LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. "EfT^ 5 '~~ ©Ijap. .. ©opjjrig^l Ifu.— Shelf ..J^13 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. FROM JERUSALEM TO NIC^A THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES Sotoell %tttutt$ From Jerusalem to Nic^a THE CHURCH IN THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES PHILIP STAFFORD MOXOM AUTHOR OF "THE AIM OF LIFE" BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS 1895 k> Copyright, 1895, By Roberts Brothers. John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. In Sacrrti J&emorg OF TWO FRIENDS HANNAH BRADBURY GOODWIN AND NATHANAEL SCHNEIDER, M.D. * PREFACE, r I ^HESE Lectures were delivered under the auspices of the Lowell Institute, in Boston, on the successive Tuesday and Friday evenings from February 12th to March 8th, 1895. They are printed as they were delivered, save that much matter, consisting mainly of illustrative quotations from the early Fathers, which had to be omitted in the delivery, appears in these pages. It scarcely needs to be said that scholars will find in the lec- tures nothing new; but I dare to believe that the general reader will find here, in intelligible form, much which he shall look for elsewhere in vain, save in more or less voluminous and sometimes not easily obtainable church histories. My thanks are due to the friends by whom I was inspired to undertake this task; and I am specially indebted to the Rev. David Nelson Beach vi Preface. who has aided me by his enthusiastic interest in my work, and by valuable suggestions, and also to Professor William Mathews, LL. D., who has ren- dered my readers as well as myself a great service by preparing the index which concludes this volume. Philip Stafford Moxom. Springfield, Mass., March; 1895. CONTENTS. Page The Rise and Spread of Christianity .... 13 The Organization of the Early Church ... 52 The Apostolic Fathers 99 The Struggle with Heathenism : The Perse- cutions 163 The Struggle with Heathenism : The Apolo- gists 218 The Struggle within the Church : Heresies . 276 The Christian School of Alexandria .... 333 The First Ecumenical Council 393 Appendix 445 Index 447 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. The following is a list of most of the works which have been read or consulted in the preparation of these lec- tures. It is given specially for the convenience of readers Who wish to investigate for themselves the subject here presented. " The Encyclopaedia Britannica," 9th edition, especially the articles by Harnack ; Hackett's Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible ; " Smith and Cheetham's " Dictionary of Chris- tian Antiquities; " Smith and Wace's "Dictionary of Chris- tian Biography;" McClintock and Strong's "Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature ; " The Schaff-Herzog " Cyclopaedia ; " "A Catholic Diction- ary," by Addis and Arnold ; the " Church Histories," by Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Neander, Baur, Kurtz, Giesseler, Guericke, Schaff, Moeller, Cheetham, Fisher, Sheldon, and Pressense" ; Eusebius's " Life of Constantine ; " Tacitus's " Annals ; " Pliny's " Letters ; " Strabo's " Geography ; " Philo-Judaeus's " Works ; " Ta- tian's " Diatessaron ; " The Ante-Nicene Fathers," 24 volumes ; Ramsay's " The Church in the Roman Em- pire;" Stanley's " History of the Eastern Church," and "Christian Institutions;" Mommsen's "History of Rome;" Gibbon's " History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ; " Milman's " History of Christianity ; " Plum- mer's " The Church of the Early Fathers ; " Farrar's Bibliographical Note. " Lives of the Fathers," " Life and Work of St. Paul," and " Early Years of Christianity ; " Lecky's " History of Euro- pean Morals;" Fisher's "Beginnings of Christianity;" Lightfoot's " Apostolic Fathers," " Essays," and Com- mentaries on Galatians and Philippians ; Reeve's " Apol- ogy of Tertullian ; " Bigg's " Christian Platonists of Alex- andria;" Uebervveg's " History of Philosophy; " Hatch's " Organization of the Early Church ; " A. V. G. Allen's " Continuity of Christian Thought ; " " Literature of the Second Century," by Wynne, Bernard, and Hemphill; Uhlhorn's "Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism," and " Christian Charity in the Ancient Church ; " Cony- beare and Howson's " Life and Epistles of St. Paul ; " "The Gospel of St. Peter," by Rendel Harris; Cape's " Early Empire," and " Age of the Antonines ; " Jenning's " Manual of Church History; " F. H. Hedge's " Ways of the Spirit ; " J. H. Allen's " Fragments of Christian His- tory;" Newman's " History of the Arians of the Fourth Century ; " Bishop Kaye's " Ecclesiastical History of the Second and Third Centuries," and " Writings and Opin- ions of Clement of Alexandria ; " Poole's " Life and Times of S. Cyprian," Caldwell's " Cities of Our Faith," and Schaff's " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF ROMAN EMPERORS FROM AUGUSTUS TO CONSTANTINE. Augustus B.C. 31-A.D. 14 Tiberius a.d. 14- " 37 Caligula " 37- " 41 Claudius " 41- " 54 Nero " 54- " 68 Galba " 68- " 69 Otho 7 Vitellius i 6 9 Vespasian " 69- " 79 Titus " 79- " 81 Domitian " 81- " 96 Nerva " 96- " 98 Trajan " 97- " 117 Hadrian " 117- " 138 Antoninus Pius " 138- " 161 Marcus Aurelius " 161- " 180 Commodus " 180- " 192 Pertinax ) u Didius Julianus > ^3 Septimius Severus " 193- " 211 Caracalla " 211- " 217 Macrinus " 217- " 218 Elagabalus " 219- " 222 Alexander Severus " 222- " 235 Maximin " 235- " 238 Gordian " 238- " 244 xii Chronological List. Philip B.C. 244-A.D. 249 Decius " 249- " 251 Gallus " 251- " 253 Valerian . " 253- " 260 Gallienus " 261- " 268 Claudius II " 269- " 270 Aurelian " 270- il 275 Tacitus " 275- " 276 Probus . " 276- " 282 Carus " 282- " 283 Diocletian " 283-^ Maximian " 286- $ 3°5 Constantius > u u < 306 Galerius > I 311 Severus \ r 307 Maxentius C " 306- " I312 Maximian) (310 Maximin Daza) (3 T 3 Licinius > " 307- " •} 323 Constantine ) ( 337 Constantine, Sole Emperor . . " 323- " 337 FROM JERUSALEM TO NIC/EA. THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY. MY function in the present course of lectures, as I have conceived it, is not to propound and unfold a theory, but to confine myself mainly to a statement of facts. The first three centuries of the Christian era is a time of beginnings. In that time may be found the germs of all the later developments of Christian institutions and Chris- tian thought. An intelligent acquaintance with the facts of that early time is absolutely necessary to a clear understanding of the later developments. Those facts I shall try to give with such fulness and distinctness as will enable intelligent hearers, who heretofore have had little acquaintance with the story of the early Church, to form some just judgment on the extent and significance of that extraordinary phenomenon in history, — the rise and development of the Christian religion. Much that is interesting, and, from an historical point of 14 From Jerusalem to Niccza. view, valuable, must be omitted ; but, I believe, nothing will be omitted that is essential. If in some directions I have gone into rather minute de- tail as, for example, in the account of Gnosticism, it is because in the treatment of this subject, the ordinary and accessible church histories are usually too compendious to be either interesting or intelli- gible to the lay reader. The contemporary story of the beginning of Christianity is confined almost entirely to the vari- ous documents which make up the New Testa- ment. The earliest of these documents are the authentic and universally acknowledged epistles of St. Paul. These epistles imply the basis of the essential facts which are given in the Gospels. The story is too familiar to require repetition here, save in a simple outline that may be presented in a few words. In Palestine, a small and obscure province of the Roman empire, there appeared, during the reign of Tiberius, a Teacher and Prophet named Jesus of Nazareth. For a little more than three years this Teacher and Prophet engaged in the work of announcing His message, inculcating His ideas of God and righteousness, and ministering to the needs of the sick and the poor. He gathered about Him a group of about a dozen men, mostly humble fishermen, whom He instructed in His principles and methods, and whom He bound to Himself by ties of confidence and affection that Rise and Spread of Christianity, 15 proved to be indestructible. The teaching of Jesus, claiming to be a message from God, while it appealed to multitudes of men with a power beyond that of any other religious teaching which has been given to the world, excited the animosity of the ruling classes among the Jews, especially the Pharisees, and brought on a conflict which in a little time issued in His violent death on the cross. His disciples, at first overwhelmed by sorrow and despair, in a short time strongly revived in confi- dence and courage, and developed a devotion to the name of Jesus and a zeal in His service which made them successful propagators of the new faith and life. These disciples believed that Jesus had come forth from God to reveal to men the nature and purposes of God, and to bring to the world salva- tion from sin. They believed that, after three days in the embrace of death, He rose from the dead and lived in personal communication with them for the space of forty days, explaining and con- firming the teaching which He had previously given them ; and that He finally departed from their sight to be no more the local and visible Christ, but henceforth to be the Divine Adminis- trator of the Kingdom of God in the world. Inspired with this faith, they became invincibly courageous in proclaiming the message which they had received from Him ; and they proved their fidelity to His teaching by untiring labors, by 16 From Jerusalem to Niccza. exalted purity of life, by patient endurance of suffering, and finally by martyrdom. The story in the book of the Acts of the Apos- tles reveals that a fresh and mighty impulse had come into human life. The new movement, begin- ning at Jerusalem, rapidly extended itself in Pales- tine. Although at first none of those who had been the immediate disciples of Jesus, and were recognized as His apostles, either extended their labors outside of Palestine, or seemed to have the intention of doing so, yet their preaching to the multitude in Jerusalem, which contained represen- tatives of various nations other than the Jewish, kindled a faith and enthusiasm like their own in the hearts of many men who went forth to be mis- sionaries of the gospel of Christ. It was not be- cause of any deliberate purpose at first, then, but because of the inevitable expansive force of the new faith, that it spread beyond the confines of the Holy Land. The records of the time, meagre as they are, show us that Christianity soon pushed beyond the narrow bounds of Judea, and beyond the immediate influence of the apostles, and created centres of Christian life and thought in distant cities. In a short time the antagonism of the Jewish leaders to the gospel developed into persecutions which scattered the believers in Jesus. These scattered believers everywhere became disseminators of the Christian doctrines. We know, for example, that Rise and Spread of Christianity, ly Christian churches were founded in Antioch and Rome and other places without the knowledge or presence of the apostles. At first, the disposition of the apostles, who were all Jews, was to confine the preaching of the gospel to their own countrymen ; but in a short time a new worker came upon the scene. This was Saul of Tarsus, who is known in Christian history as St. Paul. This man, a native of Tarsus, a free city of the Roman empire, and himself a free citizen, was bred in the traditions and princi- ples of the Hebrew religion, and was carefully educated in all the Hebrew learning in the school of Rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem. At first, Paul was a vehement persecutor of the followers of Jesus, but a remarkable experience which came to him while he was on the way to Damascus on an errand of persecution, resulted in his entire conversion to the Christian faith. From this time, Paul became an ardent and effective preacher of the Gospel of Jesus. His surviving letters, most of which have been authenticated by the severest criticism of modern scholars, contain, incorporated in his peculiar thought, the substance of the Christian facts and faith, and set forth the Divine Personality of the Founder of Christianity; and these epistles, more than any other part of the New Testament, have shaped the theology of the Christian Church for nearly nineteen centuries. With the conversion of Paul, thus, not only a 2 1 8 From Jerusalem to Niccea. new personality, but also a larger conception of the gospel came into the field. He conceived that the message which Jesus gave was not designed for Jews only, but for humanity. In his teaching and his aim, Christianity became what Jesus evidently designed it should be, the universal faith. Almost from the beginning of Paul's ministry, therefore, Christianity passed out of the narrow bounds of Judaism, and addressed itself to the conquest of the world. The story of Paul's travels and labors has the fascination of romance. By his efforts the gospel was diffused throughout Asia Minor, Christian churches sprang up under his preaching in nearly every province of that penin- sula, and converts to Christ were gathered in Macedonia and Achaia, and possibly, also, in Arabia and Spain. St. Paul suffered martyrdom near the end of the reign of Nero, about 68 A. D. At the time of his death, less than forty years after the reputed ascen- sion of Jesus, the Christian faith had already taken root in many places throughout a considerable part of the Roman empire. From the Acts of the Apostles and other writings of the first century, it appears that in Antioch, in Pisidia, nearly the whole population came together to listen to Paul. In Ephesus the temple of the tutelary goddess, Diana, was all but deserted ; the silversmiths, who did a thriving business in the manufacture of small models of the temple for the use of worshippers, Rise and Spread of Christianity. 19 complained that their business was almost ruined ; and the magicians, of whom there was a great num- ber, abandoned their arts and burned their books in the public square. In Jerusalem, Syrian Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome were large churches, in one or two cases certainly numbering their members by thousands. We learn that somewhat later, there were fifty thousand members in the church in Antioch. In Rome there were Chris- tians enough to attract the attention of the emperor and excite the antipathy, if not the ap- prehension, of the citizens. In Thessalonica it was the popular cry that the apostles had turned the world upside down. So rapid was the spread of Christianity that Paul used pardonable hyperbole when he exclaimed that the gospel was bearing fruit in all the world, and that it had been preached " in the whole creation which is under heaven." Nor were the Christians confined to the poor and wretched. There were women of wealth and dis- tinction in the Church, such as Lydia, in Philippi, the " chief women " of Thessalonica, and Domitilla, a relative of Domitian's, in Rome. Of prominent men who were converts to the Christian faith, we have the names of Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus ; Publius, the Roman governor of Malta ; Flavius Clemens, a consul; the Asiarchs, or chief officers of Asia, in Ephesus ; Dionysius, a member of the Council of Areopagus in Athens ; Erastus, the public treasurer in Corinth; Cornelius, the 20 From Jerusalem to Niccea. centurion; Luke, the physician; Theophilus, to whom Luke addressed his writings; Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue in Corinth ; and members of the Jewish sanhedrim, the priesthood, and the sect of the Pharisees. There is a lack of precise and abundant infor- mation for about sixty years after the death of Paul. From the first quarter of the second cen- tury historical records of the growth of Chris- tianity grow clearer and more abundant. A study of those records up to the close of the third cen- tury reveals that Christianity was extended with extraordinary rapidity throughout the known world. There is evidence that soon after the middle of the second century there was a Christian church in Edessa so flourishing as to count among its mem- bers Abgar Bar Manu, king of Orshene in Meso- potamia. About the same time there were churches, or groups of believers in the Christian faith, in various parts of Persia, Media, Parthia, and Bactria. Christian churches in Arabia were visited by Origen in the early part of the third century; and there is fairly good evidence that there was a Christian church in India as early as 350 A. D. In Egypt, Christianity made great progress, espe- cially in Alexandria, which is the traditional scene of the labors of St. Mark. It also penetrated Cyrene and neighboring territories. In Upper Egypt, the gospel found a lodgement, before the Rise and Spread of Christianity. 21 close of the second century, among the Copts, the reputed descendants of the ancient Egyptians. The gospel extended throughout Proconsular Africa, and developed a powerful centre of life in Carthage. As early as 256 A. D. Cyprian was able to convene in Carthage a synod of eighty-seven bishops, " in the presence of a vast laity," and this was the seventh synod in that city during Cyprian's episcopate. Half a century earlier than this " the Christians in Roman Africa were to be counted by thousands, if not by millions." There is record of a synod held in Carthage shortly after 200 A. D. in which were assembled seventy African and Numi- dian bishops. North of the Mediterranean, Chris- tianity was extended somewhat less rapidly; but we find that between 175 and 200 A. D., there were strong Christian churches at Lyons and Vienne in Gaul. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons at that time, speaks of the gospel as already established in Germany, at least, west of the Rhine. There are more or less vague traditions of the gospel having quite early reached Britain and Spain. It is not at all impossible that St. Paul himself preached the gospel in Spain. In Britain, Christianity had made such progress that, at the Council of Aries, in 314 A. D., British churches were represented by the bishops of York, London, and Lincoln. By the time of Diocletian there were many Christians in the court and in civic offices, as well as in the army. As early as the time of Septimius Severus 22 From yerusalem to Niccza. (193-21 1) they had become so numerous that they might have paralyzed the armies of the empire ; under Diocletian they were practically in the ma- jority. The persecution begun by the latter, and carried on more vigorously by Galerius, failed, because the extinction of the Christians meant the extinction of half the empire ; and after ten years of determined and bloody endeavor to exterminate Christianity, the empire became Christian at one blow. Such, in brief, is the account of the rapid exten- sion of the Christian faith during the first three centuries. Important evidence as to the number of the early Christians is furnished by the Cata- combs of Rome. These remarkable subterranean chambers, which were designed as receptacles for the Christian dead, served also in times of perse- cution as places of refuge and even as places of worship. For many centuries the Catacombs were not only hidden from sight, but, apparently, were even forgotten. Late in the sixteenth cen- tury, however (1578), some laborers, digging for Pozzolana earth, near Rome, accidentally discovered a sepulchral chamber. This was the beginning of the discovery of the vast subterranean city, which contained records of early Christianity as striking and as abundant as those which the discovery of the ruins of Pompeii, in recent times, have fur- nished concerning Roman domestic life at the beginning of the Christian era. Rise and Spread of Christianity. 23 I may not take the time now to give any descrip- tion of the Catacombs. I mention them simply because they furnish noteworthy evidence as to the vast number of believers in Christ which there must have been in Rome previous to A. D. 350. After that date the Catacombs ceased to be much used as a place of burial ; far the larger number of interments in them, therefore, must have taken place previous to that date. Padre Marchi estimates the length of these sub- terranean burial chambers, at eight or nine hun- dred miles, which would give them a capacity for between six and seven million bodies. This esti- mate is undoubtedly extravagant. Michele de Rossi estimates the length at 957,800 yards, or about five hundred and ninety miles. This would give the Catacombs a capacity for nearly or quite four million bodies. Northcote and Brownlow estimate the length at not less than three hundred and fifty miles, which would give space for about three million bodies. It is not likely that this last estimate could be materially reduced, but if it were reduced one-half, the evidence which, even then, the Catacombs furnish of a very large Christian population in the city of Rome during the second and third centuries, is very strong. I turn now, for a few minutes, to the testimony of contemporary writers. The Roman historian Tacitus, in his account of the burning of Rome 24 From Jerusalem to Niccea. and the persecution of the Christians by Nero in A. D. 64, implies that the number of Christians in the Roman capital, even at that early date, was large. The Christians were charged by Nero with setting fire to the city. Says Tacitus : " First those were seized who confessed they were Chris- tians ; next, on their information, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of hating the human race." The charge of hating the human race, was, as we shall see, one of the earliest charges brought against the Christians by their enemies. It was due to the fact that, in loyalty to their faith, the Christians withdrew from many of the occupations and social pleasures of their fellow-countrymen, because these were so inextricably involved with idolatry. The testimony of Tacitus, as to the great number of Christians thus early, is not affected in value by his opinion as to their character. Pliny, governor of Bithynia and Pontus under Trajan, wrote to his imperial master, in 1 1 1 A. D., asking for directions as to how he should treat the Christians. His letter makes it clear that already Christians were so numerous in the prov- inces which he governed that the heathen temples were largely deserted, and the " sacred rites " of the heathen religion had almost ceased. He was perplexed by the immense number of those with whom he must deal as offenders against the Roman law by practising an illicit religion. In his letter he Rise and Spread of Christianity. 25 says: " It appears to be a matter highly deserving your consideration, more especially as great num- bers must be involved in the danger of these per- secutions, which have already extended, and are still likely to extend, to persons of all ranks and ages and even both sexes. In fact, this contagious superstition is not confined to the city only, but has spread its infection among the neighboring villages and country." Let us turn now to the testimony of the Chris- tian Apologists. Of these there arose a great number, especially during the second century and the early part of the third, — Justin Martyr, Ta- tian, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and others. These bear convincing testimony to the rapid and wide extension of Christianity. They show that before the close of the second century it had grown to be a recognized power in the empire; that before the middle of the third century it had a philosophy as well as a gospel to offer to men ; that it boldly laid claim to universal acceptance and obedience ; and also that it had made many converts among the rich and learned as well as among the poor and ignorant. I can give but a few examples now, which, however, are sufficient to indicate the character and extent of the testi- mony. Justin Martyr, who wrote between 135 and 163 A. D,, in his "Dialogue with Trypho," makes this statement: "For there is not one 26 From Jerusalem to Niccea* single race of men, whether barbarians or Greeks, or whatever they may be called, nomads, or vagrants, or herdsmen living in tents, among whom prayers and giving of thanks are not offered through the Name of the crucified Jesus." Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in Gaul, who wrote between 170 and 200 A. d., speaks as follows: " The church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith." Again he says: " Although the languages of the world are dissimilar, yet the import of the tradition is one and the same. For the churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world." By the expression " central regions," Irenaeus evidently means the churches in Palestine. Tertullian, a distinguished presbyter of Carthage, writing between 197 and 220 A. D., gives the following testimony in his " Address to Scapula": " One would think it must be abundantly clear to you that the religious system under whose rules we act is one inculcating a divine patience ; since, though our numbers are so great, — consisting of all but the majority in every city, — we conduct ourselves so quietly and modestly." In his Rise and Spread of Christianity. 27 " Apology " he says : " The outcry is that the state is filled with Christians, — that they are in the fields, in the citadels, in the islands ; they make lamentation, as for some calamity, that both sexes, every age and condition, even high rank, are passing over to the profession of the Christian faith." In the same writing he declares : " We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you — cities, islands, fortresses, towns, marketplaces, the very camp, tribes, com- panies, palaces, senate, forum, — we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods. For what wars should we not be fit, not eager, even with unequal forces, we who so willingly yield ourselves to the sword, if in our religion it were not counted better to be slain than to slay? Without arms even, and raising no insurrectionary banner, but simply in enmity to you, we could carry on the contest with you by an ill- willed severance alone. For if such multitudes of men were to break away from you, and betake them- selves to some remote corner of the world, why, the very loss of so many citizens, whatever sort they were, would cover the empire with shame ; nay, in the very forsaking, vengeance would be inflicted. Why, you would be horror-struck at the solitude in which you would find yourselves, at such an all-prevailing silence, and that stupor as of a dead world. You would have to seek subjects to govern. You would have more ene- 28 From Jerusalem to Niccea. mies than citizens remaining. For now it is the immense number of Christians which makes your enemies so few, — almost all the inhabitants of your various cities being followers of Christ." In his work called " To the Nations," which Tertullian addressed to the general public, while his "Apology" he had addressed rather to the rulers and magistrates of the empire, he exclaims : " Your constant cry is that the state is beset [by us] ; that Christians are in your fields, in your camps, in your islands. You grieve over it as a calamity that each sex, every age — in short, every rank — is passing over from you to us." In his " Answer to the Jews," the same writer says : " Upon whom else have the universal nations believed but the Christ who has already come? For whom have the nations believed, — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and they who inhabit Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and they who dwell in Pontus, and Asia, and Pamphylia, tarriers in Egypt, and inhabiters of the region of Africa which is beyond Cyrene, Romans and sojourners, yes, and in Jerusalem, Jews, and all other nations; as for instance, by this time, the varied races of the Gaetulians, and manifold confines of the Moors, all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons (inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ), and of the Sarmatians, and Dacians, and Germans, and Rise and Spread of Christianity. 29 Scythians, and of many remote nations, and of provinces and islands many, to us unknown, and which we can scarce enumerate? In all of which places the name of the Christ who is already come reigns as of Him before Whom the gates of all cities have been opened. . . . " But Christ's name is being extended every- where, believed everywhere, worshipped every- where by all the above enumerated nations." The "Apology" was written in A. D. 197, and the " Address to the Nations" soon after; the "Address to Scapula" and the "Answer to the Jews" about 211. Some abatement from this testimony may be allowed on account of Tertul- lian's well-known rhetorical style, but after all reasonable abatement has been made, there re- mains an abundant and uncontradicted testimony from Tertullian to the wide extension of Chris- tianity before the end of the second century. Tertullian's testimony is strengthened by the con- sideration that he boldly challenged criticism by numerous explicit statements made repeatedly in published works, through the space of from six- teen to twenty years ; that his writings compelled the attention of pagan officials and philosophers who would not be slow to detect and contradict misstatements ; and that his very rhetorical instinct would lead him to base his eloquence on facts so well-known as to be almost commonplace until he gave them fresh significance by his fervent style. 30 From Jerusalem to Niceea. Clement of Alexandria, who wrote between 189 and 200 A. D., contrasting the gospel with philoso- phy, says : " The philosophers chose to teach phi- losophy to the Greeks alone, and not even to all of them ; . . . but the word of our Teacher re- mained not in Judea alone, as philosophy did in Greece; but was diffused over the whole world, over every nation, and village, and town, bringing already over to the truth, whole houses, and each individual of those who heard it by himself, and not a few of the philosophers themselves." Origen, who wrote between A. D. 220 and 250, in his writing, " Against Celsus," the most impor- tant apologetic work produced by the early Church, uses the following language : " At the present day, indeed, when, owing to the multitude of Christian believers, not only rich men, but per- sons of rank, and delicate and high-born ladies, receive the teachers of Christianity, some perhaps will dare to say that it is for the sake of a little glory that certain individuals assume the office of Christian instructors." In another place he quotes from Celsus the fol- lowing: " Christians at first were few in number, and held the same opinions ; but when they grew to be a great multitude they were divided and sep- arated, each wishing to have his own individual party, — for this was their object from the begin- ning." Here we have the involuntary testimony of a bitter opponent of Christianity, who wrote as early as 177 or 178 A. D. Rise and Spread of Christianity, 31 To this remark Origen replies : " That Christians at first were few in number, in comparison with the multitudes which subsequently became Christian, is undoubted," etc. In these words Origen confirms the testimony of Celsus and adds his own. But apart from the detailed evidence which I have thus rapidly summarized, the certain fact arises before us that Christianity, beginning about the year 30 A. D. in a single person, a Jew, who was crucified by the Romans at the instigation of His fellow-countrymen, and who had a following of only a few humble disciples, in less than three hundred years took possession of the Roman empire, and seated itself permanently upon the im- perial throne. In a period slightly less than that which separates the present time from the death of Shakespeare, the new religion, against the entire force of heathenism, overcame all obstacles, over- turned the deep-rooted polytheisms of Greece, Rome, Asia, and Gaul, and changed the character and course of civilization. The history of the world presents no phenomenon so striking, no movement of the human race so vast in extent and so significant in its results. The explanation of this phenomenon constitutes the largest and most interesting problem that con- fronts the philosophic student of history. Chris- tianity is a complex fact, not only of the past, but also of the present. Beginning more than eigh- teen centuries ago, the religion of Jesus is to-day 32 From J erusalem to Niece a. immeasurably the greatest spiritual force in the world. It is co-extensive with the peoples that have achieved the largest progress in the arts and industries, and have attained the highest civiliza- tion ; it is professed by all the nations of Europe, has been widely diffused in Asia and Africa, and possesses and rules the great nations which occupy the Western Hemisphere, — a territory unknown to the world until long after the Roman empire had fallen into ruin. It is difficult for us to ap- proach this question with entirely impartial minds. We have been born and nurtured in the atmos- phere of Christianity. Our ethics and our ideals, individual and social, have been inspired and shaped by the teachings of Jesus. It is, however, true, that an adherence to the essential principles of Christianity is not necessarily a disqualification for forming a dispassionate and sound judgment on the problem before us. It might be argued, indeed, that only one who has an interior knowl- edge of the Christian faith is able to form any adequate idea of its nature, and to reach any just conclusions as to its source and the reasons of its extraordinary development. Let us consider, first, some of the conditions in the midst of which Christianity took its rise. Polit- ically the world had attained to a degree of unity previously unknown. Under the lead of Julius Caesar and of Augustus, the Roman arms had extended the power of the empire to the remotest Rise and Spread of Christianity, 33 confines of civilization, exclusive of China and In- dia, and even over large territories of barbarous and savage races. The Mediterranean had become a Roman lake. The dominion of the emperor extended from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, from the wild moors of Scotland to the deserts of Africa, and contained a population of probably not less than one hundred million souls. Throughout this immense domain the Roman power was sufficiently strong to make itself felt as a unifying force upon the civil life of innumerable and diverse peoples. Under Augustus, a process of centralization was carried on, which gave a practically uniform administration of law over the whole empire. As- some one has said : " The Romans conquered like savages, but ruled like philosophic statesmen, till, from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from the shores of Britain and the borders of the German forests to the sands of the African deserts, the whole Western world was con- solidated into one great commonwealth, united by bonds of law and government, and by the facilities of communication and commerce, and by the general dissemination of the Greek and Latin languages." In the time of Tiberius, in the latter part of whose reign Christianity arose, a universal peace prevailed, and already a common political life per- vaded the empire. The privileges and immunities of citizenship, which at first were jealously confined 3 34 From Jerusalem to Niccea. to Rome, were soon extended to individuals and to cities beyond the boundaries of Italy; and this extension went on so rapidly that it was made practically universal by Caracalla between 21 1 and 217 A. D. The maintenance and administration of the vast empire which Roman arms had conquered, required the planting of military colonies in many remote provinces of the territory, and the building of roads and the development of means for easy and rapid communication. The nature and extent of the means for communication Uhlhorn thus graphically describes : " The first emperor, Augus- tus, erected in the Forum at Rome a golden mile- stone. It stood as a symbol that there was the centre of the world. A network of artificial high- ways, even then nearly completed, extended from this point through the entire empire. From Cadiz in Spain, through France, through Italy, away up to the cataracts of the Nile, from the lands of the Danube even to the Pillars of Hercules, the trav- eller could journey over well-built roads, and find everywhere, at certain distances, mutationes for change of horses, and mansiones for lodging at night. These roads were so many cords binding the conquered world to the centre, Rome, — so many channels for the impulses which streamed forth from it. On these roads marched the legions to keep under control the subjugated world, and to protect the boundaries ; on these roads proconsuls Rise and Spread of Christianity. 35 and praetors went into the provinces to administer law and justice, and swift couriers bore the edicts of the emperor to the extreme circumference of the broad empire ; over these highways commerce moved, and Romans of distinction journeyed to gain knowledge of the world ; over these highways, too, went the messengers of the gospel, bearing from city to city the joyful tidings of a manifested Redeemer." The barriers between the nations were thus broken down, and a thitherto unknown freedom of intercourse prevailed among the diverse peoples of the East and West. The result of all this was an increasing homogeneousness of thought, and of social as well as political life. The Greek tongue, the language of letters and commerce, was almost universally known ; and the Latin tongue, the language of law and civil administration, had a nearly equal extension. The political unification of the empire stimulated international commerce and a cosmopolitan education. The world was thus singularly prepared for the diffusion of the Christian faith. There were also moral conditions of great im- portance. The religions of the ancient world were almost entirely polytheistic and ethnic. Each na- tion had its own gods, and the powerful force of religion operated to hinder a community of life between the various peoples. The subjugation of these nations by Rome inevitably weakened the 36 From Jerusalem to Niece a. hold of the national gods upon the minds of their worshippers. Roman tolerance or indifference, while it left subject nations free to practise their own religious rites, had the effect of weakening the force of all current religions. The rapidly increas- ing mingling of diverse peoples brought together every variety of religious belief and worship ; the result of which was, a religious eclecticism that passed naturally into scepticism. On every hand there was a decay of the old faiths, and accom- panying this degeneration of religions, and partly because of it, was a development of colossal im- morality. The Roman conquest, especially of opulent Eastern peoples, resulted in the rapid increase of wealth and luxury in Rome; and this was accompanied by a rapid increase of vice. Popular sports became increasingly sensual and cruel, and even religion was made a minister of lust. When Christianity entered on its career of spir- itual conquest, it found heathenism in a state of indescribable moral degradation. The scathing indictment against pagan morals, which appears in the first chapter of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, seems mild when compared with the testimony of some of the pagans themselves. Seneca, a contemporary of St. Paul, says: "All things are full of crimes and vices. A great strug- gle is waged for pre-eminence in iniquity. Daily grows the appetite for sin ; daily wanes the sense Rise and Spread of Christianity. ?>7 of shame. All respect for excellence and justice being cast aside, lust rushes on at will. Crimes are no longer secret; they stalk before the eyes of men. Iniquity is given such a range in pub- lic, and is so mighty in the breasts of all, that innocence is not merely rare, it has no existence. Think you that there are only a few individuals who have made an end of law? From all sides, as at a given signal, men have sprung to the task of confounding right and wrong." Mommsen, the German historian, testifies that, " As a matter of course, morality and family life were treated as antiquated things among all ranks of society. To be poor was not merely the sorest disgrace and the worst crime, but the only disgrace and the only crime : for money the statesman sold the state, and the burgess sold his freedom ; the post of the officer and the vote of the jurymen were to be had for money ; for money the lady of quality surrendered her person as well as the com- mon courtesan ; falsifying of documents and per- juries had become so common that, in a popular poet of this age, an oath is called ' the plaster for debts.' Men had forgotten what honesty was ; the person who refused a bribe was regarded, not as an upright man, but as a personal foe. The criminal statistics of all times and countries will hardly fur- nish a parallel to the dreadful picture of crimes — ■ so varied, so horrible, and so unnatural — which the trial of Aulus Cluentius unrolls before us in 38 From J erusalem to Niccza. the bosom of one of the most respectable families of an Italian country town." There seems to have been, beginning in Rome, and spreading to the wealthy centres of the distant provinces, an abandonment to vice that can be described only as a " hunger and thirst for unright- eousness." A consequence of this wide-spread immorality was a growing disgust with life, and finally a passionate or stolid despair, which urged so many to suicide, that this crime against self ceased to attract attention ; it was even defended by philosophers as the brave man's only refuge from the appalling evils of life. By the side of this despair, however, there arose, in many quar- ters, a vague expectancy of some new message to men that should bring deliverance and peace. This expectancy was due partly to the influence of Judaism. The Jews, even before the destruction of Jerusalem in A. D. 70, had penetrated all nations. They were numerous especially in Rome, in Alex- andria, and in the cities of the far East. The He- brew Scriptures had been translated into Greek some two centuries before the beginning of the Christian era, and the knowledge of their contents had been more or less widely diffused. The spirit of the Hebrew prophets had undoubtedly affected the minds of men in various quarters of the empire, especially in the East. There were numerous proselytes to the Jewish faith, and there were many others, not proselytes, who undoubtedly were Rise and Spread of Christianity, 39 excited to the anticipation of some new religious revelation which should offer to men a way of escape from the moral chaos into which the world was rapidly falling. Such, very briefly, were some of the conditions of the world in the midst of which Christianity had its rise and began its work. We turn now to consider some of the causes of the rise and early growth of Christianity. Most readers of history are familiar with Gibbon's famous statement of these causes. They are : (a) the inflexible and intolerant zeal of the early Chris- tians, derived from the Jewish religion ; (U) their doctrine of future life and future rewards and pun- ishments ; (V) the miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Church ; (d) the pure and austere morals of the Christians ; (e) their closely knit ecclesiastical organization. Gibbon cleverly evaded any attempt to account for the origin of Christianity, and confined himself to a statement of the causes of its rapid extension after the first century. It should be said, in jus- tice to the simple truth of history, that Gibbon's statement is wanting both in exactness and in entire ingenuousness. That the early Christians were inflamed by an unquenchable zeal is true; but their zeal was not intolerant, in the sense in which that term can properly be applied to the zeal of the Jewish sec- tary. They were intolerant of heathen vices and 40 From Jerusalem to Niece a, superstitions, but their intolerance can scarcely be reckoned among the chief influences by which they commended their religion to heathens; espe- cially in view of the fact that Judaism, despite its ethical and spiritual superiority to the Gentile religions, was prevented from extending widely, largely because of the very narrowness and intol- erance of its adherents. Besides, towards the best pagan thought, Christian writers, like Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, were hospitable and even sympathetic. The early Christians undoubtedly were inspired by a profound conviction of the immortality *of the soul, and an invincible belief in the reality of future rewards and punishments ; and unquestion- ably their faith in a future life constituted in itself a powerful appeal to the minds of men. But there is no evidence that, in the first two centuries at least, Christian preachers generally made such use in their preaching of the doctrine of future rewards and punishments as Gibbon implies, and as was made by Christian preachers in later centuries ; or even such use of it as was made by Tertullian at the beginning of the third century. The possession of miraculous powers by the primitive Church would not, of itself, necessarily conduce to the rapid and permanent extension of the Church ; and the fact that miraculous powers were ascribed to the Apostolic Church by both friends and foes of Christianity does not have any Rise and Spread of Christianity. 41 great force as an argument that the assumed possession of such powers was a chief cause of its growth, particularly when we consider that the widest extension of Christianity took place after the acknowledged cessation of the apostolic mira- cles. In only two or three of the early apologists are there reports of contemporary Christian mira- cles, save such as refer to the healing of demoniacs, and to supernatural visions. The allusion of Ire- naeus to the contemporary raising of a dead man is indefinite. There is no evidence that the early Christians to any extent either claimed to work miracles themselves, or commended the gospel to pagans on the ground of miraculous powers repos- ing in the Church. It must be said, however, that such claims were freely made by the founders of heretical sects ; and that the exorcism of demons was considered by many a proper function of Chris- tian ministers. But, considering the fact that almost all people of that time, Jews and pagans as well as Christians, believed in miracles, the student of the first three centuries is surprised to find in most of the early Christian writers a singular sanity and reserve on this subject. In this respect they stand far above many later writers. The swarming miracles of ecclesiastical legend nearly all belong to a period subsequent to the Nicene Council. It should be said, also, that miracles, even if they were real, however much they might predispose men to listen, for the time being, to the miracle- 42 From Jerusalem to Niccea. workers, were incapable of producing that faith which issues in holy life and character, and, if they were not real, their inevitable exposure would hinder rather than aid the progress of the doc- trines in support of which they were adduced. In either case, therefore, Gibbon's argument at this point breaks down. The pure and austere morals of the Christians undoubtedly made a profound impression upon corrupt pagan society; but, in so far as those morals were austere they would naturally repel, rather than attract, those who were given up to vice. It is still true that Christian morality, inspired by divine love, did exert a powerful influence in the extension of Christianity ; but not, as Gibbon would seem to imply, by virtue of its austerity. The last cause which Gibbon cites, " the union and discipline of the Christian republic," or, as I have phrased it, the closely knit ecclesiastical organization of the Christians, could have had no great influence on the spread of Christianity until after the middle of the second century. The highly developed organization of the time of Cyprian was the growth of more than two cen- turies; meanwhile, as early as the beginning of Marcus Aurelius' reign, A. D. 161, Christianity had been diffused throughout the larger part of the Roman empire. Allowing all reasonable force and scope to the Rise and Spread of Christianity, 43 causes which Gibbon defines, we must still say, first, that all of them taken together are inade- quate to account for the manifest effect; and, second, that these causes themselves need explana- tion. It is fair to add, as Newman has suggested, that the combination of these causes needs also to be accounted for; this, of course, Gibbon does not attempt to do. It is impossible, in the brief space of a single lecture, to state with any satisfactory fulness the causes of the rise of Christianity, and its develop- ment during the first three centuries of the Chris- tian era; but the principle causes may be suggested. I. The first of these causes is unquestionably the unique and transcendent personality of Jesus Christ. Whatever may be our theories as to His exact metaphysical nature, this, at least, unpreju- diced students of history must admit, that in the person of Jesus there came into the world a spirit- ual force greater than any other to which the history of man witnesses. Attempts have been made by critical minds, through all succeeding centuries, to classify Jesus, and to give Him His true place among the great personalities of the world; but these attempts have mainly served to illustrate the incapacity of the critics. The story may be told in a few simple words, but its signifi- cance sweeps beyond the utmost bounds of our comprehension. The Baby, born of a Jewish 44 From Jerusalem to Niccea. mother in Palestine, grew to man's estate and then, announcing Himself as a Messenger sent from God, promulgated the doctrine of God and the scheme of human life that have ever since constituted, and still constitute, the religious and moral ideal of the most spiritual minds of the most advanced peoples in the world, — an ideal that grows in beauty, elevation and power, in propor- tion as the spirit of man grows in capacity to apprehend the holy and the divine. After three or four years of teaching, this Son of Mary left the world, committing to a handful of disciples the appalling task of conquering the world by means of the Message and the Life which He had imparted to them. In a narrative, the essential truthfulness of which has never been successfully impeached, we learn that these men, by the power of the inspiration received from their Master, were transformed, after His death, into missionaries and martyrs of the Christian faith. These men, under the influ- ence of the ineradicable conviction that God had truly revealed Himself to them in the Person and teachings of Jesus Christ, did an unexampled work. However numerous may be the subsidiary causes of the development of Christianity in the world, the influence of the personality of Jesus Christ must be placed first. In Him, to a degree beyond that ever exemplified in any other historic personage, God manifested Himself in forms of Rise and Spread of Christianity. 45 human experience, speech, and character. From Him a mighty spiritual force streamed forth upon humanity. It is no accident that the modern world takes its date from the birth of that Baby in the Manger at Bethlehem. II. The contents of the gospel which the dis- ciples of Jesus preached were of such a character as to be almost self-propagative, in the midst of the conditions that existed in the first century. These contents were : the idea of God as the infinite spiritual Father and Sovereign of the human race ; the declaration of the divine love for men, and the divine purpose to save men from sin through forgiveness and the impartation of spiritual energy; and the presentation of a loving, sympathetic, and all-powerful Saviour, who, at once divine and human, endured temptation and trial, suffered death upon the cross for the salvation of sinners, and rose from the dead to make that sal- vation complete by the fulfilment to men of the hope of eternal life. It was a marvellous gospel of hope, — a God who is absolutely holy, and yet cares for men; a Saviour who is divine, and yet shares in human nature and experience, and mingles freely with the poor and outcast and wicked, having for them only words of kindness and deeds of mercy; and a salvation that gives peace to the conscience, strength to the will in its pursuit of virtue, and boundless satisfaction to the soul. 46 From Jerusalem to Niccza. The Christian message appealed to the noblest susceptibilities of the human reason. The sublim- ity and simplicity of its doctrines of God and Sin and Salvation ; the moral purity and beautiful beneficence of the Life which it inculcated and which Jesus Himself had exemplified; and the grandeur of its doctrines of Creation and Provi- dence, in which the loftiest teachings of the Old Testament are carried up to a higher plane, ap- pealed to the intellect and moral sense of men with a force immeasurably beyond that of the theosophies of the Orient and the philosophies of Greece and Rome. But the contents of the Christian gospel appealed not only to the highest reason of the thoughtful few, they appealed also to the sensibility of the vast multitude of the poor and the wretched. The doctrine of salvation through a suffering yet tri- umphant Redeemer brought an efficacious word of hope to every man who desired deliverance from the evils and miseries of human life. Hos- tile critics, like Celsus, urged, as a reproach against Christianity, that it attracted to itself the lower classes of the people ; but this, in truth, was an authentication of its high claims, and a demon- stration of its adequacy as a means of salvation. The gospel addressed itself to the most extreme needs of human life, and its success under this severe test was the finest proof of its divine origin. Rise and Spread of Christianity, 47 III. The gospel was propagated through per- sonal communication. At the beginning, Chris- tianity had no schools, no literature, and no wealth. It was embodied in a group of people some of whom had been witnesses of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, and had learned directly from Him the message which they were to utter ; and all of whom had received and, as they believed, continued to receive, from Him, the im- pulse to carry that message to all the world. Though they but imperfectly comprehended the message and their mission ; though the labors of the original apostles had to be supplemented by the much wider labors of the Apostle to the Gentiles ; yet, as witnesses of Christ and as dis- seminators of the faith of Christ, those early missionaries, in their personal quality and their personal action, take a prominent place among the causes of the spread of the Christian faith. These men were animated by a passionate and persistent love of their Lord. Their characters were transformed, and their action was guided by His spirit. Their enterprise was inspired and directed by the divine purpose which He had revealed. With an entire devotion to Him, they possessed and uttered a lofty and persistent faith amidst wide-spread scepticism ; they exhibited a pure morality amidst wide-spread corruption ; and they illustrated a disinterested benevolence in con- trast with universal selfishness and cruelty. With- 48 From Jerusalem to Niccea. out ostentation and without faltering, they poured out their lives in self-sacrifice that paused at no limits. They at once declared, and in their con- duct exhibited, that love for men which was a dom- inant characteristic and fundamental element of the gospel committed to them. This spirit passed on from these witnesses to others who, through their testimony, espoused the Christian faith, and they, in turn, became missionaries and often martyrs of that faith. The life of the early Church was, to an extraor- dinary degree, a life of love. " Nothing," says Uhlhorn, " more astonished the heathen, nothing was more incomprehensible to them. ' Behold,' they exclaim, ' how they love one another ! ' Says a pagan in astonishment, " They love each other without knowing each other ! " The early Christians not only preached a gospel of love, but they exemplified that gospel in their ministry to the sick, and the poor, and the wretched. " The ancient world," says Uhlhorn again, " was a world without love. There was much that was admirable in it; it produced great men and heroes, but this bond of perfectness was wanting. Whence should love have come? Religion taught none, and awakened none. It taught love to one's native country, obedience to the laws, bravery in war, sacrifice for the greatness and honor of the State — but not philanthropy." But just this pure philanthropy the early Christians taught and prac- Rise and Spread of Christianity. 49 tised. It is a sad illustration of the weakness of human nature, under the temptations brought by increase in numbers and by prosperity, that scarcely was the Church successful in its deadly struggle with heathenism, when it was rent by internecine strife. The development of Christian dogma began the long era of bitter theological controversy, with its accompaniments of division and enmity and conflict, that seems only now slowly drawing toward a close. But before theo- logical strife began, and even afterwards, and in spite of it, the great body of Christians exemplified the power and exhibited the beauty of a love before which multitudes of heathen sank down in astonished and willing subjection. There are many cases on record of persecutors being con- quered by the gentleness and sweetness as well as the fortitude of their victims. In the course of time, the Christians appropri- ated for their enterprise the various means of literature and education and political influence; the development of ecclesiastical organization also became serviceable to their missionary purpose; but during the nearly three hundred years before the Church, in the person of Constantine, came into unquestioned power in the State, — during those long and weary years in which the Christian faith was outlawed, and Christian believers were subject to all kinds of ignorant and fanatical, or deliberate and malicious, persecution, when upon 4 50 From Jerusalem to Niccea. her bowed and patient head the Church received storm after storm of bloody oppression, — during all this time, the chief forces by which, in the face of all opposition and through all difficulties, Chris- tianity was extended were : the influence of the personality of its Founder, the appeal of the con- tents of the gospel which He gave, and the testi- mony and lives of His disciples and their converts. It was a struggle for existence by a spiritual faith against the customs, traditions, laws, social organizations, vices, prejudices, and even religions of the entire world. The triumph of the Christian faith, in spite of these obstacles, in spite of the imperfections of its adherents, and in spite of the corruptions that developed within the Church, is a testimony, which no argument, however subtle and strong, has force to break, — a testimony to the reality and persistence of the divine impulse which was imparted to men in and through the person of Jesus Christ. This triumph was not the triumph merely of creed, — the Church has had many creeds ; nor of a system of ecclesiastical organiza- tion, — the Church has illustrated many systems; but of a spirit of truth and a life of love emanating from God and becoming the inspiring and archi- tectonic forces of human progress and of all sub- sequent civilization. It is at once a modest and a reasonable conclu- sion to which one of the ablest and wisest Chris- Rise and Spread of Christianity. 51 tian teachers in the middle of the third century thus comes : " In all Greece and in all barbarous races within our world, there are tens of thousands who have left their national laws and customary gods for the law of Moses and the word of Jesus Christ; though to adhere to that law is to incur the hatred of idolaters, and to have embraced that word is to incur the risk of death as well. And considering how, in a few years and with no great store of teachers, in spite of the attacks which have cost us life and property, the preaching of that word has found its way into every part of the world, so that Greeks and barbarians, wise and unwise, adhere to the religion of Jesus, — doubtless it is a work greater than any work of man" THE ORGANIZATION OF THE EARLY CHURCH. TN the last lecture we considered the rise of Christianity and its extension throughout the Roman empire during the first three centuries, and the conditions and causes of its development. We are now to consider the development of the Chris- tian Church as an institution. At first the Church and Christianity were practically identical, but the spiritual force of the gospel soon overflowed all boundaries. There probably has not been a time since the beginning of the Christian era, with the exception of the earliest apostolic period, in which Christianity and the Church have been exactly co-extensive. In our study of the organization of the early Church we are tracing the process by which the Christian life became organic in human society, and observing the various functions which it devel- oped in its practical struggle for existence. At first Christianity existed without organization. The early Church was a plastic mass, without officers and without specific functions, but unified and vitalized by a common love for Christ, and led by the apostles as original hearers of Christ and wit- Organization of the Early Church. 53 nesses of His resurrection. But this mass of reli- gious protoplasm, or life-stuff, with strong powers of assimilation, quickly became organic. The organization was at first extremely simple, elastic, and free. The exigencies of the situation, however, combined with the inevitable tendency of human nature, soon produced a marked change. Many persons display great fondness for attempts to trace back the highly differentiated and elab- orately organized ecclesiastical systems of the present day to the time of Christ, or at least to the time of the apostles. The attempts are inter- esting, and on the whole, harmless, but they are also vain. Jesus wrote no book, appointed no officers, in the proper sense of that word, and established no institution. He gave His thought, His life, — in a word, Himself, to His disciples and to the world. His gospel contained within itself the principle of indestructible vitality. It was not a religion, but a revelation and a life. These have inspired religion, created institutions, developed resources, and become organic in manifold forms. The disciples seem at first to have had no idea of forming a church or elaborating a system ; full of the faith and enthusiasm which they had derived from the personal Christ, they went forth among men preaching the gospel of divine love and for- giveness and eternal hope. The sphere of their labors at first was Jerusalem, and there thousands of converts soon gathered about the witnesses. 54 From Jerusalem to Niccea* The love which the gospel of Christ awakened showed itself in deeds of chanty. The ecclesia, or assembly of the believers, became practically com- munistic. Those who had property shared it with those who had none. Love ruled. The voluntary communism that appeared was not universal, but it was prophetic, and it discloses to us the artless- ness of the infant Church. Of this communism Uhlhorn says : " There could be no falser repre- sentation of it than to think of it as an institution. . . . We might as well speak of the institution of a community of goods in a family. But as in a family the consciousness of belonging to each other is so strong as entirely to subordinate the individual possessions of each member, so was it in the primitive Church." It was, he continues, " a noble alms-giving, a free equalization of pos- sessions, carried out in the glow of first love to the largest-hearted and greatest extent, and differing, not in kind, but only in degree and extent, from what we subsequently meet with in the church at Jerusalem and elsewhere." The spectacle which confronts us, as we study the life of those early Christian days, is that of a multitude of men and women rejoicing in a new faith which as yet did not separate them from the old faith, but expanded and enriched it with a new sense of the divine nearness and love ; frequenting the temple and synagogues for worship as they had previously done ; gathering in the customary places Organization of the Early Church. 55 of popular assembly in order to hear over and over again the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection of Jesus ; and meeting in groups at the houses of believers for mutuak comfort and edification, and to commemorate their recently departed Lord by breaking bread in the Eucha- ristic supper. In all this multitude no one had any authority save the apostles, and their authority, natural and spontaneous, was due to their personal experience and prestige as the immediate disciples of Jesus. There was no new ritual, there were no distinctions of clergy and laity, and there were no ordinances, in the common sense of that term. Any believer might preach ; indeed, it is apparent that most believers became involuntary preachers of the gos- pel. Any believer might baptize, and any believer might administer the Communion. It was the childhood of the Church. The function of the apostles was not primarily that of officers, but rather that of witnesses ; but the history of the apostles, so far as it is known, shows that only those who had qualifications for leadership and the work of organization made any permanent impres- sion upon the Church. The increase of the num- ber of believers in Christ very early called for the exercise of leadership and the establishment of some sort of tuition; and the evolution of the Christian Church went on under the influence of the necessities of the case. 56 From Jerusalem to Niccea. Primitive Christianity, in so far as it was a religion, was distinguished from most other reli- gions of the world by being non-sacerdotal. It had no priests and no sacraments. Neither bap- tism nor the Communion was at first a sacrament. The new faith, by its very nature, implied the im- mediate communion of every soul with God. The only priesthood was the universal priesthood of believers. It is a significant fact that in the New Testament writings the sacerdotal title is never once conferred on the officers of the infant Church. Christianity, though it must inevitably take on organization, and adopt methods of teaching and administration, and thus develop characteristic institutions and adequate instruments for its work, was purely and simply a life from God and in God, revealed and mediated by Jesus Christ. None of the institutions that have become so familiar to us as features of the objective manifestation of Christianity were essential to it. " This," says Lightfoot, " is the Christian ideal : a holy season extending the whole year round ; a temple confined only by the limits of the hab- itable world ; a priesthood co-extensive with the human race." The Church, at first purely a voluntary assembly, retained this simple, elementary character during the time of the apostles. In Jerusalem and else- where, under the guidance of the apostles, these Organization of the Early Chtirch. 