LIBR ARYOF CONG RESS, 
 
 Chap* Copyright No. 
 
 Shelf. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF 
 ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 THE PAPACY AND THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE 
 LIGHT OF DISCOVERY 
 
 BY 
 
 PARKE P.f LOURNOY 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 Prof. WALTER W. MOORE, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 OF UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, VIRGINIA 
 
 WASW^ 7 q ^ ' 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 1896 
 
 I 
 
KOXONIHSVM 
 
 3HX I 
 
 3HX ' 
 
 ^ 
 
 Copyright, 1896, by 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 THE NEW YORK TYPE-SETTING COMPANY 
 THE CAXTON PRESS 
 
TO THAT GREAT AND GOOD TEACHER OF MANY 
 
 GRATEFUL PUPILS, THE 
 
 REV. R. L. DABNEY, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 ONE OF THEM AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATES 
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 Dedication 5 
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 To the Reader 13 
 
 I. The Marble Chair and its Occupant 15 
 
 II. A Search-light Found 27 
 
 III. Two Specimens of Infallibility 33 
 
 IV. A Calm for the Christians 43 
 
 V. The Banker Made a Bishop 51 
 
 VI. Popes (?) and Presbyters 59 
 
 VII. " The Mystery of Iniquity " 65 
 
 VIII. Callistus and the Callistians 71 
 
 IX. The Survival of the Unfittest 79 
 
 X. Two Great Christians Meet 89 
 
 XI. The Search-light and the Canon 103 
 
 XII. The Search-light on the Heretics 125 
 
 XIII. Ferdinand Christian Baur 139 
 
 XIV. Ernest Renan 149 
 
 XV. The Search-light and New Discoveries— 
 
 THE " DlATESSARON " 1^3 
 
 XVI. " The New Syriac Gospels " 177 
 
 XVII. The New Testament in the First Century . . 197 
 XVIII. The Portraiture of Christ 225 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 A SHORT and readable book dealing in a 
 popular way with certain claims of the Romish 
 Church, and certain theories of modern rationalism 
 in regard to the authority of Scripture, on the 
 one hand, and the genuineness of certain portions 
 of Scripture, on the other, is a desideratum of our 
 contemporary Christian literature. The demand 
 for such a work is emphasized by the wide cir- 
 culation, even in Protestant America, of a book 
 by a well-known cardinal which reiterates the 
 dogma of papal infallibility and other errors, and 
 which professes to have reached its forty-seventh 
 edition ; and also by the wide circulation of the 
 theories of the Tubingen school of critics, through 
 " its small imitators and camp-followers along the 
 byways of popular literature," as to the late origin 
 of the gospels, especially that of John. This de- 
 mand cannot be met by referring those who have 
 been disturbed by such representations to volu- 
 9 
 
IO INTRODUCTION 
 
 minous treatises of a technical character, as all 
 pastors who have had to deal with active minds 
 in reading communities well know. Nor is the 
 unsuitablenessof these elaborate works for general 
 reading the only reason for their failure to meet 
 the present need. Some of the most decisive 
 facts in the controversies referred to have come 
 to light since the " standard " works on these 
 subjects were written. For instance, it has long 
 been known that there is in the Vatican at Rome 
 an ancient marble statue of an eminent Christian 
 minister, author, and martyr, who was born about 
 fifty years after the death of the Apostle John, 
 and who has for centuries been reverenced as one 
 of the saints in the Roman calendar; but not 
 until the discovery of his great work entitled 
 " Philosophoumena ; or, Refutation of all Here- 
 sies," in 1842 (or, rather, until the publication 
 of it in 185 1 ), was it known, even to scholars, that 
 this martyr and saint thus honored by Rome 
 herself, was, as Dr. Schaff has well said, " an 
 irrefutable witness against the claims of an infal- 
 lible papacy, which was entirely unknown in the 
 third century." And not until that discovery 
 was made, and others still more recent, such as 
 Tatian's "'Diatessaron " (published in 1888) and 
 the ancient Syriac version of the gospels (found 
 at Mount Sinai in 1892), was it known how irre- 
 
INTRODUCTION 1 1 
 
 sistible was the evidence of the genuineness of the 
 New Testament Scriptures. 
 
 These discoveries and others are described in 
 the most interesting manner by Mr. Flournoy in 
 the following pages, and their importance to the 
 cause of truth is pointed out with admirable 
 clearness and force. His " saint with a search- 
 light " is the same whose statue still sits in the 
 Vatican, whose fcsta is still observed on the 22d 
 of August in accordance with the appointment 
 of the Breviary, and whose truthfulness is thus 
 vouched for in the strongest manner by the, 
 Church of Rome herself, and the same whose 
 recovered work, " Refutation of all Heresies," 
 demonstrates the absurdity of Rome's claim that 
 there has been a continuous chain of infallible 
 successors of Peter. Taking his stand beside this 
 ancient worthy about the beginning of the third 
 century, Mr. Flournoy shows us that this saint's 
 search-light reveals, in four directions, undeniable 
 evidence that the New Testament came down 
 from apostolic times. 
 
 It will be observed, further, that this evidence 
 is not of the subjective and uncertain sort, but 
 external, cumulative, and conclusive. It is pre- 
 sented by Mr. Flournoy in a vivacious and at- 
 tractive style, without any of the ponderous dull- 
 ness of the tomes, and yet with careful attention 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 to the reliableness of his authorities and the ex- 
 actness of his statements. In short, he has written 
 an engaging and instructive book on an important 
 subject, and it is commended to the earnest 
 attention of all who wish to know the truth con- 
 cerning certain urgent questions of the day. 
 
 W. W. Moore. 
 
TO THE READER 
 
 At the extremity of one of the three slender 
 tongues of a strangely shaped peninsula, which 
 runs out from the shores of Macedonia into the 
 iEgean Archipelago, there rises from the blue 
 water's edge a mountain which is in some respects 
 one of the most remarkable in the world. Mount 
 Athos, with its twenty monasteries, eight thou- 
 sand monks, and most peculiar rules of celibacy, 
 has been known for ages as the Holy Mountain. 
 With its lofty peak of white limestone piercing 
 the sky, it is the most prominent object in a 
 scene of surpassing loveliness. 
 
 Among the vast stores of the relics of early 
 Christian literature in the libraries of these mon- 
 asteries, some of which date from the time of 
 Constantine, there was found more than fifty 
 years ago a work of great value, written by St. 
 Hippolytus, a man who was born little more than 
 a half-century after the death of the Apostle 
 John. Fresh interest has been created in this 
 book and its author by the recent discovery of 
 another work from the same hand. 
 
 An article by Professor George T. Stokes, of 
 13 
 
14 TO THE READER 
 
 Dublin University, published in the Sunday at 
 Home, London, was the means by which the 
 writer's attention was drawn to these discoveries, 
 and he has found the writings of St. Hippolytus 
 to be, indeed, a light shining in a dark place — a 
 veritable search-light on men and affairs in the 
 church in Rome before and after the year 200. 
 In addition to this, they reveal many proofs of 
 the genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures. 
 
 The distinguished president of Princeton Uni- 
 versity, Dr. Francis L. Patton, has lately been 
 quoted as saying that the great question of our 
 times is, What is the Bible? A question of the 
 day scarcely inferior in importance to any other 
 but this one is, What is the papacy ? This little 
 volume, it is hoped, will furnish welcome aid to 
 honest inquirers in finding the true answers to 
 these questions. 
 
 In pursuing the studies suggested by the article 
 of Professor Stokes just referred to, the author 
 has followed some of the paths along which the 
 light of discovery has fallen, and if he can take 
 others by the hand and show them what has been 
 most interesting and profitable to himself, in such 
 a way as to give them a tithe of the pleasure and 
 benefit which he himself has derived from this 
 pursuit, he will be very thankful. 
 
 P. P. F. 
 
 Bethesda Manse, July 21, 1896. 
 
! 
 THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF 
 ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 
 
 THERE has been for more than three centuries 
 in the Vatican at Rome the statue of an eminent 
 Christian, who was born about fifty years after 
 the death of the " disciple whom Jesus loved." 
 He was an able and voluminous writer, with keen, 
 clear vision of passing events, and the faculty for 
 portraying them — the ability " to hold, as 'twere, 
 the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own 
 feature, scorn her own image, and the very age 
 and body of the time, his form and pressure." 
 Hence his account of his own times is very in- 
 teresting and valuable. 
 
 Fifty-four years ago that one of his many 
 books which is probably the most interesting and 
 valuable of them all was recovered after an en- 
 i7 
 
1 8 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 tombment of many centuries ; while quite recently 
 still another long-lost treasure, a product of his 
 pen, has come to light. 
 
 The first of these three discoveries is thus de- 
 scribed by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth:* 
 
 "In the year 1551 some excavations were 
 made on the Via Tiburtina, or road to Tivoli, not 
 far from the Church of S. Lorenzo, near Rome. 
 The clearing away of the accumulations of an 
 ancient cemetery and chapel on that site led to an 
 interesting discovery. 
 
 " A marble statue of a figure sitting in a chair 
 was brought to light. The person there repre- 
 sented was of a venerable aspect, bald, with a 
 flowing beard, and clad in the Greek pallium. 
 
 " The two sides and back of the chair were 
 found to be covered with inscriptions in Greek 
 uncial letters. The right side of the chair ex- 
 hibits a calendar, which designates the days of 
 the months of March and April, with which the 
 fourteenth day of the moon coincides. This 
 calendar, indicating the paschal full moons, is con- 
 structed for seven cycles of sixteen years each, 
 dating from the first year of the Emperor Alex- 
 ander Severus, which is proved from this calen- 
 dar to be A.D. 222. 
 
 " According to the theory on which the calen- 
 dar is made, after the completion of one cycle of 
 
 * " Hippolytus and the Church of Rome," pp. 42-45. 
 
THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 1 9 
 
 sixteen years, the full moons recur on the same 
 day of the month, but one day earlier in the 
 week ; and the table is formed so as to represent 
 in seven columns the day on which the full moon 
 falls during seven periods of sixteen years. 
 
 " The other side of the chair represents a table 
 indicating the day on which the Easter festival 
 falls in each year, for the same period of cycles 
 of sixteen years, dating also from A.D. 222. 
 
 " When the fourteenth day of the moon falls 
 on a Saturday then the Easter festival is not to 
 be celebrated on the morrow, or following Sun- 
 day, but on the Sunday after that. 
 
 " This regulation was in accordance with the 
 Latin practice, but at variance with the Alexan- 
 drine custom, according to which the paschal 
 table also is constructed in seven columns of six- 
 teen years each, and indicates the day of the 
 month in which the paschal festival would fall 
 from A.D. 222 to 333. 
 
 " Many things in this calendar betoken that it 
 is the work of a Western, and that it was designed 
 for the Western Church. 
 
 " The carved back of the chair, which was 
 somewhat mutilated, presents a catalogue of 
 titles of works, composed, doubtless, by the 
 person who occupies the chair. 
 
 " This statue thus discovered was in a frag- 
 mentary state, but was happily preserved by 
 
20 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 Cardinal Marcello Cervino, afterward Pope Mar- 
 cellus II., and was removed as a valuable monu- 
 ment of Christian antiquity to the Vatican, and 
 was restored by Roman sculptors as far as might 
 be under the auspices of Pope Pius IV." 
 
 The questions which naturally occur to us at 
 this point are such as these : Who is the person 
 represented in this statue ? In what place did he 
 live ? What circumstances called forth the works 
 whose names are inscribed on the back of his 
 marble chair? 
 
 As has long been known, this person is Hip- 
 polytus, a disciple of Irenaeus. Irenaeus was 
 himself a disciple of Polycarp. Polycarp, after 
 having served our Lord " eighty and six years," 
 died a martyr's death at Smyrna in A.D. 155.* 
 He was a disciple of the Apostle John. Hippoly- 
 tus, who was himself a martyr, is one of the saints 
 in the Roman calendar, his festa being marked 
 in the Breviary as on August 22d. 
 
 About his position in the church there seems 
 to be some divergence of statement, and but little 
 is known of his personal history, owing, doubt- 
 less, in part, to the severity of the persecution of 
 the giant emperor Maximin, under whom he 
 suffered. He is often called the Bishop of Por- 
 tus. " Episcopus Portuensis " is his title inscribed 
 on the base of his statue in the Vatican. Portus 
 
 * According to latest and best authorities. 
 
THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 21 
 
 Romanus was at the mouth of the Tiber on the 
 northern side, built there as the port of the city 
 which was the mistress of the world — the center 
 of commerce as well as of power — partly because 
 Ostia, the original port on the other side of the 
 Tiber, had become less suitable for this purpose 
 by reason of sand-bars.* 
 
 He is also called a presbyter or elder, and 
 again he is sometimes spoken of as a Roman 
 bishop. The disagreement of these statements is 
 doubtless only apparent. In the New Testament 
 the names presbyter (or elder) and bishop are 
 used to designate the same officer — the name 
 elder (prcsbutcros) referring to his dignity as a 
 ruler, and the name bishop (episcopos) pointing 
 to his peculiar function as an overseer in the 
 church. Now it is probable that at the early age 
 at which Hippolytus wrote the scriptural usage 
 was still maintained, and the same person was 
 sometimes called elder and sometimes bishop.f 
 It has been suggested, as an explanation of the 
 
 * Says Bunsen : " He was also called the Bishop of the Nations, 
 probably from the fact that, as bishop of the port of Rome, he 
 came in contact with representatives of many nations who landed 
 at or embarked from his city " (" Hippolytus and his Age," vol. 
 iv., p. 25). 
 
 t That eminent prelatist, Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe, says : 
 " But it seems to me to be based upon the relations of Hippolytus 
 as one of the synod, or ' presbytery,' without consent of which the 
 bishop could do nothing important." 
 
2 2 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 fact that he is sometimes spoken of as a bishop 
 of Rome, that, as Portus was the port of Rome 
 and only fifteen miles away, it was natural for 
 those at a distance to think of him as a resident 
 of the imperial city. Whether he resided in 
 Portus or in Rome itself, he was certainly a 
 member of the presbytery, or council of presby- 
 ters, of Rome, and a very prominent and influen- 
 tial one. 
 
 It is not improbable that he resided first in 
 Portus and then in Rome. His writings, espe- 
 cially the ninth and tenth books of the " Refuta- 
 tion of all Heresies," indicate that he was pastor 
 of a congregation in the city of Rome. The his- 
 torian Eusebius thus speaks of Hippolytus:* "At 
 the same time Hippolytus, who composed many 
 treatises,! also wrote a work on the Passover. In 
 this he traces back the series of times, and presents 
 a certain canon comprising a period of sixteen 
 years, limiting his computations to the first year 
 of the Emperor Alexander." A list of works of 
 Hippolytus is then given, concluding with one 
 "Against all Heresies." Eusebius adds, "You 
 will find many others still preserved by many." 
 
 We know from other sources that Hippolytus 
 
 * " Hist. Eccl.," bk. vi., chap. xxii. 
 
 t Dr. Schaff speaks of Hippolytus as " the most learned divine 
 and most voluminous writer of the Roman Church in the third 
 century" (" Church History," vol. ii., p. 763). 
 
THE MARBLE CHAIR AND ITS OCCUPANT 23 
 
 wrote several other books, some of which, in 
 whole or in part, are still extant. Our chief in- 
 terest now is in the last one here named, and in 
 one not named in this list, but often spoken of by- 
 ancient writers, and long known in part from 
 interesting fragments. This last work is a com- 
 mentary on the Book of Daniel. It was discov- 
 ered a few years ago by Dr. Basilios Georgiades 
 on the island of Chalce, near Constantinople. It 
 is on many accounts worthy of notice. For in- 
 stance, " in it Hippolytus quotes the four gospels 
 as being the very words and teaching of Christ." * 
 
 The larger part of the work which stands last 
 in the list of Eusebius, that " Against all Here- 
 sies," was discovered more than fifty years ago, 
 and its contents are of very great interest. They 
 give such a lifelike picture of the church in Rome 
 of that day, and of persons in connection with it, 
 as can be found nowhere else.f 
 
 As Hippolytus proceeds to deal with the here- 
 sies of his own times, he lets in some very unwel- 
 come light for those who would have us believe 
 
 * See article by Professor Stokes in the Sunday at Home, 
 London, for May, 1892. 
 
 t " In the two last books [i.e., the ninth and tenth of the 
 " Refutation "] we have the narrative of an eye-witness of im- 
 portant events which took place in the second and third centuries 
 after Christ in the Church of Rome — events of which our previous 
 ecclesiastical histories contained no notice " (W. E. Tayler, in 
 " Hippolytus and the Church of the Third Century"). 
 
24 THE SEARCH-UGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 that the papacy existed from apostolic times. As 
 says Dr. Schaff, " The Roman Catholic Church 
 placed him in the number of its saints and martyrs, 
 little suspecting that he would come forward in 
 the nineteenth century as a witness against her." 
 
