence contracted, and the Latin and Roman power expanded. Latin became the language of Christianity, and Augustine's system and followers used it as the instrument of molding Christianity into an Africo-Romano heathenism. The Apostles' and Nicene creeds were disregarded, and Arianism, Origenism, Pelagianism, Manichaeism and other so- called heresies were nearly or quite obliterated, and the Augustinian inventions of original and inherited depravity, predestination, and endless hell torments, became the theology of Christendom. Thus, says Schaff, <*the Roman state, with its laws, institutions, and usages, was still deeply rooted in heathenism. The Christianizing Christianity of the state amounted therefore to Paganized. a paganizing and secularizing of the church. The world overcame the church as much as the church overcame the world, and the temporal gain of Christianity was in many respects canceled by spiritual loss. The mass of the Roman Empire was baptized only with water, not with the spirit and fire of the Gospel, and it smuggled heathen practices and manners into the sanctuary under a new name. " The broad faith of 28o UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. the primitive Christians paled and faded before the lurid terrors of Augnstinianism. It vanished in the Sixth Century, "crushed out," says Bigg, "by tyr- anny and the leaden ignorance of the age. " It re- mained in the East a while, was " widely diffused among the monasteries of Egypt and Palestine," and only ceased when Augnstinianism and Catholicism and the power of Rome ushered in and fostered the darkness of the Dark Ages. Says an accurate writer: ' ' If Augustine had not been born an African, and trained as a Manichee, nay, if he had only faced the labor of learning Greek — a labor from which he con- fesses that he had shrunk — the whole stream of Chris- tian theology might have been purer and more sweet. " In no other respect did Augustine differ more widely from Origen and the Alexandrians than in his intolerant spirit. Even Tertul- Augustinianism lian conceded to all the right of Cruel. opinion. Gregory of Nazianzus, Ambrose, Athanasius and Augus- tine himself in his earlier days, recorded the toler- ance that Christianity demands. But he afterwards came to advocate and defend the persecution of re- ligious opponents. MiLM AN observes: "With shame and horror we hear from Augustine himself that fatal axiom which impiously arrayed cruelty in the garb of Christian charity. " ^^ He was the first in the long line of Christian persecutors, and illustrates the character of the theology that swayed him in the wicked spirit that impelled him to advocate the right "Latin Christianity, 1. 127. AUGUSTINE— DETERIORATION CONTINUED. 281 to persecute Christians who differ from those in power. The dark pages that bear the record of sub- sequent centuries are a damning witness to the cruel spirit that actuated Christians, and the cruel theol- ogy that impelled it. Augustine " was the first and ablest asserter of the principle which led to Albigen- sian crusades, Spanish armadas, Netherland's butch- eries, St. Bartholomew massacres, the accursed infa- mies of the Inquisition, the vile espionage, the hideous bale fires of Seville and Smithfield, the racks, the gibbets, the thumbscrews, the subterranean torture- chambers used by churchly torturers. " ^^ And George Sand well says that the Roman church com- mitted suicide the day she invented an implacable God and eternal damnation.^* J^Farrar's Lives of the Fathers. M" L' Eglise Romaine s'est porte le dernier coup: elle a consomme son suicide le jour on elle a fait Dieu implacable et la damnation eternelle. " Spiridion. XXI. UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. Historians and writers on the state of opinion in the early church have quite often erred in declaring that an ecclesiastical council pronounced the doctrine of universal salvation heretical, as early as the Sixth Century. Even so learned and accurate a writer as our own Dr. Ballou, has fallen into this error, though his editor, the Rev. A. St. John Chambre, D. D. , subsequently corrected the mistake in a brief note. A. D. 399 a council in Jerusalem condemned the Origenists, and all who held with them, that the Son was in any way subordinate to the Father. In 401 a council in Alexandria anathematized the writings of Origen, presumably for the same reason as above. Certainly his views of human destiny were not men- tioned. In 544-6, a condemnation of Origen's views of human salvation was attempted to be extorted from a small, local council in Constantinople, by the em- peror Justinian, but his edict was not obeyed by the council. He issued an edict to Mennas, patriarch of Constantinople, requiring him to assemble the bishops resident, or casiially present there, to condemn the doctrine of universal restoration. Fulminating ten anathemas, he especially urged Mennas to anathe- 282 ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 283 matize the doctrine "that wicked men and devils will at length be discharged from their torments, and re-established in their original state." ^ He wrote to Mennas requiring him to frame a canon in these words: ''Whoever says or thinks that the torments of the demons and of impious men are temporal, so that they will at length come to an end, or whoever holds to a restoration either of the demons or of the im- pious, let him be anathema." It is conceded that the half -heathen emperor held to the idea of endless misery, for he proceeds not only to defend, but to define the doc- trine. 2 He does not merely say, "We Justinian's Views, ^^x^^-^^ -^^ aionion kolasin;' iox that was just what Origen himself taught. Nor does he say "the word aionion has been misim- derstood; it denotes endless duration," as he would have said, had there been such a disagreement. But, writing in Greek, with all the words of that copious language from which to choose, he says : ' ' The holy church of Christ teaches an endless ceonian {atdcutetos aionios) life to the righteous, and endless {ateleutetos) punishment to the wicked. " If he supposed aionios denoted endless duration, he would not have added the stronger word to it. The fact that he qualified it by ateleutetos, demonstrated that as late as the sixth century the former word did not signify endless duration. Justinian need only to have consulted his con- iNicephorus, Eccle. Hist.,xvii:27. Hefele, iv: 220. SMurdock's Mosheim I, pp. MO-U; Gieseler. Hist, vi, p. 478. Also Ha- genbach and Neander. Cave's Historia Literaria. 284 UNIVERSALIS^! IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. temporary, Olympiodorus, who wrote on this very- subject, to vindicate his language. In his commen- tary on the Meteorologica of Aristotle, ^ he says: " Do not suppose that the soul is punished for end- less ages (direLpovs dtwvas) in Tartarus. Very prop- erly the soul is not punished to gratify the re- venge of the divinity, but for the sake of healing. But we say that the soul is punished for an ceonian period, calling its life, and its allotted period of pun- ishment, its (£011." It will be noticed that he not only denies endless punishment, and denies that the doctrine can be expressed by aionios, but declares that punishment is temporary and results in the sin- ner's improvement. Justinian not only concedes that aionios requires a word denoting endlessness to give it the sense of limitless duration, but he insists that the council shall frame a canon containing a word that shall indisputably express the doctrine of endless woe, while it shall condemn those who advo- cate universal salvation. Now though the emperor exerted his great influence to foist his heathen doc- trine into the Church canons, he failed ; for nothing resembling it appears in the canons enacted by the synodical council. The synod voted fifteen canons, not one of which condemns universal restoration. The first canon reads thus : "If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, Home Synod and the monstrous restitution which Canons. followsfrom it, lethim be anathema." This condemnation, it will be readily seen, is not of universal salvation, but of a «Vol. I, p. 282. Ideler's edition. ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 285 ''monstrous" restitution based on the soul's pre- existence. That this view is correct appears from the fourteenth anathema : "If anyone says that there will be a single unity of all rational beings, their substances and individ- ualities being taken away together with their bodies, and also that there will be an identity of cognition as also of persons, and that in the fabulous restitution they will only be naked even as they had existed in that prae-existence which they insanely introduced, let him be anathema. " The reader will at once perceive that these canons do not describe any genuine form of our faith, but only a distorted caricature which no doubt was thought to represent the doctrine they opposed. But not one of the nine anathemas ordered by Justinian was sanctioned by the council. They were laid before the Home Synod, but the Synod did not indorse them. Fifteen canons were passed, but the Synod refused to reprobate universal salvation. Justinian was unable to compel the bishops under his control to condemn the doctrine he hated, but which they must have favored. The theory here con- demned is not that of universal salvation, but the "fabulous pre- existence of souls, and the monstrous restitution that results from it. * The bishops, says Landon, declared that they adhered to the doctrines of Athanasius, Basil and the Gregories. The doctrine of Theodore on the Sonship of Christ was condemned, also the teachings of Theodoret. "Origen was not condemned."