57 voluntary assemblies chose committees or boards of administration that are designated as presbyters, or bishops, which means simply "elders," or "over- seers." Among the Jewish churches, the syna- gogue with its board of elders naturally served as a model ; in the Gentile churches, the society, or guild, which was common among the Gentiles, with its committee of managers, naturally served as a model. Admission to the Church was by the simplest process imaginable. There were no dogmatic tests of membership, there was no doctrinal examina- tion, and there were no creeds. Confession of belief in Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God, was followed immediately by baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus. Baptism apparently might be administered by any believer. After the develop- ment of the clergy, it was usually administered by one of that body ; but as late as the end of the second century, baptism by laymen was enjoined by Tertullian whenever none of the clergy could be present. The canons of the Roman Catholic Church still permit a layman or even a woman to baptize ; at least, baptism so administered, if the proper matter and form be used, is pronounced valid. The primitive form of baptism was immer- sion, and for the first thirteen centuries this was the form almost universally observed. The testi- mony of Stanley on this point is incontrovertible. " Baptism," he says, " was not only a bath, but a 58 From Jerusalem to Niccea. plunge, — an entire submersion in the deep water, a leap as into the rolling sea or the rushing river, where for the moment the waves close over the bather's head, and he emerges again as from a momentary grave ; or it was the shock of a shower- bath, — a rush of water passed over the whole per- son from capacious vessels, so as to wrap the recipient as within the veil of a splashing cararact." In another place he declares that " for the first thirteen centuries the almost universal practice of baptism was that of which we read in the New Testament, and which is the very meaning of the word ' baptize,' — that those who were baptized were plunged, submerged, immersed into the water. That practice is still continued in Eastern churches. In the Western church it still lingers amongst Roman Catholics in the solitary instance of the cathedral at Milan; amongst Protestants in the numerous sect of the Baptists. It lasted long into the Middle Ages. Even the Icelanders, who at first shrank from the waters of their freezing lakes, were reconciled when they found that they could use the warm water of the Geysers. And the cold climate of Russia has not been found an obstacle to its continuance throughout that vast empire- Even in the Church of England it is still observed in theory. The rubric in the Public Baptism for Infants enjoins that, unless for special causes, they are to be dipped, not sprinkled. Edward the Sixth and Elizabeth were both immersed." Organization of the Early Church. 59 As I have already said, under the exigencies of the Christian communities various offices arose. Capacity to hold office was regarded as a gift from the Holy Spirit and was called a charisma, which means literally a gift of grace. There were gifts of ruling, of teaching, of prophesying, of tongues, of discerning the spirits, and of evangelizing. The apostles themselves evidently regarded these func- tions as gifts. As yet the entire body of Christians was upon one level, indicated by the phrase, " all ye are brethren." Says Hatch: "The distinctions which St. Paul makes between Christians are based, not upon office, but upon varieties of spiritual power. They are caused by the diversity of the operations of the Holy Spirit. They are consequently per- sonal and individual. They do not mark off class from class, but one Christian from another. Some of these spiritual powers are distinguished from others by a greater visible and outward effect ; but they are all the same in kind." Among these various offices two very socfn be- came tolerably well-defined, and out of one of these developed a third ; and these three ultimately became the three characteristic and permanent offices of the Christian Church. The history of the growth of these three offices is the history of the organization of the Church. I have already alluded to the creation of boards of administration consisting of presbyters or bish- 60 From Jerusalem to Niccea. ops ; but it will be advisable to take up the three offices and study them somewhat in detail. The apostles were at first the sole directors of the Chris- tian communities which were created by their efforts ; but the multiplication of Christian com- munities outside of Palestine made this personal apostolic supervision impracticable. The necessity for the creation of some sort of administration is therefore apparent. During the lifetime of the apostles there existed two classes of administrative officers : deacons and presbyters, or bishops. The latter were also called shepherds, or pastors. Only these two kinds of officers appear during apostolic times. Between the epistles of St. Paul and the epistles of Ignatius (110-117 A. D.), a period of about fifty years, we have little information on the growth of the Church. Before the middle of the second century each church, or organized Chris- tian community, had three orders of ministers : its bishop, its presbyters, and its deacons, — though this is certainly true, at that early date, only of the churches in Syria and Asia Minor, and the church in Rome. The first of these three offices which appears in the Acts of the Apostles is that of the deacons. Following the chronological order, therefore, we shall consider, — 1. Deacons. — The word " deacon," Std/covo?, means " minister," " servant," " attendant." The origin of the word is uncertain. It was once thought to be Organization of the Early Church. 61 derived from the compound hid and /coW, which would mean " raising dust by hastening." In the New Testament the word Bcd/covos is used many- times in the general sense of " minister " or " ser- vant," and only three times (Phil. i. i, and I Tim. iii. 8, 12) in the technical sense of " deacon." The verb Sta/coveco is used many times to designate the act of ministering or serving, and but twice (1 Tim. iii. 10, 13) to designate the exercise of the office of deacon. This term is applied to Peter's mother-in-law, who, after she had been healed of the fever by Jesus, it is said, " rose and ministered unto them" (Scrj/covei, Mark i. 31). The substan- tive Biaxovia is often used in the New Testament to designate ministry, or service, or administration ; but never once with the technical sense of deacon- ship. The word, however, was soon appropriated to a specific office in the Church. That office, the diaconate, appears to have had its origin in the incident told in the sixth chapter of the Acts. In that chapter we have a most interesting glimpse of the first Christian community, — a glimpse which reveals to us the significant fact that the earliest activities of the Church were those of practical charity. A dispute had arisen between the He- brews and Hellenists over the matter of providing food for the widows and other dependents of the Christian community. The apostles, powerfully urged by their inward impulse to the work of preaching, sought to be relieved from the care of 62 From Jerusalem to Niccza. this administration, which up to this time had rested entirely upon them. They therefore asked for the appointment of " seven men of good repute, full of the spirit of wisdom," whom they proposed to appoint over the business ; meantime they would give themselves more freely to the ministry of the word. We have here two functions brought into sug- gestive comparison, in reference to which the same word, Sia/covia, is used. These are the ministry of the tables (focucovCa roiv rpaire^wv'), and the minis- try of the word (hicucovla rov \070u). The latter of these the apostles appropriated to themselves ; the former they referred to the " seven good men "who were chosen for that purpose. These seven men are never called deacons in the New Testament, but only " the Seven." Two of them, Stephen and Philip, almost immediately became distinguished preachers and evangelists, though preaching was not any part of the function for which they were specifically chosen. Assuming that the diaconate originated in the appointment of these seven men, we see that it sprang out of the earliest needs of the Christian community in Jerusalem. The're was no office corresponding to it in the synagogue, as was clearly the case with the presbyterate. In the epistles of St. Paul the term " deacons" occurs in such a way as to indicate that the office was early established. The fact that " the Seven " were never called deacons, and that several, at least, were Organization of the Early Church. 63 laborious and successful preachers of the gospel, one of whom, Stephen, on account of the hostility which his preaching stirred up among the unchris- tian Jews in Jerusalem, became the first martyr of the Church, has led some to infer that their ap- pointment does not mark the beginning of the diaconate; but on the whole it is reasonable to conclude that the appointment of" the Seven" to administer the charity of the church in Jerusalem was the real origin of the office. Against this, Uhlhorn contends that " the Seven" were not the original deacons, but the first elders, citing in proof the fact that St. Luke never again mentions the Seven in the church of Jerusalem, although he does mention presbyters, and that the Evangelist gives no other account of the institution of the presbytery; and he maintains that " the manage- ment of works of mercy, of alms-giving, was never conceded to the deacons. It was in the hands of the presbyters and afterwards of the bishops, and the deacons only gave their assistance. And this is, in general, the position of deacons in the or- ganism of the Church." He also claims that orig- inally the deacons were not appointed officers, but volunteers, who freely gave their services to the Church. " Those," he says, " who had the requisite gifts and love, rendered of their own accord the service afterwards allotted to the deacons, and it was not till the increase of the Church rendered this needful that a regular office grew up out of 64 From yerusalem to Niccza. the free gift and love." In his view the diaconate is an office which properly belongs to any Chris- tian who will fill it. In this the deacon differs radically from the presbyter. " Not every Chris- tian is a presbyter ; but every one is really and naturally a deacon, a servant of all." It was the main function of deacons (and of deaconesses, for we read of the latter also in the New Testament) to look after the poor and dis- pense the gifts of the Church under the supervision of the presbyters or bishops. " The diaconate," says Stanley, " was the oldest ecclesiastical func- tion, the most ancient of the holy orders. It was grounded on the elevation of the care of the poor to the rank of a religious service. It was a proc- lamation of the truth that social questions are to take the first place amongst religious instruction. It was the recognition of political economy as a part of religious knowledge." Deacons are always spoken of in conjunction with presbyters or bishops. The office passed from the church in Jerusalem to other churches, and, in 62 A. D., we find deacons as well as presbyters in the Philippian church. In later times the deacons became stewards of the prop- erty of the church and of the funds belonging to widows and orphans. It was their duty to visit the sick and the afflicted and report to the bishop. In time of persecution they visited confessors in prison to bear to them the messages and gifts of Organization of the Early Church. 65 their brethren, and to minister, as far as was allowed, to their needs; and they buried the bodies of martyrs. The discipline of the church was also intrusted to them as ministers to the bishop, and under his direction they sought out, reproved, and if possible recovered, offenders. For a long time it would appear that the number of deacons in any single community was limited to seven. This fact seems to indicate that the office had its origin in the appointment of Stephen and Philip and their companions. In 315 A. D. a canon of the Council of Neo-Caesarea enacted that there should be no more than seven deacons in any society. A certain latitude was secured, however, by the appointment of subdeacons. 2. Presbyters. — " Presbyter," or " elder," 7rpe- o-ftvrepos, is a Jewish term and indicates a well- known office in the synagogue. The Acts of the Apostles gives us no account of the institution of the presbytery, probably because the office was naturally and immediately transferred from the synagogue to the church. The persecution of the Christians which followed the stoning of Stephen had the result of spreading the gospel to Samaria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch in Syria. Indirectly it had the further result of giving to the Church that incomparable missionary genius, St. Paul. James, the brother of John, who had been practi- cally the head of the church in Jerusalem, was put 5 66 From Jerusalem to Niccea. to death by Herod Agrippa. The persecution in- creased the felt need of a recognized head of the church, and James, the brother of Jesus, by virtue of his personal character as well as his relationship to the Lord, became the president of the Jerusalem community. The apostle Peter had devoted him- self to preaching the gospel beyond Jerusalem, but he returned to Jerusalem, where, with James and John, he participated in the Council that assembled to consider the questions which arose through the conversion of the Gentiles and the formation of Gentile Christian communities under the preaching of Paul and Barnabas. Personal apostolic supervision, even of Pales- tinian Christian communities, was of necessity limited. The apostles naturally were the first points of attack in times of persecution, and, be- sides, the growth of the churches soon carried them beyond the ability of so small a number of men to look after their needs. There appear to have arisen in the churches bodies of men to whom was committed the duty of supervision and admin- istration. These undoubtedly were presbyters, or elders, and following closely the model furnished by the synagogue, the presbytery was a sort of local sanhedrim. Paul and Barnabas, in their missionary work, at first confined themselves to their fellow-countrymen in Gentile lands ; but soon they were driven out of the synagogues, and then they began rapidly to form Christian com- Organization of the Early Church. 67 munities among the Gentiles. These communities apparently were modelled after the societies or guilds that were so common at that time. Over these communities the apostles appointed presby- ters, or elders, as the Jews would call them, or, as they would more naturally be called in Gentile communities, overseers, that is, bishops. These presbyters, or bishops, were to watch over the Christian flocks, to direct them in their worship, and serve to the poor. They also exer- cised discipline and looked after the morals of the Christians. The presbyters were not specifically teachers, though a presbyter who had the ne- cessary qualifications might exercise the teaching function. Among the presbyters, and outside of that body, there were teachers consisting of men who showed themselves possessed of the gifts of prophecy and aptness to teach. The eldership rapidly developed into a perma- nent congregational office. The development through which this office passed leads us to the consideration of — 3. Bishops. — The word "bishop," eirCcr/coiro?, is a pagan word and means, literally, overseer. The first function which it designated was one that grew out of the charitable activities of the church. The overseer received, and through the deacons administered, the church funds for the poor. During the first century, at least until after the death of St. Paul, there was no distinction be- 68 From Jerusalem to Niccza, tween presbyters and overseers, or bishops; but probably as early as the last years of the century, and possibly with the sanction and under the guidance of St. John in Asia Minor, one of the presbyters or bishops in each church became chairman or president, and thus the later bishop in embryo. At first the terms "bishop" and "presbyter" were interchangeable ; then the bishop was called also " presbyter," though the presbyter was not called " bishop." The title, previously common to all the presbyters, was thus appropriated to one. This appropriation, however, could scarcely have taken place much before the end of the first or the early years of the second century; certainly this is true of the Christian communities among the heathen. " As late," says Lightfoot, " as the year 70 no distinct signs of the episcopal government had appeared in Gentile Christendom." Before the middle of the second century, however, we find the office of bishop quite clearly defined. In the letters of Ignatius (110-117 A. D.) the episcopate appears in so advanced a stage of development as to indicate that the development had been going on in the East for some years. This development was perhaps stimulated among Jewish Christians by the fall of Jerusalem and the loss of a visible centre. But in all Christian communities the need of some unifying force in organization and administration was early felt; Organization of the Early Church, 69 this need become more urgent as, through the increase of pagan hostility, the existence of the church seemed to grow more and more pre- carious. In Asia Minor the episcopate, as I have already suggested, may have had its beginning under the eye and even with the initiative of St. John, though, it must be admitted, of this there is no evidence. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who met a martyr's death in 155 or 156 A. D., at the ad- vanced age of eighty-six years, was the disciple of St. John. As early as 110 Polycarp is addressed as the bishop of Smyrna by Ignatius ; and it is supposed that Polycarp was appointed to this office by St. John. At any rate it is clear that the episcopacy developed rapidly in Asia Minor, though in Macedonia and Greece it was of much slower growth. It is a fair inference that there were no bishops in these latter countries as late as 125 A. d., or even later. In Corinth the episcopate was established probably as the result of feuds and controversies in the Corinthian church, though it was not in existence there as late as 97, the date of Clement's letter from Rome. In Rome, if we are to attach any significance to the silence of Ignatius in his letter to the Romans, the episcopate had not developed as late as no or 117; but it must have appeared soon after this time. Its growth in Rome was vigorous and rapid. The idea of the episcopate, as a continuation of the apostolate and its authority in the Church,. jo From Jerusalem to Niccea. was suggested as early as the time of Irenaeus (177-200). The Christian churches in Gaul were planted from Asia Minor, there being a racial kinship between the Galatians and the Gauls, and probably they began with the episcopal form of organization. The episcopate could not have been definitively established in Gaul at this time, however, since even Irenaeus uses the terms "bishops" and " presbyters" interchangeably. In Africa, which was christianized from Rome, episco- pacy was introduced early and rapidly extended. In the time of Hippolytus, near the beginning of the third century, the idea of the episcopate had developed far toward the hierarchical view which it attained under Cyprian in the middle of the same century. In 189 Victor, the bishop of Rome, first claimed universal dominion. This claim was vigorously and somewhat scornfully denied by Tertullian, and a similar claim was ignored or denied by Cyprian fifty years later. Quite early the president-bishop began to lay claim to the teaching as well as to the ruling function. The presbyters retained the position of advisers of the bishop, and later shared also in the sacerdotal functions, and, during the vacancy of the episcopal office, took the guidance of the church. In preaching and the care of souls they acted on the commission and with the approbation of the bishop. Already that process was begun which Hatch thus describes: " By one of those slow and Organization of the Early Church. 71 silent revolutions which the lapse of many cen- turies brings about in political as well as in religious communities, the ancient conception of the office as essentially disciplinary and collegiate, has been superseded by a conception ' of it in which not only is a single presbyter competent to discharge all a presbyter's functions, but ,in which also those functions are primarily, not those of discipline, but the * ministration of the Word and Sacraments.' " In early times there was a bishop wherever in later times we find a parish church, and the chief function of the bishop was one of administration ; but gradually he absorbed also the functions of administering baptism and the Communion. An interesting survival of this appears in the rite of Confirmation. " No baptism," says Hatch, " is theoretically complete until the bishop has taken that part in it which once followed immediately upon immersion, but which is now come to have the semblance of a separate rite, and is known as Confirmation." The development of the episcopate was not uniform ; as we have seen, it was more rapid in Asia Minor than it was in Gaul and Greece. Even in the fifth century it was the custom of the bishop to address the presbyters as " fellow-pres- byters ; " and this custom was not questioned till the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth cen- tury. Jerome, who wrote about the end of the 72 From Jerusalem to Niccza. fourth century, says: "Bishops and presbyters are the same, for the one is a term of dignity, the other of age." Again, " If any one thinks the opinion that bishops and presbyters are the same to be, not the view of the Scriptures, but my own, let him study the words of the apostle to the Philippians." Still again, " As presbyters know that by the custom of the church they are subject to him who shall have been set over them, so let bishops also be aware that they are superior to presbyters more owing to custom than to any actual ordinance of the Lord." In another place he says: " At Alexandria, from Mark the Evange- list down to the times of the bishops Heraclas (233-249) and Dionysius (249-265), the presbyters always nominated as bishops one chosen out of their own body and placed in a higher grade ; just as if an army were to appoint a general, or deacons were to choose from their own body one whom they knew to be diligent and call him archdeacon." At first presbyters, or bishops, and deacons were not distinguished from the laity, save by the fact of their exercising certain functions in the service of the church. They still pursued their customary secular vocations. Even in the third century we find Cyprian cautioning the clergy not to give so much time to matters of business, and protesting against their acceptance of civil offices. Although the distinction between Organization of the Early Church. 73 clergy and laity must have begun to appear early in the second century, even as late as the time of Cyprian (248-258 A. D.) the laity were not entirely excluded from a share in the management of the church. With the growth of the hierarchical idea, the rural bishops, who naturally deferred to bishops of metropolitan cities of the Roman provinces, looking to them for advice and guidance, gradually became subordinate to them in authority as well as in dignity. This was due chiefly to the supe- rior rank of the metropolitan cities. The theory of apostolic succession, suggested by Irenaeus and elaborated by Cyprian, naturally emphasised the importance of those cities which had been the scenes of apostolic labor, and the bishops of those cities soon took precedence of the ordinary metro- politans. To these the designation, " archbishop," which at first was applied to all metropolitans, was ultimately confined. The influence of the imperial idea upon the Church appears in the deference which, particularly in the Western churches, was early paid to the church in Rome. The bishop whose seat was in the capital of the world naturally drew to himself a consideration like that given to no other official of the Church. The association of the apostles, St. Paul and St. Peter, with the Roman church, and, later, the tradition that St. Peter was the founder of that church, tended also to increase the authority of its bishop. The claim that St 74 From Jerusalem to N ices a. Peter founded the church in Rome, was not heard until 170 A. D. ; it was a baseless claim, but it had a powerful charm for the minds of men, especially among Western Christians, and in later centuries it was urged with such vigor that finally it became dominant throughout the West. Now for many centuries it has been the proud boast of the Roman pontiffs that they are the successors of St. Peter. But, while the Roman bishop had considerable influence as early as the third cen- tury, no dictation from him was allowed during the period to which our study is confined ; nor was it ever allowed in the Eastern Church. Even Cyprian, who may be considered the founder of the theory that the bishops are the divinely or- dained successors of the apostles, maintained that the bishops are on a footing of perfect equality; " each of them is a successor of Peter, and an heir of the promise given indeed to Peter first, but given to h\m for all the others? In the controversy over the Easter question, the high-handed course taken by Victor in excom- municating what were called the Quarto-deciman churches (the churches that observed the four- teenth Nisan as the anniversary of Jesus' death) was condemned even by the churches who were in agreement with him, and his excommunication was disregarded. The development of the episcopate into a closely knit hierarchy, a process that was well on Organization of the Early Church. 75 its way by the middle of the third century, was due in part to the necessity for unity and harmony in the midst of the distractions which beset the Church, and to the desire for the preservation of orthodoxy. The rise of heresies and sects in the Church, particularly the inroads of Gnosticism in its various forms, led to a demand for the enforce- ment of a " rule of faith." This " rule of faith " was the apostolic tradition, supposed to be pre- served especially by bishops who occupied apos- tolic seats. By the time of Irenaeus this had grown substantially into the form which was known in after times as " the Apostles' Creed." The episcopate thus became the centre of unity and the depositary of apostolic tradition. The growth of the idea of the episcopate during the first three centuries has been clearly and succinctly sketched by Lightfoot. In the following words I summarize his statement. With Ignatius, the bishop is the centre and bond of ecclesiastical unity; with Irenaeus he is the depositary of apos- tolic tradition; with Cyprian he is the absolute vicegerent of Christ in things spiritual. " Cyp- rian," he says, " regards the bishop as exclusively the representative of God to the congregation and hardly, if at all, as the representative of the con- gregation before God. The bishop is the indis- pensable channel of divine grace, the indispensable bond of Christian brotherhood. The episcopate is not so much the roof, as the foundation stone of j 6 From Jerusalem to Nice? a. the ecclesiastical edifice; not so much the legiti- mate development, as the primary condition of the Church. The bishop is appointed directly by God, is responsible directly to God, is inspired directly from God." The development of the hierarchy in the Church was naturally accompanied or followed by the rise and development of sacerdotalism. The sacer- dotal idea is entirely absent from the New Testa- ment, and also from the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. Ignatius never regards the ministry as a sacerdotal office. Polycarp knows nothing of sacerdotal duties or privileges. Justin Martyr, though he speaks at length of the Eucharistic offerings, says nothing of any sacerdotal functions save such as belong to the whole Christian body, — all are priests. Irenaeus also, and Clement of Alexandria, and even Origen, are free from any trace of sacerdotalism. The sacerdotal idea appears germinally near the close of the second century. Tertu-llian is the first who asserts sacerdotal claims on behalf of the ministry, and even he seems to hold that the church, for convenience, has entrusted to the clergy sacerdotal functions which belong to the whole congregation. Says Ritschl : " The distinction between the active and the passive members of the congregation, — in other words, the Catholic conception of the priesthood, — is foreign to the first two centuries." Organization of the Early Church, jj .Cyprian however, advanced to a definite sacer- dotal position, and from his time on, the priestly conception of the Christian ministry grew until it completely dominated the office. For nearly or quite two centuries the office of the Christian minister was representative : it was that of an ambassador, and that of a teacher and leader; afterwards it became vicarial, and, instead of ambassadors of God, the priests were His vicars. An important feature of ecclesiastical adminis- tration is the Synod or Council. Diocesan synods appear to have been held very early in Asia Minor. Traces of such bodies are found as early as the middle of the second century. In the third century synods were frequent, though none rose above the dignity of provincial councils. During the latter half of this century they were held at least annually, in almost every province of Christen- dom ; in Asia Minor they were held semi-annually. These synods were called by metropolitan bishops to deal with important questions of doctrine and administration. They were composed of bishops, presbyters and deacons, and sometimes laymen also by invitation; but usually only bishops signed the decrees, and gradually the lay element was excluded. Important synodal decisions were com- municated to distant bishops, and thus these bodies tended to promote unity in the doctrine and practice of the Church, and accelerated the development and centralization of ecclesiastical 78 From yerusalem to Niccea. authority. From these decisions there was grad- ually formed a body of ecclesiastical law. A synod was alleged to have been held in Sicily against the Gnostic, Heracleon, as early as 125 A. D., and another in Rome under the bishop Telesphorus before 139; but there is no historical evidence of either, and, besides, Heracleon, who is the earliest known commentator on the Fourth Gospel, scarcely could have taught earlier than 150. The earliest synods that are known were called to deliberate on the Montanist heresy in Asia Minor about 156, or a little later. Toward the end of the century synods were held in Palestine, Pontus, Gaul, Mesopotamia, at Ephesus, and in Rome (under Vic- tor), in connection with the controversy over the time for observing the Easter festival. Still other synods of which we have some record were held concerning the validity of heretical baptism ; the heresies of Beryllus, Sabellius, and Paul of Samo- sata; the irregular ordination of Origen ; and va- rious other exigencies of church discipline. There was a synod in North Africa about 215 A. D., one in Iconeum in 256, and seven under Cyprian in Carthage between 248 and 256. A council at Elvira in Spain, in 305 or 306 A. D., issued the first recorded decree on the celibacy of the clergy. In Aries, in Southern Gaul, a synod was held in 314 in which Britain and nearly, or quite, all of the other Western provinces were represented by bishops. Organization of the Early Church. 79 There was no CEcumenical Council until after the conversion of Constantine. The Council of Nicaea, in 325, was the first of a series of great councils, the decisions of which shaped the doc- trine and ecclesiastical policy of the Church for many centuries, and still shape the policy of the Church throughout a large part of Christendom. It remains -for me to give some account of the worship of the early Church and of the develop- ment of sacramentalism in the estimation and use of the Christian ordinances. The religious life of the early Church, as well as its organization, was more or less influenced by the conditions amidst which it rose. In Palestine, where the churches were composed exclusively of Jews, there was at first very little change in the forms of worship. Christians frequented the temple and the syna- gogues, and continued to observe the Sabbath and the Passover. In the churches beyond Palestine both syna- gogues and Gentile religious associations probably influenced the religious customs of Christians, for in these churches there were both Jews and Gentiles. The influence of the Jewish element in the churches of Asia Minor is very apparent in the controversy over the time for the celebration of the Easter festival which agitated Christendom during the latter part of the second and the whole of the third centuries. The churches in Asia Minor contended that the annual commemoration 8o From Jerusalem to Niccza. of the death of Christ should be observed on the fourteenth of the Hebrew month Nisan, regardless of the day of the week on which this might fall. Accordingly, on the fourteenth of Nisan they ended the Lenten fast with the celebration of the Eucharist as the Christian's paschal feast. In Rome, how- ever, and the churches of the West, it was con- tended that the Hebrew calendar, should be discarded, and that the observance of Easter should always be upon the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The controversy over this question is known as the Quarto-deciman controversy. It practically ended with the Council of Nicaea in 325. The celebration of Easter as a Christian festival, it should be said, appears not to have arisen, or to have become at all general, until sometime in the second century. There is no trace of this celebration either in the New Testament or the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. Socrates, the Church historian (c. 385-430 A. D.) says: " The Saviour and His apostles have enjoined us by no law to keep this feast. . . . The apostles had no thought of appointing festival days, but of promot- ing a life of blamelessness and piety. And it seems to me that the feast of Easter has been introduced into the Church from some old usage, just as many other customs have been established." The influence of Hebrew custom, as illustrated in the synagogue, appears in the free and simple Organization of the Early Church. 81 forms of worship that characterized the apostolic church. There was reading from the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament, followed by exegetical and practical addresses from any who were moved by the Spirit to speak. In later times a letter from one of the apostles was also read, and, still later, portions from one of the gospels. After the final settlement of the New Testament canon, the custom became fixed of reading in worship selections from both the Old and New Testaments, a custom which has survived until the present day. There were prayers, which soon followed pre- scribed forms, repetitions of the Lord's Prayer and the singing of psalms. In addition to psalms, Christian hymns began to appear in worship as early, probably, as the time of St. Paul. It is thought that fragments of some of these Christian hymns are found in his epistles ; as, for example : Awake thou that sleepest, And rise from the dead, And Christ shall give thee light. Eph. v. 14. Justified in the spirit, Seen of angels, Preached among the nations, Believed on in the world, Received up in glory. 1 Tim. hi. 16. 82 From Jerusalem to Niccea. He that would love life, And see good days, Let him refrain his tongue from evil, And his lips that they speak no guile, etc. i Peter hi. io, 12. This last is adapted with a slight modification from the 34th Psalm. Before the end of the second century there was an interesting development of Christian hymnology. The Evening Hymn of the Greek Church, <£<»? l\apbv ay Las 6o'|t7?, is attributed to Athenogenes, who was martyred about 175 A. D. It is familiar to English readers through the metrical trans- lations, or paraphrases, by Keble, Eddis, and Dr. Bethune. I give a literal translation : — " Glad Light of the holy glory, Of the Immortal Heavenly Father, Holy, Blessed Jesus Christ, Coming to the setting sun, Beholding the evening light, We hymn Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God. Worthy art Thou, in all seasons, to be hymned with pious voices, O Son of God, who givest life ; Wherefore the world glorifies Thee." About the end of the second century Barde- sanes and his son, Harmonius, wrote many hymns which were very popular in the Syrian churches. Among the most notable of the early Christian hymns is the Gloria in Excclsis. The following Organization of the Early Church. 83 hymn is attributed to Clement of Alexandria. I quote from the literal translation, a part of which may be found in the first volume of Dr. Sheldon's " History of the Christian Church." As Dr. Shel- don says, " it is little else than a chain of epithets descriptive of the offices of Christ." " Bridle of untamed colts, Wing of unwandering birds, Sure helm of babes, Shepherd of royal lambs ! Assemble thy simple children To praise holily, To hymn guilelessly With innocent mouths Christ the guide of children, O King of saints, All-subduing Word Of the most high Father, Prince of wisdom, Support of sorrows, That rejoicest in the ages, Jesus, Saviour Of the human race, Shepherd, Husbandman, Helm, bridle, Heavenly Wing, Of the all-holy flock, Fisher of men Who are saved, Catching the chaste fishes With sweet life From the hateful wave Of a sea of vices, — 84 From Jerusalem to Niccea. Guide [us] Shepherd, of rational sheep ; Guide unharmed children, O holy King," etc 1 In the early assemblies for worship great freedom of address was allowed. Whoever had a charismatic endowment might speak. All Chris- tians participated in the worship until after the middle of the second century ; then worship began to be looked upon, not only as a service to God which was obligatory, but even as having a merit of its own; then the worship was gradually appro- priated by the clergy, and finally the distinction between " the active and the passive members of the congregation" became complete. In the beginning the Hebrew Christians con- tinued to keep the Jewish Sabbath, but the first day of the week also was observed in commem- oration of the resurrection of Christ, — not, how- ever, like the Jewish Sabbath, by cessation from manual labor. The Lord's day, as almost from the beginning it was called, was observed by meetings for joyful worship, in which the attitude of prayer usually was standing, and for the celebration of the Eucharist. The distinction ot days was natural to the Jewish Christians, and under Jewish influence it tended to appear in Gentile churches, especially in Asia Minor. This tendency St. Paul resisted. In 1 The whole of the literal translation of which the above is but the first half, and also a very good metrical version, may be found in Volume IV. of the " Ante-Nicene Christian Library." Organization of the Early Church. 85 accordance with the genius of the Christian faith, he maintained that all days were sacred, and threw the whole weight of his influence against the tendency to Judaize Christianity. For a time his influence prevailed, but the tendency was too strong, and, although most of the Jewish rites passed away, the tendency survived ; and during a large part of its history the Christian Church has exhibited the Judaistic spirit of devotion to sacred days and seasons and ceremonies. As the churches in Palestine declined, or largely lost their distinctively Jewish character by the incoming of Gentiles after the destruction of Jerusalem, the observance of the Sabbath gradually disappeared. The Lord's day did not, however, immediately take its place, save in the single sense that it became a day for Christian worship. Not until about the year 200 do we meet with recommendations to Christians to abstain wholly from secular labor on Sunday. Abstinence from secular labor on that day was not made compulsory by the church until as late as the Council of Laodicea in 363 A. D. ; though as early as 321 Constantine legally recognized the exceptional character of the day " by forbidding the courts of justice to hold their sessions on that day, except for the humane purpose of manumit- ting slaves. He also commanded his soldiers to refrain from their customary military exercises." Dr. Fisher, from whom I quote, adds that " the 86 From Jerusalem to Niccea. public games, however, still continued to attract many from the proper observance of Sunday and of the Church festivals. But in 425 a law was passed forbidding all games on such days." The ascetical tendency, which appeared very early in the church, developed rapidly in the second century; it shows itself in the emphasis that was laid on fasting and the custom of observ- ing Wednesdays and Fridays until 3 o'clock in the afternoon as fast days, and also in the growing dis position to attach special value to virginity and celibacy. The observance of Wednesday as a fast day ceased after a time, but Friday continued to be kept, in memory of Christ's passion. The "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" says: " Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth days of the week ; but ye shall fast on the fourth and the preparation day," — that is, Wednesday and Friday. The tendency of the Church toward sacra- mentalism began to appear in connection with the two ordinances, Baptism and the Lord's Supper. At first baptism was symbolically a confession of faith in Christ and a pledge of obedience to Him: associated with this was, of course, the idea of cleansing from sin. Its form, immersion, vividly suggested a burial and resurrection; therefore, from the beginning almost, it carried with it the idea of a birth. Even in apostolic times the act of baptism seems to have been intimately asso- Organization of the Early Church. 87 ciated with the idea of regeneration. In the ear- liest writings after the New Testament, we find expressions indicating that it was believed to have a mystical efficacy. The term " Baptism," was some- times used as the equivalent of regeneration and con- version. In the " Teaching of the Twelve " there is no clear intimation of this idea, but the idea is fairly ascribed to Ignatius, and it is found quite explicitly in the writings of Justin Martyr. The latter says concerning converts: " They are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regener- ated." Speaking of the Eucharist, he uses the following language : " Of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined." In another place, discours- ing of righteousness, Justin says : " We have be- lieved, and testify that that very baptism which he (Isaiah) announced is alone able to purify those who have repented ; and this is the water of life." Tertullia-n, although he was inclined to postpone baptism on account of the supposed deadliness of sins committed after receiving that ordinance, thus writes : " Happy is the sacrament of our water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blind- ness, we are set free [and admitted] into eternal life ! . . . We, little fishes, after the example of our 88 From Jerusalem to Niccea. IX©T2, Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in water. And so that most monstrous creature, who had no right to teach even sound doctrine, knew full well how to kill the little fishes, by taking them away from the water ! " Tertullian here alludes to some one whom he stigmatizes as the " viper of the Cainite heresy." In another place Tertullian argues vigorously against doubts that baptism is necessary to salvation. Cyprian expresses his conviction of the necessity of baptism even more strongly than Tertullian. He says : " In order that, according to the divine arrange- ment and the evangelical truth, they may be able to obtain remission of sins, and to be sanctified, and to become temples of God, they must all absolutely be baptized with the baptism of the Church who come from adversaries and antichrists to the Church of Christ." He also explicitly makes baptism the means of regeneration. " One is not born by the imposition of hands when he receives the Holy Spirit, but in baptism, that so, being already born, he may receive the Holy Spirit" About the middle of the third century, there- fore, the sacramental doctrine of baptism, though it was not fully formulated until the time of Augus- tine, had become so far fixed that the rite was conceived as necessary to salvation. In primitive times believers were baptized immediately upon Organization of the Early Church. 89 their confession of faith in Christ. The baptism was an immersion which quite early became three- fold. "The Teaching of the Twelve" is the first Christian document that seems to recognize any other form. It says: "If thou hast not living water, baptize into other water; and if thou canst not in cold, then in warm. But if thou hast nei- ther, pour water thrice upon the head into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." This writing certainly is as early as the first decade of the second century, and probably it belongs to the last years of the first century. After a time, as a cautionary measure, baptism was delayed, and the Catechumenate was formed. As early as the persecution under Pliny, in Asia Minor, the Lord's Supper, which till that time had been celebrated in the evening in connection with the " love-feast," was joined to the preaching ser- vice, and the love-feast was abandoned, in order to avoid the appearance of violating the law against secret meetings. The danger to which the church was exposed afterwards caused the exclusion of all heathens from the preaching service. Care was necessary, also, in receiving professed converts lest those should gain admittance to the church who were spies and enemies. Some means, therefore, was required by which those who avowed them- selves believers, or, at least, desirous of becoming Christians, could safely be brought into full mem- 90 From Jerusalem to Niccea.' bership in the Church. The means devised was the Catechumenate. Catechumens were those who, having expressed the wish to become Christians, were put under instruction, and were therefore naturally in prepa- ration for baptism. Of these there were four classes: (i) inquirers, — those who were suffi- ciently interested to receive private instruction ; (2) hearers, — those who were allowed to attend public preaching and to hear the reading of the gospel ; (3) genuflect entes, — those who had al- ready asked for baptism, and were allowed to par- ticipate in the prayers of the congregation ; (4) the electi or competetentes, — those who, having passed the period of probation, were ready to receive baptism. In the larger churches, quite early, there seem to have been catechists appointed for the special instruction of catechumens. In Alexandria and Carthage catechetical schools were founded, but they were not general, and, strange to say, there is no evidence of any such institution in Rome. The catechetical school in Alexandria rose to a position of great influence through the teaching of its celebrated masters, Clement and Origen. In early days baptism was administered at any time, but late in the period which we are studying the custom became general of administering it only on one of the great days of the Church, and it was finally confined to the season of Easter and Organization of the Early Church. 91 Pentecost. The growth of the sacramental concep- tion of baptism undoubtedly led to the early adop- tion of infant baptism ; of infant baptism, however, there is no absolutely certain record before the time of Cyprian. Dr. ScharT, I believe, held a different view, but I have been unable to find any evidence invalidating this statement. The reference in Irenseus is uncer- tain, and Tertullian opposed infant baptism, which would seem to indicate that it was introduced as a novelty in his time. A different inference, how- ever, is tenable. In an epistle to Fidus, giving the judgment of a council of sixty-six bishops in oppo- sition to the opinion that baptism, like circum- cision, should be delayed until the eighth day after birth, Cyprian says : '• This was our opinion in council, that by us no one ought to be hindered from baptism and from the grace of God, who is merciful and kind and loving to all. Which, since it is to be observed and maintained in respect of all, we think it to be even more observed in respect of infants and newly born persons, who on this very account deserve more from our help and from the divine mercy, that immediately, on the very beginning of their birth, lamenting and weep- ing, they do nothing else but entreat." The Lord's Supper was originally observed in private houses or in hired rooms. A group of believers, or a believing household, participated in a joyful evening meal, called ayaTrr), or love-feast; 92 From Jerusalem to Niccza. after which, the one who presided handed round the bread and wine as Jesus had done. This cus- tom seems to have continued through the apostolic period. Later, as we have seen, the Supper was attached to public worship, and near the end of the second century non-communicants were dis- missed before the celebration of the Eucharist. This was due in part, doubtless, to the danger of persecution, which led to privacy, but it was due also to changed ideas of the Supper and the conse- quent dread of profanation. Perhaps too the exam- ple of the heathen mysteries had some influence. The bread and wine were contributed by the com- municants and distributed by the deacons. Very early the conception of the Eucharist as an offer- ing arose. The elements, being the gifts of the flock, were looked upon as their offering to God, but they were not in any sense considered an offer- ing of the body and blood of Christ. The common practice was for the communion to be observed on every Sunday. It also attended every event of exceptional importance, as, for example, the anniversary of the death of a loved one. The day of a martyr's death was counted his birthday, and was celebrated at his burial-place by prayers and other acts of worship, and by par- ticipating in the Communion. On these occasions prayers for the dead were offered, probably before the end of the second century. From the time of Ignatius, some of the Fathers, Organization of the Early Church. 93 among them Justin Martyr and Irenseus, ascribed to the Lord's Supper an efficacious influence on the body and spirit of the recipient. Justin Martyr says: " For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who. was made flesh." Christ was believed to enter into mysterious union with the bread and wine, though these ele- ments did not lose their native properties. It was not a doctrine of transubstantiation, which the Fathers held, and which is familiar to later the- ology; this doctrine was first advocated by Rad- bertus in 831 A. d., and not until 12 15 was it given ecclesiastical sanction by Pope Innocent III. The idea of the Lord's Supper as the repetition of the veritable expiatory sacrifice of Christ is suggested by Tertullian in the words : " When the Lord's Body has been received and reserved (ap- parently for eating at home), each point is secured, both the participation of the sacrifice and the discharge of duty." A little later than Tertullian, Cyprian speaks of the sacrament in such a way as to show that he conceives it as a repetition by Christian priests of 94 From yerusalem to Niccea. the offering and sacrifice of Christ on the cross ; but this view was not general, nor was it insisted upon by Cyprian. The view of Cyprian was confined to the West- ern churches. " In the East," says Harnack, " we possess no proof that before the time of Eusebius there is any idea of the offering of the body of Christ in the Lord's Supper." We have now considered the development of the Church as an organization from the days of the apostles to the end of the third century. We have seen that this organization was in large part determined by the state of society and the spirit of the age. It was the product of tendencies inherent in those who composed the membership of the Church and of the influences which were exerted upon them by their environment. The analogy between the Church and the political or- ganization of the Roman empire is undoubtedly real and close; "but it would be a mistake," says Ramsay, " to attribute it to conscious imitation, or even to seek in Roman institutions the origin of church institutions that resemble them." In our study we have observed the change from the free and fluent life of the primitive Christian societies to the more or less artificial and con- strained life of the highly elaborated ecclesi- asticism which is exhibited to us under the administration of Cyprian, — the change from pure Congregationalism to the episcopacy which Organization of the Early Church. 95 in the persons and rule of some of the great bish- ops already adumbrated the hierarchy of Hilde- brand. We have observed the transition from the simple faith in Christ, which characterized the first disciples, to the beginnings, at least, of the detailed and dogmatic creeds which were rapidly wrought out in the fourth century. We have seen baptism transformed from a symbolical acknowledgment of discipleship to Christ into a mystical and saving sacrament ; and the Lord's Supper, from a joyful memorial of the recently departed Lord into a re-enactment of the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ. We have seen the Lord's day transformed from the natural occasion for a glad and spontaneous remembrance of Christ's resurrection into a Chris- tian Sabbath, that was beginning to take on the religious character of its Jewish prototype. This process of change and development was, in impor- tant particulars, a retrogression rather than an advance; and in all subsequent centuries there have not been wanting protests, like Montanism in the second century, and the Reformation in the sixteenth, and the powerful movement toward ec- clesiastical and theological liberty of our own day. Yet there was a real advance, which the fascina- tion of the primitive church-life, with its sim- plicity and spontaneity and enthusiasm must not be allowed to obscure. As we study the Church of the first three centuries, certain things grow clear: First, that Christianity came into the world, g6 From ^Jerusalem to Niccea. not as an institution, but as a life, with force to create any and every institution for its needs. That fact enables us to discriminate between the eccle- siastical form which, at any time, particular influ- ences or particular exigencies have shaped, and the truth and spirit which underlie all forms. It also enables us to appreciate the pure democracy of Congregationalism, the representative democ- racy of Presbyterianism, and the oligarchical ecclesiasticism of Episcopacy. All types exist germinally in the apostolic Church, and each type has its justification in the mission and needs, as well as its illustration in the history of the Church. No one of them can maintain itself to the absolute exclusion of the others. It grows clear: Second, that in the broad, ele- mental Christian idea, there is room in the one Catholic Church for all varieties, both of needed or useful organization and of sincere thought and worship. Christianity is more than its instruments, and larger than even its symbols. It is hospitable to whatever is real and good in the ideas and endeavors of men. The Church, in its true mani- foldness, is inclusive and not exclusive. There is place in it for the intense devotion of Ignatius, the stern asceticism of Tatian, the catholic intel- lectuality of the Alexandrine Clemens, the mystical Puritanism of Montanus, the theological boldness and massiveness of Origen, and the imperious ecclesiasticism of Cyprian. There is room for the Organization of the Early Church. 97 individualist and the socialist, the Churchman and the Quaker, the Trinitarian and the Unitarian, the saint and the sceptic, — yes, and even the rever- ent agnostic. The unity of life, of spiritual aspira- tion and endeavor, of pure desire and holy love, is deeper and stronger than any uniformity, and wider in its scope than all diversities of creed or organization. Each sect or party that has arisen in the Church has emphasized some important phase of truth, has met some need of human life, and has made some contribution to the spiritual and social progress of the race. And back of all is the universal Christ, the creator of no specific institution, but the inspirer of all enterprises that -have worked for the emancipation and enlighten- ment of man. It may justly be said that the state of the primi- tive Church was not an ideal state. It certainly is true that the state of the Church in the times of Gregory VII. and Leo X. was still less an ideal state. But in the first three centuries the careful student of history will find the germs and begin- nings of whatever form or doctrine or ecclesias- tical order has proved itself to be good and promotive of man's religious and moral well- being; and he will find the prophetic intimations of the future Catholic Church in which the spirit of Christ v/ill fitly and fully manifest itself for the salvation both of the individual soul and of the world. What the form of that coming Church 98 ' From Jerusalem to Niccza. will be, the modest student will hesitate to affirm ; but he will still confidently believe that without the abandonment of organic life, or the loss of anything valuable which it has won through the centuries of its history, that Church will illustrate the fullest development of the individual liberty and spontaneity of the first Christian years, com- bined with the comprehensiveness and efficiency of the most perfect organization which the wisdom of all the centuries of experience can produce. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. THE term " Apostolic Fathers " properly desig- nates only men in the primitive Church who had personal contact with one or more of the apostles, and have left some written record of the Christian thought and life of their time. Of such men there have survived in history the names of but five or six. It is not strange that there should be so few, for the earliest growth of Christianity was not among people who had the training or capacity to make any literary contribution to the expression or defence of the Christian faith. After the middle of the second century there is no lack of great names. The second, third, fourth and fifth centuries were distinguished by the labors of powerful apologists, profound theologians, and able administrators. It is well for us to be reminded, again and again, that Christianity began without schools, without learning and culture, and without any of the ad- vantages of wealth and rank. Among the original apostles there were only three or four who were in any sense men of mark, at least in point of in- tellect. Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, James ioo From Jerusalem to Niccea. and John, have an eminent place in the events re- corded in the Book of Acts. Matthew survives in the memory of men solely because of the con- nection of his name with the first Gospel. St. Paul, not one of the twelve, was a man of colossal genius. The impression of his powerful personality and his thought has been felt by the Christian Church through all its history more profoundly than that of any other save Jesus Himself. From the time of St. Paul's death until near the middle of the second century the student works in an obscure time. The history of the Church dur- ing those years runs underground. " We read it," says Plummer, "as we read the geological history of this planet, rather in its effects than in its operations." One cannot help being impressed by the illus- tration which the early Church furnishes of the independence of the Christian faith of those means which are usually necessary to success in any pro- paganda. After Paul passed away the only great survivor was the apostle John, and his labors were confined mainly to Asia Minor and the vicinity of Ephesus. It might truly be said of those days that " not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble" were called, and surely the strong things of the world were overcome by the weak. He who believes in the Christian faith as the result of a divine communication and im- pulse, will have no difficulty in accounting for the The Apostolic Fathers. 101 spread and ultimate triumph of that faith; but he who depends for the solution of the problem only upon what are called " natural causes," has upon his hands a problem most difficult of solution. During that " underground " period there were undoubtedly many devoted and energetic and even capable followers of Christ; but there were only a very few who have left any traces of themselves in Christian literature. The material for our study consists mainly of a few somewhat heterogeneous literary remains and considerable uncertain tra- dition. By a careful and patient study of these, scholars have arrived at a tolerably clear, though very limited, knowledge of the growth and ten- dencies of the Church during the first hundred years after its beginning; but in the traditions of that early time there is undoubtedly very much fiction. As Harnack has pithily said, " Hier gabe es reichen Stoff um ohne Geschichte Geschichte zu machen." Fortunately there have been recent and valuable additions to our knowledge of the sub-apostolic period. The most notable of these additions is the " Didache," or the " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," a copy of which was discovered and given to the world a few years ago. Our present study of the Apostolic Fathers will include sketches. of Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Hermas, Papias, Ignatius, and Polycarp, and some account of their literary remains. Of these names 102 From Jerusalem to Niccea. only the first and the last two represent personali- ties that have any distinctness as historical figures. Assuming that Barnabas and Hermas are names of real persons, we may claim the slight acquaintance that is afforded by their writings. Both wrote Greek, and there survives from one of them a letter known as the " Epistle of Barnabas," and from the other an allegorical romance known as the " Shepherd of Hermas." Our study will also include some account of the " Didache," and some other writings which tradition has erroneously attributed to Clement of Rome. Clement of Rome. Clement of Rome is thought, on account of his name, to have been a pagan. His great familiar- ity with the Old Testament, showing a long ac- quaintance with it, would indicate that he was a Hellenistic Jew; but we have no means of deter- mining this question, nor is it specially important. He was a resident of Rome and a prominent member of the Roman church during the latter part of the first century. Some writers have identified him with the Clement mentioned by St. Paul in his epistle to the Philippians. While this is not impossible, it is on the whole improb- able. Others deny that he was the Clement mentioned in Philippians, but grant that he was a companion or acquaintance of St. Paul and St. Peter in Rome. Irenaeus speaks of him as being The Apostolic Fathers. 103 acquainted with the apostles, and there is a tra- dition that he was converted to the Christian faith by St. Paul. Lightfoot says that " the tradition that he was a disciple of one or both of these apostles is early, constant, and definite ; and it is borne out by the character and contents of his genuine epistle." There is some evidence that he was a bishop, or presbyter, of the Roman church in the last decade of the first century, probably in conjunction with Linus and Anencletus. Eusebius gives the date of his official service as from 93 to 101 A. D. His name, in company with the names of Linus and Cletus, appears in the liturgy of the Roman church as early as the second century. With some plausibility Clement has been identified with Flavius Clemens, a relative of the emperor Domitian, who was put to death by the emperor on the charge of atheism near the end of his reign, and whose wife, Domitilla, also a relative of the emperor, was banished. There is no doubt that the charge designates Flavius Clemens as a Chris- tian, and that he was one of the victims of the persecution which marked the close of Domitian's reign. There are, however, very great difficulties in the way of accepting this identification of our Clement with the martyr-consul. Nothing what- ever is known of the time or manner of his death, though there are late and untrustworthy traditions that he died a martyr. 