 It is especially unfortunate for the Church of 
 Rome that after his " Refutation of all Heresies " 
 had been lost he was canonized as a saint The 
 infallible church, having put him into her Breviary, 
 and having recognized him not only as a saint, 
 but as one of the highest rank, — a martyr too, 
 — now finds him a very inconvenient saint to 
 carry in her calendar in view of the things which 
 he is found to have said about her in her earlier 
 days. The high esteem and reverence in which 
 Hippolytus was held in the Church of Rome is 
 made evident not only by this marble statue, — 
 so skilfully made as to show that it antedates the 
 decline of art at Rome, so carefully restored 
 when recovered from its long entombment in 
 155 1, and honored with a place in the Vatican 
 ever since, — but by the following story of a visit 
 made by Pope Alexander III. to the shrine of St. 
 Hippolytus at St. Denis, to which place his bones 
 had been carried from Rome in the reign of 
 Charlemagne : 
 
 " On the threshold of one of the chapels the 
 pope paused to ask whose relics it contained. 
 ' Those of St. Hippolytus,' was the answer. ' Non 
 
THE MARBLE CHAIR. AND ITS OCCUPANT 2$ 
 
 credo, non credo,' replied the infallible authority. 
 ' The bones of St. Hippolytus were never removed 
 from the holy city.' But St. Hippolytus, whose 
 dry bones apparently had as little reverence for the 
 spiritual progeny of Zephyrinus and Callistus " 
 (" popes " (?) A.D. 197-222) " as the ancient bish- 
 op's tongue and pen had manifested toward these 
 saints themselves " (how much this was we shall 
 see presently), " was so very angry that he rum- 
 bled his bones inside the reliquary with a noise 
 like thunder. To what lengths he would have 
 gone if rattling had not sufficed we dare not con- 
 jecture. But the pope, falling on his knees, ex- 
 claimed in terror, ' I believe, O my lord Hippoly- 
 tus, I believe! Pray be quiet.' And he built an 
 altar of marble there to appease the disquieted 
 saint." * 
 
 From this characteristic medieval legend let us 
 turn to the second discovery, which has, so to 
 speak, given voice to this old saint who had been 
 sitting silent for so many centuries in his marble 
 chair. 
 
 * Dr. Schaff's " Church History," vol. ii., p. 770. 
 
II 
 
 A SEARCH-LIGHT FOUND 
 
II 
 
 A SEARCH-LIGHT FOUND 
 
 In 1842 M. Villemain, minister of public in- 
 struction under Louis Philippe, King of France, 
 sent Minoides Mynas, a learned Greek, to search 
 for literary treasures supposed to be hidden in 
 old libraries in the East. When he returned 
 there was found among the old manuscripts which 
 he brought a book written in Greek with a dou- 
 ble title, " Philosophizings ; or, Refutation of all 
 Heresies." * 
 
 A considerable part of the work was wanting — 
 the second, third, and part of the fourth books ; 
 the rest of the ten books remained, and were de- 
 posited, with other finds, in the Royal Library of 
 Paris. 
 
 In 185 1 an English translation was published 
 by Miller at Oxford, and the work ascribed to 
 Origen. This was done, probably, because the 
 
 * Qihooofovfieva, fj Kara Aipeoeov Uaaov E/ley&J?. 
 29 
 
30 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 first book had long been known, and in the Bene- 
 dictine edition had been erroneously accredited 
 to this father. Scholars very soon discovered 
 that a mistake had been made, and, following the 
 lead of Duncker and Jacobi, Bunsen established 
 the true authorship. 
 
 It is useless to weary the reader with the evi- 
 dence, though the line of argument is compara- 
 tively plain and clear. Suffice it to say that the 
 well-nigh universal verdict of scholars now is that 
 it is the work of Hippolytus, to whom a book 
 with this title is ascribed by Eusebius, Jerome, 
 Photius, and other ancient writers. 
 
 The Romanists draw back from this conclusion 
 for a very transparent reason. It is this : " He 
 stands out as an irrefutable witness against the 
 claims of an infallible papacy, which was entirely 
 unknown in the third century."* 
 
 Dr. Dollinger was an exception among Roman 
 Catholics, and, as is well known, he long ago 
 (1870) seceded from the papal church on account 
 of the decree of the Vatican Council on the infalli- 
 bility of the popes. 
 
 Says Dr. Schaff, " Cardinal Newman declares 
 it to be simply ' incredible that a man so singularly 
 honored as St. Hippolytus should be the author 
 of that malignant libel on his contemporary popes,' 
 etc. But he offers no solution, nor can he. 
 * Schaff 's " Church History," vol. ii., p. 774. 
 
A SEARCH-LIGHT FOUND 31 
 
 Dogma versus history is as unavailing as the 
 pope's bull against the comet." * 
 
 But it is time that we should look into this 
 long-lost book and see what light it throws on 
 that old world in which Hippolytus lived his life 
 of earnest toil. In the earlier books, false and 
 heathenish philosophies are dealt with ; hence 
 the appropriateness of the first title, " Philoso- 
 phizings." 
 
 In the later books he treats of heresies among 
 those who professed Christianity, which is implied 
 in the second title, " Refutation of all Heresies." 
 It is made quite plain that most of the heresies 
 sprang either from some form of false philosophy 
 
 * "The authorship of Hippolytus is proved or conceded by 
 Bunsen, Gieseler, Jacobi, DSllinger, Duncker, Schneidewin, Cas- 
 pari, Milman, Robertson, Plummer, Salmon. Cardinal Newman 
 denies it on doctrinal grounds, but offers no solution " (Dr. Schaff's 
 " Church History," vol. ii., p. 762). For the full proof see 
 Bunsen's " Hippolytus and his Age," vol. i., p. 13, and W. Elfe 
 Tayler's " Hippolytus and the Church of the Third Century." 
 
 Added to the testimony of scholars ancient and modern, to- 
 gether with the inscription on the back of the marble chair in 
 which the statue of Hippolytus is seated, including the " Refu- 
 tation " among his other works, we have the testimony of the 
 author himself. In the tenth book of the " Refutation of all 
 Heresies " he uses these words : " My book which treats of the 
 essence of the universe \Tlepi tijq tov Travrdg ovaiaq]." The book 
 " On the Universe" is one of those named in the inscription on 
 the back of his chair. This binds the " Refutation " to the oc- 
 cupant of the marble chair with a chain which sophistry will strive 
 in vain to break. There are few books of ancient times the 
 authorship of which is more certain. 
 
32 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 or from Judaism. He seems to consider that the 
 statement of these heresies is sufficient for their 
 refutation. Indeed, he says, " For the opinions 
 of heretics themselves are sufficient for their own 
 condemnation." Hence he refrains almost entirely 
 from argument, and merely presents their views. 
 
 With these matters we are not now interested, 
 and can only lament the fact that in the Christian 
 church thus early there was so sad a departure 
 from the faith and practice of the religion of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. In view of these facts, we 
 can well appreciate the need and the wisdom of 
 the solemn warnings of Paul and John to the 
 effect that " perilous times " were at hand. When 
 we see this " hydra-headed heresy," as Hippoly- 
 tus aptly styles it, and the terrible lapse into un- 
 godly living on the part of those who had departed 
 from the faith, and that under the leadership and 
 protection of the Bishop of Rome, we have before 
 our eyes an object-lesson on the intimate connec- 
 tion between a belief of the truth and godly living, 
 and on the importance of what is so much decried 
 in our day — a creed in accordance with the Scrip- 
 tures as the necessary norm and inspiration of 
 scriptural holiness of life. 
 
 It is in the ninth and tenth books of the " Ref- 
 utation" that we have this picture of the church in 
 Rome as it then was — a picture whose vividness 
 of delineation reveals the hand of an eye-witness. 
 

 Ill 
 
 TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 
 
 33 
 
Ill 
 
 TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 
 
 Let us see what light is thrown by the occu- 
 pant of the marble chair on the so-called chair of 
 Peter at this period. 
 
 In the ninth book of the " Refutation of all 
 Heresies" we find the following account of two 
 of the contemporaries of Hippoly tus, whose names 
 are in all the catalogues of the popes, both of whom 
 were canonized as saints, and each of whom re- 
 ceives in our day the worship of devout Roman- 
 ists on the day marked as his festa in the Breviary : 
 
 " There was a certain man named Noetus of 
 Smyrna.* This fellow introduced a heresy taken 
 from Heraclitus.f A certain man named Epigo- 
 
 * On Noetus and his heresy, see Neander's " Church History," 
 p. 371 (Rose's translation). 
 
 t Heraclitus the Obscure was a Greek philosopher, a native 
 of Athens, and was born probably in the sixth century B.C. He 
 taught that, by the operation of a light ethereal fluid, all things, 
 animate and inanimate, were created. His unintelligible style 
 and strange views gave him the surname " the Obscure." Hip- 
 polytus shows very clearly how the heresy of Noetus was derived 
 from the philosophy of Heraclitus. 
 
 35 
 
36 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 nus,* who was his agent and scholar, came to 
 sojourn at Rome, and disseminated his odious 
 doctrine. Cleomenes,* an alien from the church 
 both in life and manners, having become his dis- 
 ciple, helped to establish his doctrine. 
 
 " At this period Zephyrinus supposed that he 
 governed the church; being an illiterate and 
 avaricious man, [and] being tempted by the offer 
 of gain, he gave permission to those who resorted 
 to Cleomenes to become his scholars. At length, 
 being himself deceived, he fell into the same error 
 in which Callistus — whose life and the heresy in- 
 vented by him I will soon set forth — was his ad- 
 viser and associate in wickedness. 
 
 " During the succession of these [bishops] this 
 school continued, being strengthened and in- 
 creased by the cooperation of Zephyrinus and 
 Callistus." f 
 
 Now it is to be remembered that Zephyrinus 
 was, according to the catalogues of the popes, the 
 pope at this time. We see, then, what view a most 
 intelligent contemporary held of his infallibility. 
 
 Hippolytus continues in a strain which does 
 not at all impress us with his intention to yield 
 implicit obedience to a supreme authority : 
 
 * Theodoret also mentions Epigonus and Cleomenes {ibid., 
 
 P- 371). 
 
 t Theodoret represents Callistus as developing the heresy of 
 Noetus. (See Dr. Salmon's article on Callistus in Smith's " Bio- 
 graphical Dictionary.") 
 
TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 37 
 
 " Yet we never gave place to them [i.e., 
 Zephyrinus and Callistus], but, on the contrary, 
 frequently opposed them and confuted them, 
 compelling them against their inclination to con- 
 fess the truth. This confession they made at the 
 time through the influence of shame and in con- 
 sequence of being compelled to do so by the force 
 of truth." This doubtless refers to discussions in 
 the presbytery, or assembly of " the blessed pres- 
 byters," of which we shall presently see some ac- 
 counts. He continues : " But shortly afterward 
 they returned to wallow in the same mire." 
 
 Hippolytus proceeds to " set forth the wicked 
 character of their doctrine," and shows us how 
 they adopted the view of Heraclitus and derived 
 from it one of the most wicked of heresies, which 
 was stamped with the name of the second of these 
 ecclesiastics, his followers being called Callistians. 
 He then goes on to give us a lively picture of 
 Callistus, afterward pope and saint, now called 
 Calixtus I. : 
 
 '* Callistus strengthened this heresy, being a 
 man crafty in wickedness and versatile in decep- 
 tion, aiming at the chair of the episcopate. He 
 stirred up Zephyrinus, an illiterate and unlearned 
 man, unacquainted with ecclesiastical affairs. This 
 person being a receiver of bribes and a covetous 
 man, Callistus led just as he pleased by the influ- 
 ence of his dogmas and unlawful demands. More- 
 
38 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 over, Callistus was continually instigating him to 
 introduce strife among the brethren, when Callis- 
 tus himself afterward managed to allure both 
 parties by wily words to his own side. At one 
 time he would speak the truth to one party, who 
 held sentiments agreeing therewith, and thus de- 
 luded them under the pretense of agreeing with 
 them. Ac another time he would [speak] similarly 
 to those who professed the opinion of Sabellius, 
 whom he displaced when he was able to keep him 
 steadfast ; for at the time that Sabellius was ex- 
 horted by us he did not show obstinacy ; but 
 when he was alone with Callistus he was instigated 
 by him (professing to believe as he did) to in- 
 cline to the theory of Cleomenes. But he [Sa- 
 bellius] did not at this time discover his subtlety ; 
 but afterward he found it out, as I will briefly 
 relate." 
 
 The narrative brings before us a scene in " the 
 assembly " of " the blessed presbyters," in which 
 Hippolytus appears to be on equal terms with 
 Zephyrinus and Callistus, and, indeed, handles 
 them without gloves as he demonstrates the falsity 
 of their teachings on the doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 To throw light on the state of things in the 
 church, Hippolytus gives us a rather startling view 
 of the antecedents of this man who played so 
 strange a part in the ecclesiastical drama enacted 
 in Rome in his day, and the narrative exhibits the 
 
TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 39 
 
 doings of a very remarkable saint. He tells us 
 that he was of the same age with Callistus, and 
 the story is evidently that of an eye-witness of 
 much that is related. 
 
 Callistus was a slave in the service of a wealthy 
 Christian, one Carpophorus, " a man of the faith, 
 belonging to the household of Caesar." Now we 
 know that at this period slaves were often profes- 
 sional men, authors, or able men in the conduct 
 of great business enterprises. Not only was this 
 the case among the Greeks and Romans, but the 
 parables of the talents and of the pounds show us 
 that the same state of things was common among 
 the Jews. Callistus was ambitious to be a busi- 
 ness man, and induced Carpophorus to establish 
 in the Piscina Publica, or Fish-market, a bank, of 
 which he was the cashier and general manager. 
 He gathered in much treasure belonging chiefly 
 to Christians, and largely to widows and orphans 
 among them. They felt very safe about their 
 deposits, for they had unlimited confidence in 
 Carpophorus, whose character was above reproach, 
 and, as Callistus did business under his patronage 
 and authority, they doubtless felt that their means 
 were in as safe a keeping as can be found in this 
 world, where even the heavy gold seems so often 
 suddenly to develop wings and fly away as an 
 eagle toward heaven. 
 
 Whether Callistus gambled, or drove fast horses, 
 
40 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 or invested too heavily in real estate during some 
 " boom " of those old times, we have no means of 
 ascertaining; but after a time, to the dismay of 
 the depositors, the bank failed. They very natu- 
 rally appealed to Carpophorus, who, it turned 
 out, had himself been a heavy loser. He imme- 
 diately proceeds to call Callistus to account. This 
 nimble saint, however, has not allowed the grass 
 to grow under his heels, and Carpophorus is not 
 able to come up with him till he is in the act of 
 fleeing the country. He is on a ship in the harbor 
 of Rome, by Portus Romanus, at the mouth of 
 the Tiber. But it seems that the wind would not 
 blow to suit Callistus, though he was to be a pope, 
 and before the ship by which he proposed to take 
 a foreign tour got under sail, lo and behold! his 
 master is seen rowing rapidly in his direction. 
 What shall he do? He has to decide quickly, 
 for presently his outraged and too confiding 
 master will be on board. His mind is soon made 
 up, and over the side he goes, and we behold this 
 saintly personage attempting suicide. 
 
 But in this decision he was lacking in that in- 
 fallibility which he was afterward to acquire. The 
 sailors rescued him. Hippolytus tells us that the 
 ferryman, whose boat was in the middle of the 
 river, was slow, and adds, " But the sailors leaped 
 into the boats, and drew him out, unwilling to 
 come, while those on shore were raising a loud 
 
TWO SPECIMENS OF INFALLIBILITY 41 
 
 cry." * The result was that the dripping rascal 
 was soon in the hands of his master. Carpoph- 
 orus, on bringing the culprit home, subjected him 
 to a punishment which was both humiliating and 
 severe. The " Napoleon of finance " was put to 
 work in the pistrinum, or domestic tread- mill, 
 in the house of Carpophorus. 
 
 Subsequently Callistus was found guilty of an- 
 other crime. " He hurried on their Sabbath to the 
 synagogue of the Jews, who were congregated 
 there, and created a disturbance among them." 
 The disorderly conduct was of so serious a nature 
 that he was arrested and arraigned before the pre- 
 fect of the city, Fuscianus.f Not only the Jews, 
 
 * It requires no violation of probability to imagine that Car- 
 pophorus, once the favorite freedman of Marcus Aurelius, and 
 now a wealthy officer of the imperial household, speeding in his 
 chariot out of the Porta Portuensis and over the fifteen miles to 
 Portus, goes first to the home of the pastor of the Christian 
 church (as he himself was a Christian and the fugitive a nominal 
 one), and thence in company with him hastens to the piers, where 
 he learns that Callistus has embarked. The description of the 
 exciting scene of the arrest indicates that the narrator was a wit- 
 ness of it. The slowness of the ferryman, the plunge of Callis- 
 tus, the quickness of the sailors, and the unwillingness of the 
 rescued to be drawn out, together with the "loud cry" from 
 those on the shore, are all touches which indicate that the writer 
 heard and saw what he tells of. 
 
 t C. Allius Fuscianus became prefect of Rome probably on the 
 death of Aufidius Victorinus, who was made prefect in 183 and 
 died in 185. Fuscianus entered on his second consulship in 188. 
 Marcia, who was at this time all-powerful with Commodus, hav- 
 ing all the honors of an empress, except that of having the sacred 
 
42 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 but his own master, Carpophorus, testified against 
 him on this occasion. 
 