^ ^Mansi IX, p. 395; Hefele, iv: 336. SLandon, pp. 177-8. 286 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Even the influence of Justinian and his obse- quious bishop, and his disreputable queen, failed to force the measure through. The action of this local Synod has been incorrectly ascribed to the Fifth CEcumenical Council, nine years later, which has also been inacurately supposed to have con- The Council Re- , j tt • i- i -i. , , ^ r^ , deraned U niversalism, when it mere- fused to Condemn ' Universalism. ^Y reprehended some of the vagaries of "Origenism " — doctrines that even Origen himself never accepted, but that were falsely ascribed to him by ignorant or malicious op- ponents; doctrines that no more resemble universal restoration, as taught by the Alexandrine fathers, than they resemble Theosophy or Buddhism. So that, though the Home Synod was called by the Em- peror Justinian expressly to condemn Universalism, and was commanded by imperial edict to anathema- tize it, and though it formulated fifteen canons, it refused to obey the Emperor, and did not say one word against the doctrine the Emperor wished to an- athematize. The local council came to no decision. Justinian had just arbitrarily condemned the writ- ings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Theodoret, and a terrible controversy and division ensued, and Theodorus, of Cesarsea, declared that both himself and Pelagius, who had sought the condemnation of Origen, ought to be burnt alive for their conduct.^ In the Fifth General Council of 553 the name of Origen appears with others in the eleventh canon, but the best scholars think that the insertion of his name is a forgery. Whether so or not, there is not a word referring sLandcn, Manual of Councils, London, 1846, p. 174. ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 287 to his views of human destiny. His name only appears among the names of the heretics, such as " Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Eutyches, Ori- gen and other impious men, and all other heretics who are condemned and anathematized by the Cath- olic and Apostolical Church, etc."^ The Fifth Ecu- menical Council, which was held nine years later than the local, neither condemned Origen by name, nor anathematized his Universalism. The object of this council was to condemn certain Nestorian doctrines; and as Gregory of Nyssa, the most explicit of Uni- versalists, is referred to with honor by the council, and as the denial of endless punishment by Origen, and his advocacy of Universalism are not named, we cannot avoid the conviction that the council was con- trolled by those who held, or at least did not repudi- ate Universalism. Great confusion exists among the authorities on this subject. The local council has been confounded with the general. Hefele has disentangled the per- plexities. It was not even at that late day — three centuries after his death — the Universalism of Origen that caused the hatred of his opponents, but his opposition to the Episcopizing policy of the church, his insisting on the triple sense of the Word, etc., and the pecul- iar form of a mis-stated doctrine of the restoration.^ Now, let the reader remember that for more than ^ The canon reads: " Si quis non anathematizat Arium, Eunomium, Macedonium, ApoUinarium, Nestorium, Eutychen, Origenem cum impiia eoruni conscriptis, et alios omnes hsreticos, qui condemnati at anathemati- zati sunt a Catholica et Apostolica Ecclesia," etc. ^Dietelmaier declares that many of the church doctors agreed with Ori- GEN in advocating the salvability of t'.ie devil. 288 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. five hundred years, during- which Universalism had prevailed, not a single treatise against Universalism not •, • i .1 ■> •.. ^ , , , It IS known to have been written. Condemned for Five Centuries. And with the exception of Augus- tine, no opposition appears to have been aroused against it on the part of any eminent Christian writer. And not only so, but A. D. 381, at the first great Ecumenical Council of Constanti- nople, the intellectual leader was Gregory of Nyssa, who was only second to Origen as an advocate of universal restoration. Thus his followers, not only, but his opponents on other points, accepted the great truth of the Gospel. As Dr. Beecher pointedly ob- serves: " It is also a striking fact that while Origen lies under a load of odium as a heretic, Gregory of Nyssa, who taught the doctrine of the restoration of all things more fully even than Origen, has been canonized, and stands high on the roll of eminent saints, even in the orthodox Roman Catholic Church. " Beecher's conclusion is, "That the modern or- thodox views as to the doctrine of eternal punish- ment, as opposed to final restoration, were not fully developed and established till the middle of the Sixth Century, and that then they were not established by thorough argument, but by imperial authority. " But the fact is that they were not even then matured and established. The learned Professor Plum pt re says in the "Dic- tionary of Christian Biography": "We have no evidence that the belief in the dTroKaTao-Tao-is, which prevailed in the fourth and fifth centuries was ever definitely condemned by any council of the Church, and so far as Origen was named as coming under the ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 289 church's censure it was rather as if involved in the general sentence passed upon the leaders of Nestor- ianism, than singled out for special and characteris- tic errors. So the council of Constantinople, the so- called Fifth General Council, A. D. 553, condemns Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinarius, Nesto- rius, Eutyches and Origen in a lump, but does not specify the errors of the last-named, as though they differed in kind from theirs, and it is not till in the council of Constantinople, known as in Trullo (A. D. 696) that we find an anathema which specifies somewhat cloudily the guilt of Theodore of Mopsu- estia, and Origen, and Didymus, and Evagrius, as consists in their * inventing a mythology after the manner of the Greeks, and inventing changes and migrations for our souls and bodies, and impiously uttering drunken ravings as to the future life of the dead. ' It deserves to be noted that this ambiguous anathema pronounced by a council of no authority, under the weak and vicious Emperor Justinian IT, is the only approach to a condemnation of the eschat- ology of Origen which the annals of the church coun- cils present." ^ Significant Facts and Conclusions. Now let the reader recapitulate: (i) Origen dur- ing his life-time was never opposed for his Universal- ism; (2) after his death Methodius, about A. D. 300, attacked his views of the resurrection, creation and pre-existence, but said not a word against his Uni- versalism; (3) ten years later Pamphilus and Euse- Bius (A. D. 310) defended him against nine charges •Article Eschatology p. 194; also Spirits in Prison, p. 41. 290 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. that had been brought against his views, but his Uni- versalism was not among them; (4) in 330 Marcel- Lus of Ancyra, a Universalist, opposed him for his views of the Trinity, and (5) Eustathius for his teachings concerning the Witch of Endor, but lim- ited their arraignment to those items; (6) in 376 Epiphanius assailed his heresies, but he did not name Universalism as among them, and in 394 he condemned Origen's doctrine of the salvation of the Devil, but not of all mankind; (7) in 399 and 401, his views of Christ's death to save the Devil were at- tacked by Epiphanius, Jerome and Theophilus, and his advocacy of the subordination of Christ to God was condemned, but not his teachings of man's uni- versal salvation; and (8) it was not till 544 and again in 553 that his enemies formulated attacks on that doctrine, and made a cat's-paw of a half-heathen Em- peror, and even then, though the latter framed a canon for the synod, it was never adopted, and the council adjourned — owing, it must have been, to the Universalistic sentiment in it — without a word of condemnation of Origen's Universalism. With the exception of Augustine, the doctrine which had been constantly advocated, often by the most emi- nent, did not evoke a frown of opposition from any eminent scholar or saint. The character of these ancient synods and coun- cils is well described by Gregory Nazianzen, A. D. 382, in a letter to Procopius: "I The Ancient am determined to avoid every assem- Councils. bly of bishops. I have never seen a single instance in which a synod did any good. Strife and ambition dominate them to an ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 291 incredible degree. * * * From councils and syn- ods I will keep myself at a distance, for I have ex- perienced that most of them, to speak with modera- tion, are not worth