104 From Jerusalem to Niccza. Considerable literature is attached to the name of Clement. The only genuine writing of his that has survived is an epistle to the church in Corinth. This letter, which is purely irenical, is not written in the name of Clement, but in the name of the church in Rome. Its single aim was to restore harmony in a church that, as we know from the epistles of St. Paul, was early distinguished by the spirit of dissension. It seems that the church, or a part of it, had revolted against some of its presbyters and had turned them out of office. The letter is not that of a brilliant or strong mind, but rather that of a gentle nature, characterized by simple faith and cheerful piety. Only once or twice in the whole letter does the style rise above the commonplace. I quote the best example: " How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God! Life in immortality, splendor in righteousness, truth in boldness, faith in assurance, self-control in holi- ness ! And all these fall under the cognizance of our understandings [now] ; what then shall those things be which are prepared for such as wait for Him? The Creator and Father of all worlds, the Most Holy, alone knows their amount and their beauty." The epistle abounds in- quotations from the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, in which, sometimes, are incorporated phrases that do not belong to the sacred text. It also contains many quotations from the New Testament. Of the The Apostolic Fathers. 105 twenty-seven books of the latter, the author quotes from fourteen. These quotations are most abun- dant from Hebrews and First Corinthians. There are no quotations from the Fourth Gospel, nor from the epistles of St. Paul to the Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians, and to Timothy and Philemon, nor from the epistles of St. John and St. Jude. The writer alludes to the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul. Of the latter he says: " By reason of jealousy and strife, Paul, by his example, pointed out the prize of patient endurance. After that he had been seven times in bonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was the reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the farthest bounds of the West ; and when he had borne his testimony before the rulers, so he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance." Many consider that there is in this passage a distinct intimation that St. Paul preached the gospel in Spain, and, possibly, even in Britain. The statement that the apostle was "seven times in bonds " is fully sustained by his own declaration in his second letter to the Corinthians that he had been " in prisons more abundantly " than the other apostles. The first part of Clement's letter is taken up 106 From yerusalem to Niccea. with the citation of examples of Christian virtue in the saints, in various Old Testament characters, and in Christ, and with exhortations to humility and peaceableness. In the latter part the writer gently but plainly charges the Corinthians with their factiousness and disorder, and urges the opposing factions to mutual conciliation and the pursuit of peace. The letter incidentally throws light on the organi- zation of the early Church. It shows that the episcopate of half a century later was not yet enucleated in the Roman church. It uses the terms " presbyter " and " bishop " in the same sense, and recognizes only two offices, that of presbyter, or bishop, and that of deacon. It also reveals the democratic character of the Church in its reference to the appointment of presbyters " with the consent of the whole church." It thus exhorts the members of the church who were active in the contention : " Who therefore is noble among you ? Who is compassionate ? Who is fulfilled with love ? Let him say: If by reason of me there be faction and strife and divisions, I retire, I depart, whither ye will, and I do that which is ordered by the people ; only let the flock'of Christ be at peace with its duly appointed presbyters." In section fifty-five there is an interesting refer- ence to the fact that in times of persecution many Christians, urged by the zeal of love, achieved the most complete self-sacrifice on behalf of their The Apostolic Fathers. 107 brethren. " We know," says Clement, " that many among ourselves have delivered themselves to bondage that they might ransom others. Many have sold themselves to slavery, and receiving the price paid for themselves, have fed others." As an indication of Clement's simplicity of mind, we observe that he takes the fabled Phoenix quite seriously, and uses it as an illustration of the Resur- rection. He also finds in the red cord which the spies used to mark Rahab's house in Jericho, a prophetic sign of the blood of Christ by which believers are redeemed from sin. The epistle is marked throughout by a purity of moral tone that separates it by an almost immeasurable degree from contemporary pagan writings. The latter half of section fifty-nine and the whole of sections sixty and sixty-one are taken up with a prayer, which is so carefully elaborated as to suggest that it is a prayer which Clement was in the habit of using in public worship ; perhaps it was a part of the nascent liturgy of the Roman Church. It is interesting to note that Clement's letter con- tains no allusion which gives support to the theory that the post-apostolic Church was divided between Pauline and anti-Pauline schools of thought. It was so highly valued by the early Christians that it was read in the churches on Sunday as if it were Scripture. Clement of Alexandria frequently quotes it as the work of the " Apostle Clemens." The following works have been ascribed by tra- 108 From ^Jerusalem to Niccza. dition to Clement, but it is impossible that any of them save the first should have been his work, and the evidence against the authenticity of the first is practically conclusive. i. The Second Epistle of Clement to the CORINTHIANS. This writing is not a letter, but rather a homily, or sermon, which belongs some- where in the first half of the second century, quite certainly before 140 A. D., and there is no insuper- able objection to its being dated as early as 120. It is, therefore, probably the earliest extant Chris- tian sermon outside of the New Testament. The writer is unknown. His work is characterized by a lofty moral tone and strong faith, but by no striking merits of thought or style. It alludes to presbyters, but to no other officers of the Church. The opening sentence pretty clearly indicates the early Christian belief in the divinity of Christ. It is as follows : " Brethren, we ought so to think of Jesus Christ as of God, as of the Judge of quick and dead." The author reports sayings of Jesus which are not found in the New Testament; for example, there is the following conversation be- tween the Lord and Peter : " For the Lord s'aith, ' Ye shall be as lambs in the midst of wolves.' But Peter answered and said unto Him, ' What then, if the wolves should tear the lambs ? ' Jesus said unto Peter, J Let not the lambs fear the wolves after they are dead ; and ye also, fear ye not them that The Apostolic Fathers. 109 kill you and are not able to do anything to you ; but fear Him that after ye are dead hath power over soul and body, to cast them into the gehenna of fire ! " In another place, speaking of the com- ing of the kingdom of God, he says : " Let us there- fore await the kingdom of God betimes in love and righteousness, since we know not the day of God's appearing. For the Lord Himself, being asked by a certain person when His kingdom would come, said, ' When the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female, neither male nor female.' " To this passage, which is quoted from the Apocryphal Gospel of the Egyptians, he gives an ingenious explanation. The same pas- sage is quoted by Clement of Alexandria in his " Stromateis." The idea of baptism as a seal which must be kept pure and undefiled finds place in this homily. There is an allusion to the Resurrection which in- dicates that the writer believed in the actual resuscitation of the body: "We ought therefore to guard the flesh as a temple of God : for in like manner as ye are called in the flesh, ye shall come also in the flesh." 2. Two Epistles on Virginity. These were discovered in 1750 by Wetstein, and are known only in the Syriac tongue. It is evident, however, that they have been translated from the Greek, for they contain Grecisms, and there is a fragment of what 1 1 o From Jerusalem to Niccea. is evidently another Syriac version. These epistles cannot possibly be the work of Clement; they belong to a much later time, though their authen- ticity was strenuously argued by Wetstein, and even Neander was inclined to admit their authenticity. The author quotes from the Fourth Gospel, and also from the Apocrypha, and gives evidence of a long familiarity with the writings of the New Testament, like that which Clement shows with the writings of the Old. The teaching of these epistles is strongly ascetical. Some critics put them as early as 150 A. D., but, as there is no notice of them in Eusebius, it is probable, both that they were not widely known in the early Church, and that they were written later than the middle of the second century. 3. The Clementines. The study of The Clementines properly belongs under the head of the heresies of the Church, but since they have been ascribed to Clement of Rome I shall give some account of them here. This remarkable work, or cluster of works, con- sists of (1) " The Homilies " and (2) " The Recog- nitions." There is also a third form known as " The Epitome," which is a late abridgment of " The Homilies" with some additions, especially the con- tinuation of the story, and an account of the martyr- dom of Clement. There seem to have been several forms of " The Epitome," but it does not differ so The Apostolic Fathers. 1 1 1 essentially from the " Homilies " and the " Recog- nitions " as to require separate treatment. Both the " Homilies " and the " Recognitions " were written in Greek, but of the latter the Greek has been lost, and we possess it only in the form of a Latin translation by Rufinus. Nothing conclusive is known concerning the author of the " Clementines." Some have believed that it is the genuine work of Clement; others have ascribed it to some of Clement's hearers and companions ; and still others have attributed it to Bardesanes, or Bardaisan, a Syrian theologian and Gnostic, who was born at Edessa in 154 A. D. The book was written, probably, in Oriental Syria, and belongs to the end of the second century or the be- ginning of the third, but contains matter of an earlier date. The work is fiction charged with Ebionitic doctrine of the Elchasaite type. It assumes to repre- sent the condition of the Church between the Ascen- sion and the beginning of the labors of St. Paul. Peter is the hero and Simon Magus is the villain. I will sketch briefly the story as it appears in the " Recognitions." The " Recognitions " is composed of ten books and is in the form of an autobiography addressed by Clement to James, bishop of Jerusalem. It falls naturally into three parts: (1) Books I— III. ; (2) IV-VI. ; (3) VII-X. ; which Dr. Salmon suggests are probably of different dates. The first part be- gins with Clement's early history. It tells us that 112 From Jerusalem to Niccza. he was born in Rome, and from the earliest age was a lover of chastity. His mind, naturally inclined to speculation, was beset by, grave doubts and per- plexities as to the origin and destiny of things and the immortality of the soul. The account of the great distress which he suffered, and from which he found no alleviation in the schools of the philoso- phers, is pathetic and even eloquent. Clement de- termines to test the question of the immortality of the soul by going to Egypt and instituting an in- quiry of the Egyptian hierophants and magicians. He is restrained however from executing his pur- pose. Then he hears of the remarkable teachings and miraculous deeds of Christ. There is here, evidently, an anachronism, for, in what Clement reports of Christ it would seem as if Christ were still alive, whereas the entire action of the story is confined to the few years immediately after the Ascension. While Clement is brooding upon what he hears of Christ, Barnabas comes to Rome and preaches the gospel. He is opposed and de- rided by the multitude, but Clement takes his part against the scoffers, and carries him off to his house. Barnabas soon departs for Judea, in order to be present at a Jewish feast, but he has so im- pressed Clement that the latter resolves to follow him. After a little time Clement goes to Caesarea, where he meets Peter, and finds that the apostle is to have, on the following day, a public discussion with one Simon, a Samaritan. Clement is cordially The Apostolic Fathers. 113 received by Peter, to whom he gives an account of himself. Peter instructs him, showing the causes of ignorance of the truth, speaks to him of the true Prophet, by which name he designates Christ, and invites Clement to be his attendant. Clement profits much by Peter's instruction and expresses his appreciation and gratitude to the great satis- faction of the apostle. The proposed discussion does not come off immediately, for Simon desires to postpone it for seven days. Peter consents to .the postponement, telling Clement that it will be advantageous be- cause in the mean time he can more fully explain to him the true doctrine. Peter continues his instruction, covering the history and teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures, and detailing, from his point of view, the events which had occurred from the coming of Christ down to the time when Simon challenges him to debate, including in his discourse a notice of the persecution of the disciples by Saul. When the day comes for the discussion with Simon, Peter rouses his attendants early in the morning and discourses to them, at length, upon Simon Magus, setting forth his history, his formidable powers and his extreme wickedness. At the appointed hour the dispu- tation begins ; it covers a wide field of discussion and continues through several days. Simon is finally overcome with dismay by Peter's evident knowledge of the secret source of his power. H4 From Jerusalem to Niccea. This is betrayed in the following manner: Simon asks to hear in a single sentence how the soul is im- mortal. Peter replies, " If you do not know, go now to your house, and entering the inner bed-chamber you will see an image placed, containing the figure of a murdered boy clothed in purple; ask him, and he will inform you either by hearing or seeing. For what need is there to hear from him if the soul is immortal, when you see it standing before you? " Peter proposes to go at once to Simon's house. Simon, hearing this, is stricken in conscience, and turns pale with fright. He beseeches Peter to re- ceive him to repentance, but, a little later, finding that Peter had learned of his secret from some per- sons who had been his associates, he is filled with rage, and turns fiercely on Peter, and denounces him as " most wicked and deceitful ; " at the same time he boasts of his divine nature and power: — " I am the first power, who am always, and without be- ginning. But having entered the womb of Rachel, I was born of her as a man, that I might be visible to men. I have flown through the air ; I have been mixed with fire, and been made one body with it ; I have made statues to move ; I have animated lifeless things ; I have made stones bread \ I have flown from mountain to mountain ; I have moved from place to place, upheld by angels' hands, and have lighted on the earth. Not only have I done these things, but even now I am able to do them, that by facts I may prove to all that I am the Son of God, enduring to eternity, and that I can make those The Apostolic Fathers. 1 1 5 who believe on me endure in like manner forever. But your words are all vain ; nor can you perform any real works, since he also who sent you is a magician, who yet could not deliver himself from the suffering of the Cross." After seeking in vain to stir up a riot, Simon is driven out with a single follower, and Peter dis- courses for a little time on Simon's lamentable delusion, and then dismisses the people with a benediction. During the following night the apostle engages in a long conversation with his companions, in which one Niceta takes part as interlocutor. Later, a deserter from Simon reports that the magician has gone to Rome, and Peter resolves to follow him. He first appoints Zaccheus bishop of Caesa- rea, and ordains presbyters and deacons. He then sends twelve disciples before him, and, after baptiz- ing more than ten thousand believers, hearing that Simon had gone to Tripolis, he departs for the latter city. Here ends the first part. The second part continues the narrative. On arriving at Tripolis, Peter finds that Simon has departed on the way to Syria. The apostle is met by crowds of people in Tripolis, among whom he performs miracles of healing on many demoniacs and other sick, and to whom he preaches on de- mons and idolatry and false prophets. Clement, being not yet baptized, is not permitted to join with the disciples even in prayer. Peter continued dis- 1 1 6 From Jerusalem to Niccea. coursing unweariedly throughout the two following days, and on the third sent certain of his disciples on to Antioch. He, however, remained three months in Tripolis, where he baptized many be- lievers, appointed a bishop, ordained presbyters and deacons, and arranged the service of the church. Clement remained with him, and at this time, apparently, received baptism. The third part, consisting of the remaining books, the seventh to the tenth, contains the long and highly romantic story of Clement's family, in the course of which Peter brings together long separated relatives, and converts them all to the gospel, and, finally, not without the use of pious fraud, accom- plishes the complete discomfiture of Simon. Such very briefly is the story of the " Recognitions." The " Homilies " is the same story with variations. Both the " Homilies " and the " Recognitions " seem to be modifications of a previously existing story. It is probable that the " Homilies" is, in the main, the earlier of the two. In it the Ebionitic and Gnostic elements appear in about equal proportions. "The 'Homilies,' says Dr. Donaldson, "contain all the characteristics of Ebionism in much the harsher form." The idea of the unity of God which the book presents is emphasized with Jewish force, but it is wanting in the high spirituality of the best Jewish thought; it is also in some sense dualistic, while a marked dualism appears in the view of the world which is set forth. Jesus is represented, not The Apostolic Fathers. 1 1 7 as the atoning Saviour of men, but as the ideal Prophet who saves by enlightening. The freedom of the will is affirmed, somewhat illogically, it must be confessed, in view of the dualism which pervades the book. Great liberty is used in the treatment of the Old Testament. Peter is represented as saying that some scriptures are true, and some are false ; and whatever does not agree with his own views he promptly rejects as spurious interpolation. Adam and the Patriarchs are idealized, and Christianity is essentially identified with Judaism ; though sacrifices are cast aside and circumcision is not inculcated. The ecclesiastical point of view is hierarchical. " Great importance is attached to baptism and the episcopacy; but James, rather than Peter, is represented as the head of the hierarchy, the highest authority in the church." " Remember," says Peter, " to shun the apostle or teacher or prophet who does not first carefully compare his preaching with [that of] James, who was called the brother of my Lord, and to whom was intrusted to administer the church of the Hebrews in Jerusalem." The ''Recognitions" was probably later than the " Homilies," since it shows a less wide depar- ture from the Catholic doctrine, evidently having been subjected to considerable modification. The main interest of this variform work lies in its supposed revelation of the great doctrinal con- flict in the early Church, and its expression of 1 1 8 From Jerusalem to Niccea. an anti-Pauline spirit. Baur and the Tubingen school supposed that in Simon the magician the writer has attacked St. Paul. Chapter xix. of the seventeenth homily is very clearly an assault upon the Apostle to the Gentiles. I give in conclusion the following condensed account by Dr. Salmon of the doctrinal character of this singular work. He says : — " The Clementines are unmistakably the production of that sect of Ebionites which held the book of Elchasai as sacred. . . . Almost all the doctrines ascribed to them are to be found in the Clementines. We have the doc- trine ... of successive incarnations of Christ, and, in particular, the identification of Christ with Adam ; the requirement of the obligations of the Mosaic Law, the rejection, however, of the rite of sacrifice ; the rejection of certain passages both of the Old and New Testaments ; hostility to the apostle Paul ; abstinence from the use of flesh ; the inculcation of repeated washing ; discourage- ment of virginity ; concealment of their sacred books from all but approved persons ; form of adjuration by appeal to the seven witnesses ; ascription of gigantic stat- ure to the angels ; and permission to dissemble the faith in time of persecution." 3. The Apostolic Constitutions. This work which, like the preceding, was erroneously ascribed to Clement of Rome, consists, in its present form, of eight books, containing in more or less diffuse and hortatory form, precepts bear- ing on theology, ecclesiastical order, and Chris- The Apostolic Fathers. 1 1 9 tian morals. Apostolic authority has often been claimed for this work, and the work itself begins in a form agreeable to this claim : " The apostles and elders to all those who from among the Gen- tiles have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ : grace and peace from Almighty God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, be multiplied unto you in the acknowledgment of Him." The first six books were probably the earliest known and are fre- quently referred to and quoted as " The Teaching of the Apostles " (To. hihaaicaXLa Toiiv 'Attoo-toXoop}, of which they are probably an expansion belong- ing to the third century. It has been remarked that the seventh book, which was known separately, in some parts bears " a curious resemblance to the Epistle of Barnabas." It is undoubtedly based on the "Didache." The eighth book was also an independent work, and is somewhat more legislative than any of the preceding. Notwith- standing that the " Constitutions " profess to be the work of the apostles, there is no clear reference to them before Eusebius. He rejects them as " spu- rious," and speaks of them as " so-called teachings of the apostles.'' Athanasius speaks of them in a similar manner. Both of these references, however, are a little uncertain, but in the fifth century an un- known writer distinctly refers to the eighth book. The " Constitutions" were well known in the sixth and seventh centuries. It is impossible that they should have been the work of the apostles, or even 120 From Jerusalem to Niccza. of apostolic men; nevertheless, their apostolicity has been at different times vigorously defended. Whiston, an eccentric scholar, devoted a volume to proving that the Apostolic Constitutions (in his own words) " are the most sacred of the canonical books of the New Testament; " for, he adds, " these sacred Christian laws or constitutions were delivered at Jerusalem, and in Mount Sion, by our Saviour to the eleven apostles there assembled after His Resurrection." In their present form they probably belong to the fifth century, but most of the materials of which they are composed ante- date the Council of Nice. Bunsen held that, with the exception of a few passages, they belonged to the ante-Nicene period, and that they were of Oriental origin. They were never received as authority in the Church, though they exercised great influence, especially in the Eastern Church. The " Constitutions " deal with the private be- havior proper for Christians, with the officers and service of the church, and with worship, and they contain considerable liturgical matter. Much space is given to the sacraments and the duties and powers of the clergy. The second book, which treats of the clergy, is much the longest of the first six, and, if we except the Apostolic Canons at the end of the eighth book, much the longest of the entire work. The " Apostolic Canons " consist of eighty-five rules for the guidance of the clergy, attached to the The Apostolic Fathers. 121 eighth book of the " Constitutions." These rules, most of which had been in existence for a. long time, were collected about the beginning of the fifth century. The eighty-fifth rule fixes the canon of the New Testament, but includes, in addition to the writings which are now considered canonical, two epistles of Clement and the eight books of the " Constitutions." Barnabas. The notices in the New Testament of Barnabas, the companion of St. Paul, are familiar. His name appears among the Apostolic Fathers because of a writing, which very generally has been ascribed to him, known as the " Epistle of Barnabas." The tone of this writing is violently anti-Judaistic. It emphasizes strongly the spirituality of worship ; denies anything preparatory or disciplinary m Judaism, in the sense of training men for higher truths, yet admits that in Jewish history and econ- omy there are, to the spiritual perception, fore- shadowings of a Christian revelation. The writer maintains that God's covenant never belonged to the Jews, but to Christians. He vigorously affirms the entire abolition of the Jewish sacrifices, con- demns the Jewish fasts as not true fasts, and claims that God has given to Christians the Testament that Moses broke. The new covenant, founded on the sufferings of Christ, tends to the salvation of Christians, but to the destruction of Jews. 122 From Jerusalem to Niccea. These, — the sufferings of Christ and the covenant founded upon them, — the writer declares, are announced by the prophets; and he discovers types of Christ and prefigurations of Baptism and the Cross in the Old Testament sacrifices and sym- bols. He shows the spiritual significance of cir- cumcision and of the Mosaic precepts on different kinds of food. He claims that the true Sabbath was no longer the seventh day but the eighth, and represents God as saying, " I will make the begin- ning of the eighth day which is the beginning of another world ; " and he adds, " Wherefore also we keep the eighth day for rejoicing, in the which also Jesus rose from the dead, and, having been manifested, ascended into the Heavens." The epistle closes with an exposition of the Two Ways : the Way of Light, and the Way of Darkness. The epistle of Barnabas was received in the early Church with great reverence, and by many it was esteemed as Scripture, in the supposition that its author was the companion of St. Paul. Clement of Alexandria, where the epistle was written and where it was earliest received, quotes it frequently, identifying the author with the Bar- nabas of the Acts, and calling him, sometimes the " Apostle," and sometimes the " Prophet," Barna- bas. Origen also held this view. At the present time scholars are about equally divided on the question of authorship. The date of the epistle has been a matter of The Apostolic Fathers. 123 considerable dispute. From a reference in the epistle itself, it must have been written after the destruction of Jerusalem. It was probably written during the reign of Vespasian between 70 and 79 A. D. The Didache. The manuscript of " The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles " was discovered by Philotheos Bryennios, metropolitan of Nicomedia, in the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople, in 1873. Besides the " Didache," the manuscript contained : (1) " A synopsis of the Old and New Testaments in the Order of Books," by St. Chrysostom, (2) " The Epistle of Barnabas," (3) " The First Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians," (4) "The Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians," (5) the spurious " Epistle of Mary of Cassoboli," and (6) twelve pseudo-Igna- tian epistles. None of these, save the " Didache," were new, but the copies of the two epistles ascribed to Clement are the only complete copies known to be in existence. The Greek text of the " Didache " was published by Bryennios, with notes and prolegomena written in Greek, at the close of 1883, in Constantinople. The importance of this document was soon recog- nized, and all over Christendom it received the criti- cal attention of scholars. The name, " Didache," is simply the Greek word which means " leach- 124 From Jerusalem to Niccza. ing." The full title is " The Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles by the Twelve Apostles." The phrase, " to the Gentiles," indicates the Jewish- Christian origin of the document. This writing is variously dated by scholars, — by Sabatier, as early as about 50 A. D. ; by Hilgenfeld, as late as 160-190; by Harnack, Zahn, Lightfoot, Bestmann, and others, at intervening dates. There is nothing in the " Didache " to prevent us from ascribing it to a date as early as 70 A. D., and the whole character of the writing favors the view that it was produced before the close of the first century, or very early in the second. The " Didache" is the oldest manual of apostolic teaching and discipline that we have. It consists of sixteen brief chapters which naturally fall into two divisions. The first, consisting of the first six chapters, is doctrinal and catechetical, and sets forth two Ways : the Way of Life, and the Way of Death. It begins thus: — " There are two Ways, one of Life and one of Death ; but there is a great difference between the two Ways. Now the Way of Life is this : first, thou shalt love God who made thee ; second, thy neighbor as thyself; and all things whatsoever thou wouldst not have done to thee, neither do thou to another." The second part, consisting of the remaining ten chapters, gives directions concerning baptism, prayer, fasting, the eucharist, the love-feast, and The Apostolic Fathers. 125 the treatment of apostles, prophets, bishops, and deacons, and closes with a solemn warning to watchfulness in view of the second coming of the Lord : — " Be watchful for your life ; let your lamps not be quenched and your loins not ungirded, but be ye ready; for ye know not the hour in which our Lord cometh. And ye shall gather yourselves together frequently, seek- ing what is fitting for your souls ; for the whole time of your faith shall not profit you, if ye be not perfected at the last season. For in the last days the false prophets and corrupters shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and love shall be turned into hate. For as lawlessness increaseth, they shall hate one another and shall persecute and betray. And then the world- deceiver shall appear as a son of God ; and shall work signs and wonders, and the earth shall be delivered into his hands ; and he shall do unholy things, which have never been since the world began. Then all created man- kind shall come to the fire of testing, and many shall be offended and perish ; but they that endure in their faith shall be saved by the Curse Himself," etc. I follow the rendering by Lightfoot. The clause rendered, " shall be saved by the Curse Himself," has occasioned considerable perplexity, but this rendering is approved by Bryennios, and Christ is called " The Curse " probably in allusion to 1 Cor. xii. 3 : " No man speaking in the spirit of God saith Jesus is accursed," and in allusion to the custom of both Jewish and heathen persecutors, 126 From Jerusalem to Niece a. who endeavored to compel Christians to curse Christ. The " Didache " quotes several passages from the Old Testament, and clearly alludes to a large num- ber; it quotes also from several books of the Apocrypha. From the New Testament the quota- tions are abundant, but they are almost entirely from the Gospel by St. Matthew. There are mani- fest allusions to the Acts, to five or six of St. Paul's epistles, to Hebrews, to First Peter, and to Revelation. There are also various phrases which seem to indicate, on the part of the writer, a knowledge of the Fourth Gospel, though there are no distinct quotations from it. The theology of the " Didache " is simple and ele- mentary. God is represented as the Creator, the Almighty Ruler, the heavenly Father, the perfect Providence, the Giver of all good gifts, the Author of salvation, and the object of worship. Christ is represented as Lord and Saviour, the servant and son of God, the author of the gospel, through whom knowledge and eternal life have been made known ; and, apparently, He is identified with the Jehovah of the Old Testament. The concluding thanksgiving prescribed for use in the celebration of the Eucharist is as follows : — "We give Thee thanks, Holy Father, for Thy holy name, which Thou hast made to tabernacle in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which The Apostolic Fathers. 127 Thou hast made known unto us through Thy Son Jesus ; Thine is the glory for ever and ever. Thou, Almighty Master, didst create all things for Thy name's sake, and didst give food and drink unto men for enjoyment, that they might render thanks to Thee ; but didst bestow upon us spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Thy Son. Before all things we give Thee thanks that Thou art powerful ; Thine is the glory for ever and ever. Remember, Lord, Thy Church, to deliver it from all evil and to perfect it in Thy love ; and gather it together from the four winds — even the Church which has been sancti- fied — into Thy kingdom which Thou hast prepared for it ; for Thine is the power and the glory for ever and ever. May grace come and may this world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David. If any man is holy, let him come ; if any man is not, let him repent. Maran- atha. Amen." Sunday is designated as " the Lord's own day," and the proper observance of it is thus indicated : " On the Lord's own day gather yourselves to- gether and break bread and give thanks, first con- fessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure." The fourth and sixth days, that is, Wednesday and Friday, are designated as fast- days, and fasting is prescribed also before baptism. There is no allusion to the celebration of the Christian Passover, nor to the idea of Christ's death as an expiatory sacrifice. Of church officers only two are recognized, — bishops, or overseers, and deacons ; but mention 128 From ^Jerusalem to Niccza. is made also of " apostles and prophets," who were evidently travelling teachers and evangelists. " Let every apostle, when he cometh to you, be re- ceived as the Lord ; but he shall not abide more than a. single day, or if there be need, a second likewise \ but if he abide three days, he is a false prophet. And when he departeth let the apostle receive nothing save bread, until he findeth shelter; but if he ask money he is a false prophet. . . . And every prophet teaching the truth, if he doeth not what he teacheth, is a false prophet. . . . And whosoever shall say in the Spirit, Give me silver or anything else, ye shall not listen to him ; but if he tell you to give on behalf of others that are in want, let no man judge him." The apostles and the prophets seem to be different functionaries, yet they are not sharply discriminated from each other. The " Didache" continues : — " Let every one that cometh in the name of the Lord be received ; and then when ye have tested him ye shall know him, for ye shall have understanding on the right hand and on the left. If the comer is a traveller, assist him, so far as ye are able ; but he shall not stay with you more than two or three days, if it be necessary. But if he wishes to settle with you, being a craftsman, let him work for and eat his bread. But if he has no craft, according to your wisdom provide how he shall live as a Christian among you, but not in idleness. If he will not do this, he is trafficking upon Christ. Beware of such men. "But every true prophet desiring to settle among you is The Apostolic Fathers. 129 worthy of his food. In like manner a true teacher is also worthy, like the workman, of his food." The functions of the church officers, as indicated in the " Didache," seem to include also prophesying and teaching. Those to whom the writing is addressed are thus enjoined : " Appoint for your- selves, therefore, bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men who are meek and not lovers of money, and true and approved ; for unto you they also perform the service of the prophets and teachers. Therefore despise them not; for they are your honorable men along with the prophets and teachers." This instruction concerning the appointment of bishops and deacons, clearly indi- cates the very early date of the " Didache." Hermas. Hermas is the reputed author of " a curious and somewhat visionary book " called the." Shepherd,'* or " Pastor," which belongs probably to the clos- ing years of the first century. It is both men- tioned and quoted by writers in the latter half of the second century. The book is artless in style, and is marked by deep and earnest piety. Light- foot likens the " Shepherd " to the " Divina Corn- media," in the one respect that the author's own personal and family history is interwoven with the narrative, and made to subserve the moral purpose of the book; though "history plays a much less 9 130 From Jerusalem to Niccza. important part here than in Dante's great poem." There is also a slight resemblance to Beatrice in the character of Rhoda. The centre of the geographical setting is Rome, where, undoubtedly, the work was written. Local- ities mentioned are the home of Hermas in the city, the road to Cumae, the Via Campana, and, in the ninth similitude, Arcadia. The last may have been the birthplace of Hermas. Though I have assigned the " Shepherd" to the last years of the first century, it must be said that the date of its composition is not certain. We know, however, that soon after the middle of the second century the work was in general circulation in both the Eastern and Western churches. It appears, also, that a Latin version of it was made about this time. Irenaeus of Gaul quotes from it with these words : " Well said the Scripture," — a fact which is noticed by Eusebius. It is fair to infer that, in the time of Irenaeus, the " Shepherd " was publicly read in the Gallican churches. Ter- tullian in Africa, and Clement and Origen in Alex- andria, all quote from it. By some of the Fathers the book was put on a level with inspired Scripture. Origen speaks of it as " very useful scripture, in my opinion divinely inspired." After Tertullian became a Montanist (about 200) he repudiated the " Shepherd " as too sensuous for his Puritan taste. The author of the Muratorian Canon allows the The Apostolic Fathers. 131 " Shepherd " to be read privately, but denies it any place among the writings either of prophets or apostles. It was very popular, however, and was publicly read as Scripture in the churches in the second, third, and even as late as the fourth, centuries. Athanasius classes it with some of the deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament, and with " The Teaching of the Apostles," as not canonical but useful to be employed in catechetical instruction. The " Shepherd" has sometimes been called the " Pilgrim's Progress " of the early Church. The question of admitting it into the canon was dis- cussed in more than one council before 212 a. d. According to one old tradition the author is the Hermas who is mentioned in St. Paul's epistle to the Romans (xvi. 14). This view was held by Origen. According to another tradition it was the work of one Hermas, the brother of Pius I., and was written during the episcopate of Pius (140-155). This tradition is supported by the Muratorian Canon. The latter is inconsistent, however, in making Clement of Rome the con- temporary of Pius, and its testimony is much weakened by a manifest effort to discredit the work as being the product of a late author. Still another view, adopted by some recent critics, is that the " Shepherd " was the work of a third Hermas, and was written between 90 and 100 A. D. Zahn, who maintains this view, fixes upon 97 as 132 From Jerusalem to Niccea. the date of composition. The references to the Christian ministry in the work indicate a date as early as the latter part of the first century. Light- foot inclines to accept the tradition that the author was the Hermas of St. Paul. There is, however, much to be said in favor of the third view. The book opens with an introduction, consisting of four Visions and a Revelation. Then follows the main part of the book, consisting of the shep- herd's message to Hermas, in two divisions : the first consisting of Mandates, or Precepts, and the second consisting of Similitudes, or Parables ; that is, moral lessons taught by allegory. Preceding the first Vision, Hermas tells us that he had been sold to one Rhoda, with whom, " after many years," he fell in love. While on a journey to Cumae he slept and dreamed that he was in a vast and diffi- cult land in which he could make no progress. While he was praying and confessing his sins, Rhoda appeared to him from heaven and smilingly charged him with sin. This filled him with horror and grief. Rhoda explained her charge and dis- appeared. Hermas then sees an old woman in glistening raiment, sitting on a great white chair, with a book in her hand from which she reads. The words are terrible, but Hermas can remember none of them save the last, which comfort him. At length the old woman is led away toward the sea, saying, as she departs: " Play the man, Her- mas." This woman he thinks to be the Sibyl, but The Apostolic Fathers. 133 later he finds that she is the Church, aged, because " she was created before all things." Before her departure she had given him a book which he sought to copy, but it was suddenly snatched from his hands. In the second vision Hermas is asked by the woman, who appears to him again, and who has now become youthful in face, but with her flesh and hair aged, if he had given the book to the elders. He is charged to write two little books ami to give them, one to Clement and one to Grapte. 1 Clement is to communicate the contents of his book to foreign cities, while Grapte is to instruct the widows and orphans. Hermas is to read the book " to this city along with the elders that preside over the church." In the third vision the woman, who had now become " altogether youthful and of exceeding great beauty, and her hair alone was aged," makes an appointment with Hermas to meet him in a retired place which he should choose. There she shows him, in a mystical vision, the building of the Church. In this vision he sees, surrounding and supporting the rising tower, seven women, who are named respectively, Faith, Continence, Simplicity, Guilelessness, Reverence, Knowledge, and Love. The relation of these to one another is thus indi- 1 Grapte is unknown save by this reference. She probably was a prominent deaconess of the church in Rome and a contemporary of Clement. 134 From Jerusalem to Niccea. cated : " from Faith is born Continence, from Continence Simplicity, from Simplicity Guileless- ness, from Guilelessness Reverence, from Rever- ence Knowledge, from Knowledge Love." The change in the aspect of the woman from age to youth, symbolizes the change of the Church from a state of worldliness and doubt and repining to a state of revived faith and new devotion. In the fourth Vision Hermas sees in his way a great and terrible beast, which, however, he passes without suffering any harm. This beast is the type of coming persecution, from which he is assured that he shall escape by faithfulness to the Lord. The Visions proper are now completed. In the Revelation which follows the Visions, Hermas sees a man " glorious in his visage, in the garb of a shepherd, with a white skin wrapt about him, and with a wallet on his shoulders and a staff in his hand." This shepherd is the Angel of Repentance, and he delivers to Hermas certain Mandates and Similitudes, or Parables, which he is commanded to write down. These Mandates enjoin : (i) faith in the one only God; (2) simplicity and guilelessness ; (3) love of the truth; (4) purity from sensual lust; (5) long- suffering, "for. the Lord dwelleth in long-suffering, but the devil in an angry temper ; " (6) righteous- ness; (7) fear of the Lord and obedience to His Commandments; (8) temperance, defined as absti- nence from all that is wicked and the practice of The Apostolic Fathers, 135 all that is good ; (9) firmness in trust toward God ; (10) cheerfulness, — under this head it is interest- ing to note that the author classes sorrow with doubtful-mindedness and an angry temper as dis- tinctly sinful : " Therefore clothe thyself in cheer- fulness, which hath favor with God always, and is acceptable to Him, and rejoice in it. For every cheerful man worketh good, and thinketh good, and despiseth sadness, but the sad man is always committing sin;" (11) discerning the spirits of prophecy: "By his life test the man that hath the divine Spirit; " (12) abstinence from evil de- sires and the cultivation of good desires. Concerning obedience to these commandments the shepherd pithily and truly says to Hermas, " If thou set it before thyself that they can be kept, thou wilt easily keep them, and they will not be hard ; but if it once enter into thy heart that they cannot be kept by a man, thou wilt not keep them." After the Mandates follow ten Similitudes, or Parables: (1) of the foreign city ; (2) of the elm and the vine. In this the idea set forth is that the rich man (the elm) by his wealth supplies the material needs of the poor man ; while the poor man (the vine), by his intercessions with God, sup- plies the spiritual wants of the rich man ; (3) of the withered trees: This world is the winter of the righteous, and in it they are indistinguishable from the sinners ; (4) of the trees, some withered 136 From Jerusalem to Niccea. and some sprouting: The withered trees are the sinners, and the " sprouting are the righteous who shall dwell in the world to come ; for the world to come is summer to the righteous, but winter to the sinners; " (5) of the vineyard and the good ser- vant, — showing the nature of a true fast; (6) of the shepherd and the sheep, in which is shown the punishment of evil self-indulgence ; (7) of the affliction of the head of the house for the sake of his family in order to bring them to repentance ; (8) of the willow and its brandies, — a parable of judgment and repentance; (9) of the twelve moun- tains and the rock with a gate and the building of the tower, — this very long and ingeniously elab- orate parable is also a parable of judgment and of redemption solely through Christ; (10) of the virgins who are henceforth to be the companions of the instructed Hermas. This outline is too brief to give an adequate idea of a curious and very interesting book. It is easy to see why it should have been so popular in the early Church. In essential particulars its teaching corresponds with that of the epistle of Clement and the apostolic epistles. I note certain points of special interest, in which light is thrown both upon the doctrine and the ethics of the Church at the time when it was written. In its slight refer- ence to the government of the Church it speaks of bishops and teachers and deacons. There is no discrimination between bishops and elders. . The Apostolic Fathers. 137 On the subject of divorce, it allows the husband to divorce his wife for the one cause mentioned in the New Testament, but it forbids the aggrieved husband to marry again, and, in case of his wife's repentance, bids him receive her back: " If the husband receiveth her not, he sinneth and bringeth great sin upon himself, — nay, one who hath sinned and repented must be received, yet not often; for there is but one repentance for the servants of God. For the sake of her repentance, therefore, the husband ought not to marry." Second mar- riage is allowed, but discouraged. Concerning the man who takes a second wife, the shepherd says : " He sinneth not, but if he remain single, he investeth himself with more exceeding honor and with great glory before the Lord ; yet even if he should marry, he sinneth not." Fasting is permitted, apparently, but neither enjoined nor encouraged. When Hermas asks instruction on the subject of fasting the shep- herd tells him, "Fast thou (unto God) such a fast as this : do no wickedness in thy life, and serve the Lord with a pure heart; observe His com- mandments and walk in His ordinances, and let no evil desire rise up in thy heart, but believe God. Then if thou shalt do these things, and fear Him, and control thyself from every evil deed, thou shalt live unto God ; and if thou do these things, thou shalt accomplish a great fast, and one ac- ceptable to God." Furthermore, the shepherd 138 From Jerusalem to Niccza. commands Hermas, when he fasts, to reckon up the expense of that which he would have eaten and give it to some one in want. The shep- herd's instruction reminds us of Herrick's admir- able lines : — "Is this a fast, to keep The larder lean And clean From fat of veals and sheep ? "Is it to quit the dish Of flesh, yet still To fill The platter high with fish ? " Is it to fast an hour, Or ragg'd to go, Or show A downcast look and sour ? " No ; 't is a fast to dole Thy sheaf of wheat And meat Unto the hungry soul. " It is to fast from strife, From old debate And hate To circumcise thy life. " To show a heart grief-rent ; To starve thy sin, Not bin ; And that's to keep thy Lent." The Apostolic Fathers. 139 Papias. Papias, born probably between 60 and 70 A. D., became bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, and, ac- cording to the " Chronicon Pascale," died a martyr not far from 160 A. d. He was the contemporary and companion of Polycarp, and, according to Irenaeus, he was a hearer of St John ; but Euse- bius argues from the words of Papias that, while he heard about the disciples from those who had known them, the John of whom he was immediately the hearer was not John the apostle, but " John the Elder," as Papias himself designates him. The statement of Papias is as follows : — " On any occasion when a person came [in my way] who had been a follower of the Elders, I would inquire about the discourses of the Elders, — what was said by Andrew or by Peter, or by Philip, or by Thomas or James, or by John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's dis- ciples, and what Aristion and the Elder John, the disci- ples of the Lord, say. For I did not think that I could get so much profit from the contents of books as from the utterances of a living and abiding voice." Late in his life, perhaps between 130 and 140 A. D., Papias published his " Exposition of Oracles of the Lord," which Eusebius speaks of as extant in his time in five volumes. Only a few fragments of this work remain, in the form of quotations found in Irenaeus and Eusebius and other ancient writers. 140 From Jerusalem to Niccea. The chief interest in Papias lies in the light which his words throw on questions of New Testa- ment criticism. It is from him that we learn the authorship of the second Gospel. Concerning this he says : — " And the Elder said this also : Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately everything that he remembered, without however recording in order what was either said or done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow him ; but afterwards, as I said, [attended] Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs [of his hearers], but had no design of giving a connected account of the Lord's oracles. So, then, Mark made no mistake, while he thus wrote down some things as he remembered them ; for he made it his one care not to omit anything that he heard, or to set down any false statement therein." Papias also says that " Matthew composed the Oracles in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as he could." The touching and powerful story told in the first eleven verses of the eighth chapter of St John's Gospel, which is now generally conceded by scholars to be an interpolation, is found in one of the fragments of Papias. This story, originally copied on the mar- gin of the Gospel manuscript, finally crept into the te*xt. It is probable that in this fragment Papias transmits a trustworthy oral tradition of primitive times. It is a great misfortune that so few frag- ments of the work of Papias remain, especially The Apostolic Fathers. 141 since so much has unreasonably been made of the silence of Papias by some critics. Eusebius speaks rather disparagingly of him, saying that " he was very limited in his comprehension, as is evident from his discourses; " but something must be allowed to the prejudice caused by a difference in theological opinions. Eusebius was criticising Papias' view of the millennium. If some searcher for old manuscripts, in a se- cluded place in the East, should come across a genuine copy of the writings of Papias, the dis- covery would be hailed with enthusiastic delight by all the scholars of Christendom. Ignatius of Antioch. One of the most striking figures in the early church is Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, according to Eusebius, from 70 or 71 to 109 A. D. About no one in the second century has greater interest gathered than about Ignatius. Almost all the information concerning him that we possess is de- rived from letters supposed to have been written by him, and a letter written by Polycarp to the church in Philippi. Of the letters ascribed to Ignatius there are in all fifteen; eight of these, however, are now uni- versally rejected as spurious. The remaining seven exist in two forms, a longer and a shorter. Of these, the shorter are accepted by many leading critics as substantially genuine. It is impossible to. 142 From Jerusalem to Niccea. attain absolute certainty as to the Ignatian letters, but in consideration of all the evidence, it seems reasonable to hold, with Lightfoot, that the seven shorter letters are the true work of Ignatius, and especially, because their authenticity is so strongly supported by the letter of Polycarp to the Philip- pians ; of the authenticity of this letter there seems now no reasonable doubt. The main objection against the authenticity of the Ignatian letters is that they show a more fully developed view of the episcopacy than is shown by any other contemporary evidence. This is a real difficulty, for it is unquestionable that the episcopacy of the Ignatian letters is much" like that which we find in the beginning of the third century. But it must be admitted that the epis- copacy developed earlier in Asia Minor than in any other part of the empire. Ignatius seems to have been possessed with the idea of the Catholic Church more than perhaps any other man before Cyprian. In his letter to the church in Smyrna occurs this significant statement : "Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be ; just as wheresoever Jesus Christ is, there is the universal Church (rj /cado\i/cr) ifc/c\r) tovtco vi/ca, " By this conquer." In March of the following year, in conjunction with Licinius, Constantine issued the famous " Edict of Milan." which established unrestricted liberty in religion. In this edict it was laid down as a prin- ciple that it is no business of the State to refuse 216 From Jerusalem to Niccea. freedom of religion, and that questions of belief according to one's own free will must be left to the judgment and desire of each individual. " This edict," says Plummer, " is the great charter of liberty of conscience." For ten years bitter persecution had raged throughout the empire. All the forces of civil government, re-enforced by the violence of fanati- cal mobs, had been put forth to exterminate the Christian faith. The result of all was the utter and final defeat of heathenism. One is filled with wonder over the fact that, despite the nature of the Christian faith, Christians, being human, did so patiently bear all the indignities and cruelties put upon them by their enemies. As early as the time of Septimius Severus they were so numerous as well-nigh to justify the extraordinary claims of Tertullian, yet there is no case on record of for- cible resistance to persecution ; and in the reign of Diocletian, when they had so increased that they might have easily accomplished a successful revolution, they bore with patience and fortitude, every variety of indignity, oppression, torture, and death, affording thus the most convincing evidence of the divineness of their faith. "The conflict with external heathenism was over; the struggle with the heathenism in the Church was to take its place." The Church had conquered, not by force of arms, but by its power of enduring all things in the strength of a living Struggle with Heathenism. 217 faith in God. In the space of 280 years the reli- gion preached in Judea by a handful of fishermen, disciples of a crucified Jew, had, by its own inhe- rent energy, overcome the united powers of pagan religion, pagan society, pagan government and pagan arms, and had grasped the sceptre which henceforth it was to wield over all the nations of the world. THE STRUGGLE WITH HEATHENISM: THE APOLOGISTS. THE Church in its conflict with heathenism had to meet, not only the assaults of persecution, but also the more subtle and more dangerous op- position of the drift of life. By their very faith Christians were committed to a life of purity, in the midst of a society in which many forms of vice were so thoroughly incorporated that only to the Christian did they appear as vice. The traditions, the habits, and the associations of the heathen were so inimical to Christian life that usually the only safety for converts from heathenism lay in a complete break with the life which was about them, and a steady resistance to its influence. That Christians stood fast, and developed a virtue which not only was invincible to the assaults of heathen vice, but also contributed powerfully to the triumph of Christianity, is a conspicuous evi- dence of the divine communication and impulse that they had received. But, in addition to all the social and political opposition which it met, the Christian faith had to meet also the intellectual attack from both Jews and pagans. This attack was the more formidable Struggle with Heathenism. 219 because at the beginning all the weapons of liter- ature — of style and dialectic — were in the hands of the enemy. In meeting this attack the Church produced the apologetic writings of the first three centuries. From the beginning Christianity had some ex- pression in writing, but this was confined, at first, to the letters of the apostles, especially of St. Paul. Simultaneously with these, or a little later than these, arose memoirs of the life and reports of the teachings of Christ. Of these the four canonical Gospels are the sifted survivors. In our study of the Apostolic Fathers we have seen how a certain literature grew up, beginning with the epistles of Clement and Barnabas ; but the sub-apostolic writings, down to the time of Justin Martyr, can scarcely be classed as literature. These writings were wanting in the point and style that character- ized pagan literature. Christianity was not long, however, in appropriating to itself the best weap- ons in the literary armory. At first uncultivated and naTve, the Christians did not attempt to enter the field of intellectual combat, but soon they gained confidence and began to produce writings that, in form at least, were fashioned after the pagan models. It is characteristic of Chris- tianity, and profoundly interesting, that " in less than three centuries from the death of St. John, the Church had appropriated every form of literature known to paganism, — the apology, the 220 From Jerusalem to Niccea. allegory, the dialogue, the romance, the history, the essay, the oration, the commentary, the hymn, and the didactic poem." In this literary development, which did not fairly begin until the middle of the second century, apologetic literature led the way. It is impossible within the limits of present space to consider even cursorily the whole Christian literature that was produced before the council of Nicaea. Much of that literature has perished, but that which remains fills some twenty-four stout octavo volumes. It will be necessary therefore for us to confine our at- tention to the study simply of the apologetic liter- ature, and still further, to representative specimens of that. Many of the early Christian apologies were defences, not of Christianity as a system, but of Christians. Christians were accused as violators of the law, as guilty of evil and immoral practices* and as enemies of the human race. To these charges there were many replies which vindicated the virtue and patriotism and piety of the Chris- tians. Soon, however, the apologists passed on from the defence of Christians to the exposition and vindication of the Christian revelation. They began to take the offensive, and to show, not only the injustice and inconsistency of the pagan attacks, but also the absurdity and immorality of the pagan religions, and the superiority to all these of the religion of Christ. Struggle with Heathenism. 221 Among the early apologies, therefore, we have two classes : {a) those that were in defence of Christians; {b) those that were in defence and enforcement of Christianity as the true religion. These two classes practically include the whole of the early apologetic literature. The apologies may also be divided into (a) those addressed to Jews, and ib) those addressed to pagans. The main arguments of the Jews against Christianity were : (1) that Jesus, by the humbleness of His circum- stances and the ignominiousness of His death, con- tradicted the glorious representations of the Messiah which are found in the Prophets ; (2) that Jesus, by His claim of peculiar kinship to God, violated the divine Unity, and was guilty of blasphemy. To these attacks Christian apologists replied by the more rational and adequate interpretation of the Old Testament writings. The arguments of pagan writers were more numerous and more various. They opposed Christianity because it was " new, and therefore untrue," — an argument that is familiar to theologians even in our own day. They denied the credibility of the Christian miracles, especially the chief miracle, namely, the Resur- rection of Jesus. A common argument was that Christianity was a religion of ignorant fanatics. The familiar charges which were urged in order to incite or justify persecution appeared over and over again in the literary attacks of paganism upon Christianity: for example, that Christians were un- 222 From Jerusalem, to Niccea. patriotic and unsocial; that they were atheists; that they were sacrilegious; that they practised magic ; and that they indulged in secret and un- mentionable immoralities. These charges were vigorously and successfully met by the apologists. It was not until the time of Celsus, the latter part of the second century, that a literary assault upon Christianity was made of sufficient scope and force to merit our attention. Lucian indulged in coarse ridicule of Christians, especially in his " De Morte Peregrini," but the main attack was made by Celsus. The latter, a passionate and able opponent of the Christian re- ligion, wrote a book which Origen considered of sufficient importance to call from him a careful and elaborate reply. Celsus' work has perished, but the entire substance of its argument has been pre- served in Origen's book. It is interestfng to observe that there have been few arguments urged by sceptics against Chris- tianity, during the centuries since the time of Origen, that were not stated or suggested by Celsus. The consideration of Origen's reply to Celsus will come up later. The apologists who undertook to defend Chris- tianity by expounding and enforcing it as the true religion may be divided into two schools. The first of these schools recognized a strong affinity between Christianity and human reason and con- science ; the second saw nothing in human nature Struggle with Heathenism. 223 but utter weakness and wickedness. Of the latter school Arnobius may be taken as a representative. The first school may be divided into two sections : the first section is composed of those who took the broad view that in the religions and philoso- phies of antiquity there was much truth anticipative of Christianity. These are represented by Clement of Alexandria. The second section took the nar- rower view that, while there is in the unsophisti- cated reason a natural appetency for truth, the systems of pagan religion and philosophy are to be condemned as false, and " the so-called philoso- phers were patrons rather of falsehood and heresy than of the truth." Of these Tertullian may stand as representative. Many of the early apologies were addressed to the emperors, but they seem to have had little favorable effect. It has been asserted that Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, and even Marcus Aurelius, were influenced by the apologies to such an extent as to modify the official treatment of Christians; but this is questionable. On the other hand, it is not unlikely that Tertullian's apology excited Septimius Severus to sterner measures against Christianity than he might otherwise have taken. Such a scathing and scornful exhibition of pagan immorality and injustice and folly must have been peculiarly exasperating to Roman officials. But, whatever may have been the effect of the Christian apologies on the emperors, they certainly had the 224 From Jerusalem to Niccza. effect upon the people of stimulating thought, and of concentrating attention on the real principles and claims of the Christian faith. The truth is, however, that the greatest achievements of the early Christians were in the field, not of literature, but of life. Their most powerful apologetics were their virtue, their patient endurance of outrage and suffering, and their lofty faith in God. It is significant that the apologists who took the liberal view of religion and philosophy antecedent to Christianity, wrote Greek, while the apologists who took the narrower view, with one exception, wrote Latin. The latter, with Tertullian in the lead, representing, as they did, the Roman type of mind in contrast with the Greek, were the pre- cursors of that Latin theology which, under the powerful influence of Augustine, became dominant in the Western church in the fifth century, and, joined with an ecclesiasticism which was moulded by the Roman spirit and method of organization, has ruled it almost to the present time. The former, with Clement of Alexandria and Origen as early representatives, elaborated that conception of truth and of the Christian revelation which is embodied in the great theology of the Greek Fathers, and which is having a renascence in our day. I shall now proceed to give a brief sketch of the life and work of some of the early apologists. One of the earliest apologetic writings with which we are acquainted is the anonymous piece known as Struggle with Heathenism. 