 It would seem as if he had made the plea that 
 the Jews had accused him because he was a 
 Christian, and had endeavored to make out that 
 it was a case of religious persecution. Carpopho- 
 rus assured Fuscianus that he was " no Christian 
 [i.e., no true Christian], having made away with 
 a great sum of money of mine, as I will prove." 
 He was scourged and then sent as a convict to a 
 mine in Sardinia. He was not a sufferer for his 
 Christian faith, as was Hippolytus himself after- 
 ward in the same island, but was sent there as a 
 criminaV 
 
 fire borne before her, seems to have obtained relief for the Chris- 
 tians exiled and treated as convicts in Sardinia in the year 1 86. 
 This helps to fix the dates of the occurrences referred to with 
 tolerable accuracy. 
 
 
IV 
 A CALM FOR THE CHRISTIANS 
 
 43 
 

 
IV 
 
 A CALM FOR THE CHRISTIANS 
 
 THIS was a time of quiet in the church, a calm 
 between terrible storms; and the Christians in 
 the city of Rome seem to have been specially- 
 favored. 
 
 There had been dreadful persecutions in the 
 reign of Marcus Aurelius, but now Commodus 
 was on the throne and there was peace. This is 
 one of the riddles of history, for Marcus Aurelius, 
 the philosopher, stands among the first of the 
 Roman emperors for high intelligence, probity, 
 and kindliness. Yet under him it is probable 
 that the Christians suffered more severely than 
 under any of his predecessors, at least in the 
 provinces. 
 
 Commodus, his son, is described as one of the 
 worst of men, inheriting none of the virtues of 
 his noble father, but in a very large measure the 
 vices of his wicked mother, Faustina. He seems 
 to have been sensual, heartless, and cruel. It is 
 said that his accession to the throne (A.D. 180) 
 45 
 
46 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 was the signal for a series of cruelties, " rivaling, 
 if not surpassing, those of Nero and Caligula." 
 He seemed to gloat on scenes of blood. 
 
 Could we have joined the mighty throngs surg- 
 ing amid the temples and monuments and palaces 
 of Rome on the day of some noted contest in the 
 arena, we should have seen strange sights in those 
 times. Passing through the Roman Forum and 
 along streets where on every hand were the most 
 splendid edifices and works of art, the chefs- 
 d'oeuvres of the greatest masters, gathered from 
 the collections of conquered cities, we would have 
 seen looming up before us, as we drifted with the 
 human tide, a building which by its grandeur 
 dwarfed all the rest. As we approach the Colos- 
 seum, that vastest of theaters, and stand in some- 
 thing like awe as we try to take in its dimensions, 
 the crowd parts and it is whispered that the 
 emperor is coming. Amid the plaudits of the 
 thoughtless multitude the splendid chariot of the 
 youthful heir of Marcus Aurelius drives at full 
 speed, for he is reckless and careless of trampling 
 down those who are too slow to make way. He 
 alights, but, strange to say, does not mount the 
 steps to the emperor's box on the podium. He 
 turns to the arena, and as the ninety thousand 
 spectators that line the tiers, rising one above the 
 other till they reach nearly to the top of the great 
 walls, hail him as Hercules, is armed by his at- 
 
A CALM FOR THE CHRISTIANS 47 
 
 tendants for the combat. Tiger after tiger and 
 lion after lion are let loose to bound upon him, 
 only to fall by the resistless weapons which he 
 wields.* 
 
 Presently this grows too tame. The blood of 
 mere beasts will not appease his passion for kill- 
 ing. Men must be sacrificed to amuse him and 
 help him make a Roman holiday. The mightiest 
 men come forth, gladiators trained from their 
 youth for sanguinary contests. One after another 
 sinks under his blows until the greed of this mon- 
 ster in human form is glutted, and his imperial 
 arm is weary taking human life, his choicest 
 pastime. 
 
 Now, one would think, there would be persecu- 
 tions more terrible than those of Nero and Domi- 
 tian. His father, Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic, with 
 rare self-command and dignity, seemed to make 
 
 * " To surprise them [the wild beasts] in their solitary haunts, 
 and to transport them to Rome that they might be slain in pomp 
 by the hand of an emperor, was an enterprise equally ridiculous 
 for the prince and oppressive for the people. . . . 
 
 " He styled himself [as we still read on his medals] ' the 
 Roman Hercules.' . . . 
 
 "A panther was let loose, and the archer waited till he had 
 leaped on a trembling malefactor. In the same instant the shaft 
 flew ; the beast dropped dead and the man remained unhurt. The 
 door of the amphitheater disgorged at one time a hundred lions ; 
 a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them 
 dead, as they ran raging around the arena. Neither the huge 
 bulk of the elephant nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros could 
 defend them from his stroke " (Gibbon, vol. i., p. 160). 
 
48 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 it his aim in self-discipline to curb and conquer 
 what is cruel and ignoble in our nature : 
 
 " To let the ape and tiger die, 
 And let the man be more and more." 
 
 He was a man such as few ages have produced 
 in moral strength and nobility of character, one 
 of the finest products of that philosophy which 
 he professed, and this in spite of physical weak- 
 ness and suffering. Commodus, with the strength 
 of a Goliath, seems to have combined the fierce- 
 ness of the tiger with the fatuity of the ape. 
 Cruel contests in the arena and disgraceful de- 
 baucheries and bloody tragedies in the palace 
 occupied his time and his energies, while he left 
 the affairs of the empire in a large degree to freed- 
 men and sycophants.* 
 
 Yet under the noble father much Christian 
 blood flowed, and under the despicable son there 
 was peace and quietness. How this came about 
 we may never be able fully to explain ; but Hip- 
 polytus tells us of some facts which make it prob- 
 able that the relief from persecution in the reign 
 of Commodus was due, at least in part, to the in- 
 fluence of a person but for whose presence in the 
 palace of Caesar Callistus would never have been 
 Bishop of Rome and would never have had his 
 
 * Of him and other emperors, Gibbon says, " Secure of im- 
 punity, careless of censure, they lived without restraint in the 
 patient and humble society of their slaves and parasites." 
 
A CALM FOR THE CHRISTIANS 49 
 
 name enrolled in the catalogues of the popes and 
 the calendar of the saints. Marcia, the favorite 
 concubine of Commodus, bore some relationship 
 to the Christians. It would seem to indicate a 
 very low grade of moral sentiment in the church 
 in Rome at this time if she was a member of it. 
 Yet this seems to be implied in what Hippolytus 
 says of her, unless, as some think, his words are 
 ironical ; and it cannot be considered greatly out 
 of keeping with other facts on which he throws a 
 surprising light. However this may have been, 
 the influence of this woman probably stayed the 
 arm of the bloody tyrant and trifler from descend- 
 ing on the Christians in the empire. 
 
 This may be inferred, for instance, from what 
 Hippolytus says of the liberation of Callistus : 
 
 " Some time after, Marcia, wishing to do a good 
 work, sent for Victor [then Bishop of Rome] and 
 asked what Christians had been transported to 
 Sardinia, adding that she would ask the emperor 
 to release them ; but, being a judicious and right- 
 eous man, he omitted the name of Callistus, 
 knowing the offense he had committed. 
 
 " Marcia obtained the letter of pardon, and 
 Hyacinthus,* a eunuch [of the service of the 
 palace undoubtedly] and a presbyter [of the 
 church], was despatched to the governor of the 
 island to claim and bring back the martyrs. 
 * Hyacinthus was the foster-father of Marcia. 
 
50 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 Hyacinthus delivered his list, and Callistus, find- 
 ing that his name was not upon it, began to 
 lament and entreat, and at last moved Hyacinthus 
 to demand his liberation also." 
 
 So Callistus, the convict, comes back to the 
 scene of his former exploits to perform others, 
 which, though not at all more meritorious than 
 those which sent him a convict to Sardinia, were 
 to elevate him to the bishopric in Rome and to a 
 place in the calendar of the saints. 
 
 When he came back to Rome Victor was 
 greatly troubled in view of the scandal which his 
 presence would bring on the church ; but, " being 
 a good-natured man," instead of excommunicat- 
 ing him, he only insisted that he should leave the 
 city and live at Antium. 
 
V 
 THE BANKER MADE A BISHOP 
 
 5i 
 
THE BANKER MADE A BISHOP 
 
 In the year A.D. 197 Victor died, and Callistus 
 came back to Rome again. Zephyrinus became 
 bishop. Callistus gained great influence over 
 him, as we have already seen. He received from 
 Zephyrinus an appointment, a remarkable me- 
 morial of which still exists in Rome. He was 
 placed in charge of " the cemetery " (beautiful 
 name, " sleeping-place ") where the bodies of 
 Christians who had " fallen asleep " were laid 
 away to await the call of Him of whom the proc- 
 lamation has been made, " Behold, He cometh 
 with clouds, and every eye shall see Him," and 
 also, " All them that sleep in Jesus will God bring 
 with Him." 
 
 It seems quite probable that the catacomb of 
 St. Calixtus is the same " cemetery " which was 
 used by the Christians at the end of the second 
 century. There is still a pagan tomb of the 
 second century at the entrance to this catacomb, 
 indicating that it was in existence in the days of 
 53 
 
54 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 Zephyrinus and Callistus, and its interior has been 
 found to be rich in inscriptions, frescos, and other 
 relics of early Christianity. 
 
 The combination of avarice and illiteracy in 
 Zephyrinus seems to have suited well the aims 
 and purposes of Callistus. He had long to wait 
 before he could obtain full possession of the ob- 
 ject of his ambition, for Zephyrinus occupied the 
 seat he coveted for twenty years ( 1 97-2 1 7). Yet 
 Callistus seems to have wielded the power of the 
 position without bearing its responsibilities. Tak- 
 ing advantage of the ignorance and venality of 
 Zephyrinus, he seems to have used him as an 
 automaton through whose hands he played his 
 own game and gained his own ends. 
 
 This was a sad time for Christianity, in spite 
 of the freedom from persecution ; for Zephyrinus 
 was the weak tool of Callistus, the wicked schemer 
 and active promoter of heresy. 
 
 When Zephyrinus died, in 217, Callistus, hav- 
 ing doubtless thoroughly arranged everything 
 beforehand for this even$, and standing by in ex- 
 pectancy, vaulted into the empty seat. The bad 
 banker was now a bishop. 
 
 What sort of a bishop will he make ? Bad men 
 have become good through divine grace. It is 
 the glory of the Christian religion that it lifts men 
 from the lowest depths of degradation to the 
 loftiest and purest heights of true nobility. But 
 
THE BANKER MADE A BISHOP 55 
 
 when a man has lived for a large part of a lifetime 
 as a professing Christian, and has all along not 
 only been guilty of foibles and weaknesses, but 
 has systematically formed and carried out wicked 
 and selfish designs, we can have but little hope 
 that any position of responsibility to which he 
 may attain will work any great change for the 
 better in his character. In such a case we need 
 not expect such a transformation as is said to 
 have taken place when the wild, roistering Prince 
 Hal became Henry V. 
 
 Let us see what a neighboring bishop has to 
 say of Callistus after he has been elevated to the 
 bishopric. Our friends of the Church of Rome 
 would have us believe (especially since 1870) that 
 he was now a pope with universal and infallible 
 authority. Of course, then, we should expect 
 that all other bishops, and especially those whose 
 lives were such as to gain them the crown of 
 sainthood, would be found bowing before this 
 universal father and potentate with all possible 
 humility, and ready to obey every mandate with- 
 out a whisper of dissent or protest. 
 
 What did Hippolytus think of " Pope " Callis- 
 tus? Here is what he says : " He was indeed an 
 impostor and a villain [navovpyog], and in the end 
 drew many after him." This surely cannot be a 
 pope of whom a Roman saint and bishop thus 
 speaks ! 
 
56 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 So much for the character of Callistus; but 
 what of his theology? Hippolytus was a good 
 judge of this. He was a worthy forerunner of 
 Athanasius in the great contest against those of 
 every shade of opinion who taught false views 
 concerning the person of Christ and the doctrine 
 of the Trinity. Hear what he says of this man 
 who was, according to the present teaching of 
 Romanists, the infallible teacher of the church : 
 " Callistus took the lead in propagating this 
 heresy, and devised certain additions to the im- 
 piety of the doctrine [i.e., Noetianism]." 
 
 Cardinal Gibbons says:* "What, then, is the 
 real doctrine of infallibility ? It simply means that 
 the pope, as successor to St. Peter, Prince of the 
 Apostles, by virtue of the promises of Jesus Christ 
 is preserved from error of judgment when he pro- 
 mulgates to the church a decision on faith or 
 morals." 
 
 Now it must be remembered that Callistus is 
 one of the so-called successors of St. Peter. After 
 him several other popes were named, and he is 
 thus an honored link of that unbroken chain of 
 infallible teachers, every link of which was stamped 
 "infallible" by the Vatican Council in 1870. 
 How poorly the facts revealed by the search-light 
 of Hippolytus agree with the dogma of infallibil- 
 ity, as thus denned by this notable exponent of 
 
 * " Faith of our Fathers," chap x. 
 
THE BANKER MADE A BISHOP 57 
 
 Romanism, we have seen and shall see yet more 
 clearly. 
 
 Hear Hippolytus again : " The infatuated and 
 tricky fellow, who pours forth blasphemy wher- 
 ever he goes, . . . and is not ashamed at one 
 time to fall into the dogma of Sabellius, and at 
 another that of Theodotus." Theodotus denied 
 the divinity of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and Sa- 
 bellius, as is well known, the true doctrine of the 
 Trinity. 
 
 Is this an infallible pope, who " is preserved 
 from error of judgment when he promulgates 
 to the church a decision on faith or morals"? 
 Strange light is this which our saint with his 
 search-light sheds on the fabled " chair of Peter " ! 
 
VI 
 
 POPES (?) AND PRESBYTERS 
 
 59 
 
VI 
 
 POPES (?) AND PRESBYTERS 
 
 While this manner of speaking on the part of 
 Hippolytus shows clearly that Callistus was not, 
 as is claimed by the Roman Catholic Church, a 
 pope with universal and infallible authority, the 
 same thing is made perfectly clear by the account 
 that Hippolytus gives us of a trial for heresy. It 
 was a cause ce fibre. 
 
 The person charged with heresy was no other 
 than that Noetus whose theory of the Trinity 
 Callistus adopted, adding " to the impiety of the 
 doctrine." Is the trial according to the papal 
 system? Let us see. Hippolytus tells us: 
 " When the blessed presbyters \inakarioi presbn- 
 teroi] heard this, they summoned him [Noetus] 
 before the assembly and examined him. But he 
 denied at first that he held such opinions ; after- 
 ward, however, taking shelter among some, and 
 having gathered round him some others who had 
 embraced the same error, he wished thereafter to 
 uphold his dogma openly as correct. And the 
 61 
 
62 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 blessed presbyters called him again before them 
 and examined him. But he stood out against 
 them, saying, .... And the presbyters replied, 
 .... Then, after examining him, they expelled 
 him from the church, and he was carried to such 
 a pitch of pride that he established a school." * 
 
 This school, in which Noetianism, alias Patri- 
 passianism, was taught, survived and was made 
 very influential under Callistus, who made it ex- 
 ceedingly popular by adding the doctrine of " free 
 love," as we shall presently see. 
 
 Does not this show that trials were conducted 
 by presbyters sitting as a court ? Is not this very 
 much like a presbytery? Tayler remarks that 
 already " the fine gold was dimmed." It was in- 
 deed. But here we find no pope to make an au- 
 thoritative decision, but a body of presbyters. 
 Precisely in keeping with this representation of 
 the mode of ecclesiastical procedure in Rome in 
 the days of Hippolytus is what he says in another 
 place, where Zephyrinus is represented not as the 
 occupant of a papal throne, but as a member of 
 the assembly of presbyters. In this passage f 
 he says, " Callistus, putting Zephyrinus forward 
 in the assembly, persuaded him to say," etc. 
 
 Here we have a vivid picture of the great 
 struggle which Hippolytus had with these here- 
 
 * Hippolytus against the heresy of one Noetus. 
 \ " Refutation," book ix., chap. vi. 
 
POPES (?) y4ND PRESBYTERS 63 
 
 tics, and this is the occasion on which Zephyri- 
 nus, manipulated by Callistus, charges Hippolytus 
 with being a " ditheist." 
 
 As we read we find that the latter is upholding 
 the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as taught a 
 hundred years later by Athanasius, and Callistus 
 is denying the existence of three persons in the 
 Godhead. 
 
 We find that when Callistus was charged with 
 teaching that the Father suffered, and upheld 
 what has been called Patripassianism, he would 
 recoil and go to the opposite extreme of denying 
 the divinity of Christ, as Theodotus, who was ex- 
 communicated in the time of Victor, had done. 
 In the words of Hippolytus, " Callistus at one 
 time branches off to the opinion of Noetus, but 
 at another into that of Theodotus, and holds no 
 sure doctrine."* 
 
 Thus we find Hippolytus carrying out his in- 
 tention (expressed in book ix., chap, i.) " to fur- 
 nish an account and refutation of those heresies 
 that have sprang up in our day, by which certain 
 ignorant and presumptuous men have attempted 
 to scatter abroad the church, and have introduced 
 the greatest confusions among all the faithful 
 throughout the entire world." 
 