much. * * * I will not sit in the seat of synods, while geese and cranes confused wrangle. Discord is there, and shameful things, hidden before, are gathered into one meeting place of rivals." Milman tells us: " Nowhere is Christ- ianity less attractive, and if we look to the ordinary tone and character of the proceedings, less authori- tative than in the Councils of the Church. It is in general a fierce collision of rival factions, neither of which will yield, each of which is solemnly pledged against conviction. Intrigue, injustice, violence, de- cisions on authority alone, and that the authority of a turbulent majority, decisions by wild acclamation rather than after sober enquiry, detract from the rev- erence, and impugn the- judgments, at least of the later councils. The close is almost invariably a ter- rible anathema, in which it is impossible not to dis- cern the tones of human hatred, of arrogant triumph, of rejoicing at the damnation imprecated against the humiliated adversary. " ^^ Scenes of strife and even murder in connection with ancient ecclesiastical coun- cils were not uncommon. There is no evidence whatever to show that it was not entirely allowable for five hundred years after Christ, to entertain the belief in universal salvation. Besides, the Council of Nice, A. D. 325, had, as an active member, Eusebius, Origen's apologist, a pro- nounced Universalist ; the Council of Constantinople, WLatin Christ. I, p. 227. 2Q2 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. A. D. 381, had as active members the two Gregor- lES, Nazianzus and Nyssa, the latter as outspoken a Universalist as Origen himself; the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431, declared that Gregory Nys- sen's writings were thegreat bulwark against heresy. The fact that the doctrine was and had been for cen- turies prevalent, if not the prevailing sentiment, demonstrates that it must have been regarded as a Christian doctrine by the members of these great councils, or they would have fulminated against it. How preposterous the idea that the prevailing sentiment of Christendom was adverse to the doc- trine of universal restoration even as late as the mid- dle of the Sixth Century, when these great, heresy- hunting bodies met and dispersed without condemn- ing it, even at the dictation of a tyrannical Emperor, who expressly demanded its condemnation. I. Neander and Gieseler say that the name of Origen was foisted into the declaration of the Fifth Council by forgery at a later date. 2. But if the condemnation was actually adopted it was of ' ' Ori- genism, " which was synonymous with other opinions. 3. " Origenism " could not have meant Universal- ism, for several of the leaders of the council that condemned Origenism held to universal restitution. 4. Besides, the council eulogistically referred to the Gregories (Nazianzen and Nyssen) who were Uni- versalists as explicit as was Origen. Manifestly, if the Council had meant Universalism by " Origenism, " it woiild not have condemned as a deadly heresy in Origen what Gregory of Nyssa advocated, and an- athematized the one, and glorified the other. Justinian not only commanded the council to ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 293 suppress Universalism, but he arbitrarily closed the schools in Athens, Alexandria and An- Justinian's Suppres- tioch.and drove out of the great church sion of the Truth, centers that theological science that had been its glory. He had "brought the whole empire under his sway and he wished in like manner to settle finally the law and the dogmat- ics of the empire." To accomplish this evil work he found an aid in Rome, in a " characterless Pope (Vigilius) who, in gratifying the emperor covered himself with disgrace, and jeopardized his position in the Occident." But he succeeded in inaugurating measures that extinguished the broad faith of the greatest fathers of the church. "Henceforth," says Harnack, "there was no longer a theological sci- ence going back to first principles." ^^ The historians inform us that Justinian the great opponent of Universalism was positive, irrita- ble, apt to change his views, and accessible to the flatteries and influences of those who surrounded him, yet withal, very opinionated in insisting upon any view he happened at the time to hold, and pre- pared to enforce compliance by the free employment of his despotic power, " a "temporal pope." ^2 The corrupt Bishop Theophilus, the vile Eudoxia and the equally disreputable, though beautiful, crafty and unscrupulous Theodora, exercised a malign influence on Justinian, the Emperor, and, thus was dictated the action of the council described above. Milman declares: "The Emperor Justinian "Outlines Hist. Dog., pp. 204, 8, 320, 323. i^Sozomen, Eccl. His^.; Gibbon, Decline and Fall. 294 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. unites in himself the most opposite vices, — insatiable rapacity and lavish prodigality, in- Justinian and tense pride and contemptible weak- His Age. ness, unmeasured ambition and das- tardly cowardice. He is the uxorious slave of his Empress, whom, after she had minis- tered to the licentious pleasures of the populace as a courtesan and as an actress in the most immodest ex- hibitions, in defiance of decency, of honor, of the re- monstrances of his friends, and of religion, he had made the partner of his throne. In the Christian Emperor seemed to meet the crimes of those who won or secured their empire by the assasination of all whom they feared, the passion for public diver- sions without the accomplishments of Nero, the brute strength of Commodus, or the dotage of Claud- ius. " And he was the champion of endless punish- ment in the Sixth Century I Justinian is described as an ascetic, a scholastic, and a pedant, "neither beloved in his life, nor regretted at his death. " Theageof Justinian, says Leg ky, that condemned Origen, is conceded to have been the vilest of the Christian centuries. The doctrine of a hell of literal fire and endless duration had begun to be an engine of tyranny in the hands of an unscrupulous priest- hood, and a tyrannical emperor, and moral degrada- tion had kept pace with the theological declination. " The universal verdict of history is that it consti- tutes, without a single exception, the most thor- oughly base and despicable form that civilization has yet assumed. " Contrasted with the age of Origen it was as night to day. And the persons who were ATTEMPTS TO SUPPRESS UNIVERSALISM. 295 most active and prominent in the condemnation of the great Alexandrian were fit implements for the task. On this point the language of Farrar in " Mercy and Judgment " is accurate: *' Every fresh study of the original authorities only leaves on my mind a deeper impression that even in the Fifth Cen- tury Universalism as regards mankind was regarded as a perfectly tenable opinion." Thus the record of the times shows, and the testi- mony of the scholars who have made the subject a careful study concedes, that though The Divine Light there were sporadic assaults on the Eclipsed. doctrine of imiversal restitution in the fourth and fifth centuries; they were not successful in placing the ban of a single council upon it; even to the middle of the Sixth Cen- tury. So far as history shows the sublime fact which the great Alexandrians made prominent— the " One divine event to which the whole creation moves," had never been stigmatized by any considerable por- tion of the Christian church for at least its first half a millenium of years. The subsequent history of Christianity shows but too plainly that the continued influence of Roman law and Pagan theology as incarnated in the mighty brain of Augustine, came to dominate the Christian world, and at length almost obliterate the faith once delivered to the saints— the faith that exerted so vast an influence in the church's earliest and best centuries— and spread thepall of darkness over Chris- tendom, so that the light of the central fact of the Gospel was scarcely seen for sad and cruel cen- turies. XXII. THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. The submergence of Christian Universalism in the dark waters of Augustinian Christo- paganism, after having been the prevailing theology of Christen- dom for centuries, is one of the strange phenomena in the history of religious thought. This volume ex- plains, in part, this obscure phenomenon. History testifies that at the close of what Hagenbach calls the second period, from A. D. 254 to A. D. 730, the opinion in favor of endless punishment had become " more general. " Only a few belonging to the " Or- igenist humanity * * * still dared to express a glimmer of hope in favor of the damned * * * the doctrine of the restitution of all things shared the fate of Origenism, and made its appearance in after ages only in connection with other heretical notions." KiNGSLEY attributes the decadence and deteriora- tion of the Alexandrine School and its doctrines and methods, to the abandonment of its Disappearance of intense activity, to the relinquish- the Truth. ment of the grand enthusiasm for humanity that characterized Clem- ent, Origen and their co-workers. He says: " Hav- ing no more Heathens to fight, they began fighting each other; * * * they became dogmatists * * * they lost the knowledge of God, of righteous- ness, and love, and peace. That Divine Logos, and 296 THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. 