225 the " Epistle to Diognetus," which dates probably from the first half of the second century, — as early as 150 A. D., if not earlier. For a long time this epistle was ascribed to Justin Martyr, but evidently it was not by him. Lightfoot ventures the con- jecture that the author was Pantaenus, the reputed founder of the Christian catechetical school in Alexandria, which would date the epistle some- where between 180 and 210. Even a conjec- ture by Lightfoot is worthy of serious attention, and there are characteristics of the epistle which readily lend themselves to support this conjecture. Birks and others ascribe the epistle to a certain Ambrose, an Athenian Christian, who, about 177, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, defends himself against the charge of fanaticism in a letter to Diognetus, a former tutor of the emperor. But on the whole the argument for a much earlier date seems stronger. The epistle begins as follows : — "Since I see, most excellent Diognetus, that thou art exceedingly anxious to understand the religion of the Christians, and that thy inquiries respecting them are dis- tinctly and carefully made, as to what God they trust and how they worship Him, that they all disregard the world and despise death, and take no account of those who are regarded as gods by the Greeks, neither observe the superstition of the Jews, and as to the nature of the affection which they entertain one to another, and of this new development or interest, which has entered into r 5 226 From Jerusalem to Niccza. men's lives now and not before : I gladly welcome this zeal in thee, and I ask of God, Who supplieth both the speaking and the hearing to us, that it may be granted to myself to speak in such a way that thou mayest be made better by the hearing, and to thee that thou mayest so listen that I the speaker may not be disappointed." In the succeeding chapters, or rather paragraphs, the author, with great purity and dignity of style, sets forth the vanity and worthlessness of idols and the folly of worshipping them ; and the defectiveness of the Jewish worship and religious customs. Then follows a statement of the position, and a represen- tation of the character, of Christians, unsurpassed if not unequalled in all the early Christian literature. This I have quoted at length in the preceding lecture. 1 The author then sets forth the revelation of the invisible God by His Son, — " the very Artificer and Creator of the Universe Himself, by Whom He made the heavens, by Whom He enclosed the sea in its proper bounds, Whose mysteries all the elements faithfully observe, from Whom [the sun] hath re- ceived even the measure of the courses of the day to keep them, Whom the moon obeys as He bids her shine by night, Whom the stars obey as they follow the course of the moon, by Whom all things are ordered and bounded and placed in subjection, the heavens and the things that are in the heavens, the earth and the things that are in the earth, the sea and the things that are in the sea, fire, air, abyss, the things that are in the heights, the things that 1 See page 172. Struggle with Heathenism. 227 are in the depths, the things that are between the two. Him He sent unto them. Was He sent, think you, as any man might suppose, to establish a sovereignty, to in- spire fear and terror ? Not so. But in gentleness [and] meekness has He sent Him, as a king might send his son who is a king. He sent Him, as sending God ; He sent Him, as [a man] unto men ; He sent Him, as Saviour, as using persuasion, not force : for force is no attribute of God. He sent Him, as summoning, not as perse- cuting; He sent Him, as loving, not as judging." In the succeeding paragraphs the author shows that in the Son is revealed the good and benevo- lent nature of God; by Him is salvation; and through Him man becomes an imitator of God. The last two paragraphs of the letter are evidently added by another hand. The apologetic value of this noble writing lies in its lofty conception and impressive presentation of the Christian faith. Says Birks: — " Lost in the crowd of predecessors whom Irenaeus and Clement hardly ever name, and merged in Justin's shadow, convinced that God alone can reveal Himself, and content to be hidden in his Saviour's righteousness, the old writer has gradually emerged by virtue of an inborn lustre, obscurest at once and most brilliant of his contemporaries, and has cast a glory on the early Church while remaining himself unknown." Justin the martyr, or, as he is universally called, Justin Martyr, as if the word which designates the manner of his death were a proper name, has been 228 From yerusalem to Niccea. called " the true founder of Christian apology." Almost all that we know of his life is derived from his writings, especially from the " Dialogue with Trypho." He was born in Flavia Neapolis, a city built in honor of Vespasian near the site of the ancient Shechem in Samaria. It survives in the modern town of Nablous. The date of his birth is unknown, but it must have been early in the second century, perhaps as early as 114 A. d. Though born in Samaria and calling himself a Samaritan, Justin was probably a Gentile of Greek extraction. His father bore the Roman name, Priscus, and his grandfather the Greek name, Bacchius. Appar- ently he had inherited some property. He was brought up in the heathen customs and received a thorough Greek education. As a youth he was evidently of serious and ardent mind, and early gave himself to the search for truth. In this search he betook himself to the philosophers of the various current schools. He first went to a Stoic, with whom he spent considerable time, but, finding that he acquired no further knowledge of God, and that his master not only had none himself but did not even think such knowledge necessary, he left him and went to a Peripatetic. The new master soon disgusted his pupil by his mercenary spirit, after the first few days requesting Justin "to settle the fee in order that [their] intercourse might not be unprofitable." Justin then sought a very celebrated Pythagorean, Struggle with Heathenism. 229 " a man," he says dryly, " who thought much of his own wisdom." This master required of his pupil, as a preliminary, a knowledge of music, astronomy, and geometry, and finding that the pupil was igno- rant of these dismissed him. Then Justin went to a Platonist, " a sagacious man, holding a high posi- tion among the Platonists." Whether this was in Flavia Neapolis or in Ephesus is not certain, but, from Justin's language, it is fair to infer that it was in the latter place. He found his new master much more satisfactory than any of his predecessors. " I progressed," he says, "and made the greatest improvements daily. And the perception of immaterial things quite overpowered me, and the contemplation of ideas furnished my mind with wings, so that in a little while I supposed that I had become wise; and such was my stupidity, I expected forthwith to look upon God, for this is the end of Plato's philosophy." He had not yet, however, attained peace. The manner of his conversion to Christianity is very interestingly told by himself in his " Dialogue with Trypho." One day, while walking in a cer- tain field not far from the sea, where he was accustomed to go for the sake of quietness, that he might meditate without interruption, an old man of " meek and venerable manners " followed him at a little distance. Justin turned about and fixed his eyes keenly upon him ; at which he said : " Do you know me ? " 230 From Jerusalem to Niccea. " ' I replied/ says Justin, ' in the negative.' ' Why, then/ said he to me, ' do you so look at me ? ' 'I am astonished/ I said, 'because you have chanced to be in my company in the same place ; for I had not expected to see any man here.' And he says to me, ' I am con- cerned about some of my household. These are gone away from me ; and therefore have I come to make per- sonal search for them, if, perhaps, they shall make their appearance somewhere. But why axe you here? ' said he to me. 'I delight/ said I, 'in such walks, where my attention is not distracted, for converse with myself is uninterrupted ; and such places are most fit for philol- ogy ! ' 'Are you, then, a lover of words/ said he, 'but no lover of deeds or of truth? and do you not aim at being a practical man so much as being a sophist?' " Justin answers that " it is necessary for every man to philosophize, and to esteem this the greatest and most honorable work." The old man inquires if, then, philosophy makes happiness. Justin answers that it does. When asked further, " What is philosophy?" he replies that "it is the knowledge of that which really exists, and a clear perception of the truth; and happiness is the reward of such knowledge and wisdom." The old man then questions him about God. In the course of the conversation on this theme, with a weightiness and intelligence which were new to Justin, the old man referred him to teachers older than all the philosophers, — " men blessed and upright and beloved of God, who spoke by the Struggle with Heathenism. 231 Spirit of God, and are called Prophets." These had borne testimony and worked wonders to the honor and glory of God the Father, and of His Christ. He concluded the conversation with the words, " Pray thou, then, that the gates of the Light may be opened too for thee; for these things can only be seen and known by those to whom God and His Christ have given understand- ing." The old man then went away and Justin saw him no more, but " straightway," he says, " a flame was kindled in my soul; and a love of the prophets, and of those men who are friends of Christ, possessed me ; and whilst revolving his words in my mind, I found this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable." The date of Justin's conversion we can only conjecture, but it must have been before the revolt under Barcochba, which would put it before 132 A. D. His conversion was thorough, and he thenceforth gave himself wholly to the work of diffusing the knowledge of the Christian faith. He kept his philosopher's cloak, and went about in the manner of the philosophers, teaching the doc- trines of Christianity. It is even said that he established some sort of a school in Rome, in his later years, but of this there is no distinct evidence. He was a man with little imagination but with considerable force of intelligence, of ardent but self-controlled temper and great courage, and of simple and noble character. Some one has said 232 From Jerusalem to Niccea. of him that " he wrote like a man full of Chris- tianity." It is characteristic of the man as well as of the time that, in his " Apologies," he defended Christians, rather than Christianity ; and, after all, this is the true defence, for it is the life rather than the theology that is of first importance. Of Justin's writings but three of those known to be genuine are extant. These are the " Dialogue with Trypho " and two " Apologies ; " the second of the " Apologies," however, is a sequel, or appendix, of the first. Some of Justin's writings certainly have been lost, and some well-known writings have been wrongly ascribed to him. Of writings ascribed to Justin, concerning the authen- ticity of which critics are divided, there survive "An Address to the Greeks," "A Hortatory Ad- dress to the Greeks," " On the Sole Government of God," and fragments of a work on the Resurrec- tion. These are all early, none of them being later than the third century. The " Dialogue with Trypho," which defends Christianity against Jewish attack, must be passed with brief notice. In it Justin explains and justi- fies the non-observance of the Mosaic law by Christians ; maintains that this law has been abro- gated and replaced by the new revelation, which was prophetically and germinally in the old ; shows that salvation and true righteousness are obtainable only through Christ; vindicates the Messiahship and divinity of Christ by elaborate proofs drawn Struggle with Heathenism. 233 from the Old Testament; asserts that the fables about Bacchus, Hercules and yEsculapius, and the mysteries of Mithras, the Persian sun-god, are an invention of the devil; and foretells the coming restoration of Jerusalem and the thousand years' reign of the saints with Christ after the Resurrec- tion. Much of this book is taken up with exposi- tions of prophecies in the Old Testament about Christ, some of which are as fantastic as Justin's little imagination will allow. For example, he sees in the outstretched hands of Moses, praying against Amalek, the prophetic sign of the cross ; finds types of Pharisees in the bulls, and of Herod in the roaring lion that beset the Psalmist; and discovers a figure of the Church in the marriages of Jacob. The " Dialogue " has great value as an example of early Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. It also throws considerable light on the belief and practice of Christians at the middle of the second century. The " Apologies," as we have them, consist of two, the first, written probably about 150, ad- dressed to Antoninus Pius and his associates in the empire, and the second, written several years later, addressed to the Roman Senate. The first " Apology " may be divided into three parts. The first part begins with a demand for justice to the Christians, refutes the charges against them, and vindicates their innocence. The second part sets forth the truth of Christianity and shows how it 234 From Jerusalem to Niccea. came to be misunderstood through the influence of demons. In Justin's writings, as in many other early Christian writings, the demons and the pagan deities are identical. The third part, which is very brief, describes the worship and customs of the Christians, and ends with a copy of Hadrian's epistle on behalf of the Christians addressed to Minucius Fundanus. In the course of this apology Justin vigorously attacks the heathen worship and customs, expounds the prophecies concerning Christ's coming and work and death, and sets forth the majesty of Christ. He charges the demons, not only with misleading men concerning the true nature of Christianity, but also with caus- ing the persecution of Christians. He claims that Plato was under obligation to Moses for his doc- trine of the creation, and also that Plato propheti- cally intimated the doctrine of the cross. He apparently identifies baptism with regeneration, describes the Eucharist as a participation in the Body and Blood of Christ, and justifies the observ- ance of Sunday for worship and ministry to the needy. " Sunday," he says, " is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day, on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world ; and Jesus Christ, our Saviour, on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday) ; and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day Struggle with Heathenism. 235 of the Sun, having appeared to his apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration." In the second " Apology," addressed to the Roman Senate, Justin recounts the persecution of Christians by Urbicus, prefect of Rome, and shows his injustice by citing specific cases. He accuses Crescens, a Cynic philosopher, of ignorant preju- dice against the Christians. He vindicates Divine Providence and asserts the certainty of judgment against sinners. In chapter x. he claims whatever truth was uttered by law-givers or philosophers before Christ as belonging to the Word, and cites Socrates with approval, as one who " was accused of the very same crimes as ourselves. For they said that he was introducing new divinities, and did not consider those to be gods whom the State recognized ; " and he thus contrasts Socrates with Christ: — " For no one trusted in Socrates so as to die for his doctrine, but in Christ, who was partially known even by Socrates (for He was and is the Word who is in every man, and who foretold the things that were to come to pass both through the prophets and in His own person when he was made of like passions, and taught these things), not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artisans and people entirely uneducated, despising both glory and fear of death ; since He is a power of the ineffable Father, and not the mere instrument of human reason." 236 From Jerusalem to Niece a. He confesses that while he was still a Platonist, and heard the Christians slandered, he was con- vinced of their sincerity by their patience and for- titude under suffering, and their fearlessness of death. Perhaps the most significant passage in this " Apology " is that in which Justin sets forth his doctrine of the " spermatic word." He says: " I confess that I both boast myself, and with all my strength strive to be found, a Christian ; not because the teachings of Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are not in all respects similar, as neither are those of the others, Stoics, and poets, and historians. For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic word, seeing what was related to it. But they who contradict themselves on the more impor- tant points appear not to have possessed the heavenly wisdom, and the knowledge which cannot be spoken against. Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians. For next to God, we worship and love the Word who is from the Unbe- gotten and Ineffable God, since also He became man for our sakes, that, becoming a partaker of our sufferings, he might also bring us healing. For all the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted Word that was in them. For the seed and imitation imparted according to capacity is one thing, and quite another is the thing itself, of which there is the participation and imitation according to the grace which is from Him." Justin prays that his little book may be pub- lished in order that men " may have a fair chance Struggle with Heathenism. 237 of being freed from erroneous notions," and so be inclined to justice toward the Christians; de- nounces the wicked and deceitful doctrine of Simon the Samaritan ; and closes with the prayer " that all men everywhere may be counted worthy of the truth. And would that you also, in a man- ner becoming piety and philosophy, would for your own sakes judge justly ! " He suffered mar- tyrdom, probably in 163 under Marcus Aurelius, sentence being pronounced and executed in the same day. One of the most striking and picturesque figures among the early apologists is that of Tatian, who was a contemporary and disciple, and probably a convert, of Justin Martyr. He was born in Assyria, possibly of Greek parentage, between no and 120 A. D. Apparently he was of good birth and possessed of some fortune. He received a thorough Greek education, diligently cultivated his mind, and developed literary powers of a high order, for, though in his " Address to the Greeks " he scorns the elegancies of style, he yet shows his exceptional capacity for literary expression. Like Justin he had an ardent desire for the truth. Urged by this desire he visited many lands, studied all the religions with which he came in contact, and even learned the sacred mysteries in Greece. In his " Address to the Greeks" he says: "The things which I have thus set before you I have not 238 From Jerusalem to Niccea. learned at second hand. I have visited many- lands ; I have followed rhetoric, like yourselves ; I have fallen in with many arts and inventions ; and finally, when sojourning in the city of the Romans, I inspected the multiplicity of statues brought thither by you." About 150 he went to Rome. By this time he had become thoroughly disgusted with the debas- ing immoralities of the heathen religions; " having everywhere," as he says, " examined the religious rites performed by the effeminate and the pathic, and having found among the Romans their Latia- rian Jupiter delighting in human gore and the blood of slaughtered men, and Artemis not far from the great city, sanctioning acts of the same kind, and one demon here and another there, instigating to the perpetration of evil." In Rome, Justin drew his attention to " certain barbaric writings, too old to be compared with the opinions of the Greeks, and too divine to be compared with their errors." These " barbaric writings " were the Old Testament Scriptures. The simplicity and modesty of the style of these Scriptures, as well as the loftiness of their doctrine, drew him by an irresistible charm. He sought instruction in the Christian faith, and became a member of the church in Rome. Here he lived for some years, working in harmony with Justin, vigorously de- fending the faith, and assailing the licentiousness and folly of the pagan religions. He also in- Struggle with Heathenism, 239 structed converts, among whom were one Rho- don, of whose writings Eusebius has preserved some fragments, and, possibly, also Clement of Alexandria, since Clement speaks of having had a teacher who " was born in the land of Assyria." After the death of Justin Martyr, Tatian seems to have imbibed Gnostic ideas, and, about 172, he was excommunicated as a heretic. He then re- turned to the East, where he lived some years near Antioch in Syria, and died about 180 at Edessa. In these last years he was at the head of the Encratites, an ascetical sect of Gnostics. Their name means the " Self-controlled." Tatian was the author of many works, of which only two sur- vive, but the titles of four others are well known. The two that have survived are his " Address to the Greeks " and his " Diatessaron." Among the Gnostic ideas of Tatian are these: with Valentinus he believed in certain ^Eons, or emanations from the supreme Deity, of which the Logos or Word was chief; with Marcion he be- lieved that the God of the Old Testament was the Demiurge, and was inferior to the God of the New Testament; he affirmed the non-salvability of Adam; condemned marriage ; and inculcated ab- stinence from animal food and from wine. He modified the celebration of the Lord's Supper by the use of water instead of wine. His " Address to the Greeks " was written about 152 A. D. This work is more polemical than apolo- 240 From J erusalem to Niccea. getic, and, in so far as it is apologetic, it is a defence of Christianity rather than of Christians. Tatian, though he was widely instructed in the pagan philosophies and religions, has no sympathy with them, sees no good in them, and finds not analogies but contrasts between them and Chris- tianity. The tone of his " Address " is defiant and aggressive. The style is abrupt and passion- ate, and wilfully devoid of elegance ; yet it is often very powerful. He is a master of scornful invec- tive. He begins his " Address " by attacking the self-conceit of the Greeks, showing that they are indebted for their various arts and sciences to others whom they contemptuously call " Bar- barians." " For which of your institutions," he asks, " has not been derived from the Barbarians? The most eminent of the Telmessians invented the art of divining by dreams ; the Carians, that of prognosticating by the stars ; the Phrygians and the most ancient Isaurians, augury by the flight of birds ; the Cyprians, the art of inspecting victims. To the Babylonians you owe astronomy ; to the Persians," magic ; to the Egyptians, geometry ; to the Phoenicians, instruction by alphabetic writing. . Cease, then, to miscall these imitations inventions of your own. Orpheus, again, taught you poetry and song ; from him, too, you learned the mysteries. The Tuscans taught you the plastic art ; from the annals of the Egyptians you learned to write his- tory ; you acquired the art of playing the flute from Marsyas and Olympus, — these two rustic Phrygians Struggle with Heathenism. 241 constructed the harmony of the shepherd's pipe. The Tyrrhenians invented the trumpet ; the Cyclops, the smith's art ; and a woman who was formerly a queen of the Persians, as Hellanicus tells us, the method of joining together epistolary tablets : her name was Atossa. Where- fore lay aside this conceit." He derides them for their inability accurately to pronounce their own language, and scoffs at the venality of their rhetoricians. He thus ridicules the philosophers : — " Diogenes, who made such a parade of his indepen- dence with his tub, . . . lost his life by gluttony. Aris- tippus, walking about in a purple robe, led a profligate life, in accordance with his professed opinions. Plato, a philosopher, was sold by Dionysius for his gormandizing propensities. And Aristotle, who absurdly placed a limit to Providence and made happiness to consist in the things which give pleasure, quite contrary to his duty as a preceptor, flattered Alexander, forgetful that he was but a youth ; and he, showing how well he had learned the lessons of his master, because his friend would not wor- ship him, shut him up and carried him about like a bear or a leopard. . . . Let such men philosophize for me ! ' : He powerfully vindicates the Christian worship of God alone. " Man," he says, " is to be honored as a fellow-man ; God alone is to be feared, — He who is not visible to human eyes, nor comes within compass of human art. Only when I am commanded to deny Him, will I not obey, but will rather die than show myself false and 16 242 From yerusalem to Niccza. ungrateful. ... I refuse to adore that workmanship which He has made for our sakes. The sun and moon were made for us : how, then, can I adore my own ser- vants ? How can I speak of stocks and stones as gods ? " He declares that the creation of the world was by the Logos, who springs forth from God by His simple will: who "came into being by participa- tion, not by abscission." He maintains the Chris- tian doctrine of the resurrection, and exclaims: " Even though fire destroy all traces of my flesh, the world receives the vaporized matter; and though dispersed through rivers and seas, or torn in pieces by wild beasts, I am laid up in the store- houses of a wealthy Lord." He ascribes the fall of man to the influence of angels who, turning away from God, became demons; but he does not relieve man of responsibility for the fall, because he was free to choose the good. With the fallen angels, who have become demons by their separa- tion from the Creator, or Logos, he identifies the pagan gods, and, with fierce scorn, he recounts their vices and follies among mankind. These demons are the cause of superstitions, but the sins of men are due not to Fate but to free-will. Of the first man he predicates two kinds of spirits, " One of which is called the soul (^%^), but the other is greater than the soul, an image and like- ness of God." By sin the latter is lost, and with it is lost immortality. Struggle with Heathenism. 243 " The soul," says Tatian, " is not in itself immortal, O Greeks, but mortal. Yet it is possible for it not to die. If, indeed, it knows not the truth, it dies, and is dissolved with the body, but rises again at last at the end of the world with the body, receiving death by punishment in immortality. But again, if it acquires the knowledge of God, it dies not, although for a time it be dissolved." He declares the necessity of union with the Holy Spirit as the ground of immortality. In several succeeding chapters he shows the decep- tions which demons practise on mankind, and denounces against them a punishment severer than that which will be visited on men ; but, true to his doctrine of free-will, he maintains that deprav- ity lies at the bottom of demon-worship. He ridi- cules the solemnities of the Greeks and denounces their popular amusements, both in the arena and on the stage; and scornfully depicts the "boastings and quarrels of their philosophers, and derides the futility of their studies. "While inquiring what God is, you are ignorant of what is in yourselves ; and, while staring all agape at the sky, you stumble into pitfalls. The reading of your books is like walking through a labyrinth, and their readers resemble the cask of the Danaids." He protests that the Christians are hated un- justly, and condemns the Greek legislation. In the closing chapters he shows that the Christian philosophy is much older than the Greek, and exhibits the superiority of the Christian doctrine. 244 From Jerusalem to Niccea. He nobly vindicates the character of Christian women, as contrasted with the frivolous and licen- tious Greek women. He cites the testimony of the Chaldeans, the Phoenicians and the Egyptians, to prove the superior antiquity of Moses, and gives a list of the Argive kings, who are all shown to be comparatively recent, while Moses is both more ancient and more credible than the heathen heroes. The " Address " concludes with the words : — "These things, O Greeks, I, Tatian, a disciple of the barbaric philosophy, have composed for you. I was born in the land of the Assyrians, having been first instructed in your doctrines, and afterwards in those which I now undertake to proclaim. Henceforward, knowing who God is and what is His work, I present myself to you prepared for an examination concerning my doctrines, while I adhere immovably to that mode of life which is according to God." The " Diatessaron," while not strictly an apolo- getic work, is of such significance and interest that I must devote to it a few words. From Eusebius and others it was known that Tatian had composed a harmony of the Gospels, and that this harmony was almost universally used in the Syrian churches for two centuries or more after his time. For many centuries the "Diatessaron" was lost from view, save as it survived, in a fragmentary shape, in a commentary upon it by Ephraem Syrus. In 1719 Stephen Assemani claimed that Struggle with Heathenism. 245 a certain Arabic manuscript in the Vatican was a copy of Tatian's " Diatessaron." This seems not to have received the attention which it merited. In 1 88 1, the German scholar, Zahn, published the " Diatessaron," reconstructed from quotations found in the Syrian Fathers, using chiefly the " Commentary " of Ephraem Syrus. Incited by this work, an Italian scholar, Agostino Ciasca, examined the Vatican manuscript and wrote an essay upon it in 1883, in which he announced his purpose to publish the manuscript itself. Three years later, Ciasca came into possession of another manuscript, which was sent from Egypt to the Borgian museum in Rome by its owner, Halim Dos Gall. This manuscript proved to be a more complete copy of Tatian's work, translated from Syriac into Arabic early in the eleventh century ; the present copy having been made not later than the fourteenth century. This manuscript, care- fully edited, has recently been translated into English. 1 The " Diatessaron " is a composite of the four canonical Gospels. It was made by Tatian prob- ably before 160 A. D. Its value is very great because of the convincing proof which it furnishes that our four Gospels were in existence, and were recognized as authoritative in the Church, as early at least, as 140 A. D., since these Gospels are evi- dently identical with the "Memoirs" to which 1 It is published by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh. 246 From Jerusalem to Niccea. reference is made by Justin Martyr. The " Dia- tessaron," therefore, puts forever at rest the con- tention that the Fourth Gospel was produced late in the second, or early in the third, century. It also disproves the theory of the late invention of the miracles ascribed to Christ in the four Gospels. The works of Tatian have doubtless suffered in the estimation of ecclesiastical writers because of the ban of heresy which was put upon him on account of his Gnostic tendencies. Irenaeus, who wrote " Against Heresies," bitterly, but probably not altogether justly, denounces Tatian. Tatian's work on the Gospels, in its importance to the Christian scholarship of our time, is outranked by no other single work of the second century. A little later in his apologetic work than either Justin Martyr or Tatian, was ATHENAGORAS. Of the life of Athenagoras almost nothing is clearly known, and his name is seldom mentioned in early ecclesiastical history. He seems to have been an Athenian philosopher, who was converted to Christianity by reading the Sacred Scriptures for the purpose of refuting them. A writer of the fifth century says that he was the first head of the Christian school in Alexandria, and it has been conjectured, on the ground of certain internal evi- dence, that his book, " Concerning the Resurrec- tion," was written in Alexandria. In 177 he addressed to Marcus Aurelius and his son Corn- modus an " Embassy" on behalf of the Christians. Struggle with Heathenism. 247 Of the other works which he wrote only one has come down to us, the treatise on the resurrection of the dead. Athenagoras was certainly a man of wide culture and of much acuteness and strength of mind, and he was possessed of fine literary art. His " Apol- ogy," or " Embassy," is elegantly written, abounds in quotations from the pagan poets and philos- ophers, as well as from the sacred Scriptures, and is characterized by great tact and logical force. Within the field which it covers it is probably the strongest, as well as the most interesting, Christian apologetic writing of the second century. In his desire to conciliate, the author indulges in some pardonable flattery of the emperors. In the first chapter he protests against the unjust discrimina- tion against the Christians, in that they are con- demned simply on account of their name. "Why," he asks, "is a mere name odious to you? Names are not deserving of hatred : it is the unjust act that calls for penalty and punishment. . . . We venture, therefore, to lay a statement of our case before you — and you will learn from this discourse that we suffer un- justly, and contrary to all law and reason — and we be- seech you to bestow some consideration upon us also, that we may cease at length to be slaughtered at the instigation of false accusers. For the fine imposed by our persecutors does not aim merely at our property, nor their insults at our reputation, nor the damage they do us at any other of our greater interests. These we hold in 248 From Jerusalem to Niccea. contempt, though to the generality they appear matters of great importance ; for we have learned, not only not to return blow for blow, nor to go to law with those who plunder and rob us, but to those who smite us on one side of the face to offer the other side also, and to those who take away our coat to give likewise our cloak. But, when we have surrendered our property, they plot against our very bodies and souls, pouring upon us wholesale charges of crimes of which we are guiltless even in thought." In the second chapter he vigorously, and yet with much tact, urges the just claim of Christians to be treated as others are when accused. " If, indeed," he says, " any one can convict us of a crime, be it small or great, we do not ask to be excused from punishment, but are prepared to undergo the sharpest and most merciless inflic- tions." He demands, what is conceded as the common right of all, that Christians shall not be hated and punished merely because they are called Christians, but be fairly tried and if guilty, convicted and punished, and acquitted if innocent. The three charges which he meets are the familiar ones of atheism, cannibalism, and incest. The larger part of the " Apology " (chapters iv. — xxx.) is taken up with an elaborate refuta- tion of the charge of atheism. He defends the Christian belief in the unity of God, and cites in corroboration the poets and the philosophers ; he shows also the superiority of the Christian doc- trine, and points out the absurdities of polytheism. Struggle with Heathenism. 249 The charge of atheism is refuted by the character of the Christians' life. He justifies the Christians for not offering sacrifices, and exhibits the incon- sistency of their accusers, since the latter " do not all acknowledge the same gods." In two fine chapters he sets forth the distinction between God and matter, and the reasons why Christians do not worship the universe : — " Beautiful without doubt is the world. . . . yet it is not this, but its Artificer, that we must worship. For when any of your subjects come to you, they do not neglect to pay their homage to you, their rulers and lords, from whom they will obtain whatever they need, and address themselves to the magnificence of your pal- ace. ... If, therefore, the world is an instrument in tune, and moving in well-measured time, I adore the Being who gave its harmony, and strikes its notes, and sings the accordant strain, and not the instrument. For at the musical contests the adjudicators do not pass by the lute-players and crown the lutes." He then cites the testimony of the poets and philosophers to prove that the pagan gods have been created and therefore are perishable. " How can the constitution of these gods remain," he asks, " who are not self-existent, but have been originated? " He reminds his readers of the absurd represen- tations which have been made of the gods, and, by copious references to the poets, exhibits the 250 From Jerusalem to Niece a. impure loves of these deities. He then criticises the theory that these are only symbolical rep- resentations, and cites Thales and Plato in defence of his idea that the effects ascribed to the gods are produced by demons. The latter he identifies with the giants begotten by an unholy union between fallen angels and the daughters of men. The demons allure men to the worship of images, and practise various devices upon them. The hea- then gods, he affirms, are simply men, and proves his affirmation from the poets. In the last seven chapters he confutes the other charges against the Christians, setting forth in opposition to these charges their pure morals and humane temper. " For our account," he says, " lies not with human laws, which a bad man can evade, . . . but we have a law which makes the measure of rectitude to consist in dealing with our neighbor as ourselves." The Apology closes with the temperate and altogether admirable appeal : — " And now do you, who are entirely in everything, by nature and by education, upright, and moderate, and benevolent, and worthy of your rule, now that I have disposed of the several accusations, and proved that we are pious, and gentle, and temperate in spirit, bend your royal head in approval. For who are more deserving to obtain the things they ask than those who, like us, pray for your government, that you may, as is most equitable, receive the kingdom, son from father, and that your Struggle with Heathenism. 251 empire may receive increase and addition, all men becoming subject to your sway? And this is also for our advantage, that we may lead a peaceable and quiet life, and may ourselves readily perform all that is com- manded us." There is a trace of ascetism in this writing, which appears especially in the author's treatment of second marriages. On this matter he says: "For he who deprives himself of his first wife, even though she be dead, is a cloaked adulterer, resisting the hand of God, because in the begin- ning God made one man and one woman." His idea of inspiration appears in the following sen- tences : "It would be irrational for us to cease to believe in the Spirit from God, who moved the mouths of the prophets like musical instruments, and to give heed to mere human opinions." Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the other prophets, were "lifted in ecstasy above the natural operations of their minds by the impulses of the Divine Spirit, [and] uttered the things with which they were inspired, the Spirit making use of them as a flute- player breathes into a flute." In his idea of the Logos Athenagoras antici- pates Origen's doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. " He [the Son] is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence, [for] from the beginning, God who is the eternal mind [1/0O?], had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos [\oyifcos]." 252 From Jerusalem to Niccea. " The Holy Spirit " he asserts " to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun." The limits of present space make it necessary for me to leave the consideration of Irenaeus until the next lecture, where he more properly belongs, since his writings which have come down to us are chiefly against heresies. Clement of Alexandria and Origen will be considered in the lecture on the Christian school of Alexandria. Of the other apologists belonging to the first three centuries, Quadratus survives in a single fragment; the works of Aristides are wholly lost; and the writ- ings of Melito of Sardis exist in only a few frag- ments, an apology in Syriac ascribed to him probably not being by his hand. The apology by Theophilus, " To Autolycus," which was writ- ten a little after the middle of the second century, and is a work showing profound acquaintance with the sacred Scriptures and ably exhibiting their superiority to the heathen writings, must be passed by, as also must Methodius, and the learned and powerful Hippolytus. Of the Latin apologists, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Lactantius, whom I have named in their chronological order, I can pre- sent briefly only one, Tertullian. Minucius Felix wrote his " Octavius " a little after 200 A. D. Of this work the late Dean Milman said, " Perhaps no late work, either Pagan or Christian, reminds us of Struggle with Heathenism, 253 the golden days of Latin prose so much as the 1 Octavius ' of Minucius Felix." The work of Lactantius belongs to the early years of the fourth century, and is characterized by great dignity, elegance, and clearness of style, and by varied and extensive erudition ; it was justly much esteemed by the Fathers of the Church. Tertullian, whose full name was Quintus Flo- rens Tertullianus, was born in Carthage, of heathen parentage, in the year 160, or a little earlier. His father was a centurion in the service of the pro- consul, with sufficient means to give his boy a lib- eral education. Carthage was at that time one of the main seats of learning in the Roman empire. Tertullian, a lad of brilliant promise, made rapid progress in his studies. He mastered Greek so that he could both speak and write it with ease. He knew his Homer and other poets, and was widely read in philosophy, science, and history. For the latter studies he evidently cared more than he did for poetry. Like most heathens of his time, he spent his youth in dissipation, a course of life which was almost inevitable to one of his station, in a city abounding in vices, espe- cially sensuality of the fiercer types. His descrip- tions, in later life, of scenes in the theatre and arena and other resorts of pleasure, were evi- dently drawn from personal observation and ex- perience. Yet, despite the wildness of his early years, he read much and developed to a high de- 254 From Jerusalem to Niccea. gree his powers both of reasoning and expression. A born orator, his very endowments led him to embrace the profession of a pleader, or advocate. It is possible that he was destined for official life in the State. He seems to have practised as a jurist in Rome sometime during the reign of Corn- modus (180-192), and is the reputed author of two legal works. His legal training is apparent in his writings, not only in his general style, which is juridical rather than homiletic, but also in his skill in argument and his frequent use of legal terms. In his apologies he is the trained and passionate advocate and defender, rather than the calm and critical apologist. Between 190 and 195, probably in 192, he be- came a convert to Christianity. He at once threw himself ardently into the study of the Bible and Christian literature, and very soon began to use his pen in defence of Christians and the Christian faith. He appears to have written somewhat in Greek, but most of his work was in Latin. His Greek writings are entirely lost. He was made a presbyter in Carthage, where his life mainly was spent. That he was married we know from letters addressed to his wife which appear among his published works. In 202 or 203 he espoused Montanism. Mon- tanus, of whom I shall have more to say later, was a Phrygian Christian who was a believer in the immediate and continuous inspiration of all Christians, a Puritan in morals, who disparaged Struggle with Heathenism. 255 wedlock and exalted celibacy, emphasized the im- portance of fasting, and took the severest views of Christians who, in violation of their baptis- mal vows, fell into sin. Tertullian continued to write with vigor and boldness in defence of the Christian faith and to denounce persecution ; but in 207 he broke entirely with the Catholic Church- and became the head of the Montanist party in Africa, as Tatian had become the head of the Encratites in Syria. This party of Mon- tanists, known as " Tertullianists," continued in ex- istence down to the fifth century. Tertullian was led to adopt Montanist principles by the laxity of the clergy in Carthage, but also by the tendency of his temperament to a stricter life. In 207 he wrote an elaborate polemic against Marcion, the Gnostic. His writings as a Montanist are full of attacks upon the laxity of Catholics. The date of his death is unknown. Jerome says that he lived to "■ a de- crepit age ; " he died probably in 240. Tertullian was the first of the Latin Fathers, and the greatest, previous to Augustine. He was the creator of Latin Christian literature, fashioning out of the rude Punic Latin a powerful, if not always elegant, vehicle for his thought. His writings show his wide and varied knowledge and interests. They are a treasury of facts illustrative both of the heathen life of his time and of the doctrines and worship of the Church. Of his Montanist writings, Bishop Kaye says, that they " are among the most 256 From yerusalem to Niece a. valuable, simply because, in his unsparing attacks on what he held to be faulty in the practices and discipline of the Church, he unconsciously pre- serves for our information what these were." His literary activity extended from 197, or a little earlier, to 223. His writings are of greater extent than the extant writings of any other ante- Nicene writer, with the exception of Origen, fill- ing four large octavo volumes. They have been divided into (ri) Apologetic, (F) Dogmatic and Polemical, and (V) Moral and Ascetic. In tem- perament he was impetuous, vehement, eloquent, and fearless. Says Moeller, " His was a fiery na- ture, rich in fantasy, witty and passionate and inclined to paradox, at the same time endowed with a certain amount of Oriental (Punic) warmth and sensuousness, but also with a good share of Roman sense of what is solid and effective." He bears a certain resemblance to Tatian. Both of these men recoiled violently from the immoralities and obscenities of pagan religions, both tended strongly toward ascetism, both had the courage of their convictions, and both were entirely con- secrated to their faith. Tertullian's apologies, like Tatian's, are polemic and aggressive, abounding in trenchant and often scornful invective. Tatian has been called "The Assyrian Tertullian." Alto- gether, Tertullian was a genuine, though some- what hot-headed, and sometimes wrong-headed, man, whose very faults add a certain attractiveness to his personality. Struggle with Heathenism. 257 His writings have been described as alike " rich in thought and destitute of form, passionate and hair-splitting, eloquent and pithy in expression, energetic and condensed to the point of obscurity." Says Harnack : — " His style has been characterized with justice as dark and resplendent like ebony. His eloquence was of the vehement order ; but it wins hearers and readers by the strength of its passion, the energy of its truth, the preg- nancy and elegance of its expression, just as much as it repels them by its heat without light, its sophistical argu- mentations, and its elaborate hair-splittings. Though he is wanting in moderation and luminous warmth, his tones are by no means always harsh ; and as an author he ever aspired with longing after humility and love and patience, though his whole life was lived in the atmosphere of con- flict. Tertullian, both as a man and as a writer had much in common with the apostle Paul." As a specimen of Tertullian's vehement spirit and style, I quote a part of chapter xxx. of his work entitled " De Spectaculis," written in denun- ciation of the popular exhibitions in the circus : "What a spectacle is that fast-approaching advent of our Lord, now owned by all, now highly exalted, now a triumphant One ! What that exultation of the angelic hosts ! what the glory of the rising saints ! what the king- dom of the just thereafter ! what the city New Jerusalem ! Yes, and there are other sights : that last day of judg- ment, with its everlasting issues ; that day unlooked for 17 258 From Jerusalem, to Niece a. by the nations, the theme of their derision, when the world, hoary with age, and all its many products shall be consumed in one great flame ! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye ! What there excites my admi- ration? what my derision? Which sight gives me joy? which rouses me to exultation? — as I see so many illus- trious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens, was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exaltation ; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ ! What world's wise men besides, the very philosophers, in fact, who taught their followers that God had no concern in aught that is sublu- nary, and were wont to assure them that either they had no souls, or that they would never return to the bodies which at death they had left, now covered with shame before the poor deluded ones, as one fire consumes them ! Poets also, trembling not before the judgment-seat of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but of the unexpected Christ ! I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity ; of view- ing the play-actors, much more ' dissolute ' in the dissolv- ing flame ; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire ; of witnessing wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows ; unless even then I shall not care to attend to such ministers of sin, in my eager wish rather to fix a gaze insatiable on those whose fury vented itself against the Lord. ' This,' I shall say, 'this is that carpenter's or harlot's son, that Sabbath- breaker, that Samaritan and devil-possessed ! This is Struggle with Heathenism. 259 He whom you purchased from Judas ! This is He whom you struck with reed and fist, whom you contemptuously spat upon, to whom you gave gall and vinegar to drink ! This is He whom His disciples secretly stole away, that it might be said He had risen again, or the gardener abstracted, that his lettuces might come to no harm from the crowds of visitants ! ' What quaestor or priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favor of seeing and exulting in such things as these ? and yet even now we in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination." It is interesting to know that he who wrote these appalling sentences could also write the following description of patience : — " Her face is tranquil and serene, her forehead pure, and unfurrowed by one line of sadness or anger ; her eyebrows are slightly raised in token of joy : she droops her eyes, not in sorrow but in humility ; a dignified silence seals her lips, the hue of her countenance is that of inno- cence and security. She defies the devil, and he trembles at her smile. White is the robe which falls across her breast and enwraps her form ; it neither heaves nor throbs tumultously. She is seated on the throne of a mind full of quietness and peace, which is ruffled by no storm, shad- owed by no cloud, which is like the calm and open heaven of blue, which Elias saw in his third vision." And could utter these words on penitence : — "Penitence is our life, for it is the great antidote of death. O sinner, such a one as I am, or rather less guilty than I, who am myself the chief of sinners, embrace 260 From Jerusalem to Niccea. repentance, cling to it as the shipwrecked man clings to the plank which saves him. It will raise thee above those floods of sin which engulf thee, and will bring thee into the port of Divine mercy." Tertullian wrote his apologies in a time of fierce and violent persecutions, in which all the old charges were revived against the Christians. These persecutions were often caused by popular hate or fanaticism, but in Africa they seem as the rule, to have been directed, or at least abetted, by the Roman officials. " From the 'Ad Martyres' to the ' Ad Scapulam,' from the first to the last of those impassioned and pathetic utterances which appeal, not for mercy but for justice, not for for- giveness for latent vice, but for praise for open virtue, not for pardon for mistaken treason, but for recognition of the truest patriotism, not for the condonation of ' atheism ' but for salutation of a God-given faith, — the tale is told of dire suffering divinely borne, of martyrs and confessors who had taken up the Cross and were faithful unto death." In 197-198 Tertullian wrote five apologetic works: "To the Martyrs," "Apology," "On the Testimony of the Soul," " To the Nations," and "Against the Jews." Of these I can notice briefly only three. " To the Martyrs," probably his earliest Christian writing, was addressed to Christians in prison in the year 197. It begins with an allusion to the care taken by the Church for their material needs: — Struggle with Heathenism. 261 " Blessed Martyrs Designate, — Along with the pro- vision which our lady mother the Church from her bounti- ful breasts, and each brother out of his private means, makes for your bodily wants in the prison, accept also from me some contribution to your spiritual sustenance. For it is not good that the flesh be feasted and the spirit starve." He exhorts them to steadfastness in concord, amidst the temptations which come to them in their very trial : — " Give not [the wicked one] the success in his own kingdom \_i. e., the prison] of setting you at variance with each other, but let him find you armed and fortified with concord ; for peace among you is battle with him." The world is more a prison than the confinement into which they have gone. "If we reflect," he says, "that the world is more really the prison, we shall see that you have gone out of a prison rather than into one. The world has the greater darkness, blinding men's hearts. The world imposes the more grievous fetters, binding men's very souls." He shows that the spirit may gain more in a prison than the flesh loses. "You have no oc- casion," he reminds them, " to look on strange gods, you do not run against their images ; you have no part in heathen holidays, even by mere bodily mingling in them ; you are not annoyed by the foul fumes of idolatrous solemnities ; you are not pained by the noise of the public shows, nor 262 From Jerusalem to Niccza. by the atrocity or madness or immodesty of their celebrants." " Let us drop the name of prison," he continues; " let us call it a place of retirement. Though the body is shut in, though the flesh is confined, all things are open to the spirit. In spirit, then, roam abroad ; in spirit walk about, not setting before you shady paths or colonnades, but the way which leads to God. As often as in spirit your footsteps are there, so often you will not be in bonds. The leg does not feel the chain when the mind is in the heavens." He recalls to their minds the discipline by which soldiers inure themselves for the toils and perils of the campaign, and ex- claims : " In like manner, O blessed, count what- ever is hard in this lot of yours as a discipline of your powers of mind and body." So also, he re- minds them, athletes are severely trained. Then he encourages the Christian prisoners to endurance by examples of pagan self-sacrifice and fortitude, telling them that if they fear to suffer they will be con- founded by those who out of vanity have sought pain and death. The " Apology " was written a little later, prob- ably in the latter part of 198. Fresh and violent persecution had broken out against the Christians. The " Apology," " the greatest of Tertullian's works," was a passionate and powerfully reasoned demand for bare justice. It begins by boldly de- nouncing the Gentile hatred of the Christians as outrageously unjust. Tertullian is in no depre- catory mood. Struggle with Heathenism. 263 " We enter not upon defence in the popular way,'* he exclaims, " by begging your favor, and moving your com- passion, because we know the state of our religion too well to wonder at our usage. The truth we profess, we know to be a stranger upon earth, and she expects not friends in a strange land ; but she came from heaven, and her abode is there, and there are all our hopes, all our friends, and all our preferments. . . . What can the laws suffer in their authority by admitting [this heavenly stranger] to a full hearing? Will not their power rise in glory for the justice of the hearing? But if you condemn her unheard, besides the odium of flaming injustice, you will deservedly incur the suspicion of being conscious of something that makes you so unwilling to hear, — what, when heard, you cannot condemn." 1 That the persecutors are ignorant of Christianity is no excuse, but rather an aggravation of their injustice. Tertullian arraigns the judges both for malice and perverseness. He argues that human laws may err, and therefore may be amended, and cites well-known cases of revision. The laws against Christians being manifestly unjust, if these laws are found not to be according to the standard of justice, they are deservedly condemned ; and, " if they punish for a mere name, they are not only to be exploded for their iniquity, but to be hissed off the world for their folly." 1 The translation of " The Apology " used here is that of Rev. William Reeve, M. A , who was rector of Cranford, Middlesex, England, 1694-1726. The English of this translation is slightly archaic, but it is racy, and, in the main, true to the sense of the original. 264 From Jerusalem to Niccea. The emperors who have persecuted the Chris- tians, he claims, were the worst men ; like Nero, who " could hate nothing exceedingly but what was exceedingly good," and like Domitian, " a limb of this bloody Nero ; " while the best emperors, like Marcus Aurelius, have protected the Christians. This passage would indicate Tertullian's belief that the persecutions which took place in Gaul and in other parts of the empire, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, were not executed by the com- mand, or with the consent, of the emperor, but were the result solely of popular enmity. The facts, however, indicate that this belief was not well- founded. Against those who urged on persecution of the Christians because Christianity was a novelty, and who were " such mighty sticklers for the observation of old laws," he contends that they had themselves introduced many novelties. He cites certain sumptuary laws, for example, those — M which allowed not above a noble (100 asses, a little more than 100 cents of our money, but, allowing for the differ- ence in value between that time and the present, perhaps about $10) for an entertainment, and but one hen, and that not a crammed one, for a supper ; . . . which ex- cluded a senator from the senate-house, as a man of ambitious designs, for having but ten pound weight of silver plate in his family ; which levelled the rising theatres to the ground immediately, as seminaries only of lewdness and immorality." These laws they had themselves egregiously vio- Struggle with Heathenism. 265 lated. Some expended 100 sestertia (about $4,000, or, allowing for the difference in value, about $40,000) for a single meal ; others had " mines of silver melted into dishes " for the tables of freed- men. Theatres abound. The women are given up to luxury and wantonness. In all this the perse- cutors are themselves guilty, both of violating the laws, and of abandoning their ancestral religion. How absurd, therefore, is their charge against the Christians of introducing novelties. Tertullian shows that the common rumor against the Christians is absolutely lacking the support of any evidence. The crimes charged against them are not only im- probable, but even impossible ; on the contrary, he proves " that the heathens are guilty both in the dark, and in the face of the sun, of acting the same abominations they charge upon Christians, and their own guiltiness, perhaps, is the very thing which disposes them to believe the like of others ; " and that the heathen are notoriously guilty of offering evil sacrifices, of destroying infants, and of committing unnatural crimes. He reminds them that one way they had of discovering Christians was, requiring them to eat blood-pudding, which they would invariably refuse, because by their very principles it was forbidden them to taste blood. " If now, therefore," he exclaims, " you would turn your eyes inward, and see the guilt in yourselves, you would see innocence in us, for contraries are best seen together." 266 From Jerusalem to Niece a. He maintains that the gods of the Gentiles are no gods, for they are but men, and he ridicules the worship of images. He charges the heathen with irreverence to their own gods, and with mocking them by offering the vilest parts of the sacrifices and by representing them on the stage, in comedies and tragedies, by lewd and infamous persons. In strong contrast he sets forth the Christian idea of God, and the involuntary tribute to Him which is often rendered by the heathen themselves, in their very exclamations : — " 'The great God," the good God,' 'the God which is the giver of all good things/ are forms of speech in every one's mouth upon special occasions. This God is appealed to as the Judge of the world, by saying, ' God sees everything,' and ' I recommend myself to God,' and ' God will recom- pense me.' Oh ! what are all these sayings but the writ- ings of God upon the heart, but the testimonies of the soul thus far by nature Christian? " Tertullian then relates the story of the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the Sep- tuagint, under Ptolemy Philadelphus, and launches into an argument on the antiquity of those Scriptures, proving their divine authority by the fulfilment of the prophecies. From this point he proceeds to explain how it is that Christians worship the God of the Jews, and yet are antagonized by the Jews, while they are charged with worshipping a man. Christ, whom they worship, is the Logos, Struggle with Heathenism. 