 If Callistus and Zephyrinus were popes with 
 infallibility and universal authority, what are we 
 
 * " Refutation," book x., chap, xxiii. 
 
64 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 to think of Hippolytus and Athanasius and all 
 the orthodox condemnations of Patripassianism 
 and Socinianism ? 
 
 Yet Callistus (Calixtus I.) is in all the cata- 
 logues as a pope, and in the Breviary at his name 
 the remark is appended, " Maxima veneratione 
 colitur " (" He is worshiped with the greatest 
 veneration "). 
 
 In the light which Hippolytus sheds on the 
 contest in the assembly, and in all that he says 
 of these wicked and blasphemous heresies, is it 
 possible to conceive an absurdity which excels 
 that of the claims of the Roman Catholic Church? 
 
VII 
 THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY 
 
 65 
 
VII 
 
 "THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY" 
 
 THUS we see how Hippolytus, in the words 
 of Dr. Schaff, " stands out an irrefutable witness 
 against the claims of an infallible papacy, which 
 was entirely unknown in the third century." 
 
 It is quite plain that, if Zephyrinus and Callis- 
 tus were popes, Hippolytus, who surely ought to 
 have known it, was entirely ignorant of the fact. 
 Yet what he tells us of another phase of the ad- 
 ministration of Callistus shows us that he pre- 
 tended to grant something very much like the 
 indulgences of later times, and we find that this 
 dreadful wickedness aroused indignation and 
 called forth protests no less earnest and decided 
 than it did in the sixteenth century. Hippolytus 
 was not only the Athanasius, but the Luther, of 
 his time. He is as earnest in opposing Zephyrinus 
 and Callistus in the year 200 as was Luther against 
 Leo and Tetzel thirteen centuries later. 
 
 Though the papacy was not established at this 
 
 time, it is easy to see that the germs of the ini- 
 
 quitotis system were developing. " The mystery 
 
 of iniquity," which existed even in Paul's day, 
 
 67 
 
68 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 and did " already work," was now growing strong 
 and bold. Indeed, it would seem that the theory 
 was not now in an early stage of evolution, but 
 had sprung full armed and equipped from the 
 fertile brain of this saint who is still invoked and 
 adored at the altars of Romanism in every land 
 on the fourteenth day of October. 
 
 Hippolytus goes on to inform us that Callistus, 
 by the promise that he would forgive sins, en- 
 couraged fornication, nameless crimes of lust and 
 uncleanness, and even abortion ; allowing the rich 
 to revel in debauchery, and yet providing rules 
 by which they might still remain in good and 
 regular standing in the church ; allowing all to 
 come to the communion, and wresting the Scrip- 
 tures to justify his course. Hippolytus exclaims : 
 " See to what a pitch of impiety this lawless one 
 [atiopios] proceeded, teaching fornication and 
 murder at the same time! Yet, in the face of 
 all these enormities, these men are lost to all sense 
 of shame and presume to call themselves the 
 Catholic Church."* 
 
 * Tertullian (" De Pudicitia," $i) says, in fine scorn of the 
 pretensions of Zephyrinus or Callistus : " I learn that an edict has 
 been given, even a peremptory edict. The sovereign pontiff 
 [pontifex maximus~\, that is, the bishop of bishops, has said: ' I 
 remit the sins of impurity and fornication to those who do pen- 
 ance.' O edict! not less can be done, then, than to ticket it, 
 'Good work.' But where shall such an edict be posted? Surely, 
 I think, upon the doors of the houses of prostitution." 
 
"THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY" 69 
 
 Here we see plainly the beginnings of that long 
 series of pretensions and usurpations of power on 
 the part of a bishop of Rome which finally de- 
 veloped, in A.D. 607, into the full-blown papacy, 
 when the decree of Phocas compelled the sub- 
 mission of other bishops to the Roman see, and 
 the bishops of Rome became popes. But there 
 is not the slightest indication that Hippolytus felt 
 that it was his duty to yield obedience to Zephy- 
 rinus or Callistus. 
 
VIII 
 CALLISTUS AND THE CALLISTIANS 
 
 7i 
 
VIII 
 
 CALLISTUS AND THE CALLISTIANS 
 
 It is perfectly clear that Hippolytus, so far 
 from acknowledging Callistus as the infallible 
 head of the church universal, indicted him as an 
 arch-heretic, and it is equally clear that this ac- 
 cusation does not apply only to his career before 
 he reached the coveted episcopate, but more es- 
 pecially to his acts and utterances while in that 
 position. He was not only guilty of these things 
 while he was operating his automaton, Zephyri- 
 nus, but more flagrantly after he is supposed to 
 have become infallible. 
 
 What less than this can be the meaning of such 
 an expression as this ? " It was from Callistus 
 his scholars took their appellation, Callistians, so 
 called on account of him who was their leader." 
 That Callistus was not the acknowledged head 
 and teacher of the church universal, but a design- 
 ing sectary and a base corrupter of morals, is 
 perfectly clear. 
 
 The thought that he owed him obedience has 
 evidently never suggested itself to Hippolytus. 
 73 
 
74 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 On the other hand, he feels that it is his bounden 
 duty to expose his errors and oppose his wicked 
 designs. Hippolytus, though calling himself a 
 presbyter, reckons himself in the true sense " a 
 successor* of the apostles and guardian of the 
 doctrine of the church," and he acts accordingly. 
 He tells us: 
 
 " The impostor Callistus, having ventured on 
 such opinions, established a school of theology in 
 ANTAGONISM f to the church, adopting the fore- 
 going system of instruction. And he first in- 
 vented the device of conniving with men in their 
 sensual pleasures, saying that all had their sins 
 forgiven by himself. For he who is in the habit 
 of attending the congregation of any one else, and 
 is called a Christian, should he commit any trans- 
 gression, the sin, they say, is not reckoned to 
 him, provided only he hurries off and attaches 
 himself to the school of Callistus. And many 
 persons were gratified with his regulations, as 
 being stricken in conscience, and at the same time 
 having been rejected for various heresies, while, 
 also, some of them, in accordance with our con- 
 demnatory sentence, had been by us forcibly 
 ejected from the church." £ This looks much 
 more as if Callistus were pastor of a church — per- 
 haps the oldest church — in Rome, and Hippolytus 
 
 * " Refutation," book i., introduction, 
 t Ibid., book ix., chap. vii. \ Ibid. 
 
CALLISTUS AND THE CALLISTIANS 75 
 
 of another, than as if Callistus were pope, or even 
 diocesan bishop. Hippolytus continues: "Now 
 such disciples as these passed over to these fol- 
 lowers of Callistus, and served to crowd his school." 
 And again: "This one propounded the opin- 
 ion that if a bishop was guilty of any sin, if 
 even a sin unto death, he ought not to be de- 
 posed. * . . . And the hearers of Callistus, being 
 delighted with his tenet, continue with him, thus 
 mocking [deceiving] themselves, as well as many 
 others, and crowds of these dupes flock into his 
 school. Wherefore also his pupils are multiplied, 
 and they plume themselves upon the crowds 
 [attending the school] for the sake of pleasures 
 which Christ did not permit. But, in contempt 
 of Him, they place restraint on the commission 
 of no sin, alleging that they pardon those who ac- 
 quiesce [in Callistus's opinions]." Then is given 
 an account of criminal and unnatural practices 
 
 * " Whosoever shall affirm that the Holy Spirit is not given by 
 ordination, and therefore that bishops say in vain, ' Receive ye 
 the Holy Ghost,' or that thereby a charade)- is not impressed, or 
 that he who was once a priest may become a layman again, let 
 him be accursed" (sessio xxiii., caput iv., canon 4, Decrees of 
 Council of Trent). 
 
 "... Of this the faithful are frequently to be reminded in 
 order to be convinced that, were even the lives of her ministers 
 debased by crime, they are still within her pale, and therefore lose 
 no part of the power with whieh her ministry invests them " 
 (ninth article of creed, Catechism of the Council of Trent, 
 Donovan's translation, published by command of Pope Pius V.). 
 
76 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HJPPOLYTUS 
 
 which is deemed unsuitable for quotation, show- 
 ing such a state of morals in the Christian church 
 as makes one shudder to think of. And these 
 things were encouraged by Callistus. What is the 
 conclusion from all this, from which it is a relief 
 to turn away as from an unbearable stench? 
 
 It would seem that, for all who are not so in- 
 cased in prejudice as to be absolutely inaccessible 
 to argument, these facts are sufficient to over- 
 throw the dogma of an infallible papacy. They 
 show plainly that there was at this time, at which 
 it is claimed that an infallible pontiff occupied a 
 papal throne, no such person in existence, and 
 that the wicked bishop Callistus, instead of being 
 the acknowledged head of the universal church, 
 was a sectary, leading his followers, in despite and 
 contempt of the authority of the church, into the 
 wildest heresy and the most infamous antinomi- 
 anism. And Rome cannot gainsay these facts, 
 for they are presented by one whom she has 
 sainted, and against whose truthfulness it would 
 be impiety for her to utter a syllable. 
 
 Thus we see that the dogma of infallibility is 
 an absurdity, and, moreover, that the so-called 
 chair of St. Peter is a mere figment of a designing 
 ecclesiasticism. Ah, how our poor world has bled 
 and groaned under the delusion! Millions have 
 shuddered at the thought of this mighty power 
 to punish eternally any opposition to its behests. 
 
CALLISTUS AND THE CALUSTIANS 77 
 
 It is clear that the chain of infallible authority- 
 supposed to lead back to the chair of St. Peter 
 has many missing links. The search-light of 
 Hippolytus reveals its non-existence, in his times 
 at least. As, in the clear radiance thrown on 
 this dark passage, we follow along the track where 
 this chain was said to lie, and find that it is not 
 there, the plain inference is that it is missing all 
 the way back to its pretended source, the chair 
 of Peter. Hippolytus has evidently never heard 
 of Peter as primate and of popes as his infallible 
 successors. Evidently, then, there is no chain 
 and there is no chair of universal and infallible 
 authority. They were manufactured in the papal 
 workshop after the days of Hippolytus. 
 
 Thus the " Refutation of all Heresies," while 
 intended for the refutation of the heresies of those 
 early times, refutes also, by the facts which it 
 lays bare, that which has been the arch-heresy of 
 the Christian era, the infallibility and supremacy 
 of the popes.* Could this but be universally 
 
 * It has been well said that " by the bull ' ineffabilis ' that pontiff 
 [Pius IX.] has retrospectively clothed the definitions of Zephy- 
 rinns and Callistus with infallibility, thus making himself partaker 
 in their heresies " (" Ante-Nicene Fathers," vol. v., p. 159). 
 
 Cardinal Gibbons would evidently claim infallibility for the 
 same "definitions." He says: "The Council of the Vatican, 
 in promulgating in 1870 the pope's infallibility, did not create a 
 new doctrine, but confirmed an old one. In proclaiming this 
 dogma, the church enforces as a law a principle which has always 
 existed as a matter of fact" (" Faith of our Fathers," chap. xi.). 
 
78 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 known and fully understood in all its bearings, 
 what fetters would be broken, what darkness 
 would be dispelled! The power of Rome to de- 
 lude and torture and destroy would be taken 
 away if all could but hear and fully comprehend 
 the words of Hippolytus. 
 
 Then we would say, as we look at this old 
 statue, O mute marble lips, may it soon be true of 
 you, as of the silent heavens, " There is no language 
 nor speech; their voice is not heard;" yet "their 
 sound is gone out into all the earth, and their 
 words to the end of the world." 
 
THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST 
 
 79 
 
IX 
 
 THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST 
 
 THE " good seed " requires " good ground " 
 and careful culture for its full development; but 
 ill weeds grow apace without any effort or care. 
 This Noetian-antinomian heresy of Callistus grew 
 and spread after his death in A.D. 222, the year 
 in which the good emperor Alexander Severus 
 ascended the throne. Shakespeare has said most 
 truly : 
 
 " The evil that men do lives after them." * 
 
 Oh, that it, instead of the good, could be "in- 
 terred with their bones " ! 
 
 It is not strange that multitudes had crowded 
 to the school of Callistus which he had " estab- 
 lished in antagonism to the church." It was 
 a very pleasant thing for those who wished 
 to live in the indulgence of "pleasures which 
 Christ did not permit " to be informed that this 
 made no serious difference ; that, though Bishop 
 Hippolytus and the bishops of other congrega- 
 
 * "Julius Csesar," act iii., sc. 2. 
 81 
 
82 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 tions in the city were so strait-laced and old- 
 fashioned as to exclude them as unfit to be 
 church-members, there was one Bishop Callistus, 
 who would readily forgive their offenses if they 
 would but attend his new theological school. 
 Here there was some scope for breadth and ad- 
 vanced thought. The disagreeable features of 
 the teachings of Christ and the apostles were 
 there smoothed down or eliminated, and a pleas- 
 ing liberalism had taken the place of a crabbed, 
 strict orthodoxy in doctrine and a purely biblical 
 rule of life. Callistianism quite naturally acquired 
 a wide-spread popularity, like Mohammedanism 
 four hundred years later, and Mormonism in our 
 own century, though the scale on which it oper- 
 ated was more contracted than that of Moham- 
 medanism by reason of the true Christianity which 
 surrounded it, and largely through the energy and 
 determined opposition of Hippolytus and his 
 fellow-pastors in Rome. 
 
 We have already seen how the " blessed pres- 
 byters " began to wrestle with the error at first 
 in order to throttle it in its birth by excluding 
 Noetus of Smyrna, its originator, from the church. 
 But the wily and able Callistus eluded their vigi- 
 lance and defied their authority, as he had the 
 crowd, doubtless, of the worldly and the rich at 
 his back, and, instead of being deposed, was 
 made a "saint." His invention of a "second 
 
THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNFITTEST 83 
 
 baptism," by which it was claimed that all sins 
 were washed away, became specially popular, it 
 seems ; for nothing so pleases those who wish to 
 live in sin and yet be saved, as an arrangement of 
 this sort. To such, one work which they can 
 perform or external ordinance which can be ad- 
 ministered to them is more highly prized than all 
 the truths of Scripture and all the " exceeding 
 great and precious promises " of the gospel. The 
 definite "work done" {opus operatum) is a 
 soothing salve for the wounded conscience much 
 sought after by Christians of this stamp, and the 
 second baptism of Callistus was just the thing to 
 meet the popular demands of the unspiritual. It 
 was " too good a thing " to be allowed to die 
 with its originator. The antinomianism of Callis- 
 tus lived after him and gained new vigor. First 
 connected with Noetianism by him, it formed a 
 copartnership after his death with another of the 
 fantastic heresies of the time. 
 
 Hippolytus gives us the sequel of this heretical 
 movement in the seventh and eighth chapters of 
 the ninth book of the " Refutation." He had 
 struggled for twenty years with Zephyrinus and 
 Callistus united, and then with Callistus invested 
 with new authority, for five more, against errors 
 that threatened to destroy the very life of the 
 church and cover with reproach the very name 
 of Christian. Now he was becoming Hippolytus 
 
84 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 the aged, but he must continue the battle. He 
 and Callistus were, as he tells us, " of the same 
 age." The latter must, then, have been about 
 seventy when he died in 222. Hippolytus, now 
 under the burden of threescore years and ten, 
 must gird on his armor again, for the battle is 
 about to wax hotter than ever. A new and 
 formidable foe appears on the scene, one Alcibia- 
 des, who broached a heresy founded on a pre- 
 tended revelation called the " Book of Elchasai." 
 But let Hippolytus tell the story : 
 
 " The doctrine of this one [Callistus] having 
 been noised abroad throughout the entire world, 
 a cunning man and full of desperation, one called 
 Alcibiades, dwelling in Apamaea, [a city] of Syria, 
 examined carefully into this business. And, 
 considering himself a more formidable character, 
 and more ingenious in such tricks than Callistus, 
 he repaired to Rome; and he brought thither 
 some book, alleging that a certain just man, El- 
 chasai, had received this from Serae, a town of 
 Parthia, and that he gave it to one called Sobiai. 
 [He alleged] that it had been revealed by an angel 
 whose height was twenty-four schoenoi, which 
 make ninety-six miles," etc. 
 
 Alcibiades represented that Elchasai's " new 
 remission of sins " had been preached as early as 
 " the third year of Trajan." Hippolytus contin- 
 ues: " And [Elchasai] determines [the nature of] 
 
THE SURVIVAL OF THE UN FITTEST 85 
 
 baptism, and even this I shall explain. He alleges 
 [as regards] those who have been involved in 
 every species of lasciviousness and filthiness and 
 [in] acts of wickedness, if only any [of them] be 
 a believer, that he determines that such an one, 
 on being converted * and obeying the book [of 
 Elchasai], should by baptism receive remission 
 of sins. He, however, ventured on these knaver- 
 ies, taking occasion from the aforesaid tenet of 
 zv/iic/i Callistus stood fonvard as a cliampion. 
 
 " For, perceiving that many were delighted 
 with this kind of a promise, he considered that 
 he could opportunely make the attempt [just 
 alluded to]. 
 