297 theology as a whole receded farther and farther aloft into abysmal heights, as it became a mere dreary system of dead scientific terms, having no practical bearing on their hearts and lives. " In a word, their abandonment of the principles of Clement and his school, left the field open to the more practical, di- rect and methodical, though degraded and corrupt theories of Augustine and his associates. This pro- cess continued till toward the middle of the Seventh Century, when, as Kingsley observes: "In the year 640, the Alexandrians who were tearing each other in pieces about some Jacobite and Melchite con- troversy, to me incomprehensible * * * in the midst of these Jacobite and Melchite controversies and riots, appeared before the city the armies of cer- tain wild and unlettered Arab tribes. A short and fruitless struggle followed ; and strange to say, a few months swept away from the face of the earth, not only the wealth, the commerce, the castles, and the liberty, but the philosophy and the Christianity of Alexandria; crushed to powder, by one fearful blow, all that had been built up by Alexander and the Ptolemies, by Clement and the philosophers, and made void, to all appearance, nine hundred years of human toil. The people, having no real hold on their hereditary creed, accepted, by tens of thousands, that of the Mussulman invaders. The Christian remnant became tributaries, and Alexandria dwin- dled from that time forth into a petty seaport town," ^ The " Universalist Quarterly, " January, 1878, at- tributes the decline and disappearance of Universal- lAlexandria and her Schools.- 298 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. ism to an entire absence of polemic on the part of its advocates ; and to regarding the doctrine as eso- teric, instead of for all ; in other words, the undemo- cratic methods of those who accepted it. These fac- tors, no doubt, contributed, but they are not alone sufBcient to account for its disappearance. ^ It is not a part of the plan of this work to follow its fate after its almost entire disappearance for cen- turies. The combined efforts of Au- Christianity's gustine and his coadjutors and suc- Eclipse. cessors, of popes and emperors, of Paganism and Latin secularism, of ignorant half-converted hordes of heathen barbarians, and of a hierarchy that could not employ it in its ambitious schemes, at length crystallized into the psuedo- Christianity that reigned like a nightmare over Christendom, from the Seventh to the Fif- teenth Century. Ignorance, cruelty, oppression, were well-nigh imiversal, and the condition of man- kind reflected the views held by the church, of the character of God and of man, of time and of eternity, of heaven and of hell. Perhaps the darkest hour of the night of ages was just before the dawn of the Reformation. The prevalent Christian thought was represented in literature and art, and its best expo- nents of the sentiment of a thousand years are the works of the great artist, Michael Angelo, and of the equally great poet, Dante. They agree inspirit, and black and white, darkness and light, truth and falsehood are not more antipodal than is the theology of Dante and Angelo contrasted with the cheerful SRev. S. S. Hebberd. THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. 299 simplicity, the divine purity of the primitive Chris- tian faith. ' ' That was a dark night that fell upon Christianity when its thought became Latinized. When Christianity came to be interpreted by the prosaic, unspiritual legal mind of Rome, the Gos- pel went into a fearful eclipse. When the Greek thought of Christ gave way to the Latin a night came upon the Christian world that has extended to the present day. Then were born all those half- views, distorted views, and false views of Chris- tian doctrine and Christian life that have perverted the Gospel, puzzled the human intellect and grieved the human heart through all the long centuries from that day to this." ^ Two great men of genius of the first order, the marvelous artist, Michael Angelo, and the equally great poet, Dante, on canvas and The Caricatures of in verse, gathered at its culmination Dante and Angelo. the nightmare of unbelief that had darkened the preceding centuries. In Dante are " Christian heroes appearing in heath- enish aspect, and heathenish poets and thinkers half- warmed by the light of Christianity, " a happy char- acterization of the hybrid product of truth and error that Dante describes, and that passed for Christian- ity during the Sixteenth Century, and with modifi- cations, has since prevailed. The "Last Judgment " of Michael Angelo harmonizes with the thought of the great poet. It is a Pagan reminiscence — a hid- eous heathen dream. The meek and lowly Man of Nazareth who would not break the bruised reed was 'Rev. S. Crane, D. D., in The Universalist. 300 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. travestied by a monstrous caricature. "An un- clothed, broad-shouldered hero, with arms upraised that could strike down a Hercules, distributing bless- ings and curses, his hair fluttering like flames which the storm blows back, and his angry countenance looking down on the condemned with frightful eyes, as if he wished to hasten forward the destruction in which his word has plunged them * * * the whole figure recalls the words of Dante, in which he calls Christ ' Sommo Glove,' — the most-high Jupiter. This he is here; not the suffering Son of Man, gen- tle as the moon, silent rather than speaking, with the foreboding of his fate written in his sad eyes. Yet, if a Last Judgment were to be painted, with everlasting condemnation, and Christ as the judge who pronounces it, how could he appear otherwise than in such terribleness? * * * Such is Michael Angelo's Last Judgment. While we cherish a feel- ing that at that day, whenever it occurs, the love of God will remit all sins as earthly error, the Roman sees alone anger and revenge, as proceeding from the Supreme Being, when he comes in contact with humanity for the last time. For the sinner is for- ever from henceforth to be condemned. It is an echo of the old idea, often enough recurring in the Old Testament, that the Divine Being is an angry and fearful power, which must be appeased, instead of the Source of good alone, abolishing at last all evil as an influence that has beguiled mankind. * * * As we look, however, at the Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, it is no longer a similitude to us, but a monument of the imaginative spirit of a past age and of a strange people, whose ideas are no THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. 301 longer ours. Dante created a new world for the Romanic nations by remodeling- the forms of heathen antiquity for his Christian mythology. " * Materialis- tic, gross, was the Christianity that ruled and op- pressed mankind for nearly a thousand years, and it is reflected in the pages of Dante, and on the canvas of Angelo, and it reverberates with ever decreasing echoes — thank God ! — in the subse- quent creeds of Christendom. Almost the only gleam of light, that relieved while it intensified the blackness of the darkness of Christendom during those dreadful centuries was the worship of Mary. The resurrection of Universalism after an eclipse of a millenium of years is as remarkable as was its strange disappearance. No better Re-birth of illustration can be found than the Universalism. history of our faith gives, of the te- nacity of life, the immortality, of truth. It calls to mind the language of the German sage, Schopenhauer: "Doubtless error can play its part, like owls in the night. But we should sooner expect the owls to cause the terrified sun to retire to the East, than to see the truth, once proclaimed, to be so repressed as that ancient error might recover its lost ground, and re-establish itself there in peace. " To truth belong "God's eternal years," and her emergence after so long a disappearance is an illus- tration of her immortal vitality. * ' Crushed to earth" she has "risen again," and is fast being accepted by a regenerated Christendom. With the invention of printing, the dawn of light •♦Grimm's Michael Angelo. 302 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. in the Reformation,'' and the increase of intelligence, our distinctive form of faith has not The Dawn of only grown and extended, but its Truth. leavening power has modified the creeds of Christendom, softening all harsh theories, and unfolding a "rose of dawn" in all Christian lands. Though, like its author and re- vealer, it seemed to die, it was, like him, to come forth to a new and glorious resurrection, for the views held by the great saints and scholars in the first cen- turies of Christianity were substantially those that are taught by the Universalist Church for the cur- rent century, so far as they include the character of God, the nature and final destiny of mankind, the resurrection, the judgment, the purpose and end of punishment, and other cognate themes. On these subjects the great Church fathers stand as repre- sentatives of the Universalisra of to-day, so that the progress of Christian ideas that the end of the pres- ent century is witnessing, is not, as many think, towards something new, but is towards the position of the early Christians seventeen hundred years ago. It is a re-birth, a restoration of Christianity to its primitive purity. As Max Muller has recently written: "If we want to be true and honest Chris- tians, we must go back to those earliest ante-Nicene authorities, the true fathers of the church."