267 who, issuing from the spiritual substance of God, is "both God and the Son of God, and those two are one." He gives a brief account of the birth and miracles and death and resurrection of Christ, and vindicates His true divinity. " We say we are Christians, and say it to the whole world, under the hands of the executioner, and in the midst of all the tortures you exercise us with to unsay it. Torn and mangled and covered over in our own blood, we cry out as loud as we are able to cry that we are worshippers of God through Christ. Believe this Christ if you please, to be a man, but let me tell you He is the only man by whom and in whom God will be known and worshipped to advantage." Having thus given an account of the origin and nature of the Christian religion, he devotes consid- erable space to a discussion of the power and methods of demons, whom he pronounces a degen- erate race, springing " from a corrupted stock of angels." These are bent upon the ruin of man- kind, and, in fulfilment of their malign purpose, they cause diseases, disasters, blight, and contagion ; they blast the minds of men, stir up outrageous lusts, entice the soul to the worship of false gods, and take delight in the fumes of blood and the stench of burning flesh in the sacrifices. Their residence is in the air, and they have such swiftness that they are practically ubiquitous ; yet they are subject to the command of Christians. He boldly 268 From Jerusalem to Niece a. challenges a test : " Let a demoniac therefore be brought into court, and the spirit which possesses him be commanded by any Christian to declare what he is, he shall confess himself as truly to be a devil as he did falsely before profess himself a god." It is undeniable, therefore, he maintains, that the deities of the pagans are no deities. On the con- fession of evil spirits under the adjuration of Chris- tians, he denounces the Romans as themselves proved guilty of irreligion. The Roman grandeur, he declares, is not due to the Roman religion, for God alone is the dispenser of kingdoms. He charges upon the Romans that they venerate their emperors more than they do the gods, and shows that, so far from the gods protecting the emperors, it is the emperors who maintain the gods. The Christians, even while suffering persecution, are ever mindful to pray for the life and prosperity of the emperors, and their prayers are of more avail than any sacrifice. "Thus, then, while we are stretching forth our hands to our God, let your tormenting irons harrow our flesh ; let your gibbets exalt us, or your fires lick up our bodies, or your swords cut off our heads, or your beasts tread us to earth. For a Christian upon his knees to his God is in a posture of defence against all the evils you can crowd upon him. " Consider this, O you impartial judges, and go on with your justice, and while our soul is pouring out herself to God in the behalf of the emperor, do you be letting out her blood." Struggle with Heathenism, 269 Christians pray for the emperors, not that their prayers may be looked upon as " spices of flattery," but because they are commanded to love their enemies, and because, by maintaining thus the prosperity of the empire, they retard " the con- flagration of the universe which is now at hand, and is likely to flame out in the conclusion of this century." He defends the loyalty of Christians in refusing to call the emperor God, and commends Augustus, the founder of the empire, for rejecting the title Dominus, or Lord. " Nevertheless," he adds, " I should not scruple to call the emperor lord ; but then it must be when I am not compelled to do it in a sense peculiarly appropriated to God ; for I am Caesar's free-born subject, and we have but one Lord, the Almighty and Eternal God, who is his Lord as well as mine." He contrasts the sober conduct of the Chris- tians, on the occasion of the public festivals, with the " dissolute joy " of the heathen, and demands kinder treatment for "the Christian sect, . . . because it is a sect from whom nothing hostile ever comes, like the dreadful issue of other unlaw- ful factions." He then describes at length the organization, worship, charities, and pure life of the Christians. " We Christians," he says, " are a corporation or soci- ety of men most strictly united by the same religion, by the same rites of worship, and animated with one and the 270 From Jerusalem to Niccza. same hope. When we come to the public service of God, we come in as formidable a body, as if we were to storm heaven by force of prayer, and such a force is a most grate- ful violence to God. . . . We meet together likewise for the reading of Holy Scriptures, and we take such lessons out of them as we judge suit best with the condition of the times, to confirm our faith either by forewarning us what we are to expect, or by bringing to our minds the predictions already fulfilled. . . . However, besides the bare reading, we continually preach and press the duties of the gospel with all the power and argument of which we are capable ; for it is in these assemblies that we exhort, reprove, and pass the divine censure or sentence of excommunication. . . . The presidents or bishops among us are men of the most venerable age and piety, raised to this honor, not by the powers of money, but the brightness of their lives ; for nothing sacred is to be had for money. That kind of treasury we have is not filled with any dishonorable sum, as the price of a purchased religion ; every one puts a little to the public stock, com- monly once a month, or when he pleases, and only upon condition that he is both willing and able ; for there is no compulsion upon any. All here is a free-will offering, and all these collections are deposited in a common bank for charitable uses, not for the support of merry meetings, for drinking and gormandizing, but for feeding the poor and burying the dead, providing for girls and boys who have neither parents nor provisions left to support them, for relieving old people worn out in the service of the saints, or those who have suffered by shipwreck, or are condemned to the mines, or islands, or prisons, only for the faith of Christ ; these may be said to live upon their Struggle with Heathenism, 271 profession, for while they suffer for professing the name of Christ they are fed with the collections of His Church." He then takes up the charge that Christians are the cause of public calamities, and shows that it is malicious and baseless as well as absurd ; and points out the true cause in the impiety of their accusers. In answer to an indictment that they are a " good-for-nothing, useless sort of people," he proves the contrary, for among them are found no idlers or malefactors of any kind. The reason for their innocence is their law, which is more per- fect and has stronger sanctions than the civil law. " We who know we must account to a God who sees the secrets of all hearts, we who have a prospect of that eternal punishment He has in store for the transgressors of His laws, — we, I say, may well be looked upon, under so much revelation, to be the only men who always take innocence in their way." Having thus replied in detail to every charge against the Christians, Tertullian turns his attention to the philosophers, and demonstrates that they have less right to toleration than the Christians; for : f, as is said, " philosophers prescribe and pro- fess the same doctrine as Christians, namely, inno- cence, justice, patience, temperance, and chastity/' then Christians should be " equalled to those, in points of privilege and impunity, to whom [they] are compared in points of discipline." But many 272 From Jerusalem to Niece a. of the philosophers are guilty of impiety to the gods, and of disrespect to the emperors ; many of them affect truth only in appearance, and con- fessedly are guilty of various vices. Moreover, the poets and philosophers have stolen from the Sacred Scriptures whatever they could pervert to their own purposes: " All the arrows that are shot at truth are taken from her own quiver, for the heresies are to look with a gospel face in emula- tion of divine truth, and the spirits of error have a great stroke in the picture." In the next chapter he argues for the literal resurrection of the body : — " The graves then shall repay the bodies at the day of judgment, because it is not conceivable perhaps how a mere soul should be passible without a union with matter, I mean the flesh ; but especially because the divine jus- tice will have souls suffer in the bodies in which they have sinned. . . . The worshippers of God shall be clothed upon with a substance proper for everlasting duration, and fixed in a perpetual union with God ; but the profane and the hypocrite shall be doomed to a lake of ever- flowing fire, and fueled with incorruptibility from the divine indefectible nature of that flame which torments them." The apology closes with the characteristic claim of victory for the Christians ; their triumph is only assured and hastened by persecution : — " To set up truth is our victory, a«d the victor's glory is to please his God, and the precious spoil of that victory Struggle with Heathenism. 273 is eternal life ; and this life we certainly win by dying for it; therefore we conquer when we are killed, and being killed are out of reach of you and all other vexations for- ever. . . . And now, O worshipful judges, go on with your show of justice, and, believe me, you will be juster and juster still in the opinion of the people, the oftener you make them a sacrifice of Christians. Crucify, torture, condemn, grind us all to powder if you can ; your injus- tice is an illustrious proof of our innocence, and for the proof of this it is that God permits us to suffer. . . . But do your worst, and rack your inventions for tortures for Christians — it is all to no purpose ; you do but attract the world, and make it fall the more in love with our religion ; the more you mow us down, the thicker we rise ; the Christian blood you spill is like the seed you sow, it springs from the earth again, and fructifies the more." Tertullian's idea of martyrdom, which soon be- came, if it had not already become, the preva- lent idea in the African church, is apparent from these words : " Who ever looked well into our religion but came over to it? And who ever came over, but was ready to sufTer for it, to purchase the favor of God, and obtain the pardon of all his sins, though at the price of his blood? for martyrdom is sure of mercy." In his book, " Concerning the Testimony of the Soul," Tertullian thus interrogates the soul: "Stand forth, O soul, . . . and give thy witness; " and he finds it, not Christian indeed, since " man becomes a Christian, he is not born one," but, in 18 274 From Jerusalem to Niccea. its natural and unsophisticated state, an involun- tary witness to the fundamental truths of the Christian religion : the being of God, — " to whom the name of God alone belongs, from whom all things come, and who is Lord of the whole uni- verse ; " the existence and wickedness of the demons; and the judgment after death. But, in this involuntary testimony, the soul corroborates the Sacred Scriptures; it is therefore self-con- demned. He concludes: — " Most justly, then, every soul is a culprit as well as a witness : in the measure that it testifies for truth, the guilt of error lies on it ; and on the day of judgment it will stand before the courts of God, without a word to say. Thou proclaimedest God, O soul, but thou didst not seek to know Him ; evil spirits were detested by thee, and yet they were the objects of thy adoration ; the pun- ishments of hell were foreseen by thee, but no care was taken to avoid them ; thou hadst a savor of Christianity, and withal wert the persecutor of Christians." This sketch of the Church's answer to the intel- lectual attack of heathenism is too brief to be ade- quate or even just; but perhaps it is sufficient to show the nature of that answer ; its full scope can be seen only in the great work of Origen against Celsus. During the past century, Christian apologetics has developed into a science which makes the apologetic work of the first three hundred years, Struggle with Heathenism. 275 with the exception of that of Clement and Origen, seem slight in comparison ; yet the early work was characterized by dignity, purity of moral tone, and often by much acuteness and strength of argument. But then, as now, the great defence of Chris- tianity was the character and life which the spirit and teaching of Christ naturally and inevitably produce; and these constitute also its chief appeal to the reason and conscience of men. Against this defence no argument can prevail ; to this appeal the sincere heart must sooner or later yield a welcome. THE STRUGGLE WITHIN THE CHURCH: HERESIES. ' THE struggle of the Church with both the mate- rial and the intellectual forces of heathenism was accompanied by a struggle within itself against ideas which, finding lodgment in its bosom, threat- ened not only the integrity, but the very existence, of its faith. This was the struggle with heresies. In the strictly historical sense it is improper to speak of heresies before the formal utterances of the great Councils, at least before the Council of Nicsea. In the early Church within the sphere of interpretation of Scripture and inference from its teachings, there was great freedom, and there were many variations in belief. There was no au- thoritative standard of orthodoxy, save that which was afforded by the New Testament. Heresy, therefore, as applied to beliefs in that early time, has a different signification from that which it ac- quired later. The term designates tendencies and types of thought that were destructive or perver- sive of the fundamental Christian facts and truths. The Fathers used the word "heresy" to designate ideas, whether Jewish or pagan, that " impinged upon and imperilled the true faith in Jesus Christ." Struggle within the Church. 277 Half-unconsciously, but with an unconquerable instinct for the simple realities of the gospel, the Church began its fight, both with the survivals of late Judaism, and with the speculative tendencies of heathenism that subtly intruded themselves into the Church by allying themselves with Christianity, adopting its phrases, and claiming its authority. This subtle intrusion was especially characteris- tic of that multifarious form of thought termed Gnosticism. The Church rested on a basis of facts; Gnosticism, on pure speculation. An early outcome of the struggle was, substantially, the " Apostles' Creed." This ancient symbol, which, in its present form, belongs to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, is really earlier than the Nicene Creed ; for all the articles of the former were in existence long before the conflict between Arius and Athanasius resulted in the formation of the Nicene symbol. The Apostles' Creed had its origin, probably, in the primitive baptismal con- fession. As a whole, it is eminent as being pecul- iarly a confession of facts rather than of principles. This old factual creed is a witness of the historical basis of Christianity, as opposed to a mythological or speculative basis. In it the Church affirmed, with clear simplicity, its faith in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Christ, the Son of Mary and Son of God, who truly was horn, lived, taught, suffered, died and was buried, and rose aeain. 278 From yerusalem to Niccea. Simple as was this faith, and strongly as it was attested by a continuous line of witnesses from the apostles down, it was maintained by the Church only as the result of a prolonged and determined conflict. The time was astir with speculation. Even as early as the days of St. Paul Gnosticism was " in the air," — an evidence of which we may find, perhaps, in the apostle's half-scornful expression, " Knowledge (yvcocris) puffs up; love builds up," — but it did not come into distinct shape until near the middle of the second century. Judaistic heresies were rife for a time, but like Jew- ish persecution of Christians compared with pagan persecution, they were of far less significance and power than the Gentile heresies. The latter all fall under the general name Gnosticism, — unless we except Manichaeism, which was a mixture of ideas from India and Persia, with a slight infusion of Christian ideas. Even Manichaeism, however, had certain decidedly Gnostic elements. In the East, Christian thinkers were profoundly influenced by Plato, and this influence was espe- cially strong in Alexandria, where Platonism received from Philo a Jewish cast. In the West, the church was characterized by a more practical spirit, and its great leaders turned their attention rather to the development of ecclesiastical organi- zation and adminstration, than to the elaboration of doctrines. Gnosticism had a much stronger hold in the East, therefore, than in the West. Struggle within the Church. 279 Gnosticism was essentially eclectic. From Hel- lenism it derived its intellectual spirit, as its very name indicates ; from Orientalism it derived its pantheistic conception of the world and also its dualism ; and from Christianity it derived the idea of redemption. Some forms of Gnosticism, like that of Marcion, were violently antagonistic to Judaism. Other forms, like that of Basilides, were sympathetic toward Judaism. All forms of Gnos- ticism were docetic ; they evaporated the facts of the gospel history into myths and symbols. All forms of Gnosticism were also dualistic, and they identified evil with matter. The great questions considered by the Gnostics concerned the origin of the world and of matter, the nature and destiny of man, and the nature of evil and how it is to be escaped. In the Gnostic thought there is an in- finite separation between the Supreme Being and the world, and a necessity, therefore, of positing mediating powers for creation as well as redemp- tion. The God of the Old Testament was con- ceived, not as the Supreme Being, but as a subor- dinate Deity, who created the heavens and the earth. The void between the Supreme Being, who is the Ineffable One of whom no attributes can be predicated, and the lowest forms of being, is filled by ^Eons, — personified attributes. "In all its forms Gnosticism may be said to represent the efforts made by the speculative spirit of the time to appropriate Christianity, and to make use 280 From Jerusalem to Niccea. of some of its most fertile principles for the solu- tion of the mysteries lying at the root of human speculation." It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, ac- curately and exhaustively to define Gnosticism, and very nearly as difficult sharply to distinguish the various Gnostic sects from each other. These may be divided into the Judaistic and the anti- Judaistic, with Neander; or the ascetic and licen- tious, with Clement of Alexandria ; or those which were hostile to both Judaism and heathenism, and those that saw something of the truth in both Judaism and heathenism, with Baur; or Alexan- drian (by which term is designated the sects that were predominantly influenced by the Platonic philosophy) and Syrian (by which term is des- ignated the sects that were predominantly influ- enced by Parsism) with Giesseler. Two of these classifications, those of Neander and Giesseler, are practically identical, for Judaistic Gnosticism had its chief seat in Alexandria, where the Jewish Neoplatonism of Philo was rife, and anti-Judaistic Gnosticism had its seat chiefly in Syria. Some of the sects were ascetic and rigorously suppressed the flesh, while others were openly licentious, indulging the flesh because the soul, being wholly foreign to the flesh, could not be affected by it The Gnostic idea of redemption is that of a re- lease or disentanglement of the soul from matter in which it is imprisoned. All the systems of Struggle within the Church. 281 Gnostic thought agree in attaching critical impor- tance to the coming of Christ, but the redemption which Christ achieves is solely by the impartation of knowledge and the disclosure of mysteries. Some held that Jesus was a mere man, who was the bearer of a revelation. Others held that He was not man at all, and His bodily manifestation, His sufferings, and His death, were but deceptive appearances. Still others held that He had a double personality: He was a real man inhabited temporarily by a messenger from the unseen world, who came in the form of a dove at His baptism, and departed at the time of His crucifixion. As the pagan heresies may all be loosely grouped under the term Gnosticism, so the Jew- ish heresies may all be grouped under the term Ebionism. Of the latter there were several vari- eties. The Ebionites proper, whose name is derived from " ebion," meaning " poor " (with reference to the voluntary poverty of the sect, or as a term of reproach applied to the Jewish Christians generally by non-Christian Jews), held to Christianity as only a slightly modified Juda- ism, of which it was the continuation and supple- ment. They exalted the Old Covenant at the expense of the New, found their ideal of life in a perfect legal righteousness, and looked for the res- toration of Jerusalem in the coming millennial reign of the Messiah. Jesus, they claimed, was the son of Joseph and Mary, and, previous to His baptism, 282 From Jerusalem to Niece a. merely a descendant of David. At his baptism He became Christ and Messiah, who, in the future, is to return and restore all things. They main- tained the necessity of observing the law by all who would be saved, refused hospitality to Gen- tiles, and claimed that Jesus was the Christ of God because he perfectly fulfilled the law. If any one else were perfectly to fulfil the law he also would be a Christ. They violently hated the apostle Paul, and, while not denying the authenticity of his epistles, rejected them as the work of " an apostate from the law." They used a recension of Matthew's gospel, which was a Chaldee version written in Hebrew letters, from which the account of the supernatural origin of Jesus was omitted. In these Ebionites we recognize prominent features of the Judaizing troublers of St. Paul in Asia Minor. The Essenian Ebionites were tinctured with Gnosticism. These rejected all the Old Tes- tament writings except the Pentateuch, from which they eliminated whatever was not in ac- cord with their principles. They held that God appointed two antagonistic powers, — Christ and the devil. The present world belongs to the devil, and the world to come belongs to Christ. Christ was created a Spirit by the Father, and had His first incarnation in Adam. At last He had come in Jesus. Jesus they held to be the successor of Moses and of no higher authority, but they admit- ted His miraculous origin. Struggle within the Church. 283 They also were ascetic, refusing to eat flesh. They observed the Lord's day as well as the Sabbath, discarded sacrifices and reverence for the temple, and, contrary to the ascetic principle, honored marriage ; but they detested St. Paul, rejected his epistles, and declined all fellowship with the uncir- cumcised. Once each year they observed the Lord's Supper, using unleavened bread and water. Unlike the Ebionites proper, they sought to make converts, and produced some literature. There were also Ebionitic sects, such as the Nazarenes, who were more moderate in their views than the preceding. They did not demand that the Gentile Christians should observe the Jewish ceremonies, and they recognized St. Paul as a teacher for the Gentiles. But Ebionism was tran- sient, and its influence on the whole, at least after apostolic times, was not great. It survived in a few adherents until about the middle of the fifth century. Gnosticism appears in such multifarious forms, and is so wanting in definiteness and coherence as a system of thought, that I can present it most intelligibly by sketching in succession the lives and teachings of its principal representatives, with- out attempting any distinct classification. All forms of Gnosticism agree in certain pretty well defined principles. These are: the infinite re- moteness of the Supreme Being; the absolute evil of matter; and redemption, or escape from en- tanglement with matter, by means of gnosis, or 284 From Jerusalem to Niccza. occult knowledge. These principles are differently embodied and differently emphasized by different Gnostic teachers. The method of all is character- ized by an extraordinary use of allegorism and symbolism. In discussing Gnostic theories we are dealing all the time, not at all with facts, nor even with ideas, so much as with fantasies. From these the Gnostic ideas must be extracted. Among the very first of the Gnostics known to Christian history is Simon Magus, of whom we have a glimpse in the Acts of the Apostles, but about whom there is such a cloud of legend and fable that it is difficult to extract therefrom any distinct personality or definite teaching. Simon Magus is commonly classed as a Gnostic, and, if he is properly identified with the Simon who fig- ures in the criticism of Gnosticism by Irenaeus and others, he undoubtedly did appropriate certain Gnostic ideas. It is apparent that he neither understood Christianity, nor to any extent came under its influence. The story of his conversion by St. Peter, reported in the Acts of the Apostles, shows us that his professed conversion was a sham. He was a native of Gitta, in Samaria, and was a magician rather than a philosopher. His scheme included the idea of male and female principles in the Supreme Being, and the doctrine of the trans- migration of souls. These ideas were already current, and he had the cleverness to adopt them and turn them to his own uses. .Irenaeus tells us Struggle within the Church. 285 that he represented himself as " the Being who is the Father over all." He carried about with him a certain Helena, a prostitute whom he had re- deemed from slavery at Tyre. This woman Simon declared to be " the first conception of his mind, the mother of all, by whom, in the beginning, he conceived in his mind [the thought] of forming angels and archangels." This " Enncea," as she is called, " leaping forth from him, and comprehend- ing the will of her Father, descended to the lower regions [of space], and generated angels and powers." These angels and powers were the crea- tors of this world. After " Enncea " had produced these, " she was detained by them through motives of jealousy, because they were unwilling to be looked upon as the progeny of any other being." Of himself, Simon affirmed, they had no knowl- edge whatever. "Enncea" suffered much from her captors, and was " shut up in a human body, and for ages passed in succession from one female body to another, as from vessel to vessel." She was, for example,- the famous Helen of Troy. At last she appeared as a common prostitute, and it was she whom Jesus meant by the lost sheep in His parable. To free her from bondage, and to set right the disorder of the world caused by the angels, and to save men by making himself known to them, Simon, though not a man, had appeared among men as a man. He it was " who appeared among the Jews as the Son, but descended in Samaria as 286 From Jerusalem, to Niccza. the Father, while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit." He was thought to have suffered in Judea, but this was an error. The prophets, he maintained, " uttered their predictions under the inspiration of those angels who formed the world." They were therefore no longer to be regarded. Men were to be " saved through his grace, and not on account of their own righteous actions." His followers were at liberty to live as they pleased. In the system of Simon, Hellena is the Gnostic Sophia. His followers led profligate lives and practised magical arts, using exorcism, incantations, love- potions and charms. " He was," says Tulloch, " plainly an impostor of the first magnitude, who must be credited with a marvellous and unblushing audacity rather than with any clear philosophic or spiritual aims." Simon was succeeded by a disciple named Men- ANDER, also a Samaritan, who like his master prac- tised magic. Menander did not claim to be the chief power, but did claim to be a Saviour. Dis- ciples, baptized in his own name, he said, would receive a resurrection and would neither die nor grow old, but abide in immortal youth. One of the earliest Gnostics was CERINTHUS, a traditional contemporary and opponent of St. John. He was of Egyptian origin, in religion a Struggle within the Church. 287 Jew, and was educated in the Judaeo-Philonic school of Alexandria. On leaving Egypt he visited Jerusalem, Caesarea, and Antioch ; thence he passed into Asia Minor and made his head- quarters in Galatia. A story survives of his meet- ing with St. John in the public baths in Ephesus. The apostle, hearing who was there, fled from the place as if for life, crying to those about him: " Let us flee, lest the bath fall in while Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is there." We cannot place much confidence in the tradi- tions on which this brief account of Cerinthus is based. He, rather than Simon Magus, seems to have been the earliest teacher of Jewish-Christian Gnosticism. He made no claim for himself of sacred and mystic power, but pretended to have received angelic revelations. Having been trained in the school of Philo, he did not hold to a malig- nant opposition between matter and spirit. Ac- cording to him the world was created, not by " the First God," but by inferior angelic Beings. The God of the Jews he identified with the Angel who delivered the Law. Cerinthus' view of Christ is Ebionitic : Christ was the Personality on whom the Holy Spirit descended to enable Him to perform miracles, but the Spirit flew heavenward when Christ came to His sufferings. Cerinthus believed that " the Lord shall have an earthly kingdom in which the elect are to enjoy pleasures, feasts, marriages, and 288 From Jerusalem to Niece a. sacrifices. The capital of this kingdom is Jeru- salem, and its duration one thousand years ; at the end of that period shall ensue the restoration of all things." This notion he undoubtedly derived from Jewish sources. He held that if a man died unbap- tized, another should be baptized in his place, in order that, at the resurrection, he might not suffer punishment. He also held that the words of Moses, and those of the prophets, were inspired by differ- ent angels, and he insisted on the practice of cir- cumcision and the observance of the Sabbath. There is a curious and somewhat early belief that Cerinthus was the author of the Apocalypse, which he ascribed to St. John in order to obtain credit and currency for his forgery. The followers of Cerinthus soon disappeared, some relapsing into stricter Ebionism, but the majority being absorbed into other Gnostic sects. SATURNINUS, who, according to Irenaeus, derived his doctrine from Simon Magus and Menander, taught in Syrian Antioch in the first half of the second century. He held that the Father, who is unknown to all, created Angels, Archangels, Powers and Authorities, but that the world and man were made by seven angels. These angels saw a brilliant image descend from the Supreme Power, and tried to detain it, but they could not; so they said, " Let us make man after the image and after the likeness." The man, when created, Struggle within the Church. 289 could not stand erect, but grovelled like a wrig- ling worm. Then the Upper Power in compas- sion sent a spark of life which raised the man and made him live. At his death this spark returns to its source, and the rest of the man is resolved back into its original elements. This creation- tnyth was substantially held also by the Ophites. Saturninus taught that the God of the Jews was one of the seven angels. These were in constant warfare with Satan and a company of evil angels. There were also two kinds of men, the good and the bad. The evil angels aided the bad men in their strife with the good. At last the Supreme Being sent a Saviour to destroy, inconsistently enough, the power of the God of the Jews and the creator-angels, and to save the good men. This Saviour was a man only in appearance. Here we have the characteristic Gnostic docetism, and its doctrines that evil has its source in the creation of matter and that redemption is by escape from mat- ter. Some of the Jewish prophecies Saturninus as- cribed to Satan, and some to the creator-angels. He also taught that marriage came from Satan. Many of his disciples followed him strictly in this teaching, and also abstained from animal food of all kinds, attracting admiring followers by their severity of life. Saturninus left no writings. To the same time belongs Cerdo, who came to Rome from Syria in 135, or a little later. He 290 From Jerusalem to Niccea. seems to have held to two first principles and two gods, one good and the other evil, the latter the creator of the world ; though another account ascribes to him the teaching that the God revealed in the law and the prophets was not the Father of Jesus Christ, for the former was only just, but the latter was good. The accounts are conflicting and, as Cerdo left no writings, it is impossible to determine his exact doctrines. He seems to have had no intention of forming a sect, but to have frequented the churches, promulgating his ideas both publicly and privately. His followers were soon after merged in the school of Marcion. CARPOCRATES was a Platonic philosopher, who taught in Alexandria, also in the early part of the second century, probably during the reign of Hadrian. He incorporated Christian elements into his system, and became the founder of an heretical sect. He taught that different angels and powers emanated from the One Unknown and Ineffable God, and the lowest of these created the world. Good souls escape from these, and rule them, by magical arts, and finally ascend to God who is above them. Jesus was only a man, but was superior to other men in that His soul, remaining steadfast and pure, remembered the revelations which it had seen before it issued from God, and therefore had power to escape the makers of the world. He despised Struggle within the Church. 291 the Jewish customs, and consequently was able to destroy the passions which are given to men as a punishment. Others might be equal or superior to Jesus if they also despised the rulers of the world. Carpocrates adopted from Plato his idea of reminiscence : human knowledge is but the recol- lection of what had been seen in a pre-existent state. His followers had pictures and images of Christ which they honored, but they paid the same honors to philosophers, such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. They illustrated their con- tempt for the rulers of the world by practising immorality without scruple and without restraint. They held that " things in themselves were indif- ferent; nothing was in its own nature good or evil, and was only made so by human opinion. The true Gnostic might practise everything, — nay, it was his duty to have experience of all." They also adopted a form of the doctrine of the trans- migration of souls : souls which had completed their experience passed up into fellowship with God ; those which had not were sent back to inhabit other bodies for further discipline ; finally all would be saved. Salvation, however, per- tained only to the soul ; there would be no resur- rection of the body. Carpocrates claimed to have the true teaching of Christ, which had been communicated to the disciples in secret and by them was passed on to 292 From Jerusalem to Niccea. the faithful. His followers became proverbial for their deliberate licentiousness ; and the Christians believed that the reports which were circulated among the heathen, of shameless orgies practised by the Christians in their love-feasts, had a basis of truth in the customs of the Carpocratians. It is said that the Carpocratians had a secret bodily- mark by which they knew each other. A part of their baptismal ceremony was branding the back of the right ear-lobe. This act represented the " baptism with fire." They also practised magic, claiming miraculous powers equal to those of Christ. A son of Carpocrates, who was associated with his father in propagating his doctrines, but who died early in life, is said to have been deified and worshipped by the inhabitants of his mother's native town in Cephalonia. A contemporary of Carpocrates was BASILIDES, the founder of a Christian-Gnostic sect in Egypt. He claimed to be a disciple of one Glaucias, an alleged interpreter of St. Peter. According to Irenseus he, like Saturninus, derived his doctrines from Simon Magus and Menander. This can scarcely be true, however, for what little system of thought Simon Magus had is radically different from that of Basilides. Basilides was probably a native of Syria. Little is known of his life, save that it was spent mainly in Alexandria, and that he wrote twenty-four books on the Gospel, — the Struggle within the Church. 293 " Exegetica." Origen says that he " had the au- dacity to write a ' Gospel according to Basilides.' " This may have been one of the numerous apoc- ryphal gospels, the production of which began in the second century and continued for several cen- turies. It is possible however, that it was simply a portion of the " Exegetica." Various fragments of the " Exegetica " have been collected by Grabe and others. The teachings of Basilides have been preserved to us in the writings of Irenaeus and Clement, and especially Hippolytus. The last is much more full than either of the others, and, with an occasional contribution from Clement, must be mainly relied on. The system of Basilides is bewildering in its vagueness and transcendentalism. It is distin- guished by the unusual course, for a Gnostic, of discarding the emanation theory, or downward evolution, and predicating instantaneous creation and evolution upwards. All things, according to Basilides, arise from pure nothing. By this pri- meval nothing, or " not-being God " (qvk cov 0eo?), of which absolutely nothing can be predicated, was produced a non-existent and non-differentiated " Seed-world," which contained the germs of all future growths. Both Creator and created, how- ever, were non-existent. " Whatsoever I affirm," says Basilides, " to have been made after these, ask no question as to whence. For [the Seed] had all seeds treasured and reposing in itself, as 294 From ^Jerusalem to Niccea. non-existent entities, which were designed to be produced by the non-existent Deity." In the Seed there existed a three-fold Sonship, " in every respect of the same substance with the non-exist- ent God [and] begotten from non-entities." Of this Sonship, part was refined, part gross, or coarse, and part needing purification. The re- fined part immediately burst forth from the Seed- world and went upwards with a velocity like that of thought, attaining unto the non-existent Deity. The gross portion, not being able to rise, equipped itself with the Holy Spirit as a wing; but the Spirit, not being of the same substance with the non-existent God, nor having " any nature in com- mon with the Sonship," could only come near " that Blessed Place which cannot be conceived or represented by any expression." There it re- mained, retaining of the Sonship only the fra- grance, as a vessel, emptied of the most fragrant ointment, retains the odor, though the ointment is gone. The third Sonship remained in the seed- world, " conferring benefits and receiving them." After the two ascensions of Sonship took place, the firmament was extended " between the super- mundane spaces and the world." This firmament seems to be identical with the Holy Spirit, which remains in suspension below the Ineffable, Non- Existent God. Meanwhile there burst forth from the " Cosmical Seed," or " conglomeration of all germs," as Hippolytus calls it, the Great Archon, — Struggle within the Church. 295 the " Head of the world, a certain beauty and magnitude and unspeakable power." This Archon soared aloft as far as the firmament, where He paused, supposing the firmament to be the end of all attainment and being. There he became more wise, powerful, comely, lustrous, and beautiful, than any entity except the Sonship which remained in the seed-world. Imagining Himself to be Lord, He addressed Himself to the work of creating " every object in the cosmical system." But first He made a Son, superior to Himself. All this, how- ever, had been willed by the Non-Existent Deity. The Great Archon, astonished at his Son's beauty, set him at his right hand in what is called the Ogdoad, where the Great Archon has his throne. The Great Archon, now called the Great, Wise Demiurge, then formed the entire celestial creation, — the Son, being wiser than he, operating in him and giving him suggestions. After this another Archon, greater than all subjacent entities save the third Sonship, but far inferior to the first Archon, arose out of the seed-world, or " conglom- eration of all germs." He, too, produced a Son wiser than Himself, and became the creator and governor of the aerial world. This region is called the Hebdomad. All this also had been willed by the Non-Existent Deity. Later on in the system, as it is expounded by Hippolytus, the Great Archon is identified with the Ogdoad, " and the Ogdoad is Arrhetus," and the second Archon is identified 296 From Jerusalem to Niccza. with the Hebdomad, and " the Hebdomad is Rhetus." Such is the strange cosmogony which Basilides dreamed out as the basis for his view of the gospel and his theory of salvation. The third Sonship, meanwhile, has remained behind in the " Seed," but his true place is " near the refined and imitative Sonship and the Non- Existent One, " and it is necessary that he should be " revealed and reinstated above." This would be in accordance with the Scripture, " The creation itself groaneth together, and travaileth in pain together, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God." " Now we who are spiritual," says Basilides, " are sons, who have been left here to arrange, and mould, and rectify, and complete the souls which, according to nature, are so constituted as to continue in this quarter of the universe." " Sin, then, reigned from Adam unto Moses." The Great Archon seemed to be King and Lord of the whole universe, but, in reality, the second Archon, the Hebdomad, " was King and Lord of this quarter of the universe." This latter being is the One who spoke to Moses, saying, " I am the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and I have not manifested unto them the name of God," — that is, the God Arrhetus, Archon of the Ogdoad. This One is also the source of inspiration to the prophets. In the condensed report of Basilides which we have in Hippolytus, we are now introduced to the Struggle within the Church. 297 gospel. There was no descent from above. The blessed Sonship did not withdraw from the Incon- ceivable and Blessed and Non-Existent God; but the powers, passing upward, caught " the flowing and rushing thoughts of the Sonship," as Indian naphtha catches flame at some distance from the fire. Thus the gospel came first from the Sonship, through the Son of the Archon, to the Archon Himself, who then learned that he " was not God of the universe, but was begotten." By the knowl- edge that above himself was the Ineffable and Unnameable and Non-Existent One, he was both converted and filled with terror, thus illustrating the Scripture, "The fear of the Lord is the begin- ning of wisdom." " Being orally instructed by Christ, who was seated near " (evidently by Christ here is meant the Great Archon's Son), he learns concerning the Non-Existent One, the Sonship, the Holy Spirit, " the apparatus of the universe," and the future " consummation of things." This is the wisdom to which St. Paul alludes in his saying, " Not in words of human wisdom, but in [those] taught of the Spirit." The instructed Archon con- fesses his sin of having magnified Himself. When every creature in the Ogdoad has been " orally instructed and taught, and [after] the mystery be- comes known to the celestial [powers]," the gospel is communicated also to the Hebdomad. " The Son of the Great Archon [therefore] kindled in the Son of the Archon of the Hebdomad the light 298 From Jerusalem to Niccza. which Himself possessed and had kindled from above from the Sonship. And the Son of the Archon of the Hebdomad had radiance imparted to Him, and He proclaimed the gospel to the Archon of the Hebdomad." He too is filled with terror and makes confession, and all the beings in the Hebdomad are enlightened. At this point in his account Hippolytus explains that, according to the Basilidians, there is an infinite number of beings, — Principalities, Powers, and Rulers, — inhabit- ing three hundred and sixty-five heavens, the Great Archon of which is Abrasax, whose name comprises the computed number 365, whence the year consists of so many days. It now became necessary that the " Formless- ness existent in our quarter of the creation" should be illuminated, and the " mystery " revealed to the Sonship which had remained behind in Formless- ness. " The light [therefore] which came down from the Ogdoad above to the Son of the Heb- domad, descended from the Hebdomad upon Jesus the Son of Mary." This is the meaning of the Scripture, " The Holy Spirit will come upon thee." The entire Sonship which was left behind, being transformed, " follows Jesus, and hastens upward, and comes forth purified." This whole passage is obscure in Hippolytus, perhaps because of his failure to grasp Basilides' meaning. It is altogether possible that Basilides himself was not quite clear. At any rate, when the entire Sonship shall have Struggle within the Church. 299 come above the Limitary Spirit, " then the creation shall find mercy, for till now it groans and is tormented and awaits the revelation of the sons of God, that all men of the Sonship may ascend from hence." After this God will bring upon the whole world a Vast Ignorance, that souls whose nature it is to continue immortal in this stage alone may not suffer by craving that which is impossible for them, " like fish desiring to feed with sheep on the mountains; " for such a desire would be their destruction. All things are incorruptible in their place, but a wish to pass beyond the things that are according to nature would be their destruction. In like manner a Vast Ignorance will lay hold on the Archon of the Hebdomad, and on the Great Archon of the Ogdoad, and all creatures subject to Him, that none may desire things impossible and so be overwhelmed with sorrow. " And so there will be the restitution of all things which, in con- formity with nature, have from the beginning a foundation in the seed of the universe, but will be restored at [their own] proper periods. And that each thing, says Basilides, has its own particular times, the Saviour is sufficient [witness] when He observes, ' Mine hour is not yet come.' And the Magi [afford similar testimony] when they gaze wistfully upon [the Saviour's] star." Jesus, in the Basilidean view, " is the inner spiritual man in the natural (psychical) man ; that is, a Sonship leaving its soul here, — not a mor- 300 From Jerusalem to Niccea. tal soul, but one remaining in its present place according to nature, just as the first Sonship up above hath left the Limitary Holy Spirit in a fitting place; He having at that time been clothed with a soul of His own." The gospel, in the doctrine of Basilides, is the knowledge of super-mundane entities which the Greal Archon did not understand. When it was shown to him that there are the Holy Spirit and the Sonship and the Non-Existent God, who is the cause of all these, he rejoiced and was filled with exultation. The birth of Jesus and all the events of His life occurred " in order that Jesus might be- come the first-fruits of a distinction of the different orders [of created objects] that had been confused together." For since the world had been divided into an Ogdoad and a Hebdomad and an order under these in which is Formlessness, " it was requisite that the various orders of created objects that had been confounded together should be dis- tinguished by a separating process performed by Jesus." Only the corporeal part of Jesus suffered and reverted to Formlessness ; his psychical part was resuscitated and returned to the Hebdomad; that element of his nature which belonged to the region of the Great Archon ascended to be with the Great Archon ; and that which pertained to the Spirit remained with the Spirit; and the third Sonship, purified through Him, ascended through all these stages of being to the blessed Sonship. Struggle within the Church. 301 The whole theory, according to Hippolytus, con- sists of a conglomeration and confusion of all things in the " Seed-world," and the sorting and restoration of these into their proper places. " Jesus, therefore, became the first-fruits of the dis- tinction of the various orders of created objects, and His passion took place for no other reason than the distinction which was thereby brought about in the various orders of created objects that had been confounded together." Obscure and difficult as this system is to our minds, we can see that it is an attempt, by means of a colossal symbolism, to arrive at a philosophic explanation of the origin of things, the origin of evil, and the way of salvation. Evil lies in the confusion of the spiritual and psychical with the material, and salvation is by enlightenment and the consequent elimination of the spiritual and psychical from the material. In his moral teaching Basilides inculcated a moderate ascetism. Bunsen maintains that he "was a pious Christian, and wor- shipped with his congregation," and he says, " He is the first Gnostic teacher who has left an indi- vidual personal stamp upon his age. . . . His erudition is unquestionable. He had studied Plato deeply. . . . All that was great in the Basilidean system was the originality of thought and moral earnestness of its founder." The followers of Basilides seem to have departed both from his ethical principles and his speculative 3I2, serpent), or Naassenes (Hebrew Nahasfr), is a name applied to various sects of Gnostics in whose systems the serpent figures largely, in some of them receiving special honor. Their use of the serpent arose partly from the influence of serpent-symbolism and serpent- worship, which had place in various ancient relig- Struggle within the Church. 313 ions, notably those of the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, and partly from the exigencies of their fundamental theory. 1 Irenaeus maintains that the Ophites originated in the heresy of Simon Magus. They believed that matter is inherently evil, therefore the creator of matter could not be the Supreme Good God. This idea was confirmed by the Old Testament account of the effort of God to keep the first pair of human beings from attain- ing the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent who promised knowledge to Adam and Eve was evidently their friend. Moreover, it was a serpent- rod by which Moses wrought his miracles ; it was a brazen serpent also that saved the perishing Israelites in the wilderness, and was the type of Christ. The serpent, too, held a prominent place among the constellations, and its form was seen in the convolutions of the brain and of the intestines. In most of the Ophite sects, however, the serpent fills only a subordinate place, and its use as a sym- bol was common to many Gnostic sects ; but the name "Ophite" was applied to them opprobriously by the Catholics and it clung. The story is told by Epiphanius, and repeated by Augustine, that some of the Gnostics allowed tame snakes to crawl about and "sanctify" their Eucharistic bread, thus, as it seemed to Catholic Christians, " binding 1 Salmon observes that " there is sufficient evidence that in the countries where Gnosticism most flourished, a heathen use of the serpent emblem had previously existed." 314 From Jerusalem to Niccea. themselves to the author of evil by a sacrament of abomination." The Ophites, as they are represented in the pages of Irenaeus, held a theory, not only strongly marked with sensuousness, but also containing large Zoroastrian elements. The history of the world is a struggle between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. In points, the Ophite Gnosticism resembles the system of Sat- urninus and also the system of Valentinus, though it is more pantheistic, less Christian, and less moral than the latter. The Sethites and Cairrites were sects of the Ophite Gnostics. The latter looked on the Maker of the world as actually an evil being whom it was virtuous to resist ; Cain, therefore, was their hero ; they honored also Esau, Korah, and Judas Iscar- iot, as the true spiritual men. They were charged by Christian writers with great immoralities. They constituted, however, only an insignificant sect. The chief representative of anti-Judaistic Gnos- ticism was MAROON. As the conservatism of St. Peter and St. James was caricatured in Ebionism, so the radicalism of St. Paul was caricatured in the Gnosticism of Marcion. Marcion, a wealthy ship- owner, was born in Sinope, in Pontus, early in the second century. It is stated that his father was a Christian bishop, but this does not seem to be well-founded, and, probably, he was converted Struggle within the Church. 315 to Christianity from paganism. He became an ardent Christian, and, notwithstanding his Gnosti- cism, continued so until his death. About 139 or 140, he came to Rome where he made a liberal contribution of money to the local church. Soon after his arrival he fell in with the Syrian Gnostic, Cerdo, of whom already I have given a brief sketch. Marcion probably had begun to develop his system of thought before this time, but to some extent it was influenced by Cerdo. He earnestly and ably propagated his views, and gained many disciples. His doctrines had a large number of adherents in Rome, and, during his life or afterwards, spread into Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, Cyprus, and even Persia. Their vigor and attractiveness are evidenced by the fact that among those who wrote against them were such men as Justin Martyr, Irenseus, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and even Bardaisan. Marcion rejected all of the New Testament writings except ten epistles of St. Paul, excluding the pastoral epistles, and the Gospel of St. Luke, eliminating from the last whatever was incompatible with his system. Harnack is un- doubtedly right in saying that Marcion's distinc- tive teachings " originated in a comparison of the Old Testament with the theology of the apostle Paul." An interesting statement of Harnack's is " that in the second century only one Christian — Marcion — took the trouble to understand Paul; but it must be added that he misunderstood him." 316 From Jerusalem to Niccea. Perplexed with the problem of evil, Marcion adopted the Gnostic view that evil is inseparable from matter; hence he held that the God of the Old Testament, who was the creator of the world, could not be the Supreme Being. He discarded entirely the vast succession of ^Eons which filled so large a place in the systems of Valentinus and other Gnostics, for his aim was practical religion, rather than subtle speculation. In the Gospel he found a God of goodness and love ; in the Old Testament he found a God who was just, stern, jealous, wrathful, and variable. These were en- tirely incompatible, and he was too conscientious and too earnest to be satisfied with the ordinary solutions of the difficulty. His scheme, which is markedly dualistic, may be epitomized as follows : The great God who exists in the highest heaven is perfectly good, but is unknown ; Jehovah, the Just God, or the Demiurge, exists in the lower heaven ; beneath all is matter. Jehovah created man and imposed on him a strict law which he could not keep ; man therefore fell under his curse, and at death was cast into hell. This was the miserable condition of the human race until, at last, the Supreme Good God had compassion on their hard lot and sent them His Son. This Son appeared in the fifteenth year of Tiberius in the likeness of a man thirty years old. (Marcion dis- carded entirely the story of Christ's miraculous birth.) After He had preached and wrought many miracles of healing, Jehovah being jealous, Struggle within the Church. 317 notwithstanding the Son had perfectly kept His law, caused him to be crucified. Jesus then descended to hell and preached the gospel there, and liberated, not the Old Testament saints, but only sinners and malefactors who obeyed His sum- mons ; the former He left to the tender mercies of the God of Law. He then confronted and con- founded Jehovah, condemning Him by His own law. " I have a controversy with thee," He said, " but I will take no other judge between us than thine own law. Is it not written in thy law that whoso killeth another shall himself be killed; that whoso sheddeth innocent blood shall have his own blood shed? Let me, then, kill thee and shed thy blood, for I was innocent and thou hast shed my blood." Jehovah, seeing himself con- demned by His own law, could make no defence, but confessed his ignorance, saying : " I thought thee but a man, and did not know thee to be a God ; take the revenge which is thy due." It should be said here that Jehovah also had a Messiah, one whom under His inspiration, the prophets predicted. " This inferior Saviour will indeed come, but only for the chosen people of the Demiurge ; to them He will bring a salvation worthy of them, — one, namely, that is purely material and earthly." Jesus then raised up Paul and revealed to him the true way of life and salva- tion. At length Marcion himself was raised up to reannounce the true gospel. 3 18 From Jerusalem to Niccea. Marcion in his writings drew up a long list of contrasts between the Old and New Testaments. Some of these I quote from Pressense : " While the Messiah of the Demiurge is a national and local Messiah, Jesus belongs to all mankind. The former promises only earthly good; the latter speaks altogether of heaven. The Demiurge commands the children of Israel to carry away the treasures of Egypt ; Jesus directs His disci- ples not to take so much as a staff in their hand. The Jewish God sent a bear to devour the chil- dren who had mocked Elisha, and calls down fire from heaven upon his enemies ; the gospel teaches only kindness and forgiveness. Lastly, the mer- ciful Saviour chose as His disciples the outcasts from Judaism." These contrasts Marcion himself thus eloquently summarizes : " While Moses lifts up his hands to heaven, invoking the slaughter of the enemies of Israel, Jesus stretches out His hands upon the cross for the salvation of all mankind." The way of salvation, according to Marcion, is a way of antipathy to the religion of the Old Tes- tament, and a way of ascetical self-discipline in order to attain purification from all matter. " We are devoted," he said, "to hatred and to grief." He condemned marriage, imposed upon his disci- ples inviolable chastity, and urged them to invite rather than to shun martyrdom. We read of numerous Marcionite martyrs both before and after Struggle within the Church. 319 the triumph of Christianity under Constantine. The Marcionites believed in a God of love, and a life -of faith and holiness. In their scheme, those who did not believe the gospel were left under the power of the Demiurge ; in this they were more charitable than their Catholic opponents. They were ready to die for their faith, but had little care for contention. It is said that in his old age, Apelles, a disciple of Marcion, declined a con- troversy with Rhodon on their points of difference, expressing his belief that faith in the Crucified, accompanied with a holy life, might suffice for the salvation of either, — a judgment in which we may well concur. Notwithstanding their failure to understand and appreciate the significance of Judaism as a preparation for Christianity, the Marcionites were fundamentally Christian, and their life nobly attested their sincerity and the elevation of their aims. Though they were her- etics, they were incomparably superior to the great majority of the Gnostics. The intensity of their hatred to the God of the Old Testament is grotesquely illustrated as late as the fifth century in the savage old man whom Theodoret met, " who washed his face with his own saliva, that he might not borrow even a drop of water from the accursed wcrld of the Demiurge." Manichceism is a system of doctrine originated in Persia by MANES, or MANICH,EUS, in the third 320 From Jerusalem to Niece a. century. Of Manes' life there are two contradic- tory accounts, an Eastern and a Western ; the lat- ter is derived from the Acta Archelai, a Greek forgery dating from about 335 A. D., and the for- mer, from Syrian, Persian, and Arabian chroniclers. Upon the Eastern account we must mainly depend for our knowledge of Manes' life. He was born about 240 A. d. of a Magian family and was well educated in Greek, music, mathematics, geog- raphy, astronomy, painting, and medicine, and also, it is said, in the Scriptures. There are tra- ditions that though of Persian parentage, he was born in Babylon ; that when he was twelve years old an angel announced to him that when he was older he should abandon his father's sect of the Moghtasilah, or " Baptists " (a sect apparently connected with the Elkesaites which had sprung up in southern Babylonia, and which probably contained Christian elements) ; that when he was twenty-four the same angel summoned him to establish Manichaeism with the words : " Hail, Manes, from me and from the Lord which has sent me to thee and chosen thee for his work. Now He commands thee to proclaim the glad tidings of the truth which comes from Him, and to bestow thereon thy whole zeal." We are struck with the similarity between this call and the call which was addressed to St. Paul recorded in Acts xxvi. Manes was evidently endowed with considerable Struggle within the Church. 321 speculative genius and a brilliant imagination. Whether he ever connected himself with the Church is open to doubt, though there is a tradi- tion that he early showed great zeal for the faith and was ordained a presbyter while quite young. He claimed to be the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, promised by Christ to his apostles, and his doctrines combined Christian with Persian elements. About 267 he went to the court of Sapor and at first won the king's favor; but there was at that time a revival of Zoroastrian- ism, and, when Manes disclosed his full scheme, it was seen to involve the overthrow of the national religion, and the king resolved to put him to death. Manes fled to Turkestan, or even perhaps as far as India, "drawn," says Pressense, "towards that land of boundless asceticism and sublime panthe- ism." In his exile he employed his talents in decorating temples with paintings. Then he retired to a cave, or grotto, in which he claimed to have had extraordinary visions. While there he wrote a Gospel, embellishing it with beautiful pictures. With this book he returned to Persia and presented himself at the court of the new king, Hormuz, who embraced his doctrines and gave him protection. Two years later, 273 A. D., Hormuz died and Varanes I. (Bahram I.) suc- ceeded to the throne. The latter was at first favorable to the sect; but it spread so rapidly as to alarm the national priesthood, and through 322 From Jerusalem to Niccza. their influence the king called Manes to a disputa- tion with the priests. Manes was condemned as a heretic and flayed alive. According to another account his body was cut in two, and a part was suspended over each gate of the city. A vigorous persecution was begun against his followers and many of these were put to death, while others were scattered over Media, China, Turkestan, and other lands. Varanes is reported to have put to death two hundred Manichaeans by burying them head downwards, with their feet projecting above the ground. He then boasted that he had a gar- den planted with men instead of trees. Manes wrote much, and some of his writings were in existence as late as the eleventh century, but nothing survives now save some fragments. The system of Manes, known as Manichseism, was essentially dualistic and contained elements de- rived from both Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. It posited two original antagonistic principles : Ahura-Mazda, the good God of Light, and Angro- Mainyus, the evil Prince of Darkness. The Powers of darkness in their wild fury leaped so high that they caught a glimpse of the radiance from the realm of light. When they strove to force their way into this realm, the good God, as a defence, produced an ^Eon, the Mother of life, and she produced the primeval spiritual Man, whom she equipped, for his struggle, with the five elements, wind, light, water, fire, and matter. These, how- Struggle within the Church, 323 ever, are ideal elements which are copied by the Prince of Darkness in the actual elements of this lower world. In the conflict the spiritual Man is so far overcome by the spirits of darkness that the Light-King must intervene to rescue and restore him to the Light-Kingdom. Meanwhile, however, some part of his luminous essence, or soul, is caught by the Powers of darkness and imprisoned in material bodies. The rescue of this luminous essence is the process of redemption. There is, at this point, a similarity between the system of Manes and the system of Valentinus, — the spiritual man who is partly despoiled of his soul suggesting Sophia, and the part of the lumi- nous essence caught and imprisoned in matter sug- gesting Achamoth. That which seemed to be a catastrophe turns out to be a device for the destruction of the Powers of darkness. This Manes shows by a parable: A shepherd sees a wild beast about to rush into the midst of his flock. He digs a pit and casts into it a kid; the beast springs into the pit to devour his prey, but cannot extricate him- self. The shepherd delivers the kid and leaves the lion to perish. The imprisoned soul is diffused throughout nature, save a part, which is placed in the sun and moon, whence it draws towards itself the souls shut up in forms of vegetable and animal life. To prevent this process, the Powers of dark- 324 From Jerusalem to Niece a. ness create a man, after the likeness of the first Man, in whom all the spiritual essence in the world is concentrated. This man combines in himself elements of both worlds, his body belonging to the kingdom of darkness and his soul to the kingdom of light. The Prince of Darkness now seeks to fix him in the lower world, and so he invites him to partake of all the trees in the Garden of Paradise save the tree of knowledge. This plot is defeated by Christ, who appears in the form of a serpent. At this point Manichaeism resembles the theory of the Ophites. Adam's true fall is due to Eve, who is given to him by the Prince of Darkness as a com- panion. " She is seductive sensuousness, though also having in her a small spark of light." Manichseans violently opposed the Old Testa- ment, in this resembling the Marcionites. They held that salvation consists in resisting the material, and strengthening the spiritual, elements in man. Death is the liberation of the soul " which is carried away by the moon, as by a heavenly vessel, up to the regions of eternal and unclouded light. The waxing of the moon corresponds with the moment when it opens to receive emancipated souls ; its waning marks the time when it has deposited its sacred burden safe in the heavenly haven." The part which Christ plays in the Manichaean scheme of redemption is small; He simply imparts knowl- edge of the true way of life. He appeared as a man, but His birth and sufferings and death were Struggle within the Church. 