 " Notwithstanding, we offered opposition to 
 this [heretic] and did not permit many for any 
 length of time to become victims of the delusion. 
 
 " For we carried conviction [to the people when 
 we affirmed] that this was the operation of a 
 spurious spirit and the invention of a heart inflated 
 with pride, and that this [heretic], like a wolf, had 
 risen up against many wandering sheep which 
 Callistus by his [arts of] deception had scattered 
 abroad." 
 
 Of this leader of the Elchasaites, or advanced 
 Callistians, Hippolytus tells us : " To those, then, 
 
 * This "conversion" evidently was the acceptance of Elcha- 
 saism, and had nothing to do with a turning from sin to righteous- 
 ness. 
 
86 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 that have been orally instructed by him he dis- 
 penses baptism in this manner, addressing to his 
 dupes some such words as the following: 
 
 " ' If, therefore, one shall ' " — here are named 
 crimes of the lowest conceivable nature, unsuita- 
 ble even to mention, — " ' and is desirous of ob- 
 taining forgiveness of sins, from the moment that 
 he hearkens to this book [of Elchasai] let him be 
 baptized a second time in the name of the great 
 and most high God, and in the name of His Son, 
 the mighty King, and by baptism let him be puri- 
 fied and cleansed, and let him adjure for himself 
 these seven witnesses that have been described in 
 this book — the heaven, and the water, and the 
 holy spirits, and the angels of prayer, and the 
 oil, and the salt, and the earth.' 
 
 " These constitute the astonishing mysteries of 
 Elchasai and those ineffable and potent secrets 
 which he delivers to his deserving disciples."* 
 
 Are the additions which the Roman Catholic 
 Church has made to the simple baptism ordained 
 by Christ survivals of Callistianism and Elchasa- 
 ism ? Rome does, indeed, condemn a second 
 baptism ; but the efficacy ascribed to the sacra- 
 ment, the exorcism, the oil and the salt used in 
 administering it, are very suggestive of Elchasai's 
 rite, while the fact that baptism in both cases is 
 called a mystery indicates in no uncertain way a 
 
 * " Refutation of all Heresies," book ix., chap. x. 
 
THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNF1TTEST 87 
 
 connection between what Hippolytus speaks of 
 with disgust and righteous indignation and the 
 Romish ordinance of the present day. 
 
 Looking back at this old-time contest between 
 antinomian heresy and true Christianity, one can 
 hardly refrain from joining in the generous out- 
 burst of the American editor of the works of Hip- 
 polytus (Bishop A. C. Coxe) : 
 
 " My soul be with Hippolytus when the great 
 Judge holds His assize. His eulogy is in the 
 psalm, ' Then stood up Phinehas, and executed 
 judgment : and so the plague was stayed. And 
 that was counted unto him for righteousness unto 
 all generations forevermore.' "* 
 
 * " Ante-Nicene Fathers," vol. v., p. 160. 
 
X 
 TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 
 
 8 9 
 
 

TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 
 
 We would fain know more of this noble de- 
 fender of the faith, but the baptism of fire which 
 swept over the Christian church just after the 
 usurpation of the imperial throne by the Gothic 
 giant, Maximin the Thracian, seems to have 
 destroyed almost all personal memorials of his 
 career; but the statue in the marble chair attests 
 the high esteem in which he was held. It pre- 
 sents to us still a form most venerable for age 
 and benign dignity, while the inscriptions upon 
 the chair indicate his participation in the en- 
 deavor to settle one of the controversies which 
 for many years divided the church. These in- 
 scriptions, as we have seen, also point to some 
 of the many works in which he labored long to 
 maintain and present to the church and the 
 world the great truths of the Scriptures on other 
 points of far greater importance than the timing 
 of the Easter festival. 
 
 Though he was threescore years and ten 
 9 1 _ 
 
92 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 when the contest with Callistus ended with the 
 death of the wicked bishop in 222, his work was 
 not near its completion. In the thirteen or 
 fourteen years that followed it is not improbable 
 that much of his literary work, of which many 
 fragments have come down to us, was done. It 
 is certain that the great work which was begun 
 in his student days, and was at first but a synop- 
 sis of the lectures of his teacher, Irenaeus, was 
 not completed till this period ; and in his " Chroni- 
 cle " is recorded, in what was perhaps one of the 
 last strokes of his prolific pen, the death of the 
 good emperor Alexander Severus in A.D. 235. 
 
 He wrote commentaries on Genesis, Exodus, 
 Numbers, the Books of Samuel, the Psalms, 
 Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Canticles, the Greater 
 Prophets, and Zechariah. That on Daniel, re- 
 cently discovered, has already been referred to. 
 He wrote commentaries on books of the New 
 Testament too, and fragments of those on Mat- 
 thew, Luke, and the Revelation still exist. He 
 also wrote a defense of John's Gospel and of the 
 Revelation. He was one of those to whom God 
 had given " a banner, that it might be displayed 
 because of the truth," and very nobly and cour- 
 ageously did he display it. 
 
 When Maximin the Thracian had compassed 
 the deaths of Alexander and his noble mother, 
 Mammaea, the guide of his youth, the next vie- 
 
TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 93 
 
 tims of his wrath were the Christians; for they 
 had been favored by Alexander and were at- 
 tached to him. 
 
 In the emperor's youth Mammaea had sent for 
 Origen to come to Antioch, and there listened to 
 his instructions with great interest. In this privi- 
 lege Alexander was doubtless a sharer. 
 
 Eusebius tells us that Origen visited Rome * in 
 the reign of Caracalla (21 1-2 17), and, strangely 
 enough, Jerome notes the fact that one of the 
 homilies of Hippolytus shows the presence of 
 Origen when it was delivered. f These two great 
 men, then, seem to have met when Alexander 
 Severus was a youth. Is it not probable that 
 they talked of the hopeful prospect that the 
 future emperor would be a Christian and that 
 the empire might be won for Christ ? We can- 
 not know. But it is certain that when Alex- 
 
 * According to Eusebius, this visit of Origen to Rome was 
 during the episcopate of Zephyrinus. He says (" Hist. Eccl.," 
 book vi., chap, xiv.): "Origen, . . . while Zephyrinus at this 
 time was Bishop of the Church of Rome " (he does not intimate 
 that this was the church universal), " says that he also came to 
 Rome, being desirous to see the very ancient Church of Rome." 
 
 t According to a great scholar (W. E. Tayler, " Hippolytus 
 and the Church of the Third Century," p. 38), "History records 
 that he [Hippolytus] was the first preacher of note in the Church 
 of Rome." 
 
 The opinion has been expressed by another equally distin- 
 guished student of Christian biography, Dr. Salmon, that Origen 
 probably received a great impetus in his brilliant course from 
 Hippolytus. 
 
94 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 ander Severus, who was looked upon as the al- 
 most Christian emperor, was slain that the 
 altogether pagan giant, Maximin, might ascend 
 the throne, Hippolytus was among the victims 
 in the persecution which followed. 
 
 There must have been much in common be- 
 tween Hippolytus and the brilliant genius and 
 untiring student, Origen. They were both great 
 students of the Word of God, and it is probable 
 that the ardent and enthusiastic younger scholar 
 had not yet mingled with his teachings drawn 
 from the Word of God those unorthodox views 
 which came from the pagan philosophies of the 
 day which Hippolytus so earnestly combats in 
 his "Refutation." At this time Origen must 
 have been engaged in the ardent pursuit of those 
 studies for the more favorable prosecution of 
 which he left Alexandria, the scene of his bril- 
 liant success as a teacher in the school established 
 by the great Clement of Alexandria, whom he 
 succeeded when he was but eighteen years old, 
 younger than most of his pupils. His enthusi- 
 astic pursuit now was the study of Hebrew. He 
 became the greatest living Hebraist, and his 
 monumental work, the " Hexapla," — the Old 
 Testament in six versions, arranged in parallel 
 columns, — has been of incalculable help in ascer- 
 taining and preserving a pure text of this part of 
 the Word of God. Though so young, his great 
 
TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 95 
 
 celebrity, it seems, had induced Mammaea to 
 seek his instructions in the truths of Christianity. 
 
 On that occasion when Origen was a hearer of 
 Hippolytus there must have been some commu- 
 nion and interchange of thought between the two 
 greatest Christians in the world, and it surely re- 
 quires no great stretch of the imagination to pic- 
 ture the younger and the older man leaving the 
 house of God together, walking together along 
 the streets of the splendid and wicked city of 
 the Caesars, and then seeking some spot where 
 they might be free from the noises of the streets 
 and where they might sit and talk of all the won- 
 derful things that God had done for them in the 
 past, the struggles of the present, and the pros- 
 pects of the future for that church which Christ 
 died to save and for which they were willing to 
 lay down their lives. 
 
 If, leaving the thoroughfares of business, they 
 should have gone up the Capitoline Hill, and have 
 sat together under the Italian sky in some of the 
 gardens about the splendid temples there, or on 
 the steps of that Capitol from which the laws for 
 the world-wide empire emanated, they would 
 have found themselves in the center of a scene 
 whose splendor has perhaps never been equaled. 
 Near by them would be seen the temple of 
 Jupiter Capitolinus, the central shrine of pagan 
 worship. To it came the victorious generals as 
 
96 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 they returned from conquered nations and prov- 
 inces to offer thanks and sacrifices and to enrich 
 it with captured wealth and works of art. From 
 this their eyes would naturally turn toward that 
 point on the eastern boundary of the great city, 
 where was the pretorian camp to which Paul was 
 brought a prisoner, and where, though himself a 
 captive, he led many a soldier captive in the 
 sweet bonds of Christ's love, preaching to him 
 the glorious gospel of Christ, as the guard and 
 the prisoner lay chained together through the 
 long watches of the night. North of them would 
 be seen the whole length of the Flaminian Way, 
 the finest street in Rome, running parallel to the 
 modern Corso from the Capitoline Mount to the 
 Flaminian Gate on the northern boundary, 
 spanned by the triumphal arches of Claudius 
 and of Marcus Aurelius. To the west of this 
 lay the Campus Martius with all its objects of in- 
 terest. Toward the setting sun would be seen 
 the Flaminian Circus and the Portico of Octavius. 
 Near the Pantheon would be seen that magnifi- 
 cent bridge erected by Hadrian to lead to his 
 mausoleum, which is still standing under the 
 name of Castle of St. Angelo. A little west of 
 south was the great Circus Maximus, capable of 
 holding three hundred and eighty-five thousand 
 spectators of the chariot-races. This helps us to 
 form some idea of the size of the city of Rome. 
 
TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET gj 
 
 On the southeast was the great Caelian Hill, 
 covered with the palaces of men whose income 
 was, in some cases, a large part of the tribute of 
 a conquered province.* 
 
 But the splendor of the Italian sky and of the 
 imperial city would not long hold the gaze ol 
 two such men in such a time. They might both 
 look toward the Palatine bridge not far away, 
 and then to the more distant Porta Portuensis, as 
 this was the way to Portus Romanus, where 
 Origen may have landed in coming to Rome, 
 and where Hippolytus, as Bishop of the Nations, 
 once exercised oversight for the Christian com- 
 munity, which must have been a veritable 
 " church of the strangers," as Christians from all 
 nations under heaven would land there on their 
 way to Rome. But no earthly sights or sounds 
 could long occupy two minds so full of higher 
 things. Both would naturally think of the terri- 
 ble persecutions of Septimius Severus, which had 
 ended with the emperor's death in 211. These 
 persecutions had been especially severe in Alex- 
 andria, the home of Origen's childhood and youth. 
 
 The young man would naturally tell the older 
 of that noble Christian father of his, Leonides, 
 who, being one of the most prominent and de- 
 voted among the Christians, was among the first 
 
 * On the Rome of the period, see Lord's " Old Roman World " 
 and Ginn's " Classical Atlas." 
 
98 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 to be seized in the Septimian persecution. He 
 Would gladly have laid down his own life with 
 that of his father, and everywhere proclaimed 
 himself a Christian ; but the Lord had work for 
 him, and he was not slain. His pupils were taken, 
 and he did not hesitate to minister to them and 
 to accompany them to the stake ; but when his 
 father was arrested a stratagem dictated by a 
 mother's love detained the enthusiastic and de- 
 voted boy savant at home, and he could only 
 write to his father urging him to be " faithful 
 unto death." His best scholars were martyred, 
 and he was stoned in the streets and continually 
 in peril of his life ; but none of these things 
 moved him. As soon as there was a lull in the 
 tempest he went on teaching again. He could 
 not help speaking to Hippolytus of scenes of 
 such absorbing interest from which he had not 
 long before come. Possibly, too, the memorable 
 conferences with Mammaea and her noble boy 
 had just taken place, and would afford matter of 
 much interest to both talkers. 
 
 Then Hippolytus might naturally be reminded 
 of his own youth, and tell Origen of his great 
 teacher, Irenaeus. What a wonderful teacher he 
 was! How he clung to the Word of God in the 
 Old and New Testaments at a time when the re- 
 ligious atmosphere seems to have been so charged 
 with heathen philosophies of one kind and an- 
 
77^0 GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET 99 
 
 other that few could escape the influence of the 
 spiritual malaria! But I think Hippolytus would 
 have dwelt most lovingly on the personal remi- 
 niscences which his teacher, who had gone to his 
 rest some twelve or fifteen years before, must 
 often have related to him of a teacher at whose 
 feet he himself had sat in youth — Polycarp, the 
 pupil of John, the beloved disciple of our Lord. 
 
 Irenaeus, doubtless, often told Hippolytus, as 
 we know he told Florinus, of the times when he 
 was "yet but a boy." He must have spoken 
 much more fully and freely to his beloved pupil, 
 too, than he did to the latter. In writing to the 
 erring Florinus, and in order to induce him to 
 cleave to the truth, he speaks of Polycarp, whom 
 Florinus had known, as follows : 
 
 " For I remember the events of those times 
 better than the events of recent occurrence, as the 
 studies of our youth growing with our minds be- 
 come one with them ; so that I can tell the very 
 spot where the blessed Polycarp, being seated, 
 used to discourse, his outgoings and his incomings, 
 his manner of life, the form of his body, his con- 
 versations with the people, and his familiar inter- 
 course with John, as he was accustomed to tell, 
 as also with the others who had seen the Lord. 
 How, also, he used to relate their discourses and 
 what things he had heard from them concerning 
 the Lord ; also concerning His miracles and His 
 
IOO THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 doctrine. All these were told by Polycarp in 
 consistency with Holy Scripture " (see how Ire- 
 naeus speaks of the Gospels), " as he had received 
 them from those who had been eye-witnesses of 
 the life of the Word. These things, by the mercy 
 of God and the opportunity then afforded me, I 
 attentively heard, noting them down not on pa- 
 per, but in my heart ; and these same facts I am 
 always in the habit of recalling faithfully to mind."* 
 Then Hippolytus would naturally come back 
 from the golden past to the struggles of the pres- 
 ent. Here in Rome the Christians highest in 
 authority presented a great contrast to " that 
 blessed and apostolic presbyter," Polycarp, as 
 Irenaeus calls him in the same letter. At this 
 time Zephyrinus and Callistus were in full career 
 and the faithful and true were mourning. This 
 was in the time of Caracalla, and, in spite of the 
 fact that this emperor was so bloodthirsty as to 
 slay twenty thousand at one time of those who 
 had adhered to his brother Geta, and to cause a 
 general slaughter of the inhabitants of Alexandria, 
 it seems that the Christians were not persecuted. 
 Elagabalus (or Heliogabalus), the fantastic, 
 effeminate, and pleasure-loving youth who next 
 wore the purple, the Sardanapalus of Rome, who 
 was so reckless of human life and so destitute of 
 
 * See letter to Florinus, preserved in Eusebius's " Hist. 
 Eccl.," book v., chap. xx. 
 
TWO GREAT CHRISTIANS MEET IOI 
 
 respect for age or eminence that he is said to have 
 invited the patricians of Rome to a banquet, and 
 while they were at table had the doors opened to 
 let in tigers and bears to tear them limb from 
 limb, seems yet not to have disturbed the calm 
 which the Christians enjoyed. The peace of re- 
 ligion lasted, it seems, through the thirteen or 
 fourteen years of Alexander's reign. But a great 
 change came when he and Mammaea were mur- 
 dered, as it is supposed, by the contrivance of 
 Maximin, the gigantic Thracian. The giant is 
 said to have consumed forty pounds of meat in a 
 day, washing it down with an amphora of wine, 
 and to have worn his wife's bracelet as a finger 
 ring. Alexander favored the Christians. The 
 bloody ogre vented his fury upon them, taking 
 the bishops first. 
 
 Hippolytus was one of the shining marks in 
 the Christian church at which this cruel archer 
 aimed. Both Hippolytus and Pontianus (so-called 
 pope of the time) were sent to the mines of Sar- 
 dinia. At fourscore the life of a convict could 
 not be very long continued there. Both perished, 
 we know not in what way, and, according to the 
 Liberian Catalogue, both were buried on the same 
 day, Pontianus in the Cemetery of St. Calixtus, 
 and Hippolytus on the Via Tiburtina, where his 
 statue in the marble chair was found in 155 1. 
 