^ This is being done by Christians in all branches of the church. The Bible, which the hands of ignorance '" In Germany alone, in six years from the promulgation of the ninety- five theses at Wittenberg, the number of annual publications increased twelvefold." Rev. W. W. Ramsay, Methodism and Literature, p. 232. *Paper read at the World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago, Septem- ber, 1893. THE ECLIPSE OF UNIVERSALISM. 303 has overwritten into a liideous palimpsest, is being read with something of its divine meaning, and as increasing light pours upon the sacred page, more and more men are learning to spell its blessed mes- sages correctly, as they were spoken or written at the beginning — as theante-Nicene fathers read them — in harmony with man's intellectual, moral and af- fectional nature, and with the character and attri- butes of the Universal Father. XXIII. SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. A few of the many points established in the foregoing pages may here be named: (i) During the First Century the primitive Chris- tians did not dwell on matters of eschatology, but devoted their attention to apologetics; they were chiefly anxious to establish the fact of Christ's ad- vent, and of its blessings to the world. Possibly the question of destiny was an open one, till Pa- ganism and Judaism introduced erroneous ideas, when the New Testament doctrine of the apokatas- tasis was asserted, and universal restoration became the accepted belief, as stated later by Clement and Origen, a. D. 180-230. (2) The Catacombs give us the views of the unlearned, as Clement and Origen stato the doctrine of scholars and teachers. Not a syllable is found hinting at the horrors of Augustinianism, but the in- scription on every monument harmonizes with the Universalism of the early fathers. (3) Clement declares that all punishment, how- ever severe, is purificatory; that even the "tor- ments of the damned " are curative. Origen ex- plains even GcJienna as signifying limited and cura- tive pimishment, and both, as all the other ancient Universalists, declare that "everlasting" {aionion) punishment, is consonant with imiversal salvation. 304 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 305 So that it is no proof that other primitive Chris- tians who are less explicit as to the final result, taught endless punishment when they employ the same terms. (4) Like our Lord and his Apostles, the primi- tive Christians avoided the words with which the Pa- gans and Jews defined endless punishment aidios or adialeipton timoria (endless torment), a doctrine the latter believed, and knew how to describe; but they, the early Christians, called punishment, as did our Lord, kolasis aionios^ discipline, chastisement, of indefinite, limited duration. (5) The early Christians taught that Christ preached the Gospel to the dead, and for that pur- pose descended into Hades. Many held that he re- leased all who were in ward. This shows that repent- ance beyond the grave, perpetual probation, was then accepted, which precludes the modern error that the soul's destiny is decided at death. (6) Prayers for the dead were universal in the early church, which would be absurd, if their condi- tion is unalterably fixed at the grave. (7) The idea that false threats were necessary to keep the common people in check, and that the truth might be held esoterically, prevailed among the earlier Christians, so that there can be no doubt that many who seem to teach endless punishment, really held the broader views, as we know the most did, and preached terrors pedagogically. (8) The first comparatively complete systematic statement of Christian doctrine ever given to the world was by Clement of Alexandria, A. D. 180, and universal salvation was one of the tenets. 3o6 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. ( 9 ) The first complete presentation of Christian- ity as a system was by Origen (A. D. 220) and uni- versal salvation was explicitly contained in it. (10) Universal salvation was the prevailing doctrine in Christendom as long as Greek, the lan- guage of the New Testament, was the language of Christendom. (11) Universalism was generally believed in the best centuries, the first three, when Christians were most remarkable for simplicity, goodness and mis- sionary zeal. (12) Universalism was least known when Greek, the language of the New Testament was least known, and when Latin was the language of the Church in its darkest, most ignorant, and corrupt ages. (13) Not a writer among those who describe the heresies of the first three hundred years intimates that Universalism was then a heresy, though it was believed by many, if not by a majority, and certainly by the greatest of the fathers. (14) Not a single creed for five hundred years expresses any idea contrary to universal restoration, or in favor of endless punishment. (15) With the exception of the arguments of Augustine (A. D. 420), there is not an argument known to have been framed against Universalism for at least four hundred years after Christ, by any of the ancient fathers. (16) While the councils that assembled in va- rious parts of Christendom, anathematized every kind of doctrine supposed to be heretical, no oecumen- ical council, for more than five hundred years, con- demned Universalism, though it had been advo- SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 307 cated in every century by the principal scholars and most revered saints. (17) As late as A. D. 400, Jerome says "most people" {pleriqiie). and Augustine "very many" {qiiam phirimi), believed in Universalism, notwith- standing that the tremendous influence of Augus- tine, and the mighty power of the semi-pagan secu- lar arm were arrayed against it. (18) The principal ancient Universalists were Christian born and reared, and were among the most scholarly and saintly of all the ancient saints. (19) The most celebrated of the earlier advo- cates of endless punishment were heathen born, and led corrupt lives in their youth. Tertullian one of the first, and Augustine, the greatest of them, confess to having been among the vilest. (20) The first advocates of endless punishment, MiNUCius Felix, Tertullian and Augustine, were Latins, ignorant of Greek, and less competent to in- terpret the meaning of Greek Scriptures than were the Greek scholars. (21) The first advocates of Universalism, after the Apostles, were Greeks, in whose mother-tongue the New Testament was written. They found their Universalism in the Greek Bible. Who should be correct, they or the Latins? (22) The Greek Fathers announced the great truth of universal restoration in an age of darkness, sin and corruption. There was nothing to suggest it to them in the world's literature or religion. It was wholly contrary to everything around them. Where else could they have found it, but where they say they did, in the Gospel? 3o8 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. (23) All ecclesiastical historians and the best Bib- lical critics and scholars agree to the prevalence of Universalism in the earlier centuries. (24) From the days of Clement of Alexandria to those of Gregory of Nyssa and Theodore of Mop- suestia (A. D. 180-428), the great theologians and teachers, almost without exception, were Universal- ists. No equal number in the same centuries were comparable to them for learning and goodness. (25) The first theological school in Christendom, that in Alexandria, taught Un'versalism for more than two hundred years. (26) In all Christendom, from A. D. 170 to 430, there were six Christian schools. Of these four, the only strictly theological schools, taught Universalism, and but one endless punishment. (27) The three earliest Gnostic sects, the Basil- iDiANS, the Carpocratians and the Valentinians (A. D. 1 1 7- 132) are condemned by Christian writers, and their heresies pointed out, but though they taught Universalism, that doctrine is never con- demned by those who oppose them. Irenaeus con- demned the errors of the Carpocratians, but does not reprehend their Universalism, though he ascribes the doctrine to them. (28) The first defense of Christianity against In- fidelity (Origen against Celsus) puts the defense on Universalistic grounds. Celsus charged the Chris- tians' God with cruelty, because he punished with fire. Origen replied that God's fire is curative; that he is a " Consuming Fire," because he consumes sin and not the sinner. (29) Origen, the chief representative of Univer- SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 309 salism in the ancient centuries, was bitterly opposed and condemned for various heresies by ignorant and cruel fanatics, He was accused of opposing- Episco- pacy, believing in pre-existence, etc.. but never was condemned for his Universalism. The very council that anathematized '♦ Origenism" eulogized Gregory of Nyssa, who was as