325 mere semblances. The process of salvation will be complete when the world has lost all that it con- tains of the luminous essence, and then the primeval spiritual Man will appear again, and matter will be destroyed by fire. Manichseism was necessarily ascetical. In the church organized by Manes there were two classes : the Elect, or Perfect, who cast aside all bonds of society and marriage, devoted themselves to celibacy and contemplation, discarded all posses- sions, and refused to do any work ; and the Hearers, who were subject to less strict rules than the Elect, and whose duty it was to support the Elect. In this there is decided trace of Buddhism. Of the Elect, who despised industry and exalted idleness into a principle of religion, Epiphanius says : — " When they are about to eat bread, they first pray and pronounce these words : ' I have not gathered in nor ground the grain, neither have I sent it to the mill. Another has done these things, and has brought thee to me. I eat thee without reproaches, for he who reaps shall himself be reaped, and he who sends corn to the mill shall himself be ground to powder.' " Manes, after Christ's example, appointed twelve apostles for the government of his church ; over these was a thirteenth who represented Manes and presided over all ; and under them were seventy- two bishops, and deacons and travelling mission- aries. He established a rigorous system of fasts, Sunday being always one of the fast days, and care- 326 From Jerusalem to Niccza. fully prescribed the hours for prayer. The Mani- chsean was to pray four times a day, preceding each prayer by ablutions, and in his devotions was to turn towards the sun, or moon, or the north, ac- cording to the hour, as the seat of light. Despite the violent death of Manes, and the severe perse- cution which fell upon his followers, Manichaeism spread rapidly and widely in the East, reaching as far as Thibet, India, and China. In 287 an edict was promulgated against the Manichaeans in Africa by Diocletian, and severe and bloody laws were enacted against them by Valentinian in 372, and by Theo- dosius in 381. Late in the fourth century they numbered among their adherents so able a man as the great Augustine. From Africa the sect spread into Spain and Gaul. The Manichaeans maintained their existence through the middle ages and, as late as the last century, according to Gibbon, they were numerous in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thrace, and Epirus. Indeed there is evidence that they still exist in Mesopotamia and Syria. Though they are always classed among the heretics, the Mani- chaeans were less an heretical sect in the Church than a rival organization, with doctrines and rites borrowed from Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Christianity. The rise and development of Gnosticism in the Church was not an unmixed evil. In the first place, it powerfully stimulated and developed Christian Struggle within the Church, 327 apologetics, and, in the second place, it gave the impulse out of which arose systematic Christian theology. The Gnostics were the first who at- tempted to put Christianity into an intelligible relation to other religions, and to create a compre- hensive Christian philosophy of the world. Among the evil elements of Gnosticism, which linger even to the present time, were its idea of the radical op- position between matter and spirit, and its conse- quent exaltation of asceticism, and its idea of the infinite distance between God and His world. These two main ideas exerted a profound and per- manent influence on the whole Latin theology, which, from the time of Augustine until the present century, has so largely determined the character of Christian thought. There were other divergent, or antagonistic, tendencies which developed within the Church, and which are more properly denominated, heretical, in the later sense of the word. These were Mon- tanism, which was at once Illuminist and Puritanical, and Rationalism} which took form in the tenets of various parties known as Monarchians. Of these I can give but the briefest notice. Montanism arose in the latter half of the second century in Phrygia, Asia Minor. MONTANUS, from whom the sect took its name, believed himself to be 1 I scarcely need to say that I use the term " Rationalism " here in the sense in which it is used in historical and polemical theology. . ._ ".. 328 From Jerusalem to Niccea. the organ of the Holy Spirit. Some have affirmed that he claimed to be identical with the Paraclete, but of this there is doubt. He had two disciples, women, named respectively Priscilla and Maximilla, who were prophetesses and fell into strange ecstasies in which they " spoke with tongues." These women were vigorous propagators of the doctrines taught by Montanus. The sect rapidly grew in numbers. It spread into Italy and Africa, and in Carthage numbered among its adherents the famous Ter- tullian. In general its doctrines did not diverge greatly from the Catholic doctrines. Montanus held that the age of the Spirit promised by Jesus had come, and that inspiration, therefore, was not confined to the apostles. He laid great emphasis on prophesying, " as the means appointed by God for the edification and guidance of the Church." " The true condition for prophesying," according to the Montanist view, "was that form of ecstasy in which all self-control is lost, and the soul rendered utterly passive in the hands of God, — the condition of one in absolute trance." In practice the Montanists were ascetical. They increased the number of fasts, forbade second marriages, encouraged celibacy, abstained from holding any political offices, and punished mortal sins, such as adultery and apostasy, committed after baptism, with absolute and final excommuni- cation. God, they said, might pardon such sins, but the Church had no power to do so. They St niggle within the Church. 329 met persecution with undaunted courage, courting rather than shunning martyrdom. They also op- posed the hierarchical tendency of the Church, ranking a " prophet " higher than a bishop. The Monarchical sects were all anti-trinitarian ; that is, they all affirmed that there is but one Person in the Godhead. They were commonly divided into two classes : those who, like Theodo- tus of Byzantium, denied the Incarnation, and held that Jesus was only " a man endowed with a pe- culiar fulness of the Holy Spirit; " and those who, like Sabellius, held that the one God revealed Him- self under the three modes of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the view of the latter, Christ was literally " God manifest in the flesh." These were called Patripassians, because their doctrine seemed to involve the crucifixion and suffering of the Father. Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch from 260 to 272, held that Christ was only a man, and therefore had no pre-existence, but, through the indwelling of the Logos, he progressively became divine. In its strife with these divergent thinkers the Church anticipated the great struggle with Arian- ism, which began early in the fourth century, about 318, and continued till the end of the sixth century. Against the inroads of Gnosticism, and the disin- tegrating force of other forms of heresy, the early Church developed able defenders. If, in the ob- jective struggle with heathenism and under assaults 33° From Jerusalem to Niccea* of fire and sword and savage beasts, she was passive and patient, exhausting persecution by her capacity for endurance, — in the subjective struggle with hostile intellectual forces, both pagan and nominal- Christian, the Church was active and aggressive, not remaining on the defensive, but pushing the con- test for the faith into every antagonistic camp. In the last lecture I spoke of the principal apolo- gists. Most of those were vigorous in assailing her- esy as well as in parrying heathen attack. Among the defenders of the faith from assaults within the Church in the second century none was more able and effective than Iren^euS. Born a little before 140 A. D. in Asia Minor, where also he was edu- cated, he early went to Gaul, in which country the greater part of his life was spent He became a presbyter in the church in Lyons, and in 178, immediately after the frightful persecution in which the aged bishop Pothinus perished, he was called to the episcopate, which office he filled with such ability that he has been called " the greatest bishop of the second century, and the representative of the catholicity of the day." Of his writings only one complete work survives. This is, in part, an elaborate and, in the main, judicious, criticism of the various forms of Gnosticism which had devel- oped before the close of the century. His book has great value as showing the theological de- velopment in. the early Church. " Irenaeus," says Struggle within the Church. 331 Harnack, " holds the same relation to the theology of the Greek Fathers that Tertullian does to the doctrinal system of the Church of the West. . . . It is from [him] also that we get the earliest form of the creed which afterwards, through the labor of councils and theologians, became what we now know as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed." He exerted also a strong irenical influence on the Eastern controversy. His death, possibly by martyrdom, took place not far from 202 A. D. In a peculiar sense Irenaeus stood as a repre- sentative of the apostolic tradition, and his defence of the simple basic elements of the Christian faith was of immense service to the Church. His criti- cism of Gnosticism, though not entirely adequate, nor always perfectly just, was motived by his calm yet intense loyalty to the fundamental facts and truths of the gospel. Of Gnosticism I have already said all that my time allows, and yet I cannot close without a few words as to the Gnostics, and as to the general significance of heresy in the early Church. The Gnostics have seldom, perhaps never, re- ceived entire justice at the hands of Christian inter- preters and critics. Their systems strike the Occidental mind as so unreal and grotesque, and their thought is so completely involved in extrava- gant allegory and colossal symbolism, that most students ,are repelled and quickly lose the patient 332 From Jerusalem to Niccea. and sympathetic temper which is necessary to a true understanding of the Gnostic aim. These men were not lunatics or mere wild dreamers. They were usually, at least often, serious and very earn- est men, in whose minds the various currents of Oriental pantheism and mysticism and Hellenic philosophical speculation met and mingled with the Hebrew idea of creation and the new Christian idea of redemption, and who out of these were seeking to fashion a complete philosophy of God, the universe, and human history. Their attempts seem to us to have issued, and, indeed, did issue in grotesque failures; but in these attempts certain great structural principles of theology at least germi- nally appeared. The entire significance of Christian thought as an historical development will scarcely be grasped by him who does not master the main elements of second-century Gnosticism. The treatment of heresy by the early Church was determined by its invincible instinct for the ele- mental Christian facts and truths, and its obstinate sense of the dependence of its integrity and life on the preservation of these. With the development of Christian dogma, heresy took on a different signification, and the spirit and at- titude of the Church towards heresy greatly changed. From the rise of the Trinitarian controversy on- ward we enter a new atmosphere as well as a new stage in the history of the Church, some apprehen- sion of which we shall get in the remaining two lectures. THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. THE Christian school of Alexandria, of which I am now to speak, must be distinguished from the " Alexandrian school " known in the history of literature and philosophy. The latter term designates, properly, two schools : one which, concerning itself chiefly with literature, took its rise early in the history of Alexandria, and passed into decadence before the beginning of the Chris- tian era; another, which sprang from the contact between Greek and Jewish thought, and concerned itself mainly with philosophy, was a later develop- ment. The latter school produced Neo-Platonism, which arose about the beginning of the third century, and was a combination of Greek and Roman metaphysics, modified both by the specula-, tions of Philo and by Christianity. Its chief repre- sentatives were Ammonius Saccas (who died in A. D. 241), Plotinus (d. 269), Porphyry (d. 305), Jamblicus (d. 330), and Proclus (d. 485). Inter- esting as this is, it can have at the present time no notice beyond a passing allusion. Preceding the distinct rise of Neo-Platonism was Jewish-Pla- tonism, which, beginning with Aristobulus about 334 From Jerusalem to Niece a. 1 60 B. C., attained its final expression in Philo Judaeus. This, blended with Oriental theosophic and Christian elements, produced Gnosticism ; and both Jewish-Platonism and Gnosticism exerted a powerful influence on Alexandrine Christianity. Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 332 B. C, became, under the Ptolemies, the home of letters and the centre of intellectual life and scientific activity. The city was adorned with many magnificent buildings, such as the Museum, the Serapeum (the temple of Serapis, in which was an image of the tutelary god), and the Sebastion, all founded by royal munificence. Here in three great libraries, aggregating 700,000 volumes, were gathered all the wealth of ancient and contempo- rary literature and science. The city was thronged with professors, philosophers, and rhetoricians. Here gathered students and pleasure-seekers from all nations, — not only from Italy and Greece and Syria, but also from Ethiopia, Arabia, Bactria, Scythia, Persia, and even India. The Jews came hither in great numbers. Philo estimates that in his~ day there were quite one million Jews in Alexandria, and it is evident that they were not only more numerous, but -also more wealthy and influential here than in any other city of the Empire. Of the five districts of the city, they practically appropriated two, and occupied por- tions of the other three, while many inhabited the country districts round about. "They had their own senate and magistrates, who apportioned the Christian School of Alexandria, 335 taxation and settled the disputes of the commu- nity." They enjoyed equal rights with the Greek burgesses, and possessed immunities which were denied even to the native Copts. As early, probably, as 250 B. c, under Ptolemy Philadelphus, who appears in history as a munifi- cent patron of literature, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek version of the Septuagint was begun, and it was substantially finished by 221 B. C. This work of translation by Alexandrian Jews was naturally undertaken to meet the wants of the Jewish population, which even at that time was large. All of these spoke Greek, while many of them were unfamiliar with Hebrew. A legendary account tells us that Ptolemy Philadelphus desired a copy of the Jewish Scriptures for his great library, and was advised to apply to the High-Priest at Jerusalem. In re- sponse to his application seventy-two scholars were sent, six for each of the twelve tribes, who were lodged in thirty-six cells on the island of Pharos, where, in seventy-two days, each scholar produced a separate version, and these versions; when they were compared, proved to be exactly alike. The story is interesting, but, of course, worthless. The fact, however, remains that the translation was made, and that the opportunity was given for that curious intellectual compound which is known as Jewish-Platonism. 1 1 Wellhausen and others maintain that the Septuagint was both begun and completed at dates considerably later than those I 336 From Jerusalem, to Niccza. Jewish-Platonism was the attempted combi- nation of the faith of the synagogue with the speculations of the Greek philosophers. The Jew- ish-Platonists, clinging with characteristic Jewish tenacity to their religious traditions and ideas, re- sorted to the most elaborate allegorical interpre- tation of the Old Testament, by which they were enabled to blend the doctrines of Plato and the Sto- ics with the teachings of Moses. Of Jewish-Platon- ism, Philo-Judaeus was the last and fullest exponent. The date of Philo's birth is unknown, but it must have been some time before the beginning of the Christian era, since he is spoken of as an old man in A. D. 39. His birthplace was probably Alexandria, and, according to Jerome, he was of priestly descent. The scion of a distinguished and wealthy family, he received the best education afforded by the times in the most intellectual city of the world. He became thoroughly acquainted with the Greek poets and philosophers, and was also deeply versed in the Hebrew Scriptures. Profoundly as he was affected by Greek specula- tion, he remained to the end an ardent believer in his ancestral religion, though his interpretation of that religion was such as to call forth the epi- have given ; but it has not been proved, I believe, that the larger part of the Septuagint was not in existence before the time of Aristobulus, 160 B.C. The precise date, however, does not affect the general proposition that the rise of Jewish-Platonism had its occasion in the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Christian School of Alexandria. ?>Z7 grammatic comment that Philo Platonizes or Plato Philonizes. Of his domestic life, almost nothing is known. It is said that he was married, though his treatment of woman in his writings might lead one to think otherwise. A pleasant story is told of his wife which we should like to think true. It is said that she appeared once without jewels in an assembly of noble women, and, when asked why she alone of them all wore no golden ornaments, she replied that a husband's virtue was sufficient ornament for his wife. The influence of Philonic-Platonism on Chris- tian teachers appears in their treatment of the Scriptures, their conception of the Logos, and their idea of knowledge {gnosis) in its relations to faith. This system also powerfully promoted, and to a great extent shaped, the development of Alexandrian Gnosticism. Amidst these influences arose the Christian Catechetical school in Alex- andria, as early at least as the last quarter of the second century. This school was founded for the purpose of giving religious instruction to the children of Christian parents, and preparing cate- chumens for baptism, but it soon broadened its scope so as to meet the special needs of adult converts who had been trained in pagan learning and were subject to the fascinations of Philonism, the Neo-Platonic philosophy, and Gnosticism. Its pupils were of both sexes. In such a school and amidst such surroundings, teachers were needed 338 From Jerusalem to N ices a. who knew Greek religion and philosophy, and who understood, as did Clement, that " all culture is profitable, and particularly necessary is the study of Holy Scripture, to enable us to prove what we teach, and especially when our hearers come to us from the discipline of the Greeks." Under able and devoted masters this school sought to give, not merely instruction in the traditions of apostolic teaching, but a scientific exposition of Christianity which should be fundamentally in full accord with those traditions. The school was eagerly sought by educated pagans, as well as Christians, and by young men who desired to pre- pare themselves for service in the Church. It thus became, to some extent, a theological seminary. Here Christian theology, in the deeper sense of that term, was born. The Christian teachers had to meet a threefold opposition : the criticism of cultivated paganism, such as that of the acute and able Celsus ; the speculations of Gnosticism ; and the hostility of Christians who both feared and despised philosophy as a device of the devil to pervert men from the faith of the gospel. To the first it presented the reasonableness, elevation, and inclusiveness of the Christian philosophy. To the second it opposed the true Gnosis, which did not exclude faith but elaborated the rational contents of faith, and therefore subjectively authenticated the factual basis of Christianity. Faith, it held, was not a substitute for knowledge, but the organ of Christian School of Alexandria. 339 knowledge. In the language of Clement, " Faith is, so to speak, the compendious knowledge of essen- tials ; Gnosis, the incontrovertible demonstration of the things received by faith, erected on the foundation of faith, through the doctrine of our Lord, whereby faith is raised to an irrefragable scientific knowledge." Moreover, knowledge is inseparable from life. " As is the doctrine," said Clement, " so also must be the life ; for the tree is known by its fruit, not by its blossoms or its leaves. The Gnosis comes, then, from the fruit and the life ; not from the doctrine and the blossom. For we say that the Gnosis is not merely doc- trine, but a divine science ; — it is that light, dawning within the soul from obedience to God's commands, which makes all things clear ; teaches man to know all that is contained in creation and in himself, and instructs him how to maintain fellowship with God ; for what the eye is to the body, such is the Gnosis to the mind." To the third form of opposition it disclosed the comprehensiveness of the gospel idea, and the necessity of knowledge and training in order to understand and expound the Scriptures ; besides, it is necessary to study philosophy in order to detect its sophistries, and so to defend the apos- tolic doctrine, and to commend Christianity to the heathen. " If the philosophy is unprofitable," said Clement, " yet the study of it is profitable, if there is profit to be derived from thoroughly demonstrating that it is an unprofitable 34-0 From yerusalem to Niece a. thing. Then again, we cannot condemn the heathens by merely pronouncing sentence on their dogmas ; we must enter with them into the development of each in detail, until we compel them to acquiesce in our sentence ; for that sort of refutation wins the most confidence which is united with a thorough knowledge of the matter in hand." In further defence of the method of the school, Clement forcibly says : " We must offer to the Greeks, who seek after that which passes with them for wisdom, things of a kindred nature, so that they may come, as it may be expected they will, in the easiest way, through what is already familiar to them, to the belief of the truth. For I become all things to all men, says the apostle, that I may win all." The beginning of the school lies in some obscu- rity. It is said that Athenagoras was its first head. What is known of him I have already stated in the lecture on the Apologists. 1 The first teacher of whom we clearly know, and who is commonly considered the first master of the school, was PANT^ENUS. It is doubtful whether he was a Chris- tian by birth and training, or a convert from paganism. He probably was born in Sicily, since Clement calls him " the Sicilian bee." By some he is said to have been a Platonic eclectic, and it is apparent that he was thoroughly acquainted with the Stoic, Pythagorean, and Platonic ideas. 1 See pages 246 ff. Christian School of Alexandria. 341 He began his work in Alexandria in A. D. 180, and, according to Origen, was the first Christian teacher who availed himself of his heathen learning in the exposition of Christianity. This implies that he made a fuller and more systematic use of that learning than either Justin Martyr or Athenagoras, both of whom had brought the resources of their pagan culture into service in defending and propa- gating the gospel. Pantsenus' work as head of the school seems to have been interrupted, since Eusebius tells us that he went on an evangelistic tour to India. The Indians, on account of his fame as a teacher, desired to meet and hear him, and they sent a deputation with the request that he would visit them. This mission of Pantsenus indicates that already he had been ordained as a presbyter, although no mention is made of the fact. In India he found, and, according to Jerome's statement, brought back with him, a Gospel by St. Matthew in Hebrew. Pantaenus was learned, ardent, eloquent and large-minded. He may have left some writings, but all save a few fragments are lost. It is probable that these are rather the reports of oral teaching than literary productions. His personal influence was great, and it was by this, rather than by any literary activity, that he accomplished his work; though Eusebius says that in his writings he " interpreted the treasures of the divine dogmas," and Jerome adds that he left " many commentaries on the 342 From Jerusalem to Niccsa. Scriptures." His work in the school ended in 189, and he was succeeded by his pupil and fellow- teacher, Clement. The date of his death is un- known, but it falls somewhere between 193 and 211. The successor of Pantaenus was TiTUS Flavius CLEMENS, known in ecclesiastical literature as Cle- ment of Alexandria. His name, Flavius Clemens, suggests the name of Flavius Clemens who was martyred by Domitian in 96, and it has been in- ferred that he was a descendant of the consul. He was born somewhere between 150 and 160, and was an Athenian in training, if not by birth. Like his predecessor, he was learned in all the literature, science, philosophy, and mythology of the heathen. An ardent spirit, he wandered far and wide, in his early years, in search of truth. In his writings he mentions six illustrious Christian teachers under whom he studied. At last, in Egypt, he found Pantaenus, and with him found rest. Here, in Alexandria, he made his home, and probably for a time was a pupil of Pantaenus in the Catechetical school. He was ordained a presbyter, and, in 189, was appointed master of the school, in which for a little time he had been an assistant. Here he taught until 202 or 203, when he fled from a per- secution under Septimius Severus and never re- turned. We hear of him later in the company of one of his old pupils, Alexander, at that time a bishop in Cappadocia, and afterwards bishop of Christian School of Alexandria. 343 Jerusalem, who was in prison on account of the faith. Alexander was much comforted by his presence, considering it providential. On the de- parture of Clement, Alexander charged him with a letter to the church in Antioch, congratulating them upon the election of Asclepiades to the episcopate, in which he thus speaks of Clement: " This epistle, my brethren, I have sent to you by Clement, the blessed presbyter, a man endued with all virtue, and well approved, whom you already know, and will learn still more to know; who also, coming hither by the providence and superinten- dence of the Lord, has confirmed and increased the Church of God." This is the last notice we have of Clement's movements; the date of his death is unknown, though it has been suggested variously as 213 and 220. Among his pupils were Origen and the Alexander above mentioned, and, perhaps, also Hippolytus. Of the works of Clement, Eusebius and Jerome enumerate ten, though many others are mentioned by Clement himself as already written, or to be written. Of the ten referred to, two are entirely lost, four survive in fragments, and four remain to us practically entire. Of the extant works, the most important are, " The Exhortation to the Greeks," "The Instructor," and "The Mis- cellanies " (Sr/jtwyLtaTet?, which means " coverlet," then, " patchwork," of which coverlets often were made). The fourth extant work, entitled "Who 344 From Jerusalem to Niccea. is the Rich Man that is Saved?" is a study, in the form of a popular address, of the incident related in Mark's Gospel, x. 17-22. Its teaching is characterized as " simple, eloquent, and just." It closes with the story of St. John and the young robber which Eusebius, quoting from Clement, incorporated in his History. It is in substance as follows : — St. John, after the death of Domitian, returned from the isle of Patmos to Ephesus. From this city he was accustomed to go out into the neigh- boring regions to appoint bishops, to institute new churches, and to render other apostolic services. In one city, after having ordained a bishop, he committed to his care " a youth of fine stature, graceful countenance, and ardent mind," saying, " Him I commend to you with all earnestness, in the presence of the Church and of Christ." The bishop promised to care for him with all diligence, and St. John returned to Ephesus. The youth was cherished, educated, disciplined, and finally baptized. Then his guardian somewhat relaxed his care, and the youth fell under the influence of " certain idle, dissolute fellows," who led him first into dissipation, and then by degrees into crime. Going from bad to worse, the young man at last committed a crime so grave as to in- volve for him and his associates, in case they were caught, the punishment of death. Thereupon he fled from his home, and, having exceeded his Christian School of Alexandria. 345 associates in daring, he was chosen by them as captain, and he formed them into a band of rob- bers who preyed upon the surrounding country. After a time the apostle returned and claimed the youth of the bishop to whom he had committed him as his "deposit." The bishop, now an old man, " groaning heavily and also weeping, said, ' He is dead.' ' How, and what death? ' 'He is dead to God/ said he, ' he has turned out wicked and abandoned, and at last a robber; and now, instead of the Church, he has beset the mountain with a band like himself.' " At this, the apostle, with great lamentation, called for a horse and guide, and rode away in search of the prodigal. Soon he was captured by an outpost of the ban- dits. He demanded to be taken to their leader. As the latter saw the aged St. John approaching he turned and fled ; but the apostle, forgetful of his age, pursued him, crying : " Why dost thou fly, my son, from me, thy father, — thy defence- less, aged father? Have compassion on me, my son; fear not. Thou still hast hope of life. I will intercede with Christ for thee. Should it be necessary, I will cheerfully suffer death for thee, as did Christ for us. I will give my life for thine. Stay; believe Christ hath sent me." At this the robber stopped, threw away his weapons, and then, trembling and bursting into tears, he caught the apostle in his arms. Finally, yielding to St. John's entreaties, and hearing his prayers to Christ on his 346 From Jerusalem to Niccea. behalf, the robber abandoned his companions and returned with him to his home, where he was at last restored to the church, " a powerful example of true repentance, and ... a trophy of a visible resurrection." "The Exhortation to the Greeks," an apologetic work % in twelve chapters, was designed to win pagans to the Christian faith. It is in Clement's best literary style, and abounds in passages of great force and beauty. In the very first chapter the author eloquently appeals to his readers to turn from the foolish fables of heathenism, and to listen to the invitations of the Divine Word. He begins by citing the fable of Eunomos the Locrian, who, while playing the Pythic dirge, broke a string of his lyre, whereupon a " grass- hopper sprang on the neck of the instrument, and sang on it as on a branch ; and the minstrel, adapt- ing his strain to the grasshopper's song, made up for the want of the missing string." " How," asks Clement, " have you believed vain fables, and sup- posed animals to be charmed by music; while Truth's shining face alone, as would seem, appears to you disguised, and is looked on with incredu- lous eyes? " Let " raving poets, now quite intoxi- cated," he exclaims, be crowned with ivy, and let the whole frenzied rabble, with the satyrs and the rest of the demon crew, be confined to Cithaeron and Helicon. " But let us bring from above out of Heaven, Truth, with Wisdom in all its bright- Christian School of Alexandria. 347 ness, and the sacred prophetic choir, down to the holy mount of God; and let Truth, darting her light to the most distant points, cast her rays all around on those that are involved in darkness, and deliver men from delusion, stretching out her very strong right hand, which is wisdom, for their salva- tion. And raising their eyes, and looking above, let them abandon Helicon and Cithaeron, and take up their abode in Sion." The heathen beguilers of men lead them only to destruction, but the Lord, " the celestial Word," draws them to salva- tion. "The Lord pities, instructs, exhorts, admon- ishes, saves, shields, and of His bounty promises us the kingdom of heaven as a reward for learning ; and the only advantage He reaps is, that we are saved. For wickedness feeds on men's destruction ; but Truth, like the bee, harming nothing, delights only in the salvation of men." Of the Saviour he says: He "has many tones of voice, and many methods for the salvation of men ; by threatening He admonishes, by upbraiding He converts, by bewailing He pities, by the voice of song He cheers." Through page after page of graceful writing, loaded with classic allusion and illustration, he vividly exposes the licentiousness and absurdity of the heathen rites, showing a familiarity with them which indicates that he himself, perhaps, had been initiated into " the mysteries." After setting forth the cruelty of the sacrifices offered 348 From Jerusalem to Niccea. to the gods, and the shamefulness of the images by which they were worshipped, he cites the opinions of the philosophers and poets respecting the true God, quoting from Plato : " Around the King of all are all things, and He is the cause of all good things," and asking : " Who, then, is the King of all? God, who is the measure of the truth of all existence," — quoting from Antisthenes: " God is not like to any ; wherefore no one can know him from an image; " and from Xenophon : " How great and powerful He is who moves all things, and is Himself at rest, is 'manifest; but what He is in form is not revealed ; " and from the Pythagoreans: "God is one; and He is not, as some suppose, outside of this frame of things, but within it; but, in all the entireness of His being, is in the whole circle of existence, surveying all nature, and blending in harmonious union the whole, — the author of all His own forces and works, the giver of light in heaven, and Father of all, the mind and vital power of the whole world, the mover of all things." The book closes with an appeal to his readers to abandon their ancient errors and to listen to Christ. I quote a single characteristic passage : "Come, O madman, not leaning on the thyrsus, not crowned with ivy : throw away the mitre, throw away the fawn-skin ; come to thy senses. I will show thee the Word, and the mysteries of the Word, expounding them after thine own fashion. This is the mountain beloved of Christian School of Alexandria. 349 God, not the subject of tragedies like Cithseron, but con- secrated to dramas of the truth, — a mount of sobriety, shaded with forests of purity ; and there revel on it not the Msenades, the sisters of Semele, who was struck by the thunderbolt, practising in their initiatory rites unholy division of flesh, but the daughters of God. the fair lambs, who celebrate the holy rites of the Word, raising a sober choral dance. The righteous are the chorus ; the music is a hymn of the King of the universe. The maidens strike the lyre, the angels praise, the prophets speak ; the sound of music issues forth, they run and pursue the jubi- lant band ; those that are called make haste, eagerly desiring to receive the Father." There are in this writing, judged from our point of view, defects both of taste and of logic, but on the whole it is well suited to its purpose, which was to show the essential superiority of Christianity over the religions and philosophies of heathenism, and to persuade the heathen to accept the lofty teaching and pure morality of the Divine Word. " The Instructor," or Tutor (JJatSaycoyo^'), a work in three books, containing in all thirty-eight chapters, is a manual for the instruction and train- ing of Christians who had been rescued from the pollutions of heathenism. Its aim is practical rather than theoretical, and, though it contem- plates always the knowledge (gnosis') which is essential to a completely developed Christian life, it sets forth in minute detail the morals and man- ners that are proper for a Christian. The first 350 From Jerusalem to Niece a. book is entirely taken up with the exposition of the office, method and character of the Instructor, who " is the holy God Jesus, the Word, who is the guide of all humanity. The loving God Him- self is our Instructor." The remaining two books treat of a great variety of subjects: of eating, drinking, clothes, ornaments, bathing, domestic and marital relations, exercise, amusements, con- duct in church and out of church, and a multitude of other matters. The treatise ends with a prayer to the Instructor, and a hymn to Christ' the Saviour. A literal translation of part of the hymn I have already given in the second lecture. 1 I quote at random some specimens of Clement's counsel. On Eating he says : — " We must guard against those articles of food which persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite. For is there not within a temperate simpli- city a wholesome variety of eatables ? Bulbs, 2 olives, cer- tain herbs, milk, cheese, fruits, all kinds of cooked food without sauces ; and if flesh is wanted, let roast rather than boiled be set down." The reason he gives for using roast, rather than boiled flesh, is, that Jesus, after His resurrection, when He asked for something to eat, received from His disciples " a piece of broiled fish." In the chapter on Drinking, after derisively condemning 1 See page 83. 2 A bulbous wild root, much esteemed in Greece. Christian School of Alexandria. 351 the excessive luxury of which many rich are guilty, he pithily says : — " The best riches is poverty of desires ; and the true magnanimity is not to be proud of wealth, but to despise it. Boasting about one's plate is utterly base. For it is plainly wrong to care much about what any one who likes may buy from the market. But wisdom is not bought with coin of earth, nor is it sold in the market-place, but in heaven. And it is sold for true coin, the immortal Word, the regal gold." In the chapter on Laughter he says : — " Pleasantry is allowable, not waggery. Besides, even laughter must be kept in check ; for when given vent to in the right manner it indicates orderliness, but when it issues differently it shows a want of restraint. For, in a word, whatever things are natural to men we must not eradicate from them, but rather impose on them limits and suitable times. For man is not to laugh on all occa- sions because he is a laughing animal, any more than the horse neighs on all occasions because he is a neighing animal." Concerning the Use of the Tongue he says : — " We ought not to speak long or much, nor ought we to speak frivolously. Nor must we converse rapidly and rashly. For the voice itself, so to speak, ought to receive its just dues ; and those who are vociferous and clamor- ous ought to be silenced. ... It is with triflers as with old shoes : all the rest is worn away by evil ; the tongue only is left for destruction." 352 From Jerusalem to Niece a, On Clothes he gives his judgment that the covering ought — " to show that which is covered to be better than itself, as the image is superior to the temple, the soul to the body, and the body to the clothes. But now, quite the contrary, the body of these ladies, if sold, would never fetch a thou- sand Attic drachmas. Buying, as they do, a single dress at the price of ten thousand talents, they prove them- selves to be of less use and less value than cloth. Why in the world do you seek after what is rare and costly, in preference to what is at hand and cheap ? It is because you know not what is really beautiful, what is really good, and seek with eagerness shows instead of realities, from fools who, like people out of their wits, imagine black to be white." In a chapter devoted to reproof of excessive fondness for jewels and gold ornaments, he gives a long and curious list of the various ornaments in use, and then exclaims : " I am weary and vexed at enumerating the multitude of ornaments ; and I am compelled to wonder how those who bear such a burden are not worried to death. Oh, foolish trouble ! Oh, silly craze for display ! They squan- der meretricious wealth on what is disgraceful ; and in their love for ostentation disfigure God's gifts." He tells the story that " Apelles, the painter, seeing one of his pupils painting a figure loaded with gold color to represent Helen, said to him, ' Boy, being incapable of painting her beau- tiful, you have made her rich.' " Concerning ear- rings, he says : — Christian School of Alexandria. 353 Let not ears " be pierced, contrary to nature, in order to attach to them earrings and ear-drops. For it is not right to force nature against her wishes. Nor could there be any better ornament for the ears than true instruction, which finds its way naturally into the pas- sages of hearing. And eyes, anointed by the Word, and ears pierced for perception, make a man a hearer and a contemplator of divine and sacred things, the Word truly exhibiting the true beauty ' which eye hath not seen nor ear heard before.' " I leave the " Instructor " with a quotation from the chapter on Frugality : — " A fair provision for the journey to heaven is theirs who bear frugality with chaste gravity. And as the foot is the measure of the shoe, so also is the body of what each individual possesses. But that which is superfluous, what they call ornaments and the furniture of the rich, is a burden, not an ornament to the body. He who climbs to the heavens by force, must carry with him the fair staff of beneficence, and attain to the true rest by communicat- ing to those who are in distress." " The Miscellanies," the most extensive and the most significant of Clement's works, has come down to us in seven books. There probably were no more, though Eusebius speaks of eight. What is printed as a fragment of the eighth book seems to be matter introductory to a work on logic. The beginning of the first book is want- ing. This work of Clement's, though it is not in any sense a systematic treatise, and was not meant 23 354 From Jerusalem to Niccza. by its author to be such, has profoundly influenced many Christian thinkers. It is still of very great value, both because it contains important materials for the history of Christian thought, and its rela- tions to Gnosticism and Neoplatonism, and be- cause in it are found, expressly or by implication, every great principle of the Greek, as contrasted with the Latin, theology. Clement was thoroughly a lover of truth, and he had that catholicity of mind which led him to study, and enabled him in some real sense to understand, all systems of contemporaneous thought Of him it justly has been said that he was the first " to bring all the culture of the Greeks and all the speculations of Christian here- tics to bear on the exposition of Christian truth." In a time of great intellectual commotion, when, in its struggle with diverting or antagonistic forces both within and without the Church, the Christian mind was beginning to shape a theology that should fitly embody the contents of its faith and its interpretation of the world, Clement grasped the truth that Christianity is legitimately the heir of all the past, and possesses the key to the inter- pretation of the future. " Sixteen centuries," says Westcott, " have confirmed the truth of his princi- ple, and left its application still fruitful." Clement, unlike Tertullian and Hermias, who utterly rejected the speculations of the Greek philosophers as evil both in origin and in in- Christian School of Alexandria. 355 fluence, conceived of philosophy as a divinely ordained preparation of the Greeks for faith in Christ, as the law of Moses was a similar prepa- ration of the Hebrews. While thus hospitable toward Greek philosophy, he assumed an attitude toward Gnosticism that gave him an enormous polemic advantage in dealing with Gnostic the- ories. In opposition to the false Gnosis of the Gnostics, whose views he criticised with acuteness and vigor, but without heat or bitterness, he set forth a true Christian Gnosis, and thus furnished at once the answer and the antidote to the specula- tions of Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion. Ac- cording to Clement the true Gnostic is not merely the knower, but the believer, who, through his faith, has become the knower. " Knowledge," he says, " a perfecting of man as man, is consummated by acquaintance with divine things, in character, life, and word, accordant and conformable to itself and to the divine Word. For by it faith is per- fected, inasmuch as it is solely by it that the believer becomes perfect. Faith is an internal good, and without searching for God, confesses His existence, and glorifies Him as existent. Whence by starting from this faith, and being developed by it, through the grace of God, the knowledge respecting Him is to be acquired as far as possible. " In another place he thus, more explicitly, sets forth his idea of the intimate relation of faith to knowledge : — 356 From Jerusalem to Niccea. "Faith is then, so to speak, a comprehensive knowl- edge of the essentials ; and knowledge is the strong and sure demonstration of what is received by faith, built upon faith by the Lord's teaching, conveying [the soul] on to infallibility, science, and comprehension. And, in my view, the first saving change is that from heathenism to faith, as I said before ; and the second, that from faith to knowledge. And the latter, terminating in love, there- after gives the loving to the loved, that which knows to that which is known. And, perchance, such an one has already attained the condition ' of being equal to the angels.' " That which, perhaps, is most characteristic of Clement's function as an interpreter of the Chris- tian faith is his thought of the Incarnation, — the indwelling Word, — " as the crown and consum- mation of the whole history of the world." With his idea of the Incarnation, or the immanent Word, was inseparably joined his idea of the world as belonging, not to the powers of darkness, but to God, and of human nature as a product of the divine wisdom and love. He rejects entirely the Gnostic ideas with respect to the origin and nature of evil, and, indeed, does not concern himself spe- cially with these questions. He knows nothing of that doctrine of the fall of man in Adam which fills so prominent a place in the later Latin the- ology, and, by his principle of the freedom of the will, he escapes the fatalism of Gnostic and Manichaean thought, into which Augustine, de- Christian School of Alexandria. 357 spite his conversion from Manichaeism, fell, or, per- haps we should rather say, from which he never entirely freed himself. Of "total depravity" Clement knows nothing, though he recognizes a moral inability which makes necessary both the quickening and the discipline of the soul by the Divine Spirit. " Though men's actions," he says, u are ten thousand in number, the sources of all sin are but two, ignorance and inability. And both depend on ourselves ; inasmuch as we will not learn, nor, on the other hand, restrain lust. And of these, the one is that, in consequence of which people do not judge well, and the other, that in con- sequence of which they cannot comply with right judg- ments. For neither will one who is deluded in his mind be able to act rightly, though perfectly able to do what he knows ; nor, though capable of judging what is requi- site, will he keep himself free from blame, if destitute of power in action. Consequently, then, there are assigned two kinds of correction applicable to both kinds of sin : for the one, knowledge and clear demonstration from the testimony of the Scriptures ; and for the other, the train- ing according to the Word, which is regulated by the discipline of faith and fear. And both develop into perfect love." Punishment he regards as always remedial, never vindictive. God does not punish, he says, " for punishment is retaliation for evil. He chas- tises, however, for good to those who are chastised, collectively and individually." 358 From Jerusalem to Niccea. Salvation, according to Clement, is a spiritually educative process, carried on within man by the indwelling Word. It is not, says Professor Allen, " a physical process, but an ethical growth, through union with God ; divine knowledge is no mere speculative insight into the origin of things, but an ever-growing perception of the true character of God, as it is revealed in Christ." Clement's idea of salvation, therefore, excludes the element of expiation. He finds no opposition between divine justice and divine love, as did Mar- cion ; there is therefore no necessity for expiation. The Incarnation is the real and only atonement, that is, the reconciliation of the world to Himself by the immanent God. Clement's attitude toward asceticism was deter- mined by his view of the world as God's world, and of the body as His temple. He therefore taught self-control, not self-annihilation ; mortifica- tion of evil desires, not of the flesh. He says : — " Those who run down created existence and vilify the body are wrong ; not considering that the frame of man was formed erect for the contemplation of heaven, and that the organization of the senses tends to knowledge ; and that the members and parts are arranged for good, not for pleasure. Whence this abode becomes receptive of the soul which is most precious to God ; and is dig- nified with the Holy Spirit through the sanctification of soul and body, perfected with the perfection of the Saviour." Christian School of Alexandria. 359 He speaks in one place of self-restraint as " God's greatest gift," but this self-restraint is always ra- tional, and is motived by a love of righteousness which arises through the perception of the truth. " Virtue," he says, " is will in conformity to God and Christ in life, rightly adjusted to life everlast- ing. For the life of Christians, in which we are now trained, is a system of reasonable actions, — that is, of those things taught by the Word, — an unfailing energy which we have called faith." With his view of God, and man, and the Incarna- tion, and faith, and the divine discipline, Clement consistently believed in the ultimate salvation of all men. I cannot take time now to enter at length into an exposition of Clement's thought on the outcome of the long drama of human history ; but it is thus justly and happily indicated by Professor Allen : " His belief in the inherent worth of the individual soul, as constituted after the divine image, would not allow him to succumb to the thought that man was created practically an animal only, with the possibility attached of some time receiving an immortal spirit in virtue of his own exertions ; or, on the other hand, that any soul could continue forever to resist the force of redeeming love. Somehow and somewhere, in the long run of ages, that love must prove might- ier than sin and death, and vindicate its power in one universal triumph." The largeness of Clement's thought and the 360 From Jerusalem to Niccza. breadth of his outlook upon the world and upon the future justify the application to him by Dr. Bigg of the epithet " Pauline." Certainly down to the time of Clement very little trace of real Paulinism can be found except, indeed, among the Gnostics. Clement's successor was Origen, the most famous name in the Christian Church antecedent to Augustine, and the greatest of the early teachers. His full name was Origenes Adamantius. He was born in Alexandria, of Christian parents, in 185 A. D. His name, which means " born of Or," or Horus, the Egyptian god of light, suggests that he was by race an Egyptian, or Copt, though his father bore the Greek name Leonides. He was the eldest of seven sons. His father, who was a teacher of rhetoric, gave him a liberal education in Greek learning and, especially, in the Christian Scriptures, portions of which he required him daily to commit to memory. The boy was an eager student, with an alert and inquiring mind, and he often put troubling questions to his father. This question- ing spirit was sometimes rebuked, but at night the father would go, and, uncovering his boy as he slept, would reverently kiss his breast, " as a shrine con- secrated by the divine Spirit," and thank God for giving him such a son. Very early Origen entered the Catechetical school, where he imbibed the intellectual spirit of Christian School of Alexandria. 361 his great master, Clement. When he was seventeen years old, in 202, his father, Leonides, became a victim of the persecution under Septimius Severus, and was thrown into prison. Origen ardently desired to share his fate. His mother implored him not to rush upon martyrdom, but, seeing him resolved upon his course, she hid his clothes, and so compelled him to remain in the house. The boy wrote his father a letter, encouraging him to stand fast in his faith, and saying, " Take heed, father, not to change thy mind on account of us." Leonides was put to death, his property was con- fiscated, and Origen was left to support his mother and his six younger brothers. For a time he re- ceived help from a wealthy lady of Alexandria, who took him in. This lady had as her chaplain a certain Paul of Antioch, whom she had adopted as a son. Paul was, as Eusebius tells us, " an advo- cate of the heretics then existing at Alexandria ; " that is, he was a Gnostic. Origen, who abomi- nated Paul's heretical doctrines, was uncomfortable in what he felt to be a compromising situation, and he resolved to leave it and support himself and his family by teaching grammar. He immediately acted on his resolution, and soon was very suc- cessful in his vocation, attracting to himself many disciples, among whom were Plutarch, soon after- wards a martyr to the faith, and Heraclas, who later became bishop of Alexandria. During that troublous time, while persecution was raging in the 362 From Jerusalem, to N ices a. city, he fearlessly gave aid and comfort to the per- secuted, whom he publicly saluted with the kiss of peace. The multitude, infuriated by his boldness, sought to put him to death, and he escaped only by fleeing from house to house. When Origen was scarcely eighteen years old, Demetrius, at that time bishop of Alexandria, who, though he was a stern and unlettered man, had ob- served and appreciated the abilities of the young student, called him to the head of the Catechetical school. Previous to this time he had accumulated, chiefly by his own labor, a considerable library, having transcribed with his own hand many copies of classic and other manuscripts. Refusing all remuneration for his teaching, he sold his library for an income of four obols (twelve cents) a day, on which he lived for many years, steadily declin- ing the contributions offered by' his friends. He devoted himself to a life of rigorous self-denial and toil. He had early exhibited a tendency towards a passionate asceticism ; now he gave himself to teaching by day and to study by night, satisfied himself with one coat, fasted much and took his little sleep on the ground. 1 For twelve or thirteen 1 There seems to be no sufficient reason for doubt- ing the generally received opinion that, at this time, Origen, with sincere but mistaken zeal, applied to himself literally the words of Christ in Matthew xix. 12. This act r according to the ecclesiastical ideas of the times, disqualified him for clerical office, and it partly explains the persistence of Demetrius in accomplishing his degradation from the pres- Christian School of Alexandria. 363 years he labored with unflagging zeal and great success as head of the school. About 213, during the episcopate of Zephyrinus in Rome (202-217), he visited the capital of the empire. On his return to his work in the school he transferred the care of the younger pupils, the catechumens, to Heraclas, whom he chose as an assistant, and devoted himself to the advanced pupils and to Biblical study. Being hampered, in his controversy with the Jews, by his ignorance of Hebrew, he resolved to learn that language, which he did, though he never attained great proficiency in it. He also sought a fuller acquaintance with Grecian literature and with the current phases of philosophic thought, and for this purpose attended the lectures of Ammonius Saccas, the reputed founder of the Neo-Platonic school, of which afterwards the lamented Hypatia was so beautiful and so distinguished a representative. Origen's fame spread far and wide. He travelled much, enlightening Christians and confirming them in the martyr spirit, and also confuting heretics, in which he generally was successful. About this time his reputation had grown so great that the Roman governor of the province of Arabia requested Demetrius and the governor of Egypt to send Origen to him. byterate. In his later life Origen developed more rational views of Scripture teaching, and probably regretted his youthful rashness. 364 From Jerusalem to Nic&a. In 215 Caracalla was severely lampooned in Alexandria for the murder of his brother Geta. In an outburst of fury the half-mad emperor began to take bloody reprisals of the Alexandrians. Origen left the city and went to Palestine, where he visited his friend, Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, and then to Caesarea, where he was welcomed by another friend, Theoctistus. These two men so admired Origen that they requested him to expound the Scriptures publicly in their pres- ence ; which he did, though he was not ordained. Demetrius, who was very much of an ecclesiastic, hearing of this, was indignant that a layman should speak in public before bishops, and promptly re- called Origen. It was probably about this time that, in response to an invitation from Julia Mammaea, the mother of Alexander Severus, he paid a visit to the empress-dowager, who seems to have been sojourning then in Alexandria. As an indication of the honor in which he was held, it is recorded that he was attended by a military escort furnished by his imperial hostess. Not long after his return to Alexandria Origen entered upon a new form of work, namely, the written exposition of the Scriptures. Up to this time he had written very little, but a wealthy Alexandrian, by name Ambrosius, whom he had converted from Valentinian Gnosticism, urged him to write, and supplied him with the necessary money for the transcription and publication of his works. Christian School of Alexandria. 365 This friend provided him with seven stenographers and the same number of caligraphists. Eusebius says that Ambrosius furnished " the most ample supplies of all necessary means; for he [that is, Origen] had more than seven amanuenses, when he dictated, who relieved each other at appointed times. He had not fewer copyists, as also girls, who were well exercised in more elegant writing. For all which, Ambrose furnished an abundant supply of all the necessary expense." Ambrose affords an example that is quite worthy of imita- tion by wealthy laymen in our own day. Owing to the increasing proficiency of Heraclas, Origen was now able to withdraw himself in a large measure from the charge of the school, and to devote himself to his literary occupations. His writings, says Westcott, " marked him out more decisively than before as a teacher in the Church even more than in the school." His work, how- ever, raised new difficulties in his path. His " First Principles," continues Westcott, " made an epoch in Christian speculation, as the ' Commentary on St. John ' made an epoch in Christian interpretation." Demetrius began to be jealous of the growing power and reputation of this layman, and Origen's position began to grow uncomfortable. About 226 or 228, an opportunity came to change, for a time at least, his relations. He was invited to Greece to aid in settling some troubles arising from heresies, and, being furnished with u commendatory letters," 366 From Jerusalem to Niccea. he set out on his journey, passing, on his way, through Palestine, where he paused for a time. While he was there, Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctistus of Csesarea consecrated him as a pres- byter. He then continued his journey to Greece, visiting Ephesus on the way, and spent some time at Athens. About 230 he returned to find Deme- trius in a rage, and a storm of ecclesiastical repro- bation ready to burst upon him. A synod of Egyptian bishops, in which also the presbyters under Demetrius were given seats, pronounced Origen unworthy of the office of catechist, prob- ably because of his violation of ecclesiastical discipline, and excommunicated him from the church in Alexandria ; but it did not venture to depose him from the dignity of presbyter. Deme- trius was not satisfied ; he called a second synod of bishops and degraded Origen from the office of presbyter, and sent an encyclical letter announcing the action of the synod. 1 The churches in Pales- tine, Phoenicia, Arabia, and Achaia disregarded the letter and the episcopal action. In Alexandria, the hierarchical party, which was now dominant, had long been opposed to Origen. He was too large and too free a man to be enclosed within the lines of their conception of a Christian teacher. It is significant that the church in Rome approved the action of Demetrius. Previous to the second synod Origen saw that he 1 See note on page 362. Christian School of Alexandria. 367 must retire before the storm, and he turned over the entire charge of the Catechetical school to Heraclas and withdrew from Alexandria, never to return. He went to Caesarea, where he " found ungrudging sympathy and help for his manifold labors." Says Westcott: "Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctis- tus of Caesarea remained devoted to him ; and Fir- milian of Caesarea in Cappadocia was no less zealous in seeking his instruction. Ambrosius was with him to stimulate and maintain his literary efforts." Here he established a school which almost rivalled in fame the school in Alexandria, and in which he labored for more than twenty years. For a little time between 235 and 237 his labors were inter- rupted by the persecution which broke out under Maximin, and he was obliged to go into conceal- ment in Cappadocia, at least during part of the time, in the house of Juliana, a Christian lady who was the heiress of Symmachus, the Ebionite trans- lator of the Septuagint. While here he wrote his " Exhortation to Martyrdom " for the consolation of Ambrosius and Protoctetus, who were suffering imprisonment on account of the faith. On the death of Maximin these friends were liberated, and Origen returned to Caesarea. Of Origen's work as a teacher in Caesarea, an interesting and eloquent account was given by his most distinguished pupil, Gregory Thaumaturgus, in a farewell address which the latter delivered on the occasion of his final departure from the school. 368 From Jerusalem to Niece a. It shows, with touching devotion, the way in which the master had turned him. from his purpose to study Roman law, and had led him into the service of the gospel, kindling in his breast a love for the Holy Word. Origen now devoted himself mainly to exegetical studies. His labors were unremitting. In one of his letters he says : — " The work of correction leaves us no time for supper, or, after supper, for exercise and repose. Even at these times we are compelled to debate questions of interpreta- tion and to emend MSS. Even the night cannot be given up altogether to the needful refreshment of sleep, for our discussions extend far into the evening. I say nothing about our morning labor, continued from dawn to the ninth or tenth hour ; for all earnest students devote this time to study of the Scriptures and reading." Although confining himself for the most part to his labors in Caesarea, Origen made an occasional visit to other places, —to Jerusalem, to Jericho, and to Sidon. He also visited Athens, and Bostra in Arabia. In the latter place he restored Beryl- lus, bishop of Bostra, from errors into which he had fallen on the subject of the Incarnation. He had now attained the full measure of his powers. From about 245, when he was sixty years old, he allowed his oral expositions of Scripture to be taken down in shorthand, and during the succeed- ing four or five years he produced most of the hom- ilies which have been preserved. His works pro- Christian School of A lexandria. 369 duced during this period show the greatest sobriety and ripest maturity of his mind, such as we see in the " Commentary on St. Matthew " and the writing entitled "Against Celsus." In 250 the persecution under Decius broke out, and many Christians in Syria were victims. Alexander of Jerusalem was thrown into prison, where he died. Origen was ar- rested and taken to Tyre, where he was subjected to the torture of chains, the iron collar, and the rack. His constancy was unshaken through all his suf- ferings. On the death of Decius, in 251, he was set free, but his health was broken by the hard- ships through which he had passed, and by his many years of incessant labor, and in 254, at the age of -sixty-nine, he died at Tyre, where he was buried. When, later, a cathedral, named after the Holy Sepulchre, was built there, his body was enclosed in the wall behind the high altar, and his tomb was honored as long as the city survived. Long after the city was destroyed by the Saracens, his name was still remembered, and, even in mod- ern times, the tradition of his greatness still lingers amidst the ruins. " It is said that the natives point out the spot where ' Oriunus ' lies under a vault, the relic of an ancient church now covered by their huts." In his personal character Origen was a singu- larly pure and noble man ; though the inheritor of a fiery and passionate nature, he was meek and patient under suffering and opposition. Unlike Tertullian, 24 370 From Jerusalem to Niccza. he reacted from his earlier extreme, ascetical views, and grew steadily in breadth of sympathy and in reasonableness of judgment. He had a mind of great speculative power and acuteness, which was enriched with prodigious learning. It is said that he produced no less than six thousand writings, a statement which, though probably exaggerated, witnesses to the remarkable fertility of his mind and to the extent of his labors. Of his numerous writings, nearly fifty volumes, too costly for reproduction, perished by fire at the capture of Caesarea by the Arabs in 653. Of his extant works I can notice but two or three. The most extensive of these, and the one upon which his fame as a critic mainly rests, is the " Hexapla." This was an edition of the Old Tes- tament Scriptures in which were arranged in par- allel columns (1) The Hebrew text of the Old Testament, (2) The same in Greek letters, (3) The Version of Aquila, (4) The Version of Symma- chus, (5) The text of the Septuagint, and (6) The Version of Theodotion. In giving an account of the origin of this colossal work, Dr. Bigg says : — " In controversy with the Jews the Christian disputant was constantly baffled by the retort, that the passages on which he relied were not found, or were otherwise ex- pressed, in the Hebrew. Several new translations or recensions of the whole or part of the LXX. had been produced, in which the discrepancies of the Alexandrine Version from the original were brought into strong relief. Christian School of Alexandria, 371 Origen saw clearly the whole of the difficulties involved, and with characteristic grandeur and fearlessness deter- mined upon producing an edition of the Old Testament that should exhibit in parallel columns the Hebrew text and the rival versions, thus bringing before the eye of the inquirer, in one view, the whole of the evidence attainable. . . . This gigantic and costly scheme was rendered feasible by the munificence, and facilitated by the active co-operation, of Ambrosius." His work on " First Principles" (De Principiis), written in 228, contains Origen's main philosophi- cal and theological principles. Of this only frag- ments have survived in the original Greek, but we have a Latin translation, or paraphrase, of the whole by Rufinus. The book " Against Celsus " (Contra Celsum) is a work of great ability and of high apologetic value. Its value is enhanced by the fact that it contains in quotations almost the whole of Celsus' acute attack on Christianity. This work, in an- swer to Celsus, was undertaken by Origen, at the request of his friend Ambrosius. We know noth- ing with certainty concerning the personal history of Celsus, and apparently Origen knew as little as do we. His book entitled " A True Discourse " ('A\?70?7? A070?), evidently was the work of a Platonist (Origen mistakenly calls him an Epi- curean), who wrote probably as early as the time of Marcus Aurelius, though Ueberweg puts the date as late as 200. He combated Christianity 372 From "Jerusalem to Niccect. partly from the Jewish and partly from his own philosophic point of view, " reducing its historical basis to an abortive attempt at insurrection, and opposing to the Christian idea of forbearing love the idea of justice; to faith in the redemption of humanity, faith in an eternal, rational order of the universe ; to the doctrine of God Incarnate, the idea of the remoteness of God, whose influence on earthly things is exerted only indirectly ; and to faith in the resurrection of the body, the doctrine of the nothingness of matter and of the future existence of the soul alone." Every essential form of objection to Christianity that has been presented up to the present time is to be found, germinally at least, in Celsus. He was well fur- nished for his attack. He had travelled widely, and conversed with representatives of every shade of religious belief, including many Christians. He was familiar with the four Gospels and Genesis and Exodus, and had some acquaintance with the writings of the prophets and with the apostolic epistles ; he had considerable acquaintance also with Gnostic and Judaistic literature. In his answer, which was written in his later years (244-249), and represents, therefore, the maturity of his powers and his more sober and evangelic thought, Origen covers all the ground covered by previous apologists, — the character of Christians and the historicity of Christianity, — and enters on the wider domain of the relation of Christian School of Alexandria. 