 The story of Prudentius that Hippolytus was 
 
102 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 dragged to death by wild horses in the streets of 
 Ostia is thought to be apocryphal ; but it seems 
 probable that both of these men died violent 
 deaths from the fact that both were buried on the 
 same day and that both were enrolled as martyrs. 
 There seems to be a pathetic reference to his own 
 banishment in a fragment of Hippolytus. Ad- 
 dressing the beloved disciple, he says : " Tell me, 
 blessed John, apostle and disciple of the Lord, 
 what didst thou see and hear concerning Baby- 
 lon ? Arise and speak, for it sent thee also into 
 banishment." The words seem to have been 
 written during his own banishment. 
 
XI 
 
 THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON; OR, 
 
 HOLY SCRIPTURE BEFORE POPES AND 
 
 COUNCILS 
 
 103 
 
XI 
 
 THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON ; OR, 
 
 HOLY SCRIPTURE BEFORE POPES 
 
 AND COUNCILS 
 
 The account given by Hippolytus of the 
 Christian church shows plainly the falsity of the 
 claim of the Church of Rome to a line of infallible 
 popes leading back to Peter. His works show 
 with equal clearness the falsity of the claim that 
 the Roman Catholic Church made up the canon 
 of Scripture and thus gave it authority by its im- 
 primatur. 
 
 Should this language seem too strong, I will 
 willingly substitute for it that of Cardinal Gib- 
 bons, as found in " The Faith of our Fathers " 
 (44th ed., 1894), chapter viii. : "The Catholic 
 Church, in the plenitude of her authority, in the 
 third Council of Carthage (a.d. 397) separated 
 the chaff from the wheat, and declared what 
 books were canonical and what were apocryphal." 
 On the same page he adds, " Indeed, when you 
 accept the Bible as the Word of God, you are 
 105 
 
106 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 obliged to receive it on the authority of the Catho- 
 lic Church" etc. 
 
 Now, long before this Council of Carthage, lived 
 Hippolytus. After his active life began more than 
 two whole centuries rolled away before this coun- 
 cil assembled in the old African city. How was 
 it with the canon two hundred years before this 
 body of men are said to have manufactured it? 
 Bunsen says: 
 
 " The whole [New Testament] canon of Hip- 
 polytus may be therefore reconstructed thus. It 
 contained : 
 
 " (i) The four Gospels. 
 
 " (2) The Acts. . . . 
 
 "(3) The Pauline epistles to seven distinct 
 churches ; nine epistles as we read them. . . . 
 
 " (4) The four Pastoral Letters : to Philemon 
 and Titus, and the two addressed to Timothy. 
 
 " (5) The six catholic (or general) epistles : the 
 Epistle of St. James ; the Epistle of St. Peter (our 
 first) ; the three epistles of St. John ; the Epistle 
 of St. Jude. 
 
 " (6) The Epistle to the Hebrews. . . . 
 
 " (7) The Apocalypse of St. John."* 
 
 It is remarkable that Bunsen represents Hip- 
 polytus as omitting the Second Epistle of Peter. 
 This is evidently an oversight, as Hippolytus 
 quotes it several times, and it is once quoted in 
 
 * Bunsen, " Hippolytus and his Age," vol. ii., p. 139. 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON IOJ 
 
 one of the extracts from the " Refutation " in 
 these pages. The reference to Zephyrinus and 
 Callistus as " returning [after an apparent tem- 
 porary reformation] to wallow in the same mire " 
 is from 2 Peter ii. 22 : "The dog is turned to his 
 own vomit again ; and the sow that was washed to 
 her wallowing in the mire." This is, then, pre- 
 cisely our canon of the New Testament. 
 
 As to his conception of the authority of the 
 Scriptures, Hippolytus views it just as Protestants 
 do. Bunsen does not go at all beyond what any 
 one reading the works of Hippolytus can see to 
 be the fact when he says, " The expressions of 
 Hippolytus on the paramount authority of Scrip- 
 ture in all matters of faith and doctrine are as 
 strong as those of the Reformers."* 
 
 If space allowed, abundant quotations from 
 Hippolytus could be cited to substantiate this, 
 but one is sufficient: 
 
 "There is one God, my brother, and Him we 
 know only by the Holy Scriptures. For, in like 
 manner as he who wishes to learn the wisdom of 
 this world cannot accomplish it without studying 
 the doctrines of the philosophers, thus all those 
 who wish to practise the divine wisdom will not 
 learn it from any other source than from the 
 Word of God. Let us, therefore, see what the 
 Holy Scriptures pronounce, let us understand 
 
 * " Hippolytus and his Age," vol. ii., p. 144. 
 
108 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 what they teach, and let us believe as the Father 
 wishes to be believed, and praise the Son as He 
 wishes to be praised, and accept the Holy Spirit 
 as He wishes to be given. Not according to our 
 own will, nor according to our own reason, nor 
 forcing w/iat God has given; but let us see all 
 this as He has willed to show it by the Holy 
 Scriptures." 
 
 This is pure Protestantism, equally free from 
 the spirit of popery, on the one hand, and from 
 unbelieving rationalism, on the other. 
 
 Could the grand old champion of a pure Chris- 
 tianity rise and live again on earth, where the two 
 great divisions of those who bear the name of 
 Christians stand opposed, one bearing on its ban- 
 ner, " The pope, the only infallible teacher," and 
 the other the immortal words of Chillingworth, 
 " The Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of 
 Protestants," there is no doubt as to which ranks 
 the old hero would join. With the prayer that 
 " all may be one," both he and we would rejoice 
 to see unfurled the banner from which should 
 shine forth, " The Bible, the Bible alone, the re- 
 ligion of all Christians." 
 
 For those Christians whose minds have been 
 disturbed by the representations of the Tubingen 
 school, and its small imitators and camp-followers 
 along the byways of popular literature, as to the 
 probability of the late origin of the Gospels, and 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 109 
 
 especially that of John, it is reassuring to find, in 
 the works of a man born about fifty years after 
 John's death, quotations from all the Gospels and 
 all the other books of the New Testament, and to 
 find also that these writings are continually called 
 " the Holy Scriptures " and " the Word of God." 
 
 As to Baur's theory that the Gospel of John 
 was written A.D. 160-170, it is instructive to find 
 Hippolytus, who was a theological student about 
 A.D. 170, speaking in this way about it: "These 
 things, then, brethren, are declared by the Scrip- 
 tures ; and the blessed John, in the testimony of 
 his Gospel, gives us an account of this economy 
 and acknowledges this Word as God when he 
 says : ' In the beginning was the Word, and the 
 Word was with God, and the Word was God.' " * 
 
 It is still more reassuring to find that the teacher 
 of Hippolytus quotes the New Testament in just 
 the same way — as " the Word of God." 
 
 The following extract, while very interesting 
 as one of the earliest accounts of the writing of 
 the New Testament, is especially so as showing 
 how the teacher of Hippolytus regarded these 
 writings. He says : 
 
 " Matthew also issued a written Gospel among 
 the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and 
 Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the 
 foundations of the church. 
 
 * Treatise against the heresy of one Noetus, § 14. 
 
110 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 " After their departure Mark, the disciple and 
 interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in 
 writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke 
 also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book 
 the Gospel preached by him. Afterward John, 
 the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned on 
 His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during 
 his residence at Ephesus in Asia. 
 
 " These have all declared unto us that there is 
 one God, Creator of heaven and earth, announced 
 by the law and the prophets, and one Christ, the 
 Son of God. If any one do not agree to these 
 truths he despises the companions of the Lord ; 
 nay, more : he despises Christ Himself, the Lord ; 
 yea, he despises the Father also ; and stands con- 
 demned, resisting and opposing his own salvation, 
 as is the case with all heretics." * 
 
 " When, however, they are confuted from the 
 Scriptures, they turn and accuse these same Scrip- 
 tures as if they were not correct nor of authority," 
 etc. f 
 
 Irenaeus may have been liable, as all men are, 
 to make mistakes in his statements of facts ; but 
 there can be no mistake about the fact that the 
 teacher of Hippolytus held the New Testament 
 to be the Word of God and that to reject it was 
 to forfeit salvation. 
 
 * " Adv. Hares.," book iii., chap. i. 
 t Ibid., chap. ii. 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON I I I 
 
 According to Keith,* Irenaeus, in that part of 
 his works which is still extant (and we have only 
 a part of what he wrote), quotes the New Testa- 
 ment seven hundred and sixty-seven times, and 
 " Irenaeus shows throughout his works an intimate 
 knowledge of the Gospels, Acts, and epistles." He 
 quotes the books of the New Testament as " the 
 divine Scriptures," " the divine Oracles," " the 
 Scriptures of the Lord." 
 
 The fact that two books of the New Testament, 
 the Third Epistle of John and the Epistle of Jude, 
 are not quoted in the extant writings of Irenaeus 
 is no indication that these books were not in the 
 New Testament at that time. For we find that 
 these two epistles together contain only thirty- 
 nine verses, and any of us might write twice as 
 much as we have from Irenaeus without having 
 occasion to quote either of these very short letters. 
 Indeed, it is a remarkable proof of the importance 
 which he attached to the New Testament that 
 there are found in his writings quotations from 
 all the books of which it is composed, with this 
 exception. 
 
 Pothinus was Bishop of Lyons, and suffered 
 martyrdom there in A.D. 177 in a most ruthless 
 persecution under Marcus Aurelius. Irenaeus, 
 who had been associated with him in his labors 
 in Gaul, was made bishop in his stead, and seems 
 
 * " Demonstration of the Truth of Christianity," chap. vi. 
 
112 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 not to have hesitated to assume the duties of a 
 position than which none could have required 
 more courage and stronger faith. 
 
 A letter was written by the churches, and prob- 
 ably sent by Irenaeus, who was in Rome the fol- 
 lowing year, addressed " to those brethren in 
 Asia and Phrygia having the same faith and hope 
 with us." Asia was the name of a small division 
 of the region afterward called Asia Minor, and 
 Ephesus was its capital. This was the scene of 
 the last days of the Apostle John, and the letter, 
 while telling of the inhuman tortures and deaths 
 of various members of their churches, dwells upon 
 the suffering and faithfulness unto death of the 
 aged and beloved bishop Pothinus. These facts 
 certainly involve a strong probability that Po- 
 thinus, like Polycarp, was a disciple of John. 
 
 After describing the fiery trial and glorious 
 triumph of others who laid down their lives for 
 Christ, the letter continues : " But the blessed 
 Pothinus, who had faithfully performed the minis- 
 trations of the episcopate at Lyons, and was past 
 his ninetieth year and very infirm in body . . . 
 when carried by the soldiers to the tribunal, and 
 when the mob raised a cry against him, gave a 
 noble testimony. When asked by the governor, 
 ' Who was the God of the Christians ? ' he said, 
 ' If thou art worthy thou shalt know.' After this 
 he was unmercifully dragged away, and endured 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON I I 3 
 
 many stripes, while those that were near abused 
 him with their hands and feet in every possible 
 way, not even regarding his age. But those at 
 a distance, whatever they had at hand every one 
 hurled at him. . . . Thus, scarcely drawing 
 breath, he was thrown into prison, and after two 
 days he there expired." * 
 
 In this letter there are quotations from the 
 epistles to the Romans, Philippians, 1 Timothy, 
 1 Peter, Acts, Gospels of Luke and John, and the 
 Apocalypse. Within the limits of the letter twelve 
 books of the New Testament are referred to. 
 Would a letter of the same length written by 
 Christians in our time, with the whole New Testa- 
 ment before them, be likely to contain more quota- 
 tions from it if the letter were a narrative of 
 passing events and not a doctrinal discussion? 
 These people in 177 show themselves to have 
 been exceedingly familiar with the New Testa- 
 ment and to have relied on its teachings as their 
 source of instruction and comfort in times when 
 each was liable to those tortures and that death 
 by which their companions had shown their faith 
 in its truths. But this New Testament had been 
 the text-book from which Pothinus had taught 
 them and doubtless the fathers of many of them. 
 Polycarp of Smyrna had sent Irenaeus to his aid 
 in his old age. Is not this another indication of 
 *Eusebius, " Hist. Eccl.," book v., chap, i. 
 
114 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 the fact that Pothinus was from Asia? But would 
 Pothinus, who must have been born before the 
 last book of the New Testament was written, 
 have taught it, and died for it, and exhorted his 
 people to die for it, if he had not known that it 
 was written by John ? In the letter of the churches 
 of Lyons and Vienne these writings are quoted 
 as " Scripture." 
 
 Irenaeus was the younger colleague of and co- 
 laborer with Pothinus, and Pothinus was old 
 enough to have sat as a catechumen under the 
 instruction of the beloved disciple. And in the 
 extant writings of Irenaeus we have quotations 
 from all the New Testament books, except the 
 thirty-nine verses which make two very short 
 letters. But Irenaeus was the disciple of Poly- 
 carp, and Polycarp was not only old enough to 
 be, but certainly was, the disciple of John. 
 
 Does Polycarp, who sat at the feet of the be- 
 loved disciple, indicate in any way the existence 
 of the writings which we call the New Testament? 
 If so, there can be no reason to doubt that they 
 belong to the apostolic age, and that they were 
 written by the persons whose names they bear 
 and to whom they have always been ascribed. 
 With the Apostle John as his instructor, he would 
 certainly have been liable to no possibility of mis- 
 take on this point. We have only one piece of 
 writing from Polycarp, his Epistle to the Philip- 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 1 1 5 
 
 pians ; but this is of immense value. That doubt- 
 ing Thomas among the critics, Professor A. Har- 
 nack, who seems to linger on the edge of a decision 
 in favor of the genuineness of any ancient docu- 
 ment confirming the New Testament Scriptures, 
 till absolutely forced over by unquestionable facts, 
 joins his voice in favor of the genuineness of this 
 letter of Poly carp. He says of it that " the ex- 
 ternal evidence is as strong as could be desired " ; 
 and also, " but the internal evidence is also very 
 strong." Of its character he remarks that its 
 " tone, language, and tendency " are " not in 
 keeping with the Ignatian epistles." Of Poly- 
 carp he says that he " lived wholly in the ideas 
 of the older generation and of the apostles, and 
 would admit no addition to their teaching." 
 Harnack considers this epistle " of great value 
 for the history of the canon." 
 
 In this letter, which is by no means long, Poly- 
 carp quotes fifteen books of the New Testament, 
 and some of them several times — the Gospel of 
 Matthew, for instance, if I mistake not, ten times. 
 
 Now, if there had been any doubt in the mind 
 of Polycarp about the genuineness of these writ- 
 ings, would he have written a letter saturated 
 through and through with New Testament 
 thought and actually made up in large part of 
 its very language? If they had been forgeries, 
 would Polycarp, the pupil of John, and his con- 
 
Il6 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 temporary for almost forty years, have quoted 
 them at all? 
 
 The very way in which he quotes the New 
 Testament is a clear indication of his reception of 
 it as of divine authority. But he does not leave 
 us simply to infer this, as no one can avoid doing 
 if he reads the epistle. In quoting Ephesians iv. 
 26 he says, " As it is said in those Scriptures, 
 ' Be ye angry, and sin not, and let not the sun go 
 down on your wrath.' " 
 
 Thus we find Hippolytus, through Irenaeus, 
 his teacher, in whose footsteps he so closely fol- 
 lowed in his " Refutation of all Heresies," linked 
 with the apostolic age through these two vener- 
 able men, Pothinus and Polycarp, both of whom 
 laid down their lives for the faith which they 
 professed. 
 
 When we find Hippolytus, then, with all his 
 means of information, quoting every book of the 
 New Testament, we may feel very sure that 
 those who deny the genuineness of these Scrip- 
 tures do so in the face of incontrovertible evi- 
 dence. 
 
 When men deliberately lay down their lives 
 rather than deny what they have asserted we have 
 the highest order of testimony to their sincerity 
 in making those assertions. It would be hard to 
 find an exhibition of more thorough sincerity in 
 all history than that of these two witnesses to the 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON I I 7 
 
 truth — Polycarp, the preceptor, and Pothinus, the 
 aged colleague of Irenaeus in his ministry in Gaul. 
 The testimony of both has been preserved by 
 letters of the churches which they served. 
 
 The church of Smyrna, of which Polycarp was 
 the bishop or pastor, that " angel of the church in 
 Smyrna" addressed by John in the Revelation 
 (or his successor), has left on record the good 
 confession of him who was its guide by his ex- 
 ample as well as his teaching for many years. 
 The testimony of Polycarp in his life and in his 
 death was of no ordinary importance. It came 
 at a most critical period, as the seven messages 
 to the churches recorded in the second and third 
 chapters of the Book of Revelation clearly indi- 
 cate, and such glimpses as we have of the times 
 of Polycarp serve to emphasize this fact. 
 