explicitly a Universalist as was Origen. Lists of his errors are given by Me- thodius, Pamphilus and Eusebius, Marcellus, Eu- STATHius and Jerome, but Universalism is not named by one of his opponents. Fancy a list of Ballou's errors and his Universalism omitted; Hippolytus (A. D. 320) names thirty-two known heresies, but Universalism is not mentioned as among them. Epiphanius, "the hammer of heretics," describes eighty heresies, but he does not mention universal salvation, though Gregory of Nyssa, an outspoken Universalist, was, at the time he wrote, the most con- spicuous figure in Christendom (30) Justinian, a half-pagan emperor, who at- tempted to have Universalism olBcially condemned, lived in the most corrupt epoch of the Christian cen- turies. He closed the theological schools, and de- manded the condemnation of Universalism bylaw; but the doctrine was so prevalent m the church that the council refused to obey his edict to suppress it. Lecky says the age of Justinian was " the worst form civilization has assumed. " (31) The first clear and definite statement of hu- man destiny by any Christian writer after the days of the Apostles, includes universal restoration, and that doctrine was advocated by most of the greatest 310 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. and best of the Christian Fathers for the first five hundred years of the Christian Era. In one word, a careful study of the early history of the Christian religion, will show that the doctrine of universal restoration was least prevalent in the darkest, and prevailed most in the most enlightened, of the earliest centuries — that it was the prevailing doctrine in the Primitive Christian Church. SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. Abulpharagius, 106. "Ad Autolycum," Theophilus, 191. Adialeipton, 36-38, 305. Adrian, Emperor, 87. Ad avit, Jerome, 266. Adult., Early Christianity, 49. "Adv. Arium," 219. "Adv. Man.," Serapion, 218. Ad virginem, 234. "JEneid," Virgil's, 46. "Against Celsus," Origan, 22, 56, 57, 134, 140, 148, 150-154, 159, 162. "Against Priscillianists and Orig" 275. Against Heresies, 83, 210. Age of Ages, 148. Agrippa, 74. Aidios, 36, 37, 39, 82, 115, 305. Aion-Aionios," Hanson's, 36,40, 150. Aionios, 8, 9, 36. 38, 39, 75, 79, 81, 82, 87, 134, 14S-150, 157, 166, 229, 236. 241, 245, 264, 274, 283, 284, 304. 305. Allen, "Cont. Christ. Thought," 4, 19, 20, 94, 122, 127, 272, 276. Allen,"First Three Periods, "42, 54. "Alethes logos," Celsus, 143. Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, 119, 172. Alexander the VI, 52. Alexandria, 21, 104, 109, 297. "Alexandria, and her Schools," Kingsley, 105, 108. Alexandrians, 55. Alexandrine Christianity, Pure, 25, 110. Alexandrine Fathers, 105. Alei-andrine Library, 105. Alexandrine Schools, 103-105,297. Alexandrinus, Clemens, 111-128. Alford,64. Allin, "Universalism Asserted," 2, 25, 26, 56, 61, 72, 224, 225, 243 252, 265. ■'.Embassador, Christian," 252. Ambrose of Alexandria, 172, 195, Ambrose of Milan, 245-248, "Epist" lib. i, 246, "De fide," 246. Ambrosiaster, 248. Amru, 106. Anastasis, 167, 229, 252, 288. Anaxagoras, 103. Ancellus of Marcyra, 244. Ancient Law, Maine, 175. "Ancient Hist. Universalism," 1, 72, 81, 167, 210, 230, 252, 255, 282, 309. Ancient Univ. Schools, 173. Ancient Universalists, Saintly, 307. Angelo, Michael, 298-301. Angelo, M., Last Judgment, 299. A Notable Family, 226-243. Antapodotikos, 239. Ante-Nicene Christ. Library, 158. Ante-Nicene Age, 261. Ante-Nicene Christianity, 302-308. Anthony of Egypt, 20. Aperanto, 81. Aphthartos, 190, Apokatastasis, 123, 140, 229, 237, 288, 304. "ApoL," Justin, 8, 80. "ApoL," Tertullian, 193. Apollodoius, 46. "Apol. Pamph., pro Origine," 154. "Apologia VitaSua," Newman, 55. Apostles' Creed, 7, 8. 311 312 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Apostles' Immediate Successors, 70. "Apostles', Teaching of Twelve," 5. Arbela, Georgius, 256. Archelaus, 196. Aristotle, 41, 50. 113, 284. Arnobius, 22. Arnold, Matthew, 18, 28, 54. Asbestos, 79. 204. Asceticism of Oriental Origin, 20. Assemani, "Bib. Orient," 65, 215, 217,256,258. Ateleutetos, 39, 283. Athanasias, 6, 57, 58, 62. Athanasius, 5, 166, 178, 205, 211,232. Athanatos, 37.38, M, 190. Athenagoras, 89, 97. Athenodore, 172, 200. Augustine, 2, 19, 21, 45, 62, 67, 101, 179, 247, 250, 262, 271-281, 295, 306. 307. Augfustine and Origen Contrasted, 272. Autolycus, 89. Bacon, 50. Badger's "Nestorians," 222. Ballou, H., 2d., Anc. Hist..l, 72, 81, 167, 210. 230, 252, 255, 282, 309. Baring-Gould. 93. Barnabas, Epistle to, 5, 45, 74. Barsudaili, Stephen, 258. Bartholomew, 104. Basil the Great, 19, 56-58, 166, 211, 226, 227, 231-235. Basilides, 90. Basilidians, 90. 308, Bassora, Salomo, of, 256. Baur, "First Three Centuries," 87, 91, 93, 125. Bayle, "Dictionary," 138. Beausobre, 197. Beecher, Edward, "Hist. Doc. Put. Ret., 2, 4, 8, 10, 38, 39, 57, 173, 184, 203, 218, 223, 224, 270, 888. "Bib. Crit.," Davidson's, 145. "Bib.. Max." Patrum. 76. Bigg. Denies Origen's Universal- ism, 69. Bible of Amiens. Ruskin, 83. Bigg, "Christian Platonists," 4, 55, 57. 69, 91, 123. 149, 165, 173, 280. Bigg, Neo-Platonism, 44, 60, 139, 143. Bingham, "History," 103. "Blessed Macrina," 226. "Blessing of Death," 247. Blunt, 4, 165. Blunt, Vestiges, 49. Boniface, Pope, 62. Bostra, Titus of, 244, 245. British "Quarterly Review," 166. Brown, Francis, 6. Brucker, "Hist. Crit. Philos.," 112. Bryennios Philotheos, 5. Bunsen, Hippolytus, 4, 8, 77, 83. 86, 90, 136, 167-182. Burnett, De Statu Mort., 59. Butler, Lives of Saints, 4, 103, 226, 230. Caiaphas, 268. Canons, Condemnatory, Origen 283-285. Canons, New Testament, 88. "Carmina," Greg., Naz., 63. Carpocrates, 74. Carpocratians,91, 308. Cassian, John, 250-252. "Causes of Corruption," Vaughan, 67, "Catacombs," Northcote's, 28. Casaubon's, "Vestiges," 49. "Catacombs, Testimony of," 27, 29, 304. "Catacombs, de Rossi," 28, 30. "Catacombs, of Rome," Kip's, 28. "Catacombs, of Rome," Mait- land's. 28, Catholic Hell, Heathen, 46. Catholic Opinion ot Origen, 184. Catholic World, 184. Cave, Lives of Fathers, 4, 18, 231, 233, 234, 247. Cave, Curious Error of, 233. 238. Cave, Historia Literaria, 283. Cave, Prim. Christianity, 4. 23. 143. Celsus, 14, 141, 145. SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 313 Celsus. Against, 22, 56, 57, 74, 134, 140, 148, 150-154, 159. 162. Chambre, A. St. J., 1, 72, 282. "Christian Biog., Diet, of," 3, 90, 157,209.217,228. •'Christian Doct. of Prayer," Lee, 67. Christian History, Neander, 4, 8, 10, 48, 55, 57. 72, 91, 103, 199, 208. 215. Christian History. First Three Cent., Baur. 87, 91,93,125. Christian History, First Three Centuries, Lamson, 8, 10, 127. Christian History, Text Book, Hagenbach, 6. Christian History, Three Great Periods, Allen, 54. Christian Institutions, Stanley, 35. Christian Platonists of Alexan- dria, Bigg, 123, 181. Christ and Mankind, 4, 18, 121, 124, 132, 135, 141, 169. Christianity Defended, 308. Christianity, (Rapid Growth of, 21. Christianity, Cheerful, 17-25. Christianity Latinized, 299. Christ Preach, in Hades. 53, 61, 305. Chrysologus, Peter, 258. Chrysostom, 2, 5, 23, 25, 32, 48, 57, 58, 212, 234, 251, 252, 268, 270. Chrysostom, Synopsis, 5. Church, First Three Centuries, Baur, 87, 91, 93, 125. Church, First Three Centuries, Lamson, 8, 10, 127. "Circumlocution," 56, 118. City of God, Augustine. Clement and Origen, "not Uni- versalists," 69. Clement ot Alexandria, 5, 7, 16, 19, 25, 45, 53, 57, 63, 66. 101, 103, 111, 128, 296, 305. Clementine Homilies, 87. Clement ot Rome, 5, 71, 73. Commentary, Mosheim, 4, 8, 23, 47, 49, 57, 140. 155, 181, 283. Condemnatioo of Origenlsm, 282- 295. Cone, Dr. Orello. 252. "Confessions," Augustine, 247, 271, 274. "Conflict of Christianity," Uhl- horn, 17. "Conquer. Cross," Haweis. 18, 28. Constans. Emp., 12, 258. Constantine, Emp., 18, 21, 137, 260. Constantius. 178. Continuity of Christian Thought, Allen, 4, 19, 20, 94, 122, 127, 272, 276. Contra Celsum, 140. Christianity, a Greek Religion. 24. Contra litteras Fetiliani. 274. Conybeare's Paul, 48. Coquerel, Ath., "First Hist. Trans." 9, 25, 35, 48. Corruptions of Christianity, Priest- ley, 1,19, 48. Corruptions of Christianity, Vaughan, 49, 67. Corruptions of Early Christianity, 52, 53. Councils, Early Statements of, 15. Council, Fifth General, 211. Council, never condemned Univer- salism, 307. Council, Chalcedon, 15. Council. Constantinople. 15, 242. 282. Councils. Ecclesiastical, character of. 290. Council, Home Synod, 286. Council, Nice, 16. Council, Rimini, 12. Council, Jerusalem, 282. Councils, Ancient, 15, 282, 290. Crane, Stephen, D. D., 299. "Credibility of Gospel History." Lardner,4, 168, 182. Creed, Ancient forms of, 12. Creed, Apostles', 7, 8. Creed, Earliest, 5, 9. Creed, Earliest, in Greek, 16. Creed, Nicene, 11. Crombie, Alex.. Trans., 158, 178. Cudworth, "Intel. Philos.." 112. Cutts's "Turning Points," 27. 314 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Cyprian, 7. Cyril of Alexandria, "Pasch.," etc., 63, 255. Daille, 126. 