373 Christianity to philosophy, to the pagan religions, and to national life. It is a comprehensive work, in which the gauntlet is taken up for Christianity against attack on critical, historical, philosophical, and political grounds. There is no time now to give an analysis of the work. He who desires to read it may easily do so in an English translation, and he will find it much the most interesting, to the ordinary reader, of all Origen's extant works* I quote a few passages to show the sobriety and dignity of Origen's style, the calmness and clearness of his judgment, and the breadth and sanity of his thought. In commendation of Jesus' doctrine as a doctrine of salvation, he says : — "Both Jesus Himself and His disciples desired that His followers should believe not merely in His Godhead and miracles, as if He had not also been a partaker of human nature, and had assumed the human flesh which 1 lusteth against the Spirit ; ' but they saw also that the power which had descended into human nature, and into the midst of human miseries, and which had assumed a human soul and body, contributed through faith, along with its divine elements, to the salvation of believers, when they see that from Him there began the union of the Divine with the human nature, in order that the human, by communion with the Divine, might rise to be divine, not in Jesus alone, but in all those who not only believe, but enter upon the life which Jesus taught, and which elevates to friendship with God and communion with Him every one who lives according to the precepts of Jesus." 374 From ^Jerusalem to Niccza. In answer to Celsus' charge, which he pro- nounces malicious, that Christians assert that " God will receive the unrighteous man if he humble himself on account of his wickedness, but that He will not receive the righteous man, although he look up to Him, [adorned] with virtue from the beginning," he replies : — " Now we assert that it is impossible for a man to look up to God [adorned] with virtue from the beginning. For wickedness must necessarily first exist in men. As Paul also says, ' When the commandment came, sin re- vived, and I died.' Moreover, we do not teach regarding the unrighteous man, that it is sufficient for him to humble himself on account of his wickedness, in order to his being accepted by God, but that God will accept him if, after passing condemnation upon himself for his past con- duct, he walk humbly on account of it, and in a becoming manner for the time to come." In reply to Celsus' criticism that it is " wicked and impious " to believe that " the great God should become a slave or suffer death," as was implied in the Christian doctrine of the Incarna- tion, Origen says with great dignity and in the most excellent spirit : — " If we consider Jesus in relation to the divinity that was in Him, the things which He did in this capacity present nothing to offend our ideas of God, nothing but what is holy ; and if we consider Him as man, distin- guished beyond all other men by an intimate communion with the Eternal Word, with absolute Wisdom, He suf- Christian School of Alexandria. 375 fered as one who was wise and perfect, whatever it be- hooved Him to suffer who did all for the good of the human race, yea, even for the good of all intelligent beings. And there is nothing absurd in a man having died, and in his death being not only an example of death endured for the sake of piety, but also the first blow in the conflict which is to overthrow the power of that evil spirit, the devil, who had obtained dominion over the whole world. For we have signs and pledges of the destruction of his empire, in those who through the coming of Christ are everywhere escaping from the power of demons, and who, after their deliverance from this bondage in which they were held, consecrate themselves to God, and earnestly devote themselves day by day to advancement in a life of piety." Contrasting the prayers of Christians to God with the prayers of even philosophic heathens to images of the gods, Origen says : — " A Christian, even of the common people, is as- sured that every place forms part of the universe, and that the whole universe is God's temple. In whatever part of the world he is, he prays ; but he rises above the universe, ' shutting the eyes of sense, and raising upwards the eyes of the soul.' And he stops not at the vault of heaven ; but passing in thought beyond the heavens, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, and having thus as it were gone beyond the visible universe, he offers prayers to God. But he prays for no trivial blessings, for he has learnt from Jesus to seek for nothing small or mean, that is, sensible objects, but to ask only for what is great and truly divine ; and these things God grants to us, to 376 From Jerusalem to N ices a. lead us to that blessedness which is found only with Him through His Son, the Word, who is God." In his conception of the Christian life, Origen, like Clement, believed profoundly in Gnosis, as the result and fulfilment of faith; but instead of the term " Gnosis," he uses the term " Wisdom." In his interpretations of Scripture, he followed Philo and his school in the use of allegorism. This, however, was far more characteristic of his earlier than of his later work; in respect to allegorism, as well as asceticism, he changed to a more rational position. In his " First Principles," one of his earliest works, he thus defines and defends the use of allegorism in interpreting Scripture: "For as man consists of body, and soul, and spirit, so in the same way does Scripture, which has been arranged to be given by God for the salvation of men." He maintains that there are in Scripture, in general, three senses, the literal, the moral, and the spiritual ; the first he identifies with the body, the second with the soul, and the third with the spirit. For example, in the parable of the mustard seed, the grain of mustard is, first, simply the seed, then it is faith, and then it is the Kingdom of Heaven. The phrase, " little foxes," in the Song of Songs, means, in the second sense, sins of indi- viduals, and, in the third sense, heresies which are distracting the Church. Not all passages are sus- ceptible of this three-fold treatment, and there are Christian School of Alexandria. ^77 some, the entire significance of which lies in their mystical sense. Concerning the latter he says : — " But since, if the usefulness of the legislation, and the sequence and beauty of the history, were universally evi- dent of themselves, we should not believe that any other thing could be understood in the Scriptures save what was obvious, the word of God has arranged that certain stumbling-blocks, as it were, and offences and impossi- bilities, should be introduced into the midst of the law and the history, in order that we may not, through being drawn away in all directions by the merely attractive nature of the language, either altogether fall away from the [true] doctrines, as learning nothing worthy of God, or, by not departing from the letter, come to the knowledge of nothing more divine. And this also we must know, that the principal aim being to announce the l spiritual ' connection in those things that are done, and that ought to be done, where the Word found that things done according to the history could be adapted to these mystical senses, He made use of them, concealing from the multitude the deeper meaning ; but where, in the narrative of the devel- opment of supersensual things, there did not follow the performance of those certain events, which was already indicated by the mystical meaning, the Scripture inter- wove in the history some event that did not take place ; sometimes what could not have happened ; sometimes what could, but did not. And sometimes a few words are interpolated which are not true in their literal acceptation, and sometimes a larger number. . . . And at other times impossibilities are recorded for the sake of the more skilful 378 From Jerusalem to Niccza. and inquisitive, in order that they may give themselves to the toil of investigating what is written, and thus attain to a becoming conviction of the manner in which a meaning worthy of God must be sought out in such subjects." The fame of Origen has been greater than that of Clement, his master, or, indeed, that of any other of the early Fathers, both because of the greater scope of his learning and intellectual force, and be- cause of his relation to the Trinitarian controversy, which, though as yet scarcely begun, soon filled the whole theological horizon of the Church. Substan- tially in sympathy with Clement, Origen differed from him in practically adopting the methods of the Neo-Platonists ; though, notwithstanding his use of these, he rested fundamentally in his teaching on the Christian revelation, and, quite as strongly as Clement, held to the truth of the Incarnation, the immanent God. It must be said also that, however far from " the simplicity of Christ" some of his speculations may seem to have carried him, he was always a humble and fervent believer in Jesus. He was the first who elaborated a complete theological system. His conception of God, the absolute Deity, had a certain resemblance to the conceptions both of the Gnostics and the Neo- Platonists. Gnosticism removed God to an infinite distance from the material universe ; Neo-Platonism sought to bring God and man together in conscious experience, but it was hampered by the Gnostic idea Christian School of Alexandria. 379 which it seemed incapable of shaking off. Origen, though he did not entirely free himself from the fundamental notion of the Gnostics and the Neo- Platonists, of the infinite remoteness and inaccess- ibleness of the absolute God, yet was held to a Christian, and a sound theological, position by his immovable conviction of the divine immanence in the world and in humanity. His contribution to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was large, although he did not by any means apprehend the entire scope of the problem. Before the thinker who sought to formulate a rational conception of God there lay the alternative of a multiplicity of Divine Beings, which is polytheism, whether the gods be three or three thousand in number, or a simple oneness of God, which is bald deism. Origen maintained that God is omniscient, omni- present, immutable, and incomprehensible, yet not impassible, for He has love. The Son, or Divine Word, is derived from the Father, and yet is co- eternal with Him. He did not begin to be, but is eternally begotten. The Son is thus co-eternal and in some real sense co-equal witlvthe Father. Says Origen : — " There never can have been a time when He was not. For when was that God, whom St. John calls the Light, des- titute of the radiance of His proper glory, so that a man may dare to ascribe a beginning of existence to the Son ? . . . Let a man, who ventures to say there was a time when the Son was not, consider that this is all one with saying 380 From Jerusalem to Niece a. there was a time when Wisdom was not, the Word was not, the Life was not." Yet the Word is not absolutely identical and co- extensive with the Father. He is the " Splendor of the Divine Glory, the Image of the Father's Person ; " the Father is the " Fountain " from which the Son's divinity is drawn; in other words, the Son answers to the Father as Effect to Cause ; the Son is therefore subordinate to the Father. Origen's doctrine of the eternally generated Son pointed the way for Christian thought, but his idea of subordination left open the door for Arianism. Of the Holy Spirit Origen declares that He is co-eternal with the Father and the Son, and yet, like the Son, He is subordinate to the Father. As the Son is derived from the Father, so the Holy Spirit, in turn, is derived from the Son. As the Son is the personification of divine reason, the Spirit is the personification and hypostasis of divine holiness. He is the spring of all spiritual gifts. I quote from Dr. Bigg the succinct statement: " The Father gives being to all that exists ; the Son im- parts reason, Logos, to all that is capable of it ; the Holy Ghost works life in those that believe." We have thus in Origen's teaching a doctrine of the Trinity, but it is not the doctrine which finally became dominant in the Church. As I have already intimated, he came too early to grasp the full significance of the problem with Christian School of Alexandria. 381 which Athanasius was called to deal, and his teaching was susceptible of such interpretation that his support was claimed on both sides of the great controversy. In his theory of the various orders of created beings Origen approached Gnosticism. His hier- archy of spirits corresponds in some degree to the Gnostic series of yEons. Spirits have the same substance as God, but they do not possess good as an essential and inherent part of their being; they acquire it by their own determination. This moral determination is always within their power. A good angel may become an evil angel, and an evil angel may become a good angel. Like Clement, only more fully than he, Origen held to the freedom of the will, powerfully opposing the fatalism and predestinationism of Gnostic thought, and supporting his doctrines by copious citations of Scripture and by acute argu- ment. All created spirits come into being free to determine their own character, and matter was created to serve as an envelope to the soul and to give outward form to moral determinations. In order, apparently, to meet certain exigencies of his system, he held to the Platonic idea of the pre- existence of human souls, but he denied metem- psychosis. Man's condition in this world is the result of a fall precedent to his entrance into this world. Origen's idea of original sin is entirely un- like that of later theologians. He was not, however, 382 From Jerusalem to Niccea. always consistent, nor is his thought always per- fectly clear. He seems to have held that the story of the fall in Genesis is a pure allegory : Adam represents man in his pre-mundane state, and Adam's sin is a symbolical representation of man's primal defection from God. He suggests that the coats of skins with which the Lord clothed Adam and Eve may represent the bodies in which fallen angels were incarnated on their expulsion from the spiritual Paradise. In the hierarchy of spiritual beings man comes midway; above him are the angels, and below him are the demons, or fallen angels, who have attained varying degrees of sinfulness. Every man in this world has his accompanying demon and good angel. By the former he is enticed to sin, but he may overcome the demons and hold their power in check by righteous action ; by the good angel he is helped in proportion as he himself strives after that which is good. Origen's system is thus not one of absolute individualism. Man is subject to the influences of good and evil about him in the world, and he maintains a certain solidarity with his race. Not- withstanding his fall, he has within him a spark of the divine life. His nature is threefold, consisting of spirit, soul, and body. Origen maintains the doctrine of salvation through the power of the Word, who is joined to the human soul of Christ and becomes incarnate. Christian School of Alexandria, 383 "Who else," he asks, " is able to save and conduct the soul of man to the God of all things, save God the Word, who, - being in the beginning with God,' became flesh for the sake of those who had cleaved to the flesh, and had become as flesh, that He might be received by those who could not behold Him, inasmuch as He was the Word, and was with God and was God? And discoursing in human form, and announcing Himself as flesh, He calls to Himself those who are flesh, that He may in the first place cause them to be transformed according to the Word that was made flesh, and afterwards may lead them upwards to behold Him as He was before He became flesh." Origen, like Clement, has no doctrine of expia- tion, in the strict sense of the term. The Incar- nate Word becomes our Ransom and in some sense our Propitiation. He makes of Himself a world-sacrifice, but His death is not an expiation by which God is propitiated in 'the sense of the later theology ; it is a ransom offered to Satan ; and yet, through that very death, Satan himself is overcome and defrauded of his victims. Origen is not thoroughly consistent here ; in one place he maintains that martyrs by their death overcome the powers of evil in a way similar to Christ's tri- umph over Satan by His death, but he also, and with great force, maintains that the death of Christ was an unparalleled exhibition and achievement of divine Love. The final redemptive process fulfilled by the Divine Word is the salvation of all. Hell is a 3$ 4- From Jerusalem to Niccza. purifying fire; even Satan himself, and all the fallen angels, will be saved, and the triumph of infinite Love will be complete. Of future punish- ment Origen says : " The Lord is like a refiner's fire." " It is certain that the fire which is prepared for sin- ners awaits us, and we shall go into that fire, wherein God will try each man's work of what kind it is. . . . Even if it be a Paul or a Peter, he shall come into that fire, but such are they of whom it is written, ' though thou pass through the fire, the flame shall not scorch thee.' The holy and the just are cleansed, like Aaron and Isaiah, with coals from off the altar. But sinners, l among whom I count myself,' must be purged with another fire. This is not of the altar, it is not the Lord's, but is kindled by the sinner himself within his own heart. Its fuel is our own evil, the wood, the hay, the straw, sins graver or lighter, which we have built upon the foundation laid by Christ. Anger, envy, remorse, these rack men even in this life with anguish so intolerable, that many perish by their own hand rather than bear their torments longer. How much fiercer will be the smart, when the soul in the light of eternity surveys the history of all its wickedness written in indelible characters upon its own texture ; when it is ' sawn asunder ' by the pangs which attend the separation of the guilty passions from the pure spirit ; when it be- wails in ' outer darkness ' its banishment from Him, who is the Light and the Life." Of Origen's successors there is space here to say but little. HERACLAS, who was his assistant, and in Christian School of Alexandria. 385 whose hands he left the school when he retired from Alexandria, retained the headship of the school but a short time. On the death of Deme- trius, in 233, Heraclas was chosen bishop of Alex- andria, and occupied the episcopal seat until his death in 248. That he was a man of learning and intellectual power is shown by the fact that Origen committed to him the care of the school, and also by the fact that the distinguished scholar, Julius Africanus, paid him a visit on account of his celeb- rity; but no works of his have survived, and he seems not to have mingled much, if any, in the great theological discussions of his time. On the election of Heraclas to the episcopate, DlONYSIUS was called to the head of the school. He was born, near the end of the second century, of an honorable and wealthy, but heathen, family. He became a Christian through reading the epis- tles of St. Paul, and was baptized by Demetrius. By his conversion, like St. Paul, he abandoned his worldly prospects, " counting all things but loss that he might win Christ." Dionysius was the most distinguished of Origen's Alexandrian pu- pils, and always remained faithful to the teachings of his master. In 248 he was made bishop of Alexandria, to succeed Heraclas, but he seems to have retained the headship of the Catechetical school to the end of his life. He suffered much in the persecutions by Decius and Valerian, 25 386 From Jerusalem, to Niccea. under the former barely escaping with his life through the timely courage of a friend, and under the latter being sent into exile. In 260, however, under Gallienus he was allowed to return, and re- mained at his post through war, pestilence, and famine, until his death in 265. As an administra- tor he showed wisdom and moderation, dealing gently with the " lapsed." In theology he fol- lowed Origen, but in controverting Sabellianism he laid himself open to the charge of Tritheism. The charge, however, was unjust, as Athanasius afterwards showed. Dionysius was openly sympathetic with Origen through all the latter's misfortunes, and felt great sorrow at his death. He wrote a book, " Con- cerning Martyrdom," which he dedicated to Ori- gen a short time before Origen's death. He wrote voluminously, but of both his treatises and his numerous letters only fragments remain. Of his writings Westcott says : They " repay careful study. They are uniformly inspired by the sym- pathy and large-heartedness which he showed in practice. His criticism of the style of the Apoc- alypse is perhaps unique among early writings for clearness and scholarly precision." Of the latter a specimen has been preserved for us in the pages of Eusebius. Following Dionysius was PlERIUS, who conducted the school for some years from 265, but afterwards Christian School of Alexandria. 387 gave it up and retired to Rome. He was eminent for his voluntary poverty, his knowledge of philos- ophy, and his power in the public exposition of the Scriptures. His eloquence won for him the title of " the younger Origen." On one Easter eve, it is said, he gave a discourse on Hosea to which the . people listened until after midnight. His works have perished, and he probably suf- fered martyrdom under Diocletian. We hear little more of the Catechetical school in Alexandria, though it continued to exist until near the end of the fourth century. It attained the zenith of its power under Clement and Origen, but after these great masters passed away it rapidly declined in influence. The most brilliant of Origen's pupils in Caesarea was GREGORY, known in ecclesiastical history as Gregory Thaumaturgus. He was a native of Pontus, and was born about 210. In his youth he purposed to devote himself to the study of Roman law. While on his way to the famous school of jurisprudence at Berytus, in Syria, he visited Caesarea, where he fell into the hands of Origen, under whose influence he became a fer- vent Christian, and in whose school he remained five years. On his return to his home in Pontus he was chosen bishop of Neo-Caesarea (about 240), and filled his office with exceptional ability until his death in 270. He was a man not only of 388 From Jerusalem, to Niccea. learning, but also of peculiar force of character and weight of judgment. To his eloquent pan- egyric on Origen we are indebted for the fullest knowledge we possess of the master's spirit and method in teaching. No pupil drank more deeply of that spirit than Gregory. In his diocese he found at the beginning only seventeen Christians, but so ardent was his zeal and so great and suc- cessful were his labors that at his death there were scarcely as many heathen. It is not to be won- dered at that about his name there gathered, later, many legends of his miraculous deeds, — hence his name, Thaumaturgus, which means wonder- worker. Gregory's tendency was practical rather than speculative, yet he took part in the controversies of his time and wrote several works which are conspicuous for their modesty and practical sense as well as for their philosophical tone. Many heretical writings were afterwards attached to his name, but, like the miracles, they are spurious. His panegyric on Origen is a piece of noble and generous eloquence. As specimens of Gregory's spirit and style I quote several paragraphs. Early in his discourse he likens Origen to a skilful gardener dealing with a " field unwrought and altogether unfertile, . . . or, . . . not utterly barren or unproductive, but . . . waste and neglected, and stiff and untract- able with thorns and wild shrubs." Christian School of Alexandria. 389 " In suchwise, then," he says, " and with such a dis- position did he receive us at first ; and surveying us, as it were, with a husbandman's skill, and gauging us thor- oughly, and not confining his notice to those things only which are patent to the eye of all, and which are looked upon in open light, but penetrating into us more deeply, and probing what is most inward in us, he put us to the question, and made propositions to us, and listened to us in our replies ; and whenever he thereby detected anything in us not wholly fruitless and profitless and waste, he set about clearing the soil, and turning it up and irrigating it, and putting all things in movement, and brought his whole skill and care to bear on us, and wrought upon our mind. And thorns and thistles, and every kind of wild herb or plant which our mind . . . yielded and produced in its uncultured luxuriance and native wildness, he cut out and thoroughly removed by the processes of refutation and prohibition." Here, for a moment, Gregory changes the figure, and speaks of Origen as " assailing us in the gen- uine Socratic fashion, and again upsetting us by his argumentation whenever he saw us getting res- tive under him, like so many unbroken steeds, and springing out of the course and galloping madly about at random, until with a strange kind of per- suasiveness and constraint he reduced us to a state of quietude under him by his discourse, which acted like a bridle in our mouth." After speaking of Origen's treatment of dia- lectics, he turns to natural philosophy, and then says : — 39° From Jerusalem to Niccea. " What need is there now to speak of the sacred mathe- matics, viz. geometry, so precious to all and above all controversy, and astronomy, whose course is on high? These different studies he imprinted on our understand- ings, training us in them, or calling them into our mind, or doing with us something else which I know not how to designate rightly. And the one he presented lucidly as the immutable ground-work and secure foundation of all, namely geometry ; and by the other, namely astronomy, he lifted us up to the things that are highest above us, while he made heaven passable to us by the help of each of these sciences, as though they were ladders reaching the skies." Gregory thus sums up Origen's work in behalf of his- pupils: — " This admirable man, this friend and advocate of the virtues, has long ago done for us perhaps all that it lay in his power to do for us, in making us lovers of virtue, who should love it with the most ardent affection. And by his own virtue he created in us a love at once for the beauty of righteousness, the golden face of which in truth was shown to us by him ; and for prudence, which is worthy of being sought by all ; and for the true wisdom, which is most delectable ; and for temperance, the heavenly virtue which forms the sound constitution of the soul, and brings peace to all who possess it; and for manliness, that most admirable grace ; and for patience, that virtue peculiarly ours ; and, above all, for piety, which men rightly designate when they call it the mother of the virtues. . . . And the end of all I consider to be nothing but this : By the pure mind make thyself like to Christian School of Alexandria, 391 God, that thou mayest draw near to Him, and abide in Him." The Panegyric concludes with this affecting apostrophe to Origen : — " But, O dear soul, arise thou and offer prayer, and now dismiss us ; and as by thy holy instructions thou hast been our savior when we enjoyed thy fellowship, so save us still by thy prayers in our separation. Commend us and set us constantly before thee in prayer. Or rather commend us continually to that God who brought us to thee, giving thanks for all that has been granted us in the past, and imploring Him still to lead us by the hand in the future, and to stand ever by us, filling our mind with the understanding of His precepts, inspiring us with the godly fear of Himself, and vouchsafing us henceforward His choicest guidance. For when we are gone from thee, we shall not have the same liberty for obeying Him as was ours when we were with thee. Pray, therefore, that some encouragement may be conveyed to us from Him when we lose thy presence, and that He may send us a good conductor, some angel to be our comrade on the way. And entreat Him also to turn our course, and bring us back to thee again; for that is the one thing which above all else will effectually comfort us." The teaching of Origen awakened prolonged controversy in the Church. Most of this arose after the Nicene Council, and the discussion of it can have no place here. One result of this con- troversy was the obscuration, for a long time, of Origen's true merits, but his day has come at last; 392 From Jerusalem to Niccza. and now, through the labors of Christian scholars and thinkers, this great Christian thinker of the third century is indirectly influencing theological thought more powerfully, perhaps, than at any time since the rise of the passionate contentions that rent the Church during the fourth century. THE FIRST ECUMENICAL COUNCIL. WE have now reviewed, somewhat in detail, the history of more than two hundred and fifty years from the time when Jesus of Nazareth preached in Palestine and commissioned his little group of immediate followers to publish His gos- pel throughout the world. We have seen the Life imparted by Him, embodying itself in a Church which, from a purely democratic con- gregation, rapidly developed into an elaborate ecclesiastical organization that, in spite of all opposition, spread over almost the whole of the Roman empire. We have seen the Life express- ing itself in a literature, which, at first artless and crude, slowly acquired force and finish of expres- sion, as well as richness and variety of substance, until it ripened into the graceful apology of Athenagoras, the powerful polemic of Tertullian, and the comprehensive philosophic theology of Origen. We have seen the Life subliming hum- ble fishermen into heroic advocates and martyrs of the faith; transforming self-indulgent heathens into self-denying Christians, whose unexampled virtue challenged the admiration, while it rebuked 394 From yerusalem to Niccea. the vices, of many peoples ; and giving to strong men and weak women alike the courage and forti- tude to meet and exhaust the assaults of every form of persecution. We have seen the handful of believers in Palestine becoming a host in every city of the empire, whose purity of life, elevation of character, and overflowing charities were writ- ing a new and unparalleled chapter in the history of the moral progress of mankind. It remains for us, in this concluding lecture, to trace the movement of Christian thought into a great con- troversy, the issue of which was the Nicene doc- trine of the Trinity. Around this doctrine the life of the Church organized itself for a struggle that continued with varying fortunes for three centuries, and that, on a smaller scale, has been renewed at different times during the succeeding centuries, even down to our own time. The Trinitarian controversy arose in Alex- andria in the second half of the third century. From the time of Philo there had been more or less speculation on the nature of God and on the relation subsisting between the Logos and the Father. In the Church, from the time of the apostles, there was a practical and unformulated Trinitarianism; that is, to both the Son and the Holy Spirit as well as to the Father attributes proper to deity were ascribed by Christian writers. When the speculative spirit arose in the Church, and there was an attempt to develop First Ecumenical Council, 395 a philosophical explanation of the divine nature, and a definition of the relations between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, various forms of thought arose which may be roughly classified as Monar- chian on the one hand and Trinitarian on the other. Of the former, Praxeas in Asia Minor about 190, Beryllus of Bostra in Arabia in the first half of the third century, and Sabellius of Ptolemais in Egypt and Paul of Samosata a few years later, may be taken as representatives. The subordinationism of Origen, while it was guarded by his doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, seemed to some to point to an essen- tially Monistic conception of the divine nature. A distinct Trinitarian doctrine was not authorita- tively formulated till the beginning of the fourth century; but during the preceding half-century, in which theological speculation was increasingly rife, the general movement of Christian thought was toward a sharper discrimination between the two general types which I have already desig- nated. In 262 a controversy arose between Dionysius of Alexandria and Dionysius of Rome, in which the discussion turned on the nature and essence of the Logos, who had become incarnate in Christ, and on His relation to the Father. From this time the view that the Son was of the same essence as the Father, and equal with Him, rapidly gained adherents. Those who adopted this view, of course, soon saw the inconsistency 396 From Jerusalem to N ices a, of maintaining subordinationism and they aban- doned it. Their opponents held that Christ was subordinate to the Father, and they carried their idea so far as to maintain that He was not only not of the same substance as the Father, but that, although pre-existent, He had a beginning, and was therefore not co-eternal with the Father. A third party, consisting mainly of those whose thought was dominated by the influence of Origen, sought to reconcile these antagonistic forms of doctrine by propounding the view that the Son was of like substance with the Father and, though subordinate to the Father, was yet co-eternal with Him. The discussion came to an acute crisis in the controversy between Arius, a presbyter, and Alexander, the metropolitan of Egypt; and this controversy led to the calling of the famous Coun- cil at Nicaea. Though this was the chief cause for the great Council, there were other causes also, namely, the Easter controversy, which divided the churches of Asia Minor from the other Eastern and the Western churches, on the proper time for the celebration of Easter, and the Meletian schism. Meletius was bishop of Lycop- olis, and, of the Egyptian bishops, was next in rank to the bishop of Alexandria. Early in the Diocletian persecution Peter, who was bishop of Alexandria from 300 to 311, following illustrious examples, withdrew to a place of safety. During First Ecumenical Council. 397 his absence Meletius, who considered Peter's withdrawal a recreant abandonment of his post, assumed the primacy of Egypt and ordained presbyters in dioceses other than his own. Four Egyptian bishops, who had been imprisoned on account of their faith, sent to him a protest de- nouncing his action as a violation of the eccle- siastical rule that no bishop should intrude into the diocese of another. To this protest Meletius paid no attention. In a little time the four bishops were put to death by the officials of the emperor, and Meletius went to Alexandria, where he was welcomed by two malcontent presbyters, Isidore and Arius. One of his first acts was to depose the two visitors, or vicars-general, who had been commissioned by Peter, and to appoint in their places two others, one of whom was in prison and the other confined at hard labor in a mine. Peter, hearing of all this, wrote to the church in Alexandria, forbidding fellowship to Meletius until his action had been investigated. A synod of Egyptian bishops was summoned which deposed Meletius, but he had attached to himself a considerable number of followers and partisans, and these he drew off and formed into a rival body. Such in brief was the Meletian schism ; its treatment by the Nicene Council will be considered later. The main reason, however, for calling the council was the controversy over the Trinity. It 398 From Jerusalem to Niccea. will subserve clearness if I give some account of the rise of this controversy and the personalities engaged in it. Alexander had succeeded to Achillas in the episcopate of Alexandria in 313. He was a man already past middle life, of kindly and gentle dis- position, but also with considerable force of char- acter. Arius, his antagonist, was born in Libya about 256, and educated under Lucian in Antioch. When he came to Alexandria 'is not known, but he was ordained deacon by Peter some time be- fore 311, and presbyter by Achillas about 312. After his ordination as presbyter he was given sole charge of a church in Baukalis, where, owing to his eloquence and asceticism, and also to a certain strong personal fascination, he became very popular. On the death of Achillas he seems to have been a very nearly successful rival of Alexander for the vacant episcopate, or rather archiepiscopate, for the bishop of Alexandria was the primate of Egypt. About 318 he began to disseminate his peculiar theological opinions in Alexandrian society. He taught that Christ was not co-eternal, and therefore not co-equal, with the Father; that he was pre-existent, however, having been created by the Father out of noth- ing before all other creatures; that He was the Creator of the world and became incarnate for the salvation of men through the Virgin Mary; that, being a creature, He had the power of First Ecumenical Council. 399 choosing good or evil and might conceivably change from good to evil; that in a secondary sense He might be called God, and Logos, but He did not share in the substance of the Father, and therefore there was a time when He was not. Alexander, hearing these sentiments bruited about the city, sought to check their further dissemina- tion by remonstrating with Arius, but without success. Arius continued the propagation of his opinions and with even increased boldness. Then Alexander summoned a conference of the clergy, in which there was a free discussion between the adherents of Arius and the orthodox clergy. At first Alexander sought to conciliate, but finally he took strong ground and unequivocally asserted the co-eternity of the Son with the Father, and administered a reproof to Arius. The latter re- torted by charging Alexander with Sabellianism. The conference broke up without reaching any conclusion. Arius and his adherents continued the agitation. Then Alexander wrote a letter to Arius and his supporters, exhorting them to renounce their "impiety," and this letter was signed by a majority of the clergy. This also proved to be fruitless, and a synod was called of nearly one hundred Egyptian and/Libyan bishops before which the Arians were summoned to ap- pear. In the trial the Arians maintained their opinions, stating that the Son was not eternal, but was created by the impersonal Wisdom of the 40O From Jerusalem to Niccea. Father. When asked, "Can He, then, change from good to evil, as Satan did?" they replied, "Since He is a creature, such a change is not impossible." On hearing this the synod anath- ematized their doctrines and excommunicated Arius. This took place about the year 320. Instead of arresting the agitation in the city, this action seemed only to increase it. The common people mingled in the debate. Arius wrote a book of songs called "Thalia," in which in rude metre his doctrines were set forth, and these songs were sung in the streets. Says Stanley: "Sailors, millers and travellers sang the disputed doctrines at their occupations, or on their journeys. Every corner, every alley of the city was full of these discussions, — the streets, the market-places, the drapers, the money- changers, the victualers. Ask a man how many oboli, he answers by dogmatizing on generated and ungenerated being. Inquire the price of bread, and you are told, 'The Son is subordinate to the Father.' Ask if the bath is ready, and you are told, 'The Son arose out of nothing. ' ! Some of the Arians in debate rudely asked women who contended with them : " Pray, had you a son before you were a mother? " It is difficult for one trained in Occidental habits of thought to understand a condition of the popular mind like that which prevailed in the Greek-Egyptian city of Alexandria. The con- First Eaimenical Council. 401 troversy spread to other cities. Arius, rinding that he could not maintain himself, left the city and went to Palestine. Here he aroused the sympathy of Eusebius of Csesarea, who sought to mediate between him and Alexander; he also came into communication with Eusebius of Nico- media, his former school-fellow under Lucian in Antioch, who warmly espoused his cause. Alexander wrote a long letter to his name- sake, the bishop of Constantinople, in which he gave an account of the controversy, expounded and defended at length the view of Christ which he had maintained as the true view, and an- nounced the excommunication of Arius and his companions. He wrote v similar letters to Philo- gonius, bishop of Antioch, to Eustathius, then bishop of Berea, and to others who held the orthodox opinion. Arius also wrote letters, defending himself, which he addressed "to all those who he thought were of his sentiments." In his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia he accused Alexander of oppressing and most severely per- secuting himself and his companions, and causing them much suffering. He says : " He has driven us out of the city as atheists, because we do not concur in what he publicly preaches, namely, that the Father has always been, and that the Son has always been ; that as the Father so is the Son; that the Son is unbegotten as the Father; that He is always being begotten, without hav- 26 402 From Jerusalem to Niece a. ing been begotten ; that neither by thought nor by any interval does God precede the Son, God and the Son having always been; and that the Son proceeds from God." He cites Eusebius of Caesarea, Theodotius, Paulinus, and others as implicitly involved in the condemnation which had been pronounced upon himself. In explica- tion of his own theological position he declares: "We say and believe, and have taught, and do teach, that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way unbegotten, even in part; and that he does not derive his subsistence from any matter; but that by his own will and counsel he has subsisted before time, and before ages, as perfect God, only begotten and unchangeable, and that he existed not before he was begotten, or created, or pur- posed, or established. For he was not unbe- gotten. We are persecuted, because we say that the Son had a beginning, but that God was with- out beginning." Arius has been charged with a want of entire frankness in this letter, and he certainly seems diplomatically to have modified the earlier statement of his views. Eusebius of Nicomedia wrote to Paulinus, bishop of Tyre, expressing sentiments in sub- stantial agreement with those set forth in the preceding letter of Arius, and urged him to exert his influence upon Alexander. He says: " I feel confident that if you will write to him, you will succeed in bringing him over to your First Ecumenical Council. 403 opinion." Eusebius of Csesarea also wrote to Alexander, urging him to re-admit Arius to communion. Meanwhile a synod, convened in Bithynia, issued letters "to all the bishops, desir- ing them to hold communion with the Arians as with those making a true confession, and to require Alexander to hold communion with them likewise." Alexander, however, remained firm; Arius, notwithstanding the archbishop's uncom- promising attitude, returned to Alexandria and resumed his functions. Eusebius now brought the matter before Con- stantine and persuaded him to write a letter to Alexander and Arius to allay the strife and reconcile the antagonists. The bearer of the letter was Hosius, bishop of Cordova in Spain, and the friend and trusted counsellor of Con- stantine. In this letter the emperor expresses his great desire for peace, and his grief over the dissensions that had arisen in Alexandria. He exclaims : " O glorious Providence of God ! How deep a wound did not my ears only, but my very heart, receive in the report that divisions existed among yourselves more grievous still than those which continued in that country! " (He alludes to the Donatist schism in Africa.) "So that you, through whose aid I had hoped to procure a remedy for the errors of others, are in a state which needs healing even more than theirs." After setting forth his understanding of how the 404 From Jerusalem to Niccza. quarrel arose, he says : " Let therefore both the unguarded question and the inconsiderate answer receive your mutual forgiveness. For the cause of your difference has not been any of the lead- ing doctrines or precepts of the Divine law, nor has any new heresy respecting the worship of God arisen among you. You are in truth of one and the same judgment : you may 'therefore well join in communion and fellowship. For as long as you continue to contend about these small and very insignificant questions, it is not fitting that so large a portion of God's people should be under the direction of your judgment, since you are thus divided between yourselves." He ap- peals to them thus : " Restore me then my quiet days, and untroubled nights, that the joy of undimmed light, the delight of a tranquil life, may henceforth be my portion. Else must I needs mourn, with constant tears, nor shall I be able to pass the residue of my days in peace. For while the people of God, whose fellow-ser- vant I am, are thus divided among themselves by an unreasonable and pernicious spirit of conten- tion, how is it possible that I shall be able to maintain tranquillity of mind?" It is evident from his letter that Constantine little understood the nature and importance of the matter under discussion, and the extent to which the contro- versy had gone, yet it is uncritical to say, with Pusey, that he attached as much importance to First Ecumenical Council. 405 the Easter controversy as he did to the contro- versy on the relation of the Son to the Father, if not more. Hosius delivered the letter, but found that the contention had grown too fierce and had spread too widely to be quieted even by imperial in- fluence. It appears that during, or immediately after, the mission of Hosius, Arius wrote a letter of remonstrance which angered the emperor. To this Constantine, who was now in a different mood, or perhaps had come under different influences, replied in a letter to Arius filled with irony and invective against him and his adher- ents. This he caused to be published throughout the cities. He also wrote to the Nicomedians severely censuring Eusebius and Theognis, the bishop of Nicaea. The controversy had now at- tained such proportions . that Constantine, prob- ably at the suggestion of Hosius, summoned an Ecumenical Council of the bishops of the Church to meet in the city of Nicaea in the spring of 325. The impression which one gets from the clever and brilliant pages of Gibbon is not at all favor- able to the Christians. Gibbon, learned as he was, seems to have had no power to appreciate the deeper aspects of the great controversy that distracted the Christian Church. There is much, indeed, in the conduct and spirit of the various disputants to excite mirth, which at times, if not 406 From Jerusalem to Niccea. restrained by charity, even deepens into scorn. But those men, who debated over abstract theo- logical questions with a vehemence and fury which we can little understand, were not mere fanatics and selfish ecclesiastical disputants. In their way they were grappling with the pro- foundest problem of philosophy as well as the- ology, and were fighting a battle the result of which has been of the deepest significance to the entire Christian Church throughout all succeed- ing centuries. Whatever may be our individual views as to the doctrine of the Trinity, we can- not, if we are serious students of the progress of human thought, treat lightly the discussions which finally precipitated the formula known as the Nicene Creed. * Nicaea, where the Council was convened, was a city in Bithynia about twenty miles from Nicomedia, which was the ancient capital of Bithynia, and, since the time of Diocletian, the capital city of the empire in the East. It was situated near the Propontis, at the head of the Ascanian lake. Strabo, who wrote about the beginning of the Christian era, thus describes Nicaea as it appeared in his time : " It is sur- rounded by a very large and very fertile plain, which in the summer is not very healthy. Its first founder was Antigonus, the son of Philip, who called it Antigonia. It was then rebuilt by Lysimachus, who changed its name to that of his First Ecumenical Council. 407 wife Nicaea. She was the daughter of Antipater. The city is situated in a plain. Its shape is quadrangular, eleven stadia [about one and one- third miles] in circuit. It has four gates. Its streets are divided at right angles, so that the four gates may be seen from a single stone set up in the middle of the Gymnasium." Stanley somewhat fancifully suggests that the name, as being of good omen, may have influenced the mind of Constantine — NUrj meaning victory. More probably the place was chosen because of its proximity to the Eastern capital, and because also it was easy of access. The wretched Turk- ish village of Is-nik (eh NUcuav), which is the modern representative of the ancient Nicaea, contains a few ruined mosques and the remains of a solitary Christian Church dedicated to "the Repose of the Virgin," and is surrounded by tangled thickets in which lie scattered broken columns, — mournful relics of a once beautiful and quite populous city. Stanley, who visited the place before writing his History of the Eastern Church, tells us that within the little church in Is-nik may be found a rude picture commemorating the Council, — "the one event which, amidst all the vicissitudes of Nicaea, has secured for it an immortal name." Two interesting reflections occur to us at this point. One is the extraordinary spectacle of a Roman emperor, sole ruler of a domain that was 408 From Jerusalem to Niccea. co-extensive with all Europe and a good part of Asia and Africa, calling an Ecumenical Council of a religious sect which had arisen less than three hundred years before from the preaching of a Galilean peasant ! The other is the session of this Council in the very province where two hundred and fifteen years before had begun the formal persecution of this religious sect by the empire. Whatever may have been the political motives which determined Constantine to call the Council, — and undoubtedly there were political motives, since the strife in the Church, extending itself among the laity, had already " threatened serious consequences of a political nature," — he was in- fluenced also by his regard for the Church ; and, considering the bishops to be representatives of God and Christ and organs of the Divine Spirit, he naturally looked to them to provide the means for restoring peace. As Neander suggests, he also "had before him the established custom of deciding controversies in the single provinces by assemblies composed of all the provincial bishops." It would appear to Constantine, there- fore, to be the most natural means of settling not only the doctrinal controversy but also the con- troversy over the time for holding the Easter festival, to convoke a Council of all the bishops in his empire. In his summons to the bishops the emperor directed that the means for public First Ecumenical Council. 409 conveyance should be put at their disposal, and provision was made for two presbyters and three servants to accompany each bishop. Dean Stan- ley justly observes that the controversy which was the occasion of the Council was characteris- tically Eastern and Greek, — " such as no Western mind could have originated." It is not sur- prising, therefore, that of the more than three hundred bishops who came to the Council (the traditional number is three hundred and eighteen) three hundred and ten were from the East, and that the language used in the Council was Greek. Accompanying the bishops was a multitude of presbyters, deacons and acolytes, aggregating in all perhaps two thousand, and even a higher number is given. One account states the total number as two thousand three hundred and forty- eight. It was a motley company that came together, containing representatives from Egypt and Libya and Nubia and Spain and Italy and Gaul and Pannonia and Arabia and Syria and Cap- padocia and even Persia and Scytbia. Eusebius likens it to the gathering in Jerusalem in the time of the Apostles, "among whom were Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and the parts of Libya about Cyrene; and sojourners from Rome, both Jews and prose- lytes, Cretans and Arabians." "But that assem- bly," he adds, "was less, in that not all who 410 From Jerusalem to Niccea. composed it were ministers of God; but in the present company, the number of bishops exceeded two hundred and fifty, while that of the pres- byters and deacons in their train, and the crowd of acolytes and other attendants was altogether beyond computation." The majority of these were undoubtedly uneducated, and many of them were obscure, but among them were men of learn- ing and eloquence and distinction. The various motives that drew these men together were per- sonal interest in the discussion and its issues, desire to promote the peace of the Church, curi- osity to see the emperor, and, in some cases cer- tainly, a hope of furthering private ends. As the crowds began to arrive the controversy be- tween the partisans of the various views broke out on the streets. Laymen and philosophers as well as ecclesiastics mingled in the discussion. A story is variously told by Socrates, Sozomen, and Rufinus that a certain heathen philosopher named Eulogius, or "Fair-Speech," was so skil- ful in sophistical debate that he overcame his Christian opponents, when suddenly an aged Con- fessor, whom one or two later writers wrongly identify with the shepherd-bishop Spyridon, stepped forth in defence of the faith. He was a rude figure, bearing, in one empty eye-socket and a mutilated leg, the marks of the terrible persecution under Maximian; 1 and the bystanders 1 This description fits Paphnutius rather than Spyridon. First Ecumenical Council. 411 were excited, some of them to laughter by his appearance, and some of them to anxiety because he seemed a champion that by his want of learn- ing and dialectical skill invited defeat. The old man, nothing daunted, abruptly said to the sophist: "Christ and the apostles left us, not a system of logic, nor a vain deceit, but a naked truth, to be guarded by faith and good works." He then briefly recited the simple and impres- sive elements of the Christian creed, and said : "Do not therefore expend your labor in vain by striving to disprove facts which can only be understood by faith, or by scrutinizing the man- ner in which these things did or did not come to pass. Answer me, dost thou believe ? " The philosopher, overcome with astonishment at the directness and dignity of the aged confessor, replied: "I believe." The old man answered: "Then, if thou believest, rise and follow me to the Lord's house, and receive the sign of this faith." The philosopher turned to his disciples, and the other bystanders, and said: "Hear, my learned friends. So long as it was a matter of words, I opposed words to words, and whatever was spoken I overthrew by my skill in speaking; but when, in the place of words, power came out of the speaker's lips, words could no longer resist power, man could no longer resist. If any of you feel as I have felt, let him believe in Christ, and let him follow this old man in whom God has 412 From Jerusalem to Niccea. spoken." The story is not inherently incredible, and is a fine example "of the magnetic power of earnestness and simplicity over argument and speculation." The Council opened some time in the last of May, or early in June. 1 The meetings were held mainly in a large hall in the imperial residence. According to Stanley, the first meeting was held in the Gymnasium, or the church, but the sub- sequent meetings were held in the palace. When the bishops, with their assistant deacons and presbyters, were all assembled and seated on benches ranged along the walls on each side of the large oblong hall, and "a low chair of wrought gold " had been set for the emperor at the upper end of the seats, "general silence prevailed in expectation of the emperor's arrival." I quote from Eusebius' " Life of Constantine" his descrip- tion of Constantine's appearance before the Coun- cil : "First of all, three of his immediate family entered in succession, then others also preceded his approach, not of the soldiers or guards who usually accompanied him, but only friends in the faith. And now, all rising at the signal which indicated the emperor's entrance, at last he him- 1 Socrates says: "This Synod was convened (as we have dis- covered from the notation of the date prefixed to the record of the Synod) in the consulate of Paulinus and Julian, on the 20th day of May, and in the 636th year from the reign of Alexander the Mace- donian." Others, however, give dates varying from May 20 to June 19. Contemporary information is very scanty. First Ecumenical Council. 413 self proceeded through the midst of the assembly, like some heavenly messenger of God, clothed in raiment which glittered as it were with rays of light, reflecting the glowing radiance of a purple robe, and adorned with the brilliant splendor of gold and precious stones. Such was the external appearance of his person ; and with regard to his mind, it was evident that he was distinguished by piety and godly fear. This was indicated by his downcast eyes, the blush on his countenance, and his gait. For the rest of his personal excellences, he surpassed all present in height of stature and beauty of form, as well as in majestic dignity of mien, and invincible strength and vigor. All these graces, united to a suavity of manner, and a serenity becoming his imperial station, declared the excellence of his mental qualities to be above all praise." The emperor remained standing until the bish- ops beckoned him to be seated, and then the whole assembly also sat down, and the Council formally opened. At this point, according to Theodoret, Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, pronounced a pan- egyric upon the emperor, but, according to Sozo- men and other writers, it would seem to have been Eusebius of Caesarea who addressed the emperor, and this testimony is not contradicted by Eusebius himself. Before the opening of the Council, immediately upon the emperor's arrival in the city, there had 414 From Jerusalem to Niccea. been put into his hand a large number of peti- tions from various ecclesiastics, "containing com- plaints against those by whom they considered themselves aggrieved. " Constantine, in his reply to the address of welcome by Eusebius, dis- claimed having read the petitions, and said : " All these accusations will be brought forward at the great day of judgment, and will be judged by the Great Judge of all men; as to me, I am but a man, and it would be evil in me to take cog- nizance of such matters, seeing that the accusers and the accused are priests; and priests ought so to act as never to become amenable to the judg- ment of others. Imitate, therefore, the Divine love and mercy of God, and be ye reconciled to one another; withdraw your accusations against each other, be ye of one mind, and devote your attention to those subjects connected with the faith on account of which we are assembled." He then ordered a brazier to be brought in and burnt the petitions in the presence of the assembly. The emperor's address to the Council, de- livered in a "calm and gentle tone," was simple, dignified, and entirely conciliatory. He earnestly exhorted the bishops to peace. " Delay not, then, dear friends; delay not, ye ministers of God, and faithful servants of him who is our common Lord and Saviour: begin from this moment to discard the causes of that disunion which has existed among you, and remove the perplexities of con- First Ecumenical Council. 415 troversy by embracing the principles of peace. For by such conduct you will at the same time be acting in a manner most pleasing to the Supreme God, and you will confer an exceeding favor on me who am your fellow-servant." The address was delivered in Latin and was immediately repeated in Greek by the imperial translator. It will help us to get a more vivid idea of this memorable Council if I give some brief notice of the more distinguished personalities who filled places in it. Among these, of course, the emperor comes first. Constantine was born at Naissus, Upper Moesia, in 274; he was there- fore, at the time of the Council, forty-nine years old and in his full prime. His father, Constan- tius, who was a nephew of the emperor Claudius, was made Caesar under Diocletian's complex im- perial system in 292, and ruled over Spain, Gaul, and Britain. On the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian, in 305, he became Augustus, with Galerius. Constantine's mother was Helena, the daughter of an inn-keeper. Since the time of William of Malmesbury the idea has been widely current that she was a British princess, and that Constan- tine, her first and only son, was born in Britain ; but the truth is that she was a native of Bithynia and she held no higher position than that of con- cubine to Constantius until after the birth of her 4i6 From yerusalem to Niece a. son, when she was formally married. When Con- stantius became Caesar he divorced Helena be- cause Maximian wished him to marry Theodora, the emperor's step-daughter. After Constantine became emperor, Helena, who had never remar- ried, was recalled to the court, and under his influence she became a Christian. She is famous in ecclesiastical history because of a pilgrimage which she made to the Holy Land when she was eighty years old, and on which she is said to have discovered the true cross of Christ. Constantine, at the age of sixteen, was sent to the court of Diocletian, where he was kept as a sort of hostage for his father. He was a youth of great enterprise and courage, and early devel- oped exceptional military skill. In 296 he served with such distinction in the Egyptian campaign, and, later, in the war with Persia, under Galerius, that he was appointed a tribune of the first rank. Galerius became so jealous of the rising young soldier that he sent him on enterprises of unusual danger, but the discipline which Constantine thus received proved a good schooling for his future career. In 305, when Constantius became Augustus, he requested that his son might be sent to him. Permission was given, but, having reason to fear that it would be revoked, Constantine left the court at once, and made a journey of extraordi- nary rapidity across Europe. In the following year Constantius died at York, Britain, and with First Ecumenical Council. 417 the sympathy and support of the army Constantine assumed the purple. His course from that time on was marked by a series of triumphs over his rivals until, in October, 312, he defeated Maxen- tius at the Milvian Bridge and entered Rome. He was now sole emperor of the West. In July 323 he defeated Licinius at Adrianople, and thus became sole ruler of the empire East and West. Constantius his father had adopted a tolerant policy toward the Christians, and ignored the per- secuting edict issued by Galerius. Constantine followed his father's policy. Previous to the bat- tle at the Milvian Bridge he became a professed convert to Christianity, being incited thereto, according to Eusebius, by the appearance, a little after mid-day, of a blazing Cross in the heavens bearing the motto, "By this conquer," and by a dream on the following night, in which Christ interpreted to him the sign, and directed him to make a standard on which the cross, or, according to others, a monogram consisting of the first two letters of XpicrTos, should be wrought. Constantine's conversion, at this time, was not at all spiritual, but his favorable attitude towards Christianity is apparent in the edict which, con- jointly with Licinius, he issued in March, 313, known as the "Edict of Milan." This edict restored all civil and religious rights to the Christians and secured to them full toleration throughout the empire. 