 Says Canon Westcott : " In one respect the 
 testimony of Polycarp is more important than 
 that of any of the apostolic fathers. Like his 
 master [John], he lived to unite two ages ; he had 
 listened to St. John and he became the teacher 
 of Irenaeus. In an age of convulsion and change 
 he stands at Smyrna and Rome as a type of the 
 changeless truths of Christianity. In his extreme 
 age he taught that which he had learned from the 
 apostles and which continued to be the tradition 
 of the church. . . . Thus the zeal of Polycarp 
 watches over the whole of the most critical period 
 
Il8 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 
 
 of the history of Christianity. His words are the 
 witnesses of the second age." * 
 
 How he loved the truth and hated error, which 
 was becoming so rife in his old age, we are shown 
 by his stopping his ears when the vagaries of 
 Valentinus and of Marcion were urged upon his 
 attention, lamenting the fact that he had been 
 preserved to old age to hear such things. 
 
 In character he seems to have been strikingly 
 like his master, John. When he went to Rome 
 to confer with Anicetus, the senior pastor there 
 (whom the Romanists represent as the pope of 
 the time), about the time of the Easter celebration, 
 though he was unable to effect a reconciliation 
 between the advocates of the Eastern and those 
 of the Western churches, there was no breach of 
 charity, and he celebrated the Lord's Supper in 
 Rome, using the Greek language. But, though 
 so loving toward even those brethren who differed 
 from him in such a matter, he was a very Boanerges 
 when the vital truths of Christianity were assailed 
 by heretics. 
 
 Marcion seems to have endeavored to approach 
 him, during this visit to Rome, to curry favor with 
 him and secure the powerful aid of his influence; 
 but he was rebuffed with such a lightning stroke 
 as this : 
 
 Marcion : " Thou knowest us." 
 
 * Westcott on the Canon, p. 40. 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 119 
 
 Polycarp : " I know thee as the first-born of 
 Satan." 
 
 But his Christian constancy and fortitude were 
 to have a severer test than was afforded by this 
 encounter with the enemies of the faith in Rome. 
 
 " The proconsul of Asia Minor [at this time] 
 does not appear to have been personally hostile 
 to the Christians ; but the heathen people, with 
 whom the Jewish rabble joined themselves, were 
 enraged against them, and the proconsul yielded 
 compliance to the fury of the people and the de- 
 mands of the law. . . . 
 
 " When he [Polycarp] heard the cry of the 
 people who were eager for his blood, his first im- 
 pression was to remain in the town, and to await 
 God's pleasure in the event; but the prayers of 
 the church prevailed on him to take refuge in a 
 neighboring country-seat. Here he remained in 
 company with some friends, busied day and night, 
 as he was accustomed, in offering prayers for all 
 communities in the whole world. 
 
 " When he was searched for he betook himself 
 to another country place, and he had scarcely gone 
 before the police appeared, to whom the retreat 
 of Polycarp had been made known by some con- 
 fidential but unworthy friends. They found two 
 slaves, one of whom, under the pain of torture, 
 betrayed the place to which the bishop had fled. 
 When they came Polycarp, who was in the upper 
 
120 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 story, might have retreated from the flat roof to 
 another house, a convenience which the Eastern 
 mode of building afforded, but he said, ' God's 
 will be done ! ' 
 
 " He came down to the police officers, and or- 
 dered them as much refreshment as they might 
 be inclined to take, begging only as a favor that 
 they would allow him one hour's undisturbed 
 prayer. The fullness of his heart, however, carried 
 him on for two hours, and even the heathen were 
 touched at the sight of his devotion. 
 
 " When this interval had passed he was con- 
 ducted on an ass to the town, where the chief 
 officer of police, going with his father out of the 
 town, met him, and, taking him into his carriage, 
 spoke to him in a kind and friendly manner. 
 ' What harm,' said he, ' can it be for you to say, 
 " Our lord the emperor " ? ' Poly carp at first was 
 silent, but when they continued to press him he 
 calmly said, ' I will not do what you advise me.' 
 When they saw that they could not persuade him 
 they grew angry. With bitter and contumelious 
 expressions they threw him out of the carriage 
 so roughly as to injure one of the bones of his leg. 
 He turned and went on his way as if nothing had 
 happened. 
 
 " When he appeared before the proconsul the 
 latter said to him, ' Swear, curse Christ, and I will 
 set you free ! ' 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 1 2 I 
 
 " The old man answered, ' Eighty and six years 
 have I served Him, and I have received only good 
 at His hands! Can I, then, curse Him, my King 
 and my Saviour? ' 
 
 " When the proconsul continued to press him 
 Polycarp said, ' Well then, if you desire to know 
 who I am, I tell you freely, lam a Christian.' . . . 
 After the governor had in vain threatened him 
 with wild beasts and the funeral pile, he made the 
 herald publicly announce in the circus that Poly- 
 carp had confessed himself a Christian. These 
 words contained the sentence of death against 
 him. The people instantly cried out, ' This is the 
 teacher of atheism, the father of the Christians, 
 the enemy of our gods, who has taught so many 
 not to pray to the gods and not to sacrifice ! ' 
 
 " As soon as the proconsul had complied with 
 the demand of the populace that Polycarp should 
 perish on the funeral pile, Jew and Gentile has- 
 tened with the utmost eagerness to collect wood 
 from the market-places and the baths. When 
 they wished to fasten him with nails to the pile 
 the old man said, ' Leave me thus, I pray, un- 
 fastened. He who has enabled me to abide the 
 fire will give me strength also to remain firm at 
 the stake.' 
 
 " Before the fire was lighted he prayed thus : 
 ' O Lord, almighty God ! the Father of Thy be- 
 loved Son, Jesus Christ, through whom we receive 
 
122 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 a knowledge of Thee ! God of the angels and of 
 the whole creation, of the whole human race, and 
 of the saints who live before Thy presence! I 
 thank Thee that Thou hast thought me worthy, 
 this day and this hour, to share the cup of Thy 
 Christ among the number of Thy witnesses! ' " * 
 
 Thus was the faithful testimony which Polycarp 
 had borne to Christ through his long life of service 
 crowned and perfected in his death. 
 
 Pothinus and Polycarp, to use an expression 
 which Professor Gildersleeve has applied to Justin 
 Martyr, were "no holiday Christians." They 
 believed and therefore spoke ; for they were willing 
 to seal their testimony with their blood. " All 
 that a man hath will he give for his life." If the 
 New Testament writings had been forgeries these 
 men could not have failed to know it. Polycarp 
 must have been born before most of Paul's epistles 
 were written, and was probably between thirty 
 and forty years old when John wrote his Gospel. 
 It has been made almost certain within the last 
 few years that his martyrdom took place not at 
 the date given by Eusebius, but under the pro- 
 consul Ouadratus, and on the 23d of February, 
 A. D. 155-f Then he was old enough to say, 
 " Eighty and six years have I served Him." 
 
 Pothinus was a contemporary of John for eleven 
 
 * Neander, " Ch. Hist.," pp. 64, 65, Rose's trans, 
 t Adolph Harnack. 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND THE CANON 1 23 
 
 or twelve years, and Polycarp for thirty-nine 
 years, if he dates his service from his tenth year. 
 Now when we find in the letter of the churches 
 which Pothinus had instructed for so many years, 
 quotations from or allusions to some twelve books 
 of the New Testament, and then turn to the epistle 
 of Polycarp and find it made up in large part of 
 quotations from the New Testament, we may feel 
 sure that we have traced these writings back to 
 the age of the apostles, and that they could not 
 have been written by any persons but those to 
 whom they are ascribed ; for these men were in 
 a position to know that they were genuine. That 
 they knew it is attested by the fact that they not 
 only taught the truths contained in these writings 
 during their lives, but laid down their lives in at- 
 testation of the truth of their teaching. 
 
XII 
 THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 
 
 125 
 
XII 
 
 THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 
 
 We know, then, that the assertion of Baur and 
 the Tubingen school to the effect that the Gospels, 
 and especially the fourth Gospel, originated long 
 after the deaths of their reputed authors is abso- 
 lutely false. The assertion was made and has been 
 maintained to uphold the theory of theological 
 " tendency " evolved out of the fertile, German- 
 student, inner-consciousness of Baur, and is in the 
 face of all the facts of the case. If we had no 
 other proofs of the origin of the Gospels in the 
 apostolic age than these simple facts, that Hip- 
 polytus quotes every book of the New Testament 
 as Holy Scripture, that Irenseus before him quotes 
 every book, with the exception of two short let- 
 ters, containing together thirty-nine verses, that 
 Polycarp, born near the time of Paul's death and 
 for nearly forty years contemporary with the 
 Apostle John, quotes thirteen books of the New 
 Testament in his letter to the Philippians, quoting 
 127 
 
128 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 very much more in proportion to the length of the 
 production than Hippolytus and Irenaeus, and 
 that both he and Pothinus, the co-laborer of Ire- 
 naeus, laid down their lives in attestation of their 
 testimony — these facts alone would be amply suffi- 
 cient to establish the genuineness of these writings. 
 
 Mathematical demonstration is impossible in 
 this, as in all similar cases, but moral certainty is 
 reached from these facts alone. These, however, 
 are far from being the only facts to which Hip- 
 polytus introduces us by which the genuineness 
 of the New Testament Scriptures is proved. 
 
 Hippolytus, clasping hands with his preceptor, 
 Irenaeus, who brings us to Polycarp, thus, through 
 this line of his spiritual ancestry, leads us back to 
 that disciple who leaned on the bosom of the 
 Saviour. 
 
 But there is another line to which he introduces 
 us, and by this, as well as by that of his spiritual 
 ancestry, we are led back to John. He introduces 
 us, in his " Refutation of all Heresies " especially, 
 to numerous heretics; and these bear witness to 
 the existence of the New Testament writings in 
 their day. This testimony has at least one point 
 of special value : it is the testimony of enemies. 
 
 This gives us one advantage. We may be sure 
 that when they quote the books of the New Testa- 
 ment these books are not only in existence, — of 
 this their quoting them is evidence, — but that they 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 1 29 
 
 are already of recagnizcd autJiority, and must have 
 been in existence for a considerable time in order 
 to have been disseminated among all Christians 
 and established in their confidence as the source 
 of decisive authority in religious questions. Had 
 they not been thus disseminated and received as 
 the Word of God among Christians in various 
 countries, these heretics would not have appealed 
 to them as they did. 
 
 Let us take a brief glance at some of the here- 
 tics to whom Hippolytus introduces us. With- 
 out noticing to any great extent their peculiar 
 tenets, matters which are of little interest now, we 
 may with profit notice their treatment of the New 
 Testament Scriptures. 
 
 The Ophites, called so because of their theories 
 about the serpent as the Logos, or Eternal Wis- 
 dom, formed a sect which existed very early. 
 They are described by Irenaeus as well as by 
 Hippolytus, and seem to have existed as a Chris- 
 tian sect from the earlier part of the second cen- 
 tury. They represent one branch of the Gnostic 
 heresy, if not the main trunk of it. 
 
 " The manner in which they used the New Tes- 
 tament in order to support their special theory 
 concerning the serpent is very curious. They dis- 
 covered the serpent in the most unexpected 
 quarters, for they used a method of arbitrary 
 interpretation which will enable a man with luxu- 
 
130 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 riant imagination to prove any doctrine from any 
 text. They quoted the four Gospels, but especially 
 the Gospel of St. John." * 
 
 This sect seems to have combined some of the 
 peculiarities of the Basilidians and Valentinians. 
 
 Basilides is said to have been a younger con- 
 temporary of the beloved disciple. This is proba- 
 ble, for several authorities represent him as 
 teaching in Rome in the reign of Hadrian (i 1 7— 
 138). He quoted the New Testament, and es- 
 pecially the fourth Gospel. 
 
 Says the author of the article on Basilides in 
 Smith's " Dictionary of Christian Biography," 
 " In spite of his peculiar opinions, the testimony 
 of Basilides to our ' acknowledged books,' as given 
 by Hippolytus, is comprehensive and clear." 
 
 Hippolytus deals with Valentinus and the 
 Valentinians in the sixth book of the " Refuta- 
 tion." His system of Gnosticism is said to have 
 been the most complicated of all ; different sects 
 and schools drew their systems from it ; but that 
 of Basilides, which Neander represents as having 
 " the doctrines of emanation and dualism as the 
 foundation of his system," is complicated enough, 
 and fills one with amazement at its heaven-daring 
 intrusion into the unrevealed mysteries of the 
 divine nature and works. 
 
 * Professor Stokes, of Dublin University, in Sunday at Home 
 (London). 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 131 
 
 The chief interest in Valentinianism for moderns 
 is that it was very much like the popular fad of 
 our day called Theosophy. Valentinus seems not 
 to have considered paganism as necessarily wicked, 
 but rather as a development preparatory to Chris- 
 tianity, and here we may see that the theory of 
 Evolution applied to religion is, like Theosophy, 
 no new thing under the sun. 
 
 It was against the teachings of this heretic and 
 of Marcion that Polycarp made so emphatic a pro- 
 test at the time of his visit to Anicetus in Rome. 
 
 Valentinus, like Basilides, quoted the New Tes- 
 tament, and, though he endeavored to read his 
 system into it, recognized it as the standard of be- 
 lief and the universally accepted authority among 
 Christians. In this he was entirely unlike our 
 modern Theosophists and religious Evolutionists. 
 
 But Hippolytus introduces us to another Gnos- 
 tic, in whom we may rightly feel a very special 
 interest ; for, though he was drawn aside by the 
 powerful current among the thinking men of his 
 day of Gnosticism, and may be accused of hold- 
 ing a philosophy or science, "falsely so called," 
 yet he showed great sincerity and earnestness. 
 His chief claim, however, to our interest arises 
 from the fact that not only did he, like Basilides 
 and Valentinus, quote the New Testament as the 
 inspired Word of God, but he wrote a commen- 
 tary on it. He has the distinction of being the 
 
132 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 first commentator on the New Testament so far 
 as is known. This writer, Heracleon, was a Val- 
 entinian. Heracleon's commentary is not now in 
 existence, unless, indeed, it be hidden away some- 
 where, as the " Refutation " was for so many ages 
 in the convent on Mount Athos. But Origen has 
 preserved many extracts from it, and from these 
 we may learn how Heracleon regarded the New 
 Testament Scriptures. 
 
 On this point we have no inferior testimony. 
 Here is that of Canon Westcott : 
 
 " The introduction of the commentaries implies 
 the strongest belief in the authenticity and author- 
 ity of the New Testament Scriptures ; and this be- 
 lief becomes more important when we notice the 
 source from which they were derived. They took 
 their rise among heretics, and not among Catho- 
 lic Christians. Just as the earliest fathers applied 
 to the Old Testament to bring out its real harmony 
 with the Gospel, so heretics endeavored to recon- 
 cile the Gospel with their own systems. Com- 
 mentaries were made where the want of them was 
 pressing. But, unless the Gospels had been gener- 
 ally accepted, the need of such works would not 
 have been felt. 
 
 " Heracleon was forced to modify and turn 
 much that he found in St. John, which he would 
 not have done if the book had not been received 
 beyond all doubt. And his evidence is more 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS I 33 
 
 valuable because it appears that he had studied 
 the history of the apostles and spoke of their lives 
 with certainty. 
 
 " The sense of the inspiration of the evange- 
 lists — of some providential guidance by which 
 they were led to select each fact in their history 
 and each word in their narrative — is not more 
 complete in Origen. 
 
 " The first commentary on the New Testament 
 exhibits the application of the same laws for its 
 interpretation as were employed in the Old Tes- 
 tament. The slightest variation of language was 
 held to be significant." * 
 
 This is exactly in accord with Dr. George Sal- 
 mon's representation as to Heracleon's view of 
 inspiration: " His theory of inspiration is just the 
 same as the one now popularly current in the 
 church of Christ." f 
 
 Now it should be remembered that the value 
 of the testimony of these heretics to the existence 
 and acknowledged authority of the books of the 
 New Testament is not at all dependent on the 
 trustworthiness of the heretics as witnesses. The 
 fact that they appealed to these books is evidence 
 of their acceptance among Christians as the foun- 
 tain of authority. 
 
 The existence of these writings from the days 
 
 * Westcott on the Canon, p. 304. 
 
 t See article of Professor Stokes in Sunday at Home (London). 
 
134 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 of the apostles is indicated by another fact, which 
 is perhaps not generally known. Both Basilides 
 and Valentinus claimed a connection with apostles, 
 each through a single link. Basilides claimed to 
 have been instructed by one Glaucias, an interpre- 
 ter of Peter, and Valentinus asserted that Theodas 
 (or Theudas) was his instructor, and that this 
 person was a disciple of Paul. 
 
 Now, whether these claims were true or false, 
 the fact that they were made shows that these 
 men lived early enough to have been thus con- 
 nected with these apostles ; for a claim which 
 their contemporaries could not have believed 
 would have prejudiced their cause instead of gain- 
 ing acceptance for it. The learned Heracleon, 
 for instance, could not have become a follower of 
 Valentinus if the Theudas story had been in- 
 credible. 
 
 Basilides also claimed that secret discoveries 
 were communicated to him by Matthias, the suc- 
 cessor to the apostolate of Judas. He would 
 hardly have made such a claim if it had been 
 incredible to the men of his time. 
 
 Hippolytus begins with the Ophites, as if they 
 were the first of these Gnostics, and indicates in 
 book vi., chapter i., of the "Refutation" that 
 they were the progenitors of the Basilidians and 
 Valentinians. Their quoting the Gospel of John 
 and other New Testament books as authorities, or 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 1 35 
 
 rather as the authority, with Christians indicates 
 that they were accepted among them from the 
 beginning. 
 