239. Dale, Dr. A. \V., 158. Damnation, Infant, 276. Dante, 30, 298, 299, 302. Darkness at Advent, 17. Davidson, Bib. Grit., 145. Dead, Condition not Final, 66. Dead, Gospel Preached to, 53, 61. Deane, W, J., "Pseudepigrapha," 98-100. Dean Mansell's "Gnostic Here- sies," 58, 91, 93. "De Asceticis," 235. Decadence, Christian, 278. "De Civitate Dei," 273, 276, 277. "Decline and Fall," Gibbon, 21, 47,211,222. "DeEccl. Theol., Migne, 62,82," 111, 204, 205, 213, 226, 245, 249, 263, 274. Demetrius, 130-137, 167, 168. Demosthenes, 234. •'De passione et cruce Dom.," 62. "De Prsemiis," 38. De Pressense, 4, 18, 121, 124, 132, 135, 141, 169, 181. "De Principiis," Origen, 57, 140, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 157, 163, 160, 167, 187, 255. De Rossi, "Catacombs," 28, 30. Des Cartes, 50. De Spectaculis, Tertullian, 194. De Spiritu Sanctu, 206. Deterioration of Christian Thought, 260,281. De Trin., Hilary, 250. De Trinitate, Augustine, 274. De Usu Pat., 239. De vita funct, Statu, 40. Dialogue between Gregory and Macrina, 226. 8ta TTupos KaOapcriv, 120. Dlatessaron, Tatian, 74. "Dictionary Christ. Biog.," 8, 90, 157, 209, 217, 228, 256, 262, 264, 278,2 8. Dictionary, Historical, Bayle, 157. Didymus. 62, 166, 206, 263. AIAAXH T«N AfiAEKA AnOSTOAriN, 5. Dies Irae, 98. Dietelraaier, 4, 61, 287. Dlodore of Tarsus. 240, 251,255- 257, 268, 270. DiodorusSiculus, 46. Diognetus, Epistle to, 82. Dlonysiul, 200. Dionysius, Halicarnassus, 47. "Divine Leg.," Warburton, 46. "Doct. and Person of Christ,'' Dorner, 4, 219, 220. "Doct. Hist, of Christ." Shedd, 20. 197. "Doct. Future Retribution," Beecher,2, 4, 8,10, 38, 39, 57, 173, 184, 203, 218, 223, 224, 270, 288. Doct., Mitigation, 53-:54. Doct., Reserve. 55, 11^305. Doederlein, 79, 223, 22* Dollinger, 38. Domitian, 171-255. Dornegan, 39. Dorner, Doct. Per. of Christ, i, 219-220, Doucln, 169. Draper, "Int. Devel. of Europe," 222. Earliest Creeds, 5. Earliest Creed, in Greek, 16. "Early Days of Christ.," Farrar,64. Early Christianity, Adult., 49. Early Christianity, Cheerful, 17. Early Christ. History, Merivale,50. Early Christians, character of, 224, 225. Early Years of Christian Church, De Pressense, 18. Eastern Ch., Stanley, 108, 176, 201. Early Funeral Emblems, 29. Early Days, Farrar, 64. Ebedjesu of Sabra, 256. SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 315 Eclipse of Universalism, 296-303. Eclipse of Christianity, 298. Edinburgh Review, 49, 102. Eirgnios. 36, 37, 39. Eis tous aionas, 7, 75. Emblems in Catacombs, 29. Enchiridion, Augustine, 179, 273. Encyclopoedia Britannica, 185. Endless Punishment of Heathen Origin, 36. Endless Punishment, Origin of Doctrine, 36, 42. Enfield. "Hist. Philos.," 47, 48. Enoch, Book of, 44. Epicureanism, 42. Epiphanius, 45, 137, 170, 176, 178, 309, 210, 265, 290, 309. Epitaphs in Catacombs, 30. Erasmus, 234. Essays, Stanley's, 243. Esoteric Doctrines Held, 57. Eternal Hope, Farrar, 2, 40, 81. Eulogists of Origen, 181, 187. Eulogies of Anc, Universalists' 224. 225. Eunomius. 287. Eusebius, Hist. EccL, 5, 7, 19, 45, 62, 129, 154, 166, 170, 195, 200, 203, 252, 289, 291, 309. Eustathius, Dem., 170. 290, 309. Evagrius Ponticus, 254, 257. "Exhortation to Heathen," Clem, Alex., 119. "Expositor, Universalist," 47. Ezra. 45. Fabian, Pope, 172. Facts to be Remembered, 289. Facundus, 255. Family, A Notable, 226-243. Farrar, F. W.— See "Early Days," "Eternal Hope," "Mercy and Judgment," and "Lives of Fathers," 2, 4. 33, 34, 76, 108. 126, 150. 171, 212, 241, 247, 281, 295. Fatherhood, God's, 23. Fathers, Lives of, Cave, 4, 18. Fathers, Lives of, Farrar, 81. Fichte, 50. "Filius, Subjecietur," 236. Fire, Chastening, 212. Fire, Cleansing, 212. Fire, Consuming, 150. Fire, symbolizes purification, 117, 120, 150, 154. Firmilian, 169, 170, 200. "First Hist. Trans.," Coquerel, 9, 25, 35, 48. "First Three Centuries," Baur, 87, 91, 93, 125. "First Three Per.," Allen. 42, 54. Floyer, Sir John, 100. Forever and further, 149. Frauds, Pious, 56, 57. Freedom of Will, Origen, 187. Freemantle, Canon, 262. Funerals, Early Emblems, 29. Galla Placidus, 33. Gehenna, 40, 41, 80. Gehenna, Purifying, 134, 152, 153, 304. Georgius of .^rbela, 256. Germanus, 237, 239. Germ, Greek, of An. Creeds, 16. Geschichte erst drei Jahr, Baur, 87. 91. 93, 125. Gibbon, Milman's. 21, 47, 211, 223. Gieseler, "Text-Book," 4. 8, 55, 56, 136, 209. 268, 283. "Glaph. inEx.,"255. Gnostic Sects, Three, 90, 95, 308. Gnosticism, 91, 112. Gospel in Hades, 53, 61, 305. Grant, "Mountain Nestorians," 216-223. Gregory the Great, 166-254. Gregory Nazianzen, 11, 57, 68, 63, 211-215, 234, 259, 270, 289, 290, Gregory Nyssen, 11, 166, 211, 226, 231-234, 235-243, 292, 309. Gregory. Pope, the First, 66. Gregory Thaumaturgus, 7, 201, "231. Greek Fathers Superior. 25, 806. Greek Germ of Earlier Creeds, 16- Greek New Test. Language, 51. Greek Words Defining Punish- ment, 36-44. 3i6 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Grimm. Life of Angelo, 300-302. Grote's Plato. 55. 58. Grotius, 39. Guerike, 198. Hades. Restorative. 117. Hades, Gospel Preached in. 63, 61. Hagenbach, 4, 8, 42, 48,67, 121, 199, 215, 278, 283, 296. "Harnack's Outlines." 16, 95, 140, 185. Hanson's "Aion-Aionios," 36, 40, 150. Hase, 194. Haweis's "Conq. Cross," 18, 28. Heathen Origin of End. Punish- ment, 36-52. Hebberd, Rev. S. S., 298. Hefele. 76, 283, 285, 287. Hegel, 50. Hell a Pagan invention, 36-58. Heraclius, 172, 200, 258. Heresies, 83, 210, 308. Hermas, Shepherd of, 76. Hermits, First Christian. 20. Herodotus. 46. Hesiod, 46. "Hexapla," 145, 263. Hieronymus, 262, 265. Hilary, 45, 166, 249. "Hippolytus," Bunien's, 8, 83, 90, 114, iro, 181, 188, 189-191, 261, 309. HistoriaDeorum, 98. Historia Dogmatis de Desc. In- feros, 61. Historia Literaria, 283. Histoire d' I'Ecole d' Alex., 108. Historical Transformations, Co- querel, 9, 25, 35, 48. History, Ancient, of Universal- ism, Ballou, 1, 25, 72. 81, 167, 210. 282, 309. History, Doct. Fut. Pun., Beecher, 2, 4, 8, 10, 33. 39. 57, 173, 184, 203. 218. 223, 224. 270, 288. History, Christian Church, Baur, 87, 91, 93, 125. History, Christian Church, Bing- ham, 103. History, Ancient Law, Maine, 175. History, Christian Church, Gi«s- eler. 48. .55. 66, 136, 209. History, Christian Church, Guer- ike, 198. History, Christian Church, Hag- enbach, 4, 8, 42, 48, 67, 121, 199, 215. History, Christian Church, Jere- mie, 126. History, Christian Church, Lam- son, 8, 10, 127. History, Christian Church, Lard- ner, 4, 168, 182, History, Christian Church, Lyall. History, Christian Church, Mil- man, 20, 24, 25, 47, 48. History, Christian Church, Mosh- eim, 4, 8, 23, 47, 49, 57, 103, 140, 155, 181, 250. History, Christian Church, Nean- der, 4, 8, 10, 48, 55, 57, 72, 91, 103, 199, 208, 215, History, Christian Church, Rob- ertson, 4, 21, 44, 103, 134, 156, 166, 212, 257. 261. History, Christian Church, Schaff 4, 20, 31, 50, 131, 166, 252. History, Christian Church. So- crates, 4, 12, 46, 58, 177. History, Christian Ch.. Sozomen. History Christian Church, Theo- doret, 222, 232. History, Christian Doctrine, Shedd, 20, 197. History, Christian Dogmas, Ne- ander, 250, 251. History, Critical Phllos., Brucker, 112. History, Endless Punishment, Thayer, 1, 50. History, Europ. Morals, Lecky,309. History. Manichsans, Beausobre, 195, 272. History, Martyrs and Ap., De Pressense, 4, 18, 121, 124, 132, 135, 141, 169. History, Jews, Milman, 46. Hitchcock, R.D., 6. SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 317 History, Person Christ, Dorner, 218, 220. Holmes, O. W., 97. "Holy Eastern Churcii," Neale, 108, 176, 201. Home Synod, Mennas, 286. "Homilia Pasch.," 254. Hort's Two Dissertations, H. Hours of Thought. Martineau, 35. Hovey, Alvah, "State of Impen. Dead," 70. Huet, (Huetli Danielis). 4, 150, 160, 255. 265, 278. Hdidekoper, "Christ's Descent," 61, 112. Huidekoper, Indirect Testimony toGos.,61. Ideler's "Olympiodorus," 284. Ignatius, 77,170. Ignem Eeternum, 9. Important Thoughts, 68. Indirect Testimony to Cos., Hui- dekoper, 112. Infant Damnation, 276, 277. "Intel. Devel. of Europe," Draper, 222. Intel. Philosophy, Cudworth, 112. Introduction, 1. In. to the Gospels, Westcott, 4, 42, 43. 88, 08, 165, 182. Irenaeus, 7, 9, 10, 45. 83-87, 170, 808. Isaac of Nineveh, 256. Isocrates, 234. Inst. Theol. Christ., Doderlein, 79. 223. 228. Jahn, Archaeology, 46. Jameson, Mrs., Legends of Ma- donna, 52. Jeremie, Hist. Chr. Ch., 126. Jesu. Ebed, 256. Jerome, 23, 45, 63, 103, 137, 166, 168, 170, 187, 250, 36^-268,278, 290, 307, "Jewel" Nestorians, 222. "Jewish Wars," Josephus, 36, 37. John the Grammarian, 106. Johannes Cassianus, 250-252. Josephus, 36, 37. Judas Iscariot, 54. Justinian. 187. 279. 283, 292, 309. Juvenal, 17. Kant, Im., 50, Katharsin. 238. Kitto, Cyclo., 145. Kingsley's Schools of Alex., 103, 105, 108, 296. Kip's Catacombs, 28. Kid on Good Shepherd's Shoul- der, 28. Kirchengeschichte, Nieder, 208. Kolasin, 36, 39, 41. 66, 79. 116. 118, 123, 283. Lactantius, 100. Lamson's "Ch. First Three Cent.," 8, 10, 127. Landon's "Manual of Councils," 2S5-287. Lardner, 4, 168, 182, 245. "La Politique des Remains," Montesquieu, 46. Last Enemy Destroyed, 162. Last Judgment, Angelo's,299. "Latin Christianity," Milman's, 20, 24-25, 47. 48. 