27 418 From Jerusalem to Niccza. Constantine's military career closed with his victory over Licinius, and the remainder of his reign was tranquil, save as it was disturbed by ecclesiastical strife. At the Council he was in the full splendor of his fame as conqueror of all his enemies and rivals, and as the first Christian emperor. He was tall and powerfully built, with a thick neck and broad shoulders, the embodi- ment of strength and sturdy health. His com- plexion was ruddy, his nose slightly hooked, his eyes brilliant and indicative of commanding force, and his whole bearing lion-like. His hair and beard were slightly curly and rather thin, and his voice, usually, was gentle and musical. Clad in splendid attire and surrounded by the glamour of his achievements and position, he made a pro- found impression upon the Council; and yet, so independent in thought were these Christian bishops, and so fearless were they through their training and their convictions, that their final decision seems to have been in no way materially affected by the imperial presence, since it was given in favor of the Alexandrian position, not- withstanding that Constantine, in so far as he understood the question at issue, was really a sympathizer with the Arians. Among all those who were present at the Council no one has projected so large a figure upon the vision of subsequent times as the little First Ecumenical Council. 419 and youthful deacon from Alexandria, Athanasius, who was not strictly a member of the Council, but only an attendant upon the good bishop Alex- ander. He was born in Alexandria about 296, and was therefore only twenty-nine years old at the time of the Council. Little is known of his family, save that an aunt of his suffered from Arian cruelty during his second exile. He seems to have been poor in material goods, but in the intellectual atmosphere of the Egyptian Athens he acquired a substantial education. Of his boy- hood Rufinus tells us the following story: One day Alexander, the bishop, looking from his win- dow towards the sea, saw some boys playing on the beach, in imitation of the church ceremonial. After a little time, fearing that the game was drawing too near to sacrilege, Alexander called the boys into his presence, and then found that one of them, named Athanasius, had played the part of a bishop and, as such, had baptized several of his companions, who had never previously received the rite. After consulting with his clergy, the bishop determined to recognize this baptism as valid, and he commended the boy- bishop and his companions to their respective relations to be trained for the service of the Church. There is a serious chronological ob- jection to this story, since at the time when Alexander became bishop Athanasius must have been quite seventeen years old, and, therefore, a 420 From Jerusalem to Niccea. rather large boy to be playing at church. How- ever, this is true, that his unusual ability was early recognized, and he became an inmate of Alexander's house as his companion and secre- tary. It was both a fortunate and an agreeable position for the youth, since it afforded him ex- ceptional opportunities for education, and Alex- ander was a man of sweet and lovable temper. Athanasius gave himself assiduously to the study of Christian theology. As early as 318, about the 'beginning of the controversy between Arius and Alexander, he produced two works, or essays, one entitled, "Against the Greeks," and the other entitled, "On the Incarnation." Of the latter writing Moehler says, that it is "the first attempt that had been made to present Christianity and the chief circumstances of the life of Jesus Christ under a scientific aspect. By the sure tact of his noble and Christian nature, everything is referred to the Person of the Redeemer: everything rests upon Him; He appears throughout." In the former writing he departed from the method of previous apologists ; for, disregarding the absurd and immoral stories of the gods which they had repeatedly exposed and ridiculed, he attacked the very basis of pagan theology. His conception of nature was determined by his fundamental principle of the Divine Immanence, and in this principle he found the perfectly effective argu- ment against polytheism. " The all-powerful and First Ecumenical Council. 421 perfect reason of the Father," he said, "pene- trating the universe, developing everywhere its forces, illuminating with His light things visible and invisible, made of them all one whole and bound them together, allowing nothing to escape from His powerful action, vivifying and preserv- ing all beings in themselves, and in the harmony of the creation." Athanasius was ordained deacon about this time and placed at the head of the Alexandrian deacons. He threw himself into the Arian con- troversy with all the ardor of a fervid tempera- ment and a profound conviction of the truth of the orthodox conception. Until the time of the Council, however, he kept his own personality in the back-ground, and did his work chiefly as an assistant of Alexander. In the Council, where he quickly became the leading figure, and a tower of strength to Alex- ander and his companions, he showed himself a keen disputant, a close reasoner, and a ready and fluent interpreter of Scripture. "He so well defended the doctrines of the apostles," says Theodoret, " that he obtained the approbation of all who upheld the truth, and excited the enmity of those who opposed it. " Within a year after the Council, Alexander died, and Athanasius was chosen as his suc- cessor. His personal appearance was not calcu- lated at first sight to make any great impression 422 From yerusalem to Niccsa. upon beholders. He was short of stature, almost -dwarfish, and had a slight stoop. He had a hooked nose and a short beard which spread out at the sides. But there must have been some- thing more than ordinary in his countenance, especially when it was illuminated by the excite- ment of debate. Gregory Nazianzen tells us, that he had "almost angelic beauty of face and expression." Of Arius I have already given some account ; it remains only for me to sketch his personal appearance. At the time of the Council he was about sixty years old, more than double the age of his chief antagonist. He was tall and lean, with a certain sinuous motion of his body, — like that of a snake, his antagonists said. He had an emaciated and pallid countenance and a downcast look. His abundant hair was long and tangled. He had, however, a singularly sweet voice and an earnest and winning manner, and he displayed at times a kind of wild and passionate eloquence. He was a man of severely ascetic temper and habits, and exercised an unusual de- gree of personal fascination over his followers. The aged Alexander, bishop of the most intel- lectual diocese in Christendom at that time, was one of the foremost in dignity if not in intellec- tual force. Of all the bishops present in the First Ecumenical Council. 423 Council he was the only one who bore the title of Papa, or Pope. That term had been used to designate the Christian bishop in Carthage as well as in Alexandria, but, as far as we can learn, in no other part of Christendom. Alexander's influence on the discussions was completely over- shadowed by that of his able deacon Athanasius. On account of his dignity and position Alexander was chosen one of the presidents of the Council, in company with Eustathius, the pious, learned, and eloquent bishop of Antioch, and probably also Eusebius of Caesarea. High in the esteem of the Council was the already venerable Hosius, bishop of Corduba, or Cordova, in Spain. For nearly half a century he was the foremost bishop of his time. He was born in Spain about the year 256, and was there- fore nearly or quite seventy years old at the time of the Council. He lived to be over a hundred, and sustained an important relation to the con- troversies that disturbed the church subsequent to the Council. Hosius was much revered and trusted by Constantine, who sought his advice in ecclesiastical matters. His spirit was uniformly mild and conciliatory. Another important figure was that of Eusebius of Caesarea, who had been a pupil and friend of Pam- philus, whose name he took, so that he is known in history as Eusebius Pamphili. Pamphilus, who 424 From Jerusalem to Niccea. was at once student and saint, lover of learn- ing and lover of God, had sealed his life-long confession of his Master with his blood in 309. Eusebius was the most learned man and the most accomplished and famous writer of his time. To him we are indebted for the earliest and most important history of the first three centuries. He has been justly called "the father of Eccle- siastical History." He was the confidant of the emperor, and, in the Council, occupied the first seat to the right of Constantine. Eusebius of Nicomedia, the most distinguished representative of the Arian movement, the leader rather than the follower of Arius, was a man of considerable learning and undoubted energy. According to Ammianus Marcellinus he was a distant relative of the emperor Julian and there- fore, possibly, a relative of Constantine. He seems to have been a friend and supporter of Licinius, and, after the latter's fall, to have maintained sympathetic relations with his widow, Constantia, the sister of Constantine. Undoubt- edly she protected him from the natural conse- quences of his devotion to her brother's previous rival. He became a bitter and persistent foe of Athanasius. Among the more picturesque figures were James, bishop of Nisibis in Mesopotamia, con- First Ecumenical Council. 425 spicuous for the scars which he had received in the persecution by Maximian, and famed for many miracles; Nicholas, bishop of Myra, famed for his piety and asceticism; the latter he is said to have practised even when he was an infant, abstaining from his mother's breast on Wednes- days and Fridays, the canonical fast days; and Paphnutius, a bishop of Upper Thebes, eminent for piety and good sense, who had one eye torn out and one leg mutilated in the persecution by Maximian, and therefore was much honored as a Confessor. Constantine is said to have felt such regard for this man that he kissed the place where his eye had been torn out, and pressed his purple robe against the Confessor's mutilated leg. To Paphnutius were ascribed many miracles. Spyridon, a bishop of Cyprus, had been a shep- herd; but, as Socrates tells us, "so great was his sanctity while a shepherd that he was thought worthy of being made a shepherd of men." He was therefore made bishop of one of the cities in Cyprus named Trimithuntis. Spyridon, how- ever, did not cease to feed his sheep. Among the extraordinary things related of him are the following: Some thieves, one midnight, planned to carry off his sheep ; but these were protected by Divine Power, and the thieves suddenly found themselves held fast by invisible bands in the fold. In the morning they were discovered by 426 From Jerusalem to Niccza. the good bishop with their hands tied behind their backs. He prayed with them, and then set them free, "exhorting them to support them- selves by honest labor, and not to take anything unjustly." He was evidently a man of some humor, for when he sent the thieves away, he gave them a ram, in order, as he said, that they might not "appear to have watched all night in vain." Another story tells us that his virgin daughter Irene, who shared in her father's piety, had been intrusted with an ornament of considerable value. This, for security, she had hidden in the ground. Some time afterwards she died without making known the hiding-place of the treasure. When the owner of the ornament finally came to claim his property, not finding Irene, he alternately charged her father with an attempt at fraud, and besought him with tears to restore the deposit. The remainder of the story I tell in the words of Socrates: "The old man, regarding this person's loss as his own misfortune, went to the tomb of his daughter, and called upon God to show him in anticipation the promised resurrection. Nor was he disappointed in his hope; for the virgin again reviving appeared to her father, and having pointed out to him the spot where she had hidden the ornament, she once more departed." Among the delegates was Acesius, bishop of a Novatian sect. The presence of this schismat- First Ecumenical Council. 427 ical ecclesiastic by invitation of the emperor is illustrative of Constantine's desire for ecclesias- tical harmony. Acesius was one of those who held that a person who had committed mortal sin after baptism could not be again received to the Communion; he should be exhorted to repent- ance, but must not expect remission from the priests, though he might be forgiven by God, who alone had power to forgive sins. Declaring his views to the emperor, near the close of the Council, it is said that he was facetiously advised by Constantine to " place a ladder and climb alone into heaven." There was also Theophilus, the Goth, who was the predecessor and teacher of Ulfilas, the famous Arian missionary to the Goths and the translator of the sacred Scriptures into the Gothic tongue. Carthage was represented by its bishop, Cseci- lian, who had long been in the midst of a violent contention in Carthage, where he had stood as the leader of the moderate party, and resisted the craze of the zealots for martyrdom and their implacableness towards the " lapsed. " The bishop of Rome, Sylvester, was not present, his great age preventing him from mak- ing the "long journey to Nicaea. He was repre- 428 From Jerusalem to Niccza. sented, however, by the two presbyters, Victor and Vicentius, who, in accordance with the im- perial provision for the bishops, probably would have accompanied him had he been able to attend the Council. These men seem to have had no special prominence or influence in the Council. Rome's day had not yet come. The debate in the Council opened with a vio- lent controversy, each party vehemently charging error upon the other and as vehemently refuting countercharges. The Arian party was led by the three Bithynian bishops, Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis of Nicaea, and Maris of Chalcedon. The party of Alexander was led, not by the bishop himself, but by his deacon, Athanasius. Besides these two parties there was a third, consisting, at the beginning of the Council, of the majority of the bishops, led by Eusebius of Caesarea. These, who were theological disciples of Origen, occupied a middle ground and shaded off, by degrees, on the one hand toward the views of Athanasius, and, on the other, toward the views of Arius. Stanley, with characteristic optimism, pleclares that the discussion was based, not on the principle of authority, save as that appeared in the appeal to the sacred Scriptures, but on the principle of free inquiry; and the right of free expression of opinion was recognized. But this judgment must be taken with a considerable First Ecumenical Council. 429 grain of salt. In the course of the discussion, a creed was produced which had been signed by the eighteen Arian bishops. This creed is not reported, but it evidently set forth extreme Arian views, for it was received, not in accordance with "the principle of free inquiry," and a recognition of "the right of free expression of opinion," but with "tumultuous disapprobation," and was torn in pieces on the spot. So vehement was the opposition to it that all the signers but two, Theonas and Secundus, at once gave up Arius and he was expelled from the Council. Eusebius of Caesarea then presented a creed which had been in use, certainly since his childhood, in the see of Caesarea. It is as follows: — "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things both visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only begotten Son, the First-born of every creature, begotten of the Father before all worlds, by whom also all things were made. Who for our salvation was made flesh, and lived amongst men, and suffered, and rose again on the third day, and ascended to the Father, and shall come in glory to judge the quick and the dead. And we believe in one Holy Ghost. Believing each of them to be and to have existed, the Father, only the Father, and the Son, only the Son, and the Holy Ghost, only the Holy Ghost : As also our Lord sending forth His own disciples to preach, said : ' Go and teach all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the 430 From J erusalem to Niccea. Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; ' concerning which things we affirm that this is so, and that we so think, and that it has long so been held, and that we remain steadfast to death for this faith, anathematizing every godless heresy. That we have thought these things from our heart and soul, from the time that we have known ourselves, and that we now think and say thus in truth, we testify in the name of Almighty God, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, being able to prove even by demonstration, and to per- suade you that in past times also thus we believed and preached." This Creed the Arian minority were willing to adopt, and it was approved by the emperor; but the Alexandrian party were suspicious of a state- ment of doctrine that Arians could accept, and they held off. Then a letter from Eusebius of Nicomedia was produced, in which the writer declared that the application to Christ of the term Homoousion (ofjuoovo-tov, "of the same sub- stance"), was absurd. This letter, like the Arian creed, was torn in pieces amidst great excite- ment, and the fatal word, that was to be the watchword in so many bitter conflicts, was adopted by the Alexandrian wing and promptly applied to all others as a shibboleth. "Homoousion" was not a new word. It had been used by Irenaeus in his criticism of the Gnostic theories of Valentinus, and, later, it was used as a test of orthodoxy in the trial of Paul of Samosata. It was denounced by the Arians as First Ecumenical Council. 431 savoring of Sabellianism, and defended by the orthodox as combating polytheism. In the midst of the struggle, however, the word was adopted by the emperor, as a conciliatory measure, prob- ably under the influence of Hosius, and finally was acceded to with certain qualifications, per- haps also with certain mental reservations, by the party of Eusebius of Caesarea. The creed was then agreed upon and, in the course of a little time, was signed by nearly or quite all of the bishops. Constantine, though he had leaned decidedly toward the semi-Arianism of Eusebius, approved the decision of the bishops. Eusebius took a day for consideration. He found that Constantine understood the word " Homoousion " in a sense accordant with his own previous views, and in the same sense he also accepted it. This creed has passed through such modifica- tions in later times that I give the form in which it was adopted by the Council of Nicaea: — ■ " We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things both visible and invisible ; " And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, be- gotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is to say, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, both things in heaven and things upon earth, — who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, and was made man, suffered, and rose again on the 432 From Jerusalem to Niccua. third day, and went up into the heavens, and will come again to judge the living and the dead ; " And in the Holy Ghost. " But those that say, ' there was when He was not,' and ' before He was begotten He was not,' and that ' He came into existence from not-being,' or who profess that the Son of God is of different substance (v7ros) or essence (ovo-ias), or that He is created, or changeable, or variable, are anathematized by the Catholic Church." Eusebius of Nicomedia and the bishops of Nicaea and Chalcedon, Theognis and Maris, still hesitated. The former consulted Constantia, the emperor's sister, and she persuaded him to com- ply in the interests of peace. They all then subscribed, slyly inserting, it is said, an Iota (i) into the word " Homoousion " ("of the same sub- stance "), making it read " Homoiousion " (ofiotov- o-lovj "of like substance"), but they refused to approve the anathemas pronounced against Arius. Eusebius and Theognis were deposed and ordered into exile, but Constantia interceded for them, and they submitted, and were received and subscribed the creed. The bishops Theonas and Secundus, the deacon Euzoius, the reader Achillas, and the presbyter Saras, were banished, but, according to statements made by Philostorgius, Socrates, and Jerome, they also were ultimately recalled and allowed to subscribe. Arius disappeared, but it seems that he too came back, and the only penalty inflicted on him was a prohibition First Ecumenical Council. 433 against his returning to Alexandria. His book, "Thalia," was condemned and burnt. Of the debate on the Easter question we have no record. The letter of the Council which communicated its decisions to the Churches con- tains the following statement as to the conclusion reached : — " We have also gratifying intelligence to communicate to you relative to unity of judgment on the subject of the most holy feast of Easter ■ for this point has been happily settled through your prayers ; so that all the brethren in the East who have heretofore kept this festival when the Jews did, will henceforth conform to the Romans and to us, and to all who from the earliest time have observed our period of celebrating Easter." Although in some quarters and among a few minor sects the custom still continued of cele- brating the Easter festival on the fourteenth Nisan, the controversy on this subject practically ended with the Council of Nicaea. A more important matter for the Council to settle was that of the Meletian schism. Of this schism I have already given some account. 1 By the decree of the Council, Meletius was allowed to retain his episcopal dignity, but he was de- prived of all authority either to ordain or to nom- inate for ordination, and those who had been appointed by him to ecclesiastical office were 1 See page 396. 28 434 From Jerusalem to Niccza. required to be reordained before admission to the Communion and to rank as ministers. Even then they were to be accounted as inferior to those who had been ordained previously by Alex- ander. Meletius retired to his see of Lycopolis and was silent until after the death of Alexander; but he took part in the controversies which arose about Athanasius, and, before his death, contrary to the decree of the Council, he nominated a friend as his successor in the episcopate. His followers were gradually absorbed into the Arian party. The Council promulgated twenty canons on discipline. The first fixed the incapacity of eunuchs either to receive ordination or to retain ecclesiastical office if previously ordained. The second prohibited the choice of any one as pres- byter or bishop who had not long been baptized or had not received full instruction. The third guarded the purity of the clergy. The fourth required that the consecration of a bishop should be, if possible, by all the bishops of the province, but it allowed his consecration by three bishops, provided that the consent of the absent bishops had been obtained in writing, and that the conse- cration should be finally confirmed by the metro- politan. The fifth interdicted any one wh6 had been excommunicated by his own bishop from be- ing received to the communion by other bishops, and provided for semi-annual synods in each province to be held in the spring and autumn. First Ecumenical Council. 435 The sixth defined the relations between bishops and their metropolitans, and the question of epis- copal jurisdiction. The seventh conceded to the bishop of i^Elia Capitolina, the new city that had been built on the site of Jerusalem, the second place of honor. The eighth provided for the return of those who had been clerical members of the sect known as the Cathari to the bosom of the Church. The ninth and tenth declared null and void the ordination of presbyters made with- out proper inquiry; of those who had confessed sins committed before ordination; and of those who had been ordained in ignorance, or whose sins had come to light after ordination. The eleventh and twelfth dealt with the "lapsed," pre- scribing the conditions for their readmission to the Communion. The thirteenth forbade the denial of the Communion to any one who was likely to die. The fourteenth directed that cate- chumens who had relapsed must remain three years among the "hearers." The fifteenth and sixteenth forbade the translation of bishops from one see to another, and the removal of presbyters or deacons from their own church to another. The seventeenth commanded the deposition of clergy who lent money on usury. The eighteenth prohibited deacons from exercising any function that belongs to a presbyter. The nineteenth required followers of Paul of Samosata to be rebaptized and, in the case of clergy, also to be 436 From Jerusalem to Niccea. reordained. The twentieth ordered all persons to pray standing on Sundays and during the time between Easter and Pentecost. It was proposed to pass another canon estab- lishing the celibacy of the clergy, but this was defeated, mainly by the influence of Paphnutius, who was himself a celibate. He earnestly en- treated the bishops "not to impose so heavy a yoke on the ministers of religion," defended marriage as "honorable among all," and warned them of the danger to morality, and the injury to the Church that would surely result from too great stringency. Having once more vindicated the chastity of the marital relation, he expressed the opinion that those who "had previously entered on their sacred calling should abjure matrimony, according to the ancient tradition of the Church; but that no one should be separated from her to whom, while yet unordained, he had been legally united." The whole assembly listened to his rea- soning, and all debate on this point ceased. " His speech," says Stanley, "produced a profound sen- sation. His own austere life of unblemished celi- bacy gave force to every word that he uttered ; he showed that rare excellence of appreciating diffi- culties which he himself did not feel, and of hon- oring a state of life which was not his own." The Council closed on the 25th of August. During its session two of the bishops, Chrysan- thus and Mysonius, had died and were buried in First Ecumenical Council. 437 the cemetery of Nicaea. A legend of later times tells us that, when the day for final subscription to the decrees of the Council came, the bishops took the roll to the grave of the two dead men, and, addressing them, as Mohammedans are said to address their dead saints, solemnly conjured them that if now in the clearness of the heavenly vision they still approved, they would come and sign the decrees with their brethren. The bishops, leaving a blank space on the roll for the signatures, sealed and laid it on the tomb. After spending the night in prayer, in the morn- ing they returned, and, breaking the seal, found the blank spacefilled with the following: "We, Chrysanthus and Mysonius, fully-concurring with the first Holy and CEcumenical Synod, although removed from earth, have signed the volume with our own hands." At the conclusion of the Council, or late during its session (Stanley gives the date as July 25), Constantine celebrated his Vicennalia, the com- pletion of the twentieth year of his reign. He gave a brilliant and sumptuous banquet to all the bishops, showing them much honor and bestowing on them gifts — "to each individual according to his rank." He also made them a farewell address, in which, according to Eusebius, — "He recommended them to be diligent in the mainten- ance of peace, to avoid contentious disputations amongst themselves, and not to be jealous if any one of their num- 438 From Jerusalem to Niccsa. ber should appear pre-eminent for wisdom and eloquence, but to esteem the excellence of one a blessing common to all. On the other hand, he reminded them that the more gifted should forbear to exalt themselves to the prejudice of their humbler brethren, since it is God's prerogative to judge of real superiority. Rather should they consider- ately condescend to the weaker, remembering that absolute perfection in any case is a rare quality indeed. Each, then, should be willing to accord indulgence to the other for slight offences, to regard charitably and pass over mere human weakness ; holding mutual harmony in the highest honor, that no occasion of mocking might be given by their dissensions to those who are ever ready to blaspheme the word of God." He said much more in a similar vein, and then gave the bishops permission to return to their respective countries. "This they did with joy," says Eusebius, "and," he adds, with almost gro- tesque disregard, or ignorance, of the truth, "thenceforward that unity of judgment at which they had arrived in the emperor's presence con- tinued to prevail, and those who had long been divided were bound together as members of the same body." The bishops were provided with means for their homeward journey at the public expense, and Constantine sent largesses of money to be distributed among the people in various parts of the empire. He also wrote a letter to the churches, announcing the decisions of the Council, especially with reference to the Easter First Ecumenical Council. 439 question, and exhorting all to obey them. A copy of this letter was sent to every 'province. The Great Council which had been called to end the controversy begun in Alexandria was in fact but the beginning of a fierce struggle that continued with wavering fortunes for Athanasian and Arian until near the end of the century, when it was, in a manner, settled in favor of the orthodox party by the action of the emperor, Theodosius. During fifty years party was arrayed against party and bishop against bishop. Now one triumphed, and now the other; and in all parties there developed great heat and bitterness of spirit, and a violence of contention that some- times passed beyond the bounds of the most acrimonious debate, and issued in blows and bloodshed. A new class of martyrs arose — the martyrs to theological hate — and often those that suffered were quite as wrong in spirit as those who inflicted the suffering. Of Athanasius it should be said that he was conspicuous not only for his abilities, but also for the sanity and, con- sidering all the circumstances, the fairness of his temper. His life was a succession of conflicts and enforced exiles from his see in Alexandria, but finally the principle for which he contended prevailed. The real point at issue — the truth towards which the Christian Church was almost uncon- sciously moving — was not the mere Triplicity 44-0 From Jerusalem, to Niccza. of the Divine Nature, but the reality of the Incarnation, — God in man, and in His world. No one seems clearly to have seen this save Athanasius, and even he saw it only in part, for he did not grasp the full breadth of the idea; but he saw it with sufficient clearness to appre- ciate its vital importance and to stand in defence of it, if necessary, against the whole world. He felt that the fight was a struggle for the suprem- acy of the one truth which underlay the whole Christian philosophy and scheme of redemption, — the truth that was at once the only efficacious and the final answer to Paganism and Gnosticism, and the only ground of any reasonable hope for the salvation of the world. Salvation could be accomplished only by the actual contact and com- munication of God with man, therefore Athanasius and the bishops who contended in company with him held fast to the " Homoousion," — the con- substantiality of the Son with the Father. Here- in lies the great and lasting significance of the Nicene Council. " The superficial mind," says Hedge, " is apt to regard these questions, which then agitated the Church and the world, as empty abstractions, senseless quibbles. But the union of God with man is no quibble ; it is a truth of pro- found significance ; and the Council of Nicsea which de- clared it is one of the most important assemblies that were ever convened on this earth : it dates a new era in the history of human thought. God in actual contact with First Ecumenical Council. 441 man — God in man and man in God — is the underlying idea of the Athanasian dogma which asserts that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Probably Athanasius did not perceive the real drift and scope of his doctrine. It was only of the person of Christ that he affirmed sub- stantial community with God. Christ united in His per- son two natures, the human and the divine ; and, by this union of God with man in the person of Christ, human nature is redeemed and restored to health and God. This was the substance of his theology." The decision of the Nicene Council, therefore, affirmed and fixed a principle back of which the Christian Church has never receded and from which it has never swerved. The Nicene symbol stands also as an historic witness to the fulness and richness of the Christian conception of God, in contrast with the weak multifariousness of polytheism and the barrenness of a bald deism. Thus the Christian conception of God recognizes and fulfils all that was true in the different schools of Greek philosophy. Arianism continued in the Church with con- siderable force for three hundred years. The Goths, who were converted to Christianity by Ulfilas, were all Arians. Alaric, Genseric, and Theodoric the Great, who was the hero of the Nibelungen Lied, were Arians. The Lombards were Arians till the close of the sixth century. Arianism also had a strong hold, for a time, upon Spain and Southern France; but, by the begin- 44 2 From Jerusalem to Niccea. ning of the seventh century, it was practically extinct. Through all the fierce theological, and conse- quent political, controversies that disturbed the Church for nearly three centuries after, the Great Council, the Nicene Creed survived. It is still the creed of the whole vast Greek Church; with some modifications, it is also the creed of the Latin Church; and, in its original form and stripped of its condemnatory clauses, it is sub- stantially the creed of universal Christendom. Under the influence mainly of Augustine, the Latin theology soon dominated the Western Church, and gradually excluded or suppressed the richer and nobler thought of the Greek Fathers. The Latin theology to some extent obscured and, while seeming to affirm, almost denied the fun- damental and structural doctrine of the Incarna- tion, the enunciation and persistent defence of which was the chief merit of Athanasius. That doctrine, however, survived through all strife, and now, amidst the changes and even the wreck of creeds, it still survives. In its real essence, it is not an arithmetical threeness of persons in- explicably inhering in one substance, so that we have the impossible conception — three equals one, — as it so often appears in dogmatic the- ology; but it is the reality of God in Christ, as the revelation and archetype of God in humanity, and the pledge of the perfect fulfilment of man's First Ecumenical Council. 443 life by his perfect union with the divine, "being filled with all the fulness of God." It is the supreme doctrine of Christianity, — the Incar- nation, the immanence of God in the realm of personality as well as in the realm of nature. Re- enforced by enlarged knowledge of the world and man, and by higher and purer conceptions of God, that doctrine rises afresh in the consciousness of the Church with power to recreate theology and to inspire and lead the thought of Christendom to a broader and truer and more spiritual philosophy of divine revelation and human history. A P P E N D I X. ON page 252 I have made the statement that "the works of Aristides are wholly lost." While this volume was passing through the press there came into my hand a copy of the recently found "Apology of Aris- tides." This interesting document is a Syriac version which was discovered on Mt. Sinai by Prof. J. Rendel Harris, and is issued as No. I. of Vol. I. of Texts and Studies, published by the Cambridge University Press, under the general editorship of J. Armitage Robinson, B. D. No. I. comprises, besides the Syrian text of "The Apology of Aristides," and several Armenian fragments, an introduction, an English translation, and notes on the Syriac, by J. Rendel Harris, M.A., and an Appendix con- •laining the main portion of the " Original Greek Text " of the Apology, as it is preserved in the story of " Barlaam and Josaphat," to which is prefixed a critical introduction, by J. Armitage Robinson, B. D. Of "The Apology of Aristides" Eusebius gives a brief notice, according to which it must have been written as early, at least, as 133 a.d., and possibly as early as 124. Professor Harris makes an ingenious argument to prove that the date cannot be earlier than the early years of Antoninus Pius, i. e. soon after 138. The question of date is still open, however, with a strong probability in favor of 133 as against any later date. 446 Appendix, At any rate, it is clear that in the recently discovered document we have the earliest extant Christian apologetic writing. The " Apology " is simple and clear in style, and is occupied mainly with an exhibition of the absurdity of the heathen religious ideas and worship, the defectiveness and errors of the Jew's religion, and the simplicity and purity of the Christian faith, character, and life. Perhaps its chief significance lies in the evidence which it affords that as early as the second quarter of the second century the Church had a Symbol of Faith, and that this symbol already embodied the main elements of the Apos- tle's Creed. Professor Harris thus restores the fragments of Aristides' Creed : — " We believe in one God, Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth : And in Jesus Christ His Son Born of the Virgin Mary : He was pierced by the Jews : He died and was buried : The third day He rose again: He ascended into Heaven ; He is about to come to judge INDEX. Acesius, bishop of a Novatian Sect, 426, 427. Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, opponent of Arius, 398-400 ; de- scribed, 422, 423. Alexandria, its Christian School, 333-392; a centre of intellectual life, 334; the Jews in it, 334, 335 ; its Christian Catechetical School, 337-34°- Alexandrian School of literature and philosophy, 333, 334; divided into two schools, 333. Antoninus Pius, his treatment of Christians, 187, 188. Apollonius, of Tyana, 182. Apologies for Christianity, 219-275; the extant fill 24 volumes, 220 ; two classes of them, — in reply to the Jews, 221 ; in reply to pagans, 221-275 ; two schools of their writers, 222, 223 ; their influence on the Roman emperors, 223 ; the Christian virtues the most effec- tive, 224 ; the Greek and Latin contrasted, 224 ; the " Epistle to Diognetus" analyzed and charac- terized, 225-227 ; Justin Martyr's, 233-237 ; Tatian's, 239-246 ; Athe- nagoras's, 247-252 ; Theophilus's, 252 ; Minucius Felix's, 253 ; Lac- ' tantius's, 253. Apostasies of early Christians, 202, 203 ; three classes of them, 202, 203 ; the object of persecutions, 205. Apostles' Creed, its origin and char- acter, 277. Apostles of Christianity, character of the original ones, 47, 48. " Apostolic Constitutions," contents and character of the work. 118- 121 ; rejected as spurious by Eu- sebius and Athanasius, 119; ac- cepted as apostolic by Whiston, 120 ; Bunsen on their origin, 120. Apostolic Fathers, the, 99-162 ; their number, 99 ; " Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," 101, 123-129. Archbishop, the term first applied to all metropolitans, y^- Arianism, its adherents, 441. Aristides, 252 ; his Apology, 445. Arius, his controversy with Alexan- der, 396 ; his doctrines, 398-400 ; excommunicated by a synod of bishops, 400; his doctrinal book of songs, 400 ; Dean Stanley on ibid., 400 ; finds friends in Pales- tine, 401; accuses Alexander of persecution, 401 ; explains his the- ological views, 402 ; personal ap- pearance, 422. Arnobius, 223. Athanasius, a leading figure at the Council of Nicaea, 421 ; his per- 44 8 Index. sonal appearance, 422 ; his quali- ties, 439 ; maintained the reality of the Incarnation, 440 ; why he held fast to the term " Homoousion," 440 ; Dr. Hedge on his theology, 441. Athenagoras, his character, 247; his book "Concerning the Resurrec- tion," 246; his "Embassy" ana- lyzed, 247-252 ; his ideas of in- spiration and the Logos, 251. Aurelian, Roman Emperor, 209. Aurelius, Marcus, 189-197 ; the se- verest persecutor of the early Christians, 1 89 ; his inconsistencies, 189 ; his " Meditations " quoted, 189, 190; influenced by popular clamor, 190 ; Christian apologies addressed to him, 192 ; noted mar- tyrs in his reign, 194-197. Baptism, by laymen, in the Early Church, 57; immersion its form for thirteen centuries, 57; Dean Stanley on its form in the Early Church, 57, 58; the Anglican ru- bric for that of infants, 58 ; how regarded in the Early Church, 86- 89 ; the term used as the equivalent of regeneration and conversion, 87; Justin Martyr on it, 87; Ter- tullian and Cyprian on it, 88 ; the " Teaching of the Twelve" on it, 89 ; infant, not practised till Cy- prian's time, 91 ; infant, opposed by Tertullian, 91. Bardaisan, the Gnostic, his hymns and doctrine, 311, 312. Barnabas, his supposed epistle ana- lyzed, 1 21-123 ; its authorship doubtful, 122. Basilides, the Gnostic, his life and teachings, 292-301 ; Bunsen on him, 301 ; character of his follow- ers, 302, 303. Basilides, Roman officer, his remark- able conversion, 198. Birks, on the " Epistle to Diogne- tus," 227. Bishop, meaning of the word, his earliest function, 67 ; the term interchangeable with " presbyter," 68; when his office was first de- fined, 68 ; causes of development of his office, 68, 69 ; Polycarp ap- pointed to the office in Smyrna, 69 ; development of the office in Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, Corinth, and Rome, 69; also in Gaul and Africa, 70 ; first claim by one of universal dominion, 70 ; absorption by him of administer- ing baptism and the communion, 71; Jerome, on the equivalence of bishops and presbyters, 71, 72. Blandina, a slave girl, her martyr- dom, 195. Bunsen, his characterization of Basi- lides, 301. C^cilian, bishop of Carthage, 427. Caracalla, Roman Emperor, 200, 3 6 4. Carpocrates, the Gnostic, his teach- ings, 290-292 ; licentiousness of his followers, 292. Catacombs, their discovery, 22 ; prove the great number of early Christians in Rome, 23 ; estimates of their extent, 23. Catechumenate, the, formed, 89. Catechumens, defined, 90; divided into four classes, 90. Celsus, on the multiplication of Christians, 30 ; his assault on Christianity, 222 ; Origen's reply to his book, 222, 371, 372. Cerdo, the Gnostic, his doctrines, 289, 290. Index. 449 Cerinthus, the Gnostic, his rise and religious views, 286-288. Christian Catechetical School of Alexandria, its origin, purpose, and teachings, 337-340 ; attended by educated pagans, 338 ~, its defi- nition of faith, 338, 339 ; its char- acterization of the Gnosis, 23^^ 339 ; its defence of the study of philosophy, 339, 340 ; its begin- ning, 340. Christian literature, the sub-apostolic characterized, 161, 162. Christians, the early, their life and gospel of love, 48, 49; their volun- tary communism, 54 ; their intol- erance of paganism, 39, 40, 168 ; denounced as atheists, 168 ; re- garded as unsocial and " haters of the human race," 168, 169 ; de- nounced by priests and teachers, 169 ; make enemies by their pure morality, 170 ; charged with licen- tiousness, magic, and treason, 171 ; Justin Martyr's defence of them, 171, 172 ; vindicated in the " Epis- tle to Diognetus," 172, 173 ; Ter- tullian's " Apology " on their character, 173; beginning of their political persecution, 173, 174; persecuted by the Romans, 174; their attitude toward the Roman state, 176, 177; Ramsay on their anti-Roman organization, 177. Christianity, the germs of its devel- opment found in first three centu- ries, 13 ; its early and rapid spread, 16-22 ; prominent early converts, 19, 20 ; progress in Africa, Ger- many, and Great Britain, 20, 21 ; converts in Diocletian's reign, 21, 22 ; testimony of Tacitus, Pliny, and Christian apologists, to the number of its early converts, 23- 31 ; conquers the Roman Empire in less than 300 years, 31 ; the greatest of spiritual forces, 32; co-extensive with the world's civi- lization, 32 ; condition of the world at its rise, 32-39 ; its diffu- sion aided by the moral conditions of the world, 35-38 ; causes of its rise and early growth, 39-51 ; Gib- bon's statement of these causes considered, 39-43 ; its rapid spread not aided by claims of miraculous power, 40-42 ; its triumph a testi- mony to its divine origin, 50 ; primitive, was non-sacerdotal, 56 ; hospitable to all goodness in ideals and endeavors, 96 ; began without schools, or culture, 99 ; its spread not explainable by "natural causes," 100, 101; its early strug- gle with heathenism, 163-217 ; forms of opposition it encoun- tered, 164, 165 ; causes of early popular antipathy to it, 167-170; its apologists, 218-275 ; Jewish and pagan arguments against it, 221, 222; its true defence, 275 ; summary of its early history, 393, 394- Church, the Early Christian, its or- ganization, 52-98 ; had no ritual, ordinances, or distinction of clergy and laity, 5 5 ; had no creeds or dog- matic tests, its members upon one level, 58 ; its officers, 60 ; its three orders of ministers, 60 ; its worship, 79 ; its controversy over time of Easter festival, 79, 80 ; simplicity of its worship, 80, 81 ; fragments of its hymns, 81, 82 ; changes in its views of worship, 84 ; its observance of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, 84 ; asceti- cism in it, 86 ; its first tendency toward sacramentalism, 86-89; its analogy to the organization of the 29 450 Index. Roman Empire, 94 ; review of its changes, 94, 96; all types exist germinally in it, 97, 98 ; a period of obscurity in its history, 100 ; its debates regarding "lapsed" Christians, 209 ; character of its theological controversies, 405, 406. Clemens, Flavius, executed by Do- mitian, 181. Clement of Alexandria (Titus Fla- vius Clemens), his hymn, 83 ; on pagan religions and philosophies, 223 ; on the diffusion of Chris- tianity, 30 ; his life and character, 34 2 > 343, 354-35 6 ; his works ana- lyzed and characterized, 343-360 ; his story of St. John and the rob- ber, 344-346 ; his " Exhortation to the Greeks," 346-349 ; his "Instructor," or "Tutor," ana- lyzed, with extracts, 349-360 ; on eating, 350; on laughter, 351; on the use of the tongue, 351; on clothes, 352 ; on fondness for jewels, etc., 352, 353 ; on frugality, 353; on philosophy and Gnosti- cism, 355, 356 ; on the relation of faith to knowledge, 355, 356; on the Incarnation, 356 ; on the sources of sin, 356, 357; on pun- ishment and salvation, 357, 358; on asceticism, 358 ; on the salva- tion of all men, 359. Clement of Rome, his writings, 101- 121 ; Lightfoot on the traditions concerning him, 101 ; not, probably, the martyr-consul, Flavius Clem- ens, 103 ; his epistle to the church in Corinth characterized, and its contents described, 104-108; on St. Paul, 105 ; on the reorganiza- tion of the Early Church, 106 ; on the self-sacrifice of Christians, 107 ; his simplicity of mind, 107 ; his letter read as Scripture, 107 ; his second Epistle to the Corinthians analyzed, 108, 109; on the divin- ity of Christ, 108 ; on baptism and the resurrection, 109; " The Clem- entines " ascribed to him, 111. " Clementines, The," their author- ship, in; contents of "The Recognitions," m-116; extract from, 114; character of "The Homilies," 116,117; anti-Pauline spirit, of the work, 1 1 7, 118; Dr. Salmon on its doctrinal character, 118. Clergy, the, when first distinguished from the laity, 72, y^- Commodus, Roman Emperor, favor- able to Christians, 197. Constantine, becomes Roman Em- peror, 214, 215; defeats Maxen- tius, 215; his "Edict of Milan," 215; writes to Alexander and Arius, urging a reconciliation, 403, 404 ; his second letter to Arius, 405 ; his motives for calling the Council of Nicaea, 408; his ap- pearance before the Council, 412, 413 ; his treatment of petitions from ecclesiastics, 414 ; his ad- dress to the Council of Nicaea, 414, 415; sketch of his birth and career, 415-418; his conversion to Christianity, 417; his personal appearance, 418 ; approves the bishops' decision concerning " Ho- moousion," 431 ; banquets the bishops of the Council of Nicaea, 437; his farewell address and lar- gesses to them, 437, 438 ; an- nounces to the churches the Coun- cil's decisions, 438. Council, the first Ecumenical, 393— 443 ; for what purposes called, 396; Constantine' s motives in call- ing it, 408 ; number and character of its members and their at ten- Index. 45i dants, 409, 410; discussions in the .streets, 410 ; where held, 412 ; Con- stantine's appearance before it, 412, 413 ; his address to it, 414, 415 ; distinguished men in it, 415- 428 ; its parties, 428 ; its treatment of an Arian creed, 429, 430; ex- pels Arius, 429; agrees upon a creed, 431; creed adopted by it, 431 ; prohibits Arius from re- turning to Alexandria, and burns his book, " Thalia," 432 ; its de- cision on the Easter question, 433; its decree concerning the Meletian schism, 433, 434 ; pro- mulgates twenty canons on disci- pline, 434-436 ; refuses to decree the celibacy of the clergy, 436; its close, 436; legend concerning the subscription to its decrees, 437 ; controversies that followed it, 439 ; Dr. Hedge on its impor- tance, 440, 441. Creed, the Nicsean, its adherents, 442 ; its vitality, 442 ; its essence, 442, 443- Cyprian convenes a synod in Car- thage, 21 ; his caution to the clergy, 72; on the equality of bishops, 74; a sacerdotalist, 77; on baptism, 88 ; on the baptism of infants, 91 ; on the Lord's Sup- per, 93 ; flees from persecution, 205 ; his martyrdom, 208. Deacons, derivation and meaning of the word, 60, 61 ; origin of the diaconate, 61, 62; their two func- tions in Early Church, 62 ; Uhl- horn on their function, 63 ; Dean Stanley on the diaconate, 64 ; their duties in the Early Church, 64, 65 ; their number limited to seven, 65. Decius, Roman Emperor, his perse- cution of Christians, 200-206 ; his edict against them, 201 ; apostasies of Christians in his reign, 202, 203. Didache, or " The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," 101 ; analyzed, 123-129 ; when the MSS. was discovered, 123; other books con- tained in the MSS., 123 ; impor- tance of the document, 123; vari- ously dated by scholars, 124 ; the oldest manual of apostolic teach- ing and discipline, 124; quoted, 125, 126, 128; simplicity of its theology, 126 ; on Sunday and church officers, 127, 129. Diocletian, Roman Emperor, his persecution of Christians, 210- 214 ; associates Galerius with him, 211; his edicts against Christian churches and scriptures, 212-213. Dionysius, his life, doctrine, and writings, 385,386; Westcott on ibid., 386. Dogma, the development of Chris- tian, 49. Domitian, the Roman Emperor, and the relatives of Jesus, 182, 183. Easter, when first celebrated as a festival, 80. Ebionites, their religious views, 281- 283. Ecclesiastical Systems, attempts to trace them to time of Christ or the Apostles, 53. Ecumenical Council, the first, at Nicaea, 79, 393~443- Episcopacy, the causes of its devel- opment into a hierarchy, 74 ; Lightfoot on its growth during the first three centuries, 75 ; its devel- opment followed by sacerdotalism, 76. "Epistle to Diognetus," its author- ship, 225 ; extracts from, 225-227 ; its value, 227. 452 Index. Eucharist, the, when and how ob- served, 91 ; Justin Martyr on it, 92, 93 ; Tertullian on it, 93 ; Cy- prian on it, 94. Eulogius, a heathen philosopher, vanquished by an aged confessor, 410-412. Eusebius, of Caesarea, confidant of the Emperor Constantine, 423 ; presents a creed to the Council of Nicaea, 429, 430 ; accepts the term " Homoousion " in the creed, 431 ; criticises Papias, 141. Eusebius, of Nicomedia, agrees theologically with Arius, 402 ; the - foe of Athanasius, 424, 430 ; on the application of the term " Ho- moousion " to Christ, 430 ; his letter to the Nicaean Council torn in pieces, 430; subscribes the Nicaean creed, after insert- ing an Iota into " Homoousion," 432. Fisher, G. P., quoted, $7. Galerius, Roman Emperor, perse- cutes the Christians, 212, 214; his dying edict, 215. Gallienus, Roman Emperor, charac- terized, 209. Gallus, Roman Emperor, persecu- tions under him, 206. Gibbon, Edward, on the causes of the rise and growth of Christianity, 39-43 ; on the controversies in the Church, 405. Gnosticism, 277-284 ; its origin, 278 ; eclectic, 279 ; its principles and characteristics, 279-281; its vari- ous forms, 279 ; its sects distin- guished, 280; its ideas of Christ and redemption, 2S0, 281; sketches of its chief representatives, 284- 326; its good and evil elements, 326,327; unfairly criticised, 331, 33 2 - Gospel, contents of that preached by Christ's disciples, 46; its appeal to human reason and to the sensi- bility of the wretched, 46; how propagated, 47, 48 ; shaped by Jewish ideals, 163 ; obstacles to its spread, 164. Gregory (Thaumaturgus), his life, writings, and character, 387-392; his panegyric on Origen quoted, 388-391. Hadrian, Roman Emperor, his persecution of Christians, 186, 187. Harnack, quoted, toi ; on Irenaeus, 331 ; on the Valentinian schools, 310, 311 ; on Marcion, 315. Hatch, on the changes in the func- tions of the episcopate, 71. Hedge, F. H., on the ancient Church controversies, 440, 441. Helena, wife of Constantius, 416. Heracles, bishop of Alexandria, 384, 385. Heresies, — the Struggle within the Church, 276-332 ; use of the term by Fathers of the Church, 276; their treatment by the Early Church, 332. Hermas, his book, "The Shep- herd," analyzed and characterized, 129 ; Lightfoot on the book, 129; the Fathers' opinion of it, 130; Athanasius's opinion of it, 131; opinions as to its authorship, 131, 132 ; on divorce and second mar- riages. 137 ; on fasting, 137. Herrick, his verses on fasting, 138. "Homoousion," its religious his- tory, 430 ; adopted by Constan- tine and the Nicaean Council, 43 1 - Index. 453 Hosius, bishop of Cordova, de- scribed, 423. Hymnology of the Early Church, 82 ; Evening Hymn of the Greek Church, 82 ; the " Gloria in Ex- celsis," 82; a hymn by Clement of Alexandria, S3. Ignatius, of Antioch, 141-152; au- thenticity of his letters, 141- 143; his death, 143; legends about him, 144; a Greek, of Asia Minor, 144; thrown to wild beasts at Rome, 145 ; his letter on his coming mar- tyrdom, 145, 146; his letters to the churches, 146-151; on the orders of the clergy, 148 ; his letter to the Magnesians, 148, 149 ; his let- ter to the Trallians, 148, 149 ; on his own inspiration, 149 ; on the Eucharist, 149; on Judaism, 150; on Docetism, 150; his silence con- cerning a bishop at Rome, 151 ; striking passages in his letters, 151 ; his letter to Polycarp, 151. Immersion, baptism by it in Ice- land and Russia, 58. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, 21 ; on the early Christian Church, 26 ; his life and works, 330; on Gnos- ticism, 330, 331. James, bishop of Nisibis, 424, 425. Jesus of Nazareth, his teaching, 14, 15 ; belief of his disciples, 15 ; gave a mighty impulse to human life, 16; his transcendant person- ality, 43-45- John, the apostle, tradition concern- ing him, 180. Judaism, its influence on the Ro- mans, 38. Justin Martyr, on regeneration by baptism, 87 ; his martyrdom in the reign of Aurelius, 192 ; incident related by him, 193; his origin and character, 227, 231 ; his search for truth, 228, 229; his account of his conversion to Christianity 229-231 ; his writings, 232; analy- sis of his " Dialogue with Try- pho," 232, 233; analysis of his first Apology, 233, 234 ; of the sec- ond, 235, 237 ; contrasts Socrates with Christ, 235 ; his doctrine of the " spermatic word," 236 ,- his martyrdom, 237. Lactantius, his "Apology" for Christianity, 253. Lightfoot, bishop, on Clement of Rome, 103; on the Christian ideal, 56 ; on first appearance of episco- pal government, 68 ; on the authen- ticity of Ignatius's letters, 142; on the persecutions of the church at Antioch, 143, 144 ; on authorship of the "Epistle to Diognetus," 225. Love-Feasts, discontinued by the Roman Christians, 186. Lucian, ridicules Christians in his " De Morte Peregrini," 222. Magus, Simon, his doctrinal scheme, 284-286; characterized by Tulloch, 286. Manes, sketch of his life, 320-322 ; his theological system (Manichae- ism) analyzed, 322-326; his oppo- sition to the Old Testament, 324 ; spread of his doctrines, 326. Marcion, the anti-Judaistic Gnostic, his history and doctrines, 314-319 ; attractiveness and spread of his doctrines, 315; his contrasts be- tween the Old Testament and the New, 318 ; he and his followers fundamentally Christian, 321. 454 Index. Martyr, Justin, his defence of the early Christians, 171, 172. Maxentius, elected Roman Empe- ror, 214 ; defeated by Constantine, 215. Maximin, Roman Emperor, perse- cutes the Christians, 200. Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, his schism, 396, 397 ; his subsequent history, 434. Menander, the Gnostic, 286. Minucius Felix, his " Octavius," 252. Miracles, sanity of the Christian apologists regarding them, 41 ; not urged by early Christians in sup- port of Christianity, 41. Mommsen, Theodor, on the immor- ality of Rome, 37. Monarchians, their doctrines, 329. Montanus, his doctrines, 254, 327, 328. Neo-Platonism, its origin and rep- resentatives, 333. Nerva, "the Good," stops persecu- tion of Christians, 183. Nicsea, in Bithynia, described, 406; Isnik, its modern representative, 407; Council called in it by Con- stantine, 408-443 (see "Council, First Ecumenical "). Nicholas, bishop of Myra, 425. Ophites, their origin and religious system, 312-314. Origen, visits churches in Arabia, 20; on the number of early Chris- tians, 30, 31 ; his escape from martyrdom, 200 ; his life, labors, and character, 360-370; enters the Catechetical School of Alexandria, 360 ; becomes head of the School, 362 ; his self-denial and toil, 362 ; studies Hebrew and Greek litera- ture, 363 ; assisted by Ambrosius to publish his works, 364, 365 5 Westcott on his writings, 365 ; consecrated as a presbyter, and de- posed, 366 ; establishes a catechet- ical school at Caesarea, 367; his "Exhortation to Martyrdom," 367; his devotion to his exegetical stud- ies, 368 ; his last works, 368, 369 ; subjected to torture, 369 ; his death and burial, 369; his mental acute- ness and power, 370; his prolific production, 370 ; his " Hexapla," 370, 371 ; his "First Principles," 371 ; his book against Celsus, 371, 372; quotation from ibid., t,73~ 376 ; on allegorism in interpreting Scripture, 376; on the mystical sense of the Scriptures, ^77\ his theological system, 378-384 ; held to the freedom of the will, 381 ; on the story of the fall, in Genesis, 382 ; on salvation through the Word, 382, 383 ; on future pun- ishment, 384 ; his influence to-day, 39 2 - PANTiENUS, his life and character, 34o-342. Paphnutius, bishop of Upper Thebes, 425 ; his speech on the celibacy of the clergy, 436. Papias, his life and writings, 139- 141; on the second Gospel, 140; on Matthew's Gospel, 140 ; Euse- bius's disparagement of him, 141. Paul, the apostle, his epistles, 14 ; his birth, education, and conver- sion, 17; shaped the theology of the Christian Church, 17 ; his con- ception of the Gospel, 18 ; his labors and martyrdom, 18 ; on the distinction of days, 84, 85 ; his powerful personality, 100 ; his idea of Christianity, 163, 164. Index. 455 Paul, of Samosata, his view of Christ, 3 2 9- Perpetua, her fortitude as a martyr, 199. Persecutions of the Christians,- 16, 143, 144, 156, 157, 163-217, con- tinued till about a.d. 310 ; by the Jews, 165-167; caused by the superstitions of the populace, 170; by the Roman Emperors, 173- 266 ; their number, 179 ; by Nero, 179, 180; by Domitian, 181; by Trajan, 183-186 ; by Hadrian, 186, 187 ; by Marcus Aurelius, 189-197; at Lyons and Vienne in Gaul, 194, 195 ; in Numidia and Carthage, 198, 199; by Septimius Severus, 197-199; by Maximin, 200 ; by Decius, 200-206 ; drive some Christians to apostasy, 202, 203 ; in Rome and Alexandria, 203 ; in Carthage, 204 ; their vari- ous forms, 205 ; they intensify the Christians' faith, 206 ; under Gal- lus and Valerian, 206-208; sus- pended for forty years, 209; pro- mote the triumph of Christian- ity, 210; under Diocletian, 210- 214. Pfleiderer, on Ignatius's letters, 142, H3- Philo-Judaeus, his life and senti- ments, 336. Philo-Platonism, its influence on Christianity, 337-340. Pierius, of Alexandria, 386, 387. Pliny, Roman governor, his pro- ceedings against Christians in Bithynia and Pontus, 184-186 ; his famous letter to Trajan, 184. Polycarp, 152-162 ; sources of infor- mation about him, 152, 153 ; a hearer of St. John, 153 ; Irenaeus on his acquaintance with him, x 53> *54 '1 entertains Ignatius, 154; his discussion with the bishop of Rome, 155 ; his rebuke of Marcion, 155 ; his character, 155, 156, 161; his last days and martyrdom, 156- 160 ; his replies to the Roman pro- consuls, 158, 159; his prayer at the stake. 159 ; his letter to the Philip- pians, 160, 161. Potamiaena, her martyrdom, 198. Predestination, its first appearance in Christian theology, 309. Presbyters, origin of their appoint- ment, and their duties, 65-67 ; ad- visers of the bishops, etc., 70 ; change in their functions, 71. Ptolemaus, his martyrdom, 193. Quarto-Deciman controversy, 80. Ramsay, Dr., on Ignatius's letters, and his martyrdom, 143 ; on the anti-Roman organization of the early Christians, 177; on Roman laws against Christianity, 184 ; on a statement of German critics about Trajan, 185 ; on Marcus Aurelius, 191. Ritschl, quoted, 76. Roman Church, deference early paid to it, 73 ; causes of increase of its bishop's authority, 73 ; St. Peter not its founder, 74 ; no dictation by its bishop allowed in this period, nor ever in the Eastern Church, 74. Romans, the, as conquerors and rulers, 33; extent of their public roads, .34, 35 ; their immorality, 37 ; their disgust with life, 38 : their expectancy of a new message to men, 38. Sabbath, kept by the early Chris- tians, 84 ; its gradual disappear- ance, 85 ; abstinence from labor 456 Index. on it advised about a.d. 200, but not made compulsory till a.d. 363, 85 ; Constantine's decree re- garding it, 85. Sacerdotalism, not recognized in the New Testament, nor by the Apos- tolic Fathers, 76 ; its claims first asserted by Tertullian, 76 ; sup- ported by Cyprian, yy. Sacramentalism, its first appearance, 86-89. Saint Peter, when first claimed as founder of the Roman Church, 73, 74- Saturninus, the Gnostic, his doctrine, 288, 289. Seneca, on the wickedness of his age, 36. Septuagint, its origin, 335 ; legendary account of it, 335. "Seven good men," of the Early Church, not deacons, 63. Severus, Septimius, Roman Empe- ror, persecutes the Christians, 197-200. Sixtus, Roman bishop, his martyr- dom, 207. Smyrna, persecution of its Christians, 188. Socrates, church historian, on the celebration of Easter, 80. Spyridon, bishop of Cyprus, anec- dotes of, 425, 426. Stanley, Dean, on Nicaea, 407 ; on Paphnutius, 436. Struggle within the Church, — Here- sies, 276-332. Sylvester, bishop of Rome, 427, 428. Symphorosa, a Christian martyr, 187. Synod of Egyptian and Lydian bish- ops that excommunicated Arius, 400; in Bithynia, upholds Arius, 403- Synods, when first held, yy, 78; why called, yy ; how composed, yy ; promoted unity, yy ; in Asia Minor, Gaul, Mesopotamia, Rome, Africa, and Spam, 78. Tacitus, on the early Christians, 23, 24; quoted, 179, 180. Tatian, Christian apologist, 237- 246 ; his birth, education, etc., 237-239; becomes a gnostic, 239; his death, 239 ; his writings, 239 ; some of his Gnostic ideas, 239 ; his "Address to the Greeks " ana- lyzed, 239-244 ; his ridicule of the Greeks, 240 ; also of their phi- losophers, 241, 243 ; his " Diates- saron " and its history, 244, 245 ; value of the latter work, 245, 246; denounced by Irenaeus, 246. Tertullian, 253-273, on the multi- plication of Christians, 26-29 J hi s "Address to Scapula," "Apol- ogy," "To the Nations," and "Answer to the Jews," 26-29; asserts sacerdotal claims, 76; on baptism, 88 ; opposes infant bap- tism, 91 ; on the Lord's Supper, 93 ; on the persecution of the Ro- man Christians, 170; his vindica- tion of the early Christians, 173; on pagan religion and philosophy, 213 ; his life and character, 253- 256; an advocate and jurist, 254 ; his character as a Christian apolo- gist, 254 ; espouses Montanism, 255 ; his death, 255; character of his writings, 255-260 : his Mon- tanist writings, 255, 256 ; his men- tal and moral qualities, 256; his style, 257 ; extracts from his writ- ings, 257-274; his denunciation of the circus, 257-259 ; on pa- tience and penitence, 259 ; his apologies, 260-275 ; his " To the Index. 457 Martyrs " analyzed, 260-262 ; his "Apology" analyzed and char- acterized, 262-273 ; on Marcus Aurelius, 264 ; on the Roman sumptuary laws, 264; on the power and methods of demons, 267 ; on the organization, worship, charity, and pure life of the Christians, 269-271 ; replies to charges against Christians, 271 ; on the pagan phi- losophers, 271, 272 ; on the resur- rection of the body, 272 ; on the persecution of Christians, 272, 273; his book "Concerning the Testimony of the Soul," 273- 275. Theology, the Latin, 442. Theophilus the Goth, teacher of Ulfilas, 427. Trajan, his persecutions of the early Christians, 175, 184-186 ; his or- ders to Pliny regarding the Chris- tians in Bithynia and Pontus, 184; did not initiate persecution of Christians, 185. Trinitarian controversy, its origin, 394, 395- Trinitarianism, when authoritatively formulated, 395. Uhlhorn, on the mutual Jove of the Early Christians, 48 ; on the Roman roads, 34 ; on the " Seven good men " of the Early Church, 63-, quoted, 215. Valentinus, the Gnostic, 302-311 ; his education and life, 302, 303 ; his theological system sketched, 304-311 ; Harnack, on his system, 3 I0 > 3"- Valerian, Roman Emperor, his per- secution of the Christians, 206 ; his edicts against them, 207. Victor, bishop of Rome, first claim- ant of universal dominion, 70 ; his excommunication of the Quarto- Deciman churches, 74. Virginity, two early epistles on it, 109, no. 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