275, 280, 291. Latin Reaction Injurious, 19. Layard's "Nineveh," 222. Lecky, 239. "Lectures," Maurice, 124. Lee's Christ. Doct. Prayer, 67. "Legends of Madonna," Mrs. Jameson, 50. Leibnitz, 50. Leland's "Necessity," 46. Leonides, 129. Leontius, 150. Liddell, 39. "Life and Resurrection," Greg. Nyss.,226, 229. "Life of Blessed Macrina," 226- 231. Lives of Fathers, Blunt, 4, 165, 226. Lives of Fathers, Cave, 4, 18, 231, 234, 238. Lives of Fathers, Farrar, 3, 13, 217, 281 3i8 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. Livy, 47. Locke, 50, Longfellow, 87. Lying Defended, 60, Martineau, "Hours of Thought," 35. Mansi, 285. Manual of Councils, 286. Martyrdom of Polycarp, 74. Martyr, Justin, 7,22,34. "Martyrs and Apologrists," De Pressense, 4, 18, 121, 124, 132, 135, 141, 169, 181. Matter, I'Ecole d'Alexandrie, 9, 108. Maurice, F. D., 124. Maximinus, 131. Maximin, Emperor, 22. Max Muller, Theos. or Psych. Rel., 56, 115, 186. Macarius Magnes, 248, 257. Macrina the Elder, 231. Macrina the Blessed, 2a6-231. Magnus, 7. Maitland, "Ch. of Catacombs," 32. Magnes, Macarius, 248. Mangey, 38. Manichaeans, 195, 272. Mansell, Gnostic Heresies, 58, 91, 93. "Manual of Councils," Landon, 286, 287. Mai Abd Yeshua, 222. Marcellus of Ancyra, 844, 290, 309. Marcion, 82. Mariott, 31. Martin, Pope L, 258. Marius Victorinus, 249. Martial, 17. Maximus the Confessor, 258. Meaning of Scrip. Terms, 36-42. Mechri telous, 82. Mennas, 282. "Mercy and Judgment," Farrar, 2, 40, 41, 66, 150, 295. Mercy and Judgment Identical, 163. Merivale, Early Christ. Hist., 50. "Meteorologia," Aristotle, 284. Methodism and Literature, 302. Methodius, 170, 210, 289, 309. Middleton, Letter from Rome, 49. Migne. De Eccl. Theol.. 62, 82, 111, 204, 205, 213, 226, 245, 249, 263, 274. Milan, Ambrose, 245-248, 254. Milman's Gibbon, 21.47,211,222. Milman, Hist. Christ. 24, 25, 48. Milman, Hist, Jews, 46. Milman, Kist. Latin Christianity, 20, 275, 280, 291. Milner, 21. Minor Authorities, 200-210. Minucius Felix, 25, 45. Miracles, Celsus and Orig. 141. "Miscellanies," Clem. Alex., 111. Mission to Underworld, 53, 61. Mitigation, Doct. of, 53, 54. Modern Theologians Equivocal, 59. Montesquieu, "LaPolitique," 46. Mosheim, 4, 8, 23, 4 , 49, 57, 103, 140, 155, 181, 252, 283. Muller, Max, 39, 56, 110, 114, 186, 302. Murdock's Mosheim, 8, 47,252 283. Musardus, 8, 47. Neale, 176, 201. Neander, 4, 8, 10, 48, 55, 57, 72, 91. 103, 199, 208, 215, 250, 252, 258, 359. 270, 283. " Neo-Platonism, " Bigg, 60, 68, 139. Nero, 18. Nestorians, 216 223. Nestorian Liturgies, 218, 222. Newman's "Apol. Vita Sua," 55. Newman's "Hist. Essays," 213. Newton, Bishop, 242. Nicene Creed, 4, 11, 12, 211, 242. Niceo-Cons. Creed, 11, 13. Nicephorus, 231, 283. Nicodemus, Gospel of, 63. Nieder, "Kirchengeschichte," 208. "Nineveh," Layard's, 222. Nisibis, School in, 103. Nitzsch, "Christ. Lehre." 67, 270, Northcote's " Catacombs," 28, 30. SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 319 Notable Family, A, 226-243. Norton. Statement, 112. Not. at Frag. Magnes, 249. Novatian, "Trinity," 25. Numa, 46, 47. CEconomy, Doctrine of, 53. CEcumenical Council, Fifth, 211. Oehler, Dr. Franz, 229. Olshausen, 225, Omar, 106. Olympiodorus, 284. Olympius.the Monk, Dialogue, 226. OpsopcEus, 97. Oracles, Sibylline, 14. "Oratio Catechet. Magna," Greg. Nyssen, 241. "Oratio de Mortuis,"Greg. Nyssen, 242. Oriental Asceticism, 20. Oriental Liturgies, 218, 222. Origen, 7. 9, 14, 19, 22, 25, 41, 45, 53, 55, 56, 57, 62, 63, 68; 12S-187. Origen, Second, 201, 235, 296, 306, 808. Origenism. Condemnation of, 282- 295. Origenism, 210. Origin Doct.End. Punishment, 36. Orosius, 273. "Outlines," Harnack, 95. "Oxford Tracts for Times," 192. Padeiai, 116, 118. "Paedag." Clem. Alex., 116. 118, 120, 123. Palladius, 200. Pamphilus, Apol. pro Origine, 154, 166 170. 202, 263, 289, 309. Panarion, 210. Travra iv ttSctiv, 209 Pantaenus. 103-4. Pantheism, 113. Pastor of Hermas, 76. "Patrologiae," Migne's, 62, 82, HI. 204, 205. 213, 226, 263, 274. Paul of Thebes, 20. Pericles, 234. "Perpetua, Acta St.," 66. Persecution, Work of Augustinl' anism,281. Petavius, 212. Peter of Sebaste, 226, 228. Pfaffian Fragment. 86. Pharisees, Opinions, 86. Phillips, Wendell, 197. Philo Judaeus, Views of, 87, 38. Philosophumena, 189. Philotheos Briennius, 5. Photius, 210, 239. Pierius, 201. Pious Frauds. 56, 57. Plato, 19, 39, 47, 55, 58, 112. Platonism. 113. Pliny, 17, 21, 35. Plumptre, Dean, 4, 41, 61. 65, 67, 167, 182, 217, 242, 264, 288. Plutarch, 46. Polybius, 46. Polycarp, 73. Pond, Dr.'s, Misrepresentation, 177. 187. Ponticus, Evagrius, 254. Post-Nic. Age Deteriorated, 261. Prayers for the Dead, 53, 65, 305. Priestley, Corruptions of Chrlst'y, 48. "Primitive Christianity," Cave, 4, 23, 143. Primitive Christianity, Horta- tory, 304. Procopius, 290. "Pseudepigrapha," Deane's, 98, 100. Ptolemy Soter, 106. Punishment, G|;pek word for, 86,37, 39, 41, 66, 79. 110, 118, 123, 283. Punishment not Endless, 82. Punishment Purificatory, 17, 127, 238, 304. TTVp pOVLKOV, 17. Pusey, Concessions ol, 257. Quadratus, 87. Quarterly, British. 166. Quarterly, Universalist, 1, 251, 252, 268, 297. Ramsay, W. W.,302. 320 UNIVERSALISM IN THE EARLY CENTURIES. "Rationalism in Europe," Lecky, 239. 309. Redepenning, "Origines," 173. "Refutation of Heresy," Hippoly- tus, 8, 83, 90, 114, 170, 181, 188. 189-191, 261, 309. "Reliquiai Sacrae," Routh, 171, 203. Renaudot's "Oriental Liturgies." 221. Reserve, Doctrine of, 55, 118, 305. Reuss, 180. Review, Edinburgh, 49, 102. Rhet., Aristotle, 41, 50, 284. Righteous Pray for Wicked Dead, 96. Robertson, Hist., 4, 21, 44, 103, 134, 156, 212, 257, 261. Romulus, 46. Rosenmuller, 274. Rothe, 76. Routh, "Reliq. Sacrae," 171, 203. Rufinus, 7. 72, 214, 239, 255, 262. Ruskin, John, 33. Saints, Sins of, 4,103. Salomo of Bassora. 256, 257. Sand, George, 281. Savonarola, 52. Sawyer, Thos. J., D. D., 1. Schaff, Hist. Christ. Ch., 4, 20, 81. 50, 131. 136, 166, 212, 240, 252, 261, 270, 278, 2r9. Schelling, 50. Scholars, Test, of, to Origen, 182. Schools, Theological, 103, 105. Schopenhauer, 301. Scripture Terms, Meaning of, 36. Seneca, 47. Septimus Severus, 129. "Sermon. Catech. Magnus," 237. Sharpe, Samuel, 75. Shedd, W. T., Errors of, 197. Shedd, W.T., Hist. Christ. Doct.. 20, 197, 252. Shepherd of Hermas, 76. Sibylline Oracles, 14, 57, 98- 102. Sin, Penalties of, 212. Sixtus, Carus, 31. Sodom Restored, 265. Socrates. "Eccl. Hist.," 4, 12. 46,58 177. Solom. Parab.,38. Solon, 55. Spinoza, 50, Spiridion, 281. Spirits in Prison, Plumptre, 61, 167, 289. Stanley, Dean, "Eastern Church," 108. 176, 201. Stanley, Dean, Christ. Inst., 35. Stanley, Dean, Essays, 243. " Statement of Reasons," Norton, 112. " State Impen. Dead," Hovey, 70. Statius Quadratrus, 73. Stephanas of Edessa, 256. Stephens's "Thesaurus." 88. Stieren's "Irenaeus." 94. Strabo, 47. "Stromata." Clem. Alex., 57, 113. 116 117. 118. 120. 123. "Stromata," Origen's,63. Subjection Universal, 160. Suetonius, 17. Sunday, Primitive, 21. Summary of Conclusions, 304-310. Suppressio Veri, Cave. 233, 238. Suppressio Veri. Lecky, 309, Suppressio Veri. Shedd. 197. Swete, Prof. J. B.,217. Sweetness and Light, 19. Symbols in Catacombs, 29. Synesius Defends Lying, 60. "Synopsis," Chrysostom's. 5. 2IBYAAIAK0I XPHMOI 96. Tacitus. 17, 35. Taine, 17. Tamerlane, 218. "Tarquin of Jonathan." 40. Tatian,45. 74. Tatius, 46. Teaching of Twelve Apostles, 6. Tennyson, Alfred, 3. Tertullian, 7, 10, 11, 21, 22, 45, 62, 66, 191, 193, 307. Testimony of Catacombs, 27, 29. SUBJECT AND AUTHOR INDEX. 321 Testimony of Scholars, 182. "Text Book." Gieseler's. 48, 55, 68, 136, 209. "Text Book," Hagenbach's, 4, 8, 42,48.67,121,199,215. Thanaton, 38, 74. Thayer, T, B., D, D., 50. 251. Thecla, 228. Theoctistus, 172. Theognostus, 201. Theotinus, 179. Theodorus, 214. Theodore of Mopsuestia, 218, 219, 223, 240, 252. 268. Theodoret the Blessed, 222, 232. 252, 254. Theodosius, 211, 214. Theological Schools, 103-4, 308. Theology. Doederlein, 223,8. Theology of Universalism, 50. Thesaurus, Stephens', 38. Theophilact, 169. Theopilus, 170, 176. Theoph. of Alex., 60, 191, 285. 290. Theophilus of Antioch. 89. "Theosophy. or Psych. Rel.." 58, 115. 186. Third Century Group. 188. Thomas of Celano. 98. Three Periods, Allen, 42, 54. Tillotson, Equivocal, 59. Tillemont. 244, 245. Timoria. 36, 37, 39, 41. 116, 118, 123. Timotheus II, 65. Tischendorf, 75. Titus of Bostra. 244-5 Transition of Christianity, 260. True Discourse. Celsus, 143. Trypho, Dialogue, 78. Turning Points, Cutts. 27. Two Dissertations. Hort, 14. Two Kindred Topics, 61. Tytler, Univ. Hist.. 49. Uhlhorn, Conflict Christ, with Paganism, 17, 65, 68, 143. Ueberweg, 250, 259. Underworld, Christ's Mission to, 61. Unity in Diversity, 220. Universal History, Tytler, 49. "Universalism Asserted." Allin, 2, 25, 26. 56, 61, 72, 224, 225. 248, 265. Universalism, Attempts to Sup- press. 282-295. Universalism, Anc. Hist., Ballou, 1, 25, 72, 81. 167, 210, 255, 282, 309, Universalism, Eclipse of, 296-305. Universalism of Greek Origin, 25. Universalism. many roads, to 220- 257. Universalism, Resurrection of, 300. Universalism Submerged, 293. Universalism Never Condemned, 286-289. Universalist Expositor, 47. Universalist Quarterly. 1. 52, 65, 82, 251, 252, 268, 297. Universalist. The, 299. Unsuccessful Attempts to Sup- press Universalism, 282. Usher and Wake, 66. Valentine, 92. Valentinians, 92, 308. Vaughan's Corruptions, 49, 67. Victorinus, Marius, 249. Virgil's iEneid, 46. Wake, Arch. 66. Warburton, Div. Leg. 46., Westcott, 4. 42, 43. 88, 98, 165, 188. "What is of Faith," Pusey, 257. Whittier, J. G. 97. Wigglesworth, M., 277. Windet, 40. Withrow. Catacombs, 28. Wordsworth, Dean. 188. Zoroaster, 20. ^lorjv Tov /LieAXovTOS aiwvos. Date Due | ; ■- stc- jpuSPiiW 1 ^^^-im,^ -:^,^is^*^ f

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