 Hippolytus (in book v.), treating of this heresy 
 at considerable length, notices some of the texts 
 which they misinterpreted to support their theories. 
 Among them are quotations from Matthew, Mark, 
 and Luke, besides such passages as these from 
 John's Gospel: i. 3, 4; ii. 1-11 ; iv. 10; vi. 44, 
 etc.; vi. 53. 
 
 How can the adherents of the Tubingen school 
 hold up their heads in the face of these facts? 
 How can they assert that these books were not 
 written until many years after the time in which 
 we find them extensively quoted ? We would 
 consider it rather difficult to quote in this year 
 of our Lord 1896 from a book which is not to be 
 written till, say, 1926. But the Hegelian phi- 
 losophy and German (or German/^^) inner-con- 
 sciousness can do wonderful things. If the facts 
 are against their theory they can readily conclude 
 that this makes it " so much the worse for the 
 facts." Common sense, however, would lead us 
 to look at the facts first and then hear the theories. 
 
 The Ophites (or Naasseni, as Hippolytus calls 
 them) existed as a sect before Christ. Says Mos- 
 heim : " This sect, which had its origin among the 
 Jews, was of a more ancient date than the Chris- 
 tian religion. A part of its followers embraced 
 
 
 
136 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 the gospel, while the rest retained their primitive 
 superstition ; and hence arose the division of the 
 Ophites into Christian and antichristian." 
 
 The fact that Hippolytus in dealing with the 
 errors of this sect of Egyptian Jewish Gnostics 
 represents them as quoting the New Testament 
 books, is quite suggestive in view of the very early 
 rise of this heresy. 
 
 Hippolytus also represents that Valentinus had 
 his " starting-point " from Simon Magus and the 
 philosophical systems of Plato and Pythagoras.* 
 This may be true or it may not. But, whether 
 the assertion is true or not, the fact that Hip- 
 polytus asserted it is indicative of the early rise 
 of this heresy also, and the quotations which its 
 advocates made from the New Testament imply 
 the existence of this collection of writings and 
 their accepted authority among Christians from 
 the apostolic age. 
 
 The rise of the various phases of Gnosticism in 
 connection with the spread of Christianity is a 
 most interesting as well as a very saddening in- 
 tellectual phenomenon. Egypt seems to have 
 been a hotbed of these heresies. Alexandria was 
 a center of wonderful intellectual activity. There 
 met the advocates of the Egyptian and the Syrian 
 Gnosis and the Greek philosophies. 
 
 As the Ophites originated in Egypt and both 
 
 * See " Refutation," book vi., chap. xv. 
 
THE SEARCH-LIGHT ON THE HERETICS 1 37 
 
 Basilides and Valentinus began to propagate their 
 theories there, it seems probable that the assertion 
 of Hippolytus about the " starting-point " of Val- 
 entinianism is true, in part at least. 
 
 There are certainly great differences and con- 
 trasts between these Gnostics and the school of 
 Ferdinand Christian Baur. These early heretics 
 received the New Testament writings as genuine 
 and authoritative, while the advocates of the 
 Tubingen theory endeavor to prove them to have 
 been spurious documents, originating, with the 
 exception of the Pauline epistles (the first four of 
 which they acknowledge as genuine beyond all 
 controversy, and others probably so), long after 
 the apostolic age. Unlike the Tiibingenists, who 
 deny the supernatural, they not only acknow- 
 ledged it, but each sect endeavored to show its 
 various features as revealed in the Scriptures to 
 be in full accord with the particular phase of 
 philosophy held by itself. 
 
 In these and perhaps other respects there are 
 great differences between the ancient advocates 
 of the various forms of Gnosis, which gave them 
 the name of Gnostics, and the modern advocates of 
 " Reason," which gives them the name of Ration- 
 alists ; but the ancient and the modern movements 
 are precisely alike in one thing: they both em- 
 braced systems of philosophy and applied their 
 principles to the facts and doctrines of Christianity. 
 
138 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 As the result of the first great intellectual 
 movement, we have Gnosticism in its Protean 
 shapes, with its bythos and pleroma and demiurge 
 and eons, and wild speculations about the un- 
 known and the unknowable, in which we see men, 
 as it were, vainly endeavoring and yet pretending 
 to enter the very presence-chamber of God, for 
 the purpose of revealing to the vulgar gaze those 
 secrets of His own nature and work which He has 
 not seen fit to reveal to mortal man ; " intruding 
 into those things which they have not seen, vainly 
 puffed up by their fleshly mind." 
 
 As the result of the second movement, we find 
 the Tiibingenists taking as self-evident the conclu- 
 sions of Hegel, and thus adopting as absolutely 
 certain the main positions of a system character- 
 ized by the same idealistic pantheism as some, at 
 least, of the Gnostics held, and, instead of trying 
 to lay the Scriptures on the Procrustean bed -they 
 have made, rejecting them altogether. Thus, while 
 pursuing a course much like that of these heretics, 
 they arrive at the conclusion of Agnosticism ra- 
 ther than that of Gnosticism ; for it has long ago 
 been recognized as the same thing to say " The 
 universe [to irax*] is God" and "There is no God." 
 Pantheism is atheism. 
 
XIII 
 FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 
 
 
 139 
 
XIII 
 
 FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 
 
 Is it less amazing to look upon the course of 
 Baur and his followers than on that of the Gnostics ? 
 
 Much instruction may be found in Baur's grad- 
 ual progress from orthodoxy in early life to the 
 extreme position which he afterward occupied as 
 the founder of the Tubingen school of critics. It 
 shows how the most powerful minds may be 
 "spoiled through philosophy and vain deceit" 
 when fully submitted to their influence. 
 
 The father of Ferdinand Christian Baur was a 
 diligent and conscientious pastor, first in a little 
 village near Stuttgart, and afterward at Blaubeu- 
 ren, a small town at the southern base of the Swa- 
 bian Alps. He was the teacher of his son until 
 his fourteenth year, when he left home to attend 
 school. In 1809 Ferdinand Christian Baur be- 
 came a student of the University of Tubingen, 
 where he was afterward to become so distin- 
 guished. His first production "was orthodox and 
 141 
 
142 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 supernaturalistic in its attitude."* Now for the 
 influences that turned him. 
 
 Schleiermacher seems to have given the first 
 touch that started this powerful and fertile intel- 
 lect on its daring career of speculation in which, 
 like an ignis fatuus, it has attracted and led astray 
 so many of his own and the following generation. 
 " The tendency and effect of Schleiermacher's ex- 
 position of the Christian faith are to reduce the 
 supernatural to a minimum, and to make the 
 little that remains appear as natural as possible, 
 and so to satisfy the claims of science and phi- 
 losophy, while endeavoring to do justice to the 
 sentiments of believers."! 
 
 Then came Hegel. The Hegelian philosophy, 
 adopted by Baur, was afterward applied by him 
 to Christianity, and the result was the Tubingen 
 theory of " tendencies." 
 
 Strauss, who had been a pupil of Baur, and 
 whose work on the " Life of Jesus " has " over- 
 turned the faith of many," seems to have com- 
 pleted the work of destroying Baur's faith in the 
 genuineness and inspiration of the NewTestament. 
 
 A false philosophy is usually the fountain of a 
 false theology. The early heretics adopted the 
 various forms of heathen philosophy, as Hippol- 
 ytus takes great pains to show, and the result 
 
 * Professor A. B. Bruce, in " Living Papers," vol. vii. 
 t Ibid. 
 
FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 1 43 
 
 in each case was some form of the fantastic mon- 
 grel monstrosity called Christian Gnosticism. 
 
 These modern critics have likewise adopted a 
 philosophy and applied it to Christianity, and the 
 result is not a mixture of the false system and 
 Christianity, as in the first case, but a rejection 
 of Christianity as a divine revelation and super- 
 natural religion. 
 
 Under the powerful influence of his Hegelian 
 philosophy, Baur tried to show that according to 
 that philosophy there must be in the development 
 of Christianity, as in the universe, a great process 
 " which moves in a perpetual rhythm of affirma- 
 tion, negation, and synthesis of opposites." * In 
 order to apply the Hegelian theory to the develop- 
 ment of Christianity he made out that each book 
 of the New Testament must have been the out- 
 come of the " tendency " of thought at a particu- 
 lar period. Hence, while he accepts the plain 
 evidence for the genuineness of the first four 
 epistles of Paul (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, 
 and Galatians), as, according to his theory, they 
 suit the tendency of that period, he affirms that 
 the Gospels could not have originated until much 
 later, because his theory demanded it. The ten- 
 dency which he thinks must have given birth to 
 the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John could hardly 
 have risen to high tide till about the middle of 
 
 * Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. 
 
144 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 the second century, and hence these Gospels 
 could not have been written till then. He holds 
 that the Gospel of John comes after the time of 
 affirmation and of negation and controversy, and 
 represents the sentiment of those who were for 
 the reconciliation of the two opposing schools he 
 supposes to have arisen, and indicates the later 
 tendency of " synthesis of opposites," so that the 
 Gospel of John must have originated somewhere 
 between 1 60 and 170 A.D. 
 
 Now when Hippolytus shows us that these 
 sects, which began to arise certainly very soon 
 after the death of John, if not before, quoted 
 all the Gospels, and his more than any of the rest, 
 we have before our eyes very plain evidence that, 
 however ingenious the theory of Baur may have 
 been and whatever may have been the quality of 
 that genius which was able to draw so many 
 minds in its train, Baur was entirely mistaken. 
 The facts are too numerous, too plain, and from 
 too many sources to admit of any doubt that the 
 gospels were in existence many years before the 
 dates which he gives them. 
 
 The conclusion of Zahn after the review of the 
 evidence is that, "in view of the history of the 
 text, opinions as to the origin of John's Gospel 
 such as Baur has expressed must appear simply 
 as madness. It follows, further, that the element 
 which remains the same in all of the originals and 
 
FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 1 45 
 
 of the versions [he had spoken of corruptions of 
 the text] amid all the variations that crept into 
 the text between 150 and 160 must have been 
 every "w here read at the beginning of the second 
 century." Zahn concludes that the fourth Gospel, 
 which Baur represents as not written till 160-1 70, 
 was everywhere read in the year 100. 
 
 The argument from the " Refutation " of Hip- 
 polytus, who shows that it was quoted by Ophites, 
 Valentinians, and Basilidians, leads without doubt 
 to the same conclusion. 
 
 Thus the same conclusion is reached by two 
 distinct paths as their common goal, and its valid- 
 ity is made the more evident by this fact. Zahn, 
 looking at the text itself and studying its history 
 in versions and variations, sees that the Gospel of 
 John must have been in existence in the year 100 ; 
 and we have seen our saint turning his search-light 
 on these times and revealing the contentions of 
 the various bands of Gnostics very soon after 
 this date — contentions in which they made use 
 of weapons taken from this armory, the Gospel 
 of John. These weapons would have had no 
 point or power if this Gospel had not been already 
 generally known and accepted as authoritative. 
 
 Those were not the days of railroads, tele- 
 graphs, and steam printing-presses, and this gen- 
 eral distribution and acceptance as authoritative 
 pf the fourth Gospel implies that it had been 
 
I 4 6 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPP6LYTUS 
 
 written a considerable time before it was thus 
 quoted by opposing sects in different places. The 
 slow multiplication of copies by the pen and the 
 slow modes of travel in those times would make 
 dissemination a slow process. 
 
 Not all of us are prepared to receive with full 
 assurance the conclusions which are reached by 
 mere critical processes. Many of us cannot feel 
 entirely sure about the grounds of such conclu- 
 sions ; are uncertain about the " canons of criti- 
 cism " employed ; may fear, perhaps, that the mind 
 of the critic may have been in some degree influ- 
 enced by a priori preconceptions; or we may 
 have to confess that, owing to ignorance or some 
 mental defect on our part, we become a little 
 confused by the talk about " uncials " and " cur- 
 sives " and "palimpsests" and "groups" and 
 " families" of texts and versions — that we grow 
 a little dazed or dizzy as we are led along such 
 highways of learned research, and a little uncer- 
 tain about our footing on these heights of erudi- 
 tion, and somewhat faltering in the steps with 
 which we proceed, if we proceed at all. But, 
 without any "canons of criticism," or expert 
 knowledge of texts, or any of the (to our appre- 
 hension) rather lumbering apparatus with which 
 the professional critic sets out on his explorations, 
 we can appreciate plain facts ; and when our saint 
 with his search-light shows us different sets of 
 

 FERDINAND CHRISTIAN BAUR 147 
 
 men in different countries quoting a certain book 
 or set of books, we know, for one thing, that such 
 writings are in existence. Otherwise they could 
 not be quoted. And our plain, every-day com- 
 mon sense tells us that they would not be thus 
 quoted unless they were of recognized authority 
 on the matters under discussion, and that to have 
 acquired such authority in different countries they 
 must have been written a considerable time be- 
 fore the quotations were made. 
 
 The New Testament Scriptures were thus 
 quoted soon after the close of the first century. 
 Therefore they must have been written before the 
 close of that century* 
 
 * For a fuller view of the career of Baur, the reader is referred 
 to the admirable treatise, " Ferdinand Christian Baur and his 
 Theory of the Origin of Christianity," by Professor A. B. Bruce, 
 in " Living Papers," vol. vii., to which I am chiefly indebted for 
 whatever of interest or value is to be found in this short sketch. 
 -P. P. F. 
 
XIV 
 ERNEST RENAN 
 
 149 
 
XIV 
 
 ERNEST RENAN 
 
 To some it may have seemed unnecessary to 
 dwell at such length on the peculiar teachings of 
 Baur, whose theory has been so thoroughly re- 
 futed by facts that even those who hold the He- 
 gelian philosophy see that it cannot be applied to 
 Christianity after Baur's manner. Even Profes- 
 sor Harnack has admitted that, as the result of 
 recent discoveries, especially that of the " Dia- 
 tessaron " of Tatian, " we learn . . . that about 
 1 60 A.D. our four Gospels had already taken a 
 place of prominence in the church and that no 
 others had done so; and that, in particular, the 
 fourth Gospel had taken a place alongside the 
 three synoptics." This acknowledgment, though 
 it lags far behind the natural interpretation of 
 the facts at which we have been looking and of 
 those to which we shall presently turn, thoroughly 
 overturns the conclusions of Baur. 
 
 But these facts are not generally known among 
 151 
 
152 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 the great mass of readers, and the friends of 
 Christianity should bestir themselves to make 
 them known. 
 
 The Tubingen school is by no means dead, and, 
 though the positions of its founder about the date 
 of the Gospels have been shown to be false by 
 facts which no one can honestly ignore, yet the 
 skeptical principles of the leader are still animat- 
 ing a large number of followers, who, with some 
 necessary change of view as to the origin of the 
 Gospels, are yet cultivating in themselves and vast 
 numbers under their influence the spirit of unbe- 
 lief in Christianity as the divinely revealed and 
 only true religion. The Hegelian philosophy 
 is gaining a powerful and, it is to be feared, in- 
 creasing influence * over cultivated minds. A 
 notable article by one of the greatest thinkers 
 of our times sounds a note of earnest warning 
 against this most specious and yet most ensnar- 
 ing of philosophical systems, f 
 
 In the words of another very able writer, " Of 
 the many antichristian influences which have 
 been at work in the minds of the more cultivated 
 classes of men during the last fifty years, it is 
 doubtful if any have had a more noxious and 
 wide-spread effect than the works of this writer 
 
 * See Contemporary Revieiv for February, 1895. 
 t See article in the Presbyterian Quarterly for January, 1895, 
 by Dr. R. L. Dabney. 
 
ERNEST REN AN 1 53 
 
 [Baur]. Not that his books, like those of Strauss 
 or Renan, have ever commanded a wide circle of 
 readers or appealed directly to the popular taste ; 
 but they have served as an armory whence popu- 
 lar writers have supplied themselves with weapons 
 for their attacks upon the foundations of Chris- 
 tianity." * 
 
 Of this Hegelian tree, planted in Christian soil, 
 we may think of Baur as the trunk, and Strauss 
 and Renan as the main branches, and Harnack as 
 a vigorous shoot from a Ritschlian bough. 
 
 Baur's works were not fitted to influence the 
 reading public. They are to a great extent "cav- 
 iare to the general." But they reached and power- 
 fully influenced scholars who could reach the 
 great mass of readers. If the root has been hid- 
 den from the vulgar eye, the branches to which 
 it has supplied the sap have, unfortunately, at- 
 tracted the gaze and gratified the appetite of the 
 many who, like the Athenians and the sojourners 
 in Athens, " spent their time in nothing else but 
 either to tell or to hear some new thing." 
 
 Strauss influenced the more thoughtful class of 
 readers, like George Eliot, who translated his 
 " Leben Jesu," and received from it, doubtless, 
 one of the chief influences which robbed her of 
 her faith. 
 
 * Professor M. Maher, in the Month (London), November, 
 1892. 
 
154 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 Renan has influenced that larger class who 
 prefer the indulgence of fancy and the gratifica- 
 tion of curiosity to real thinking, whose object 
 in reading is enjoyment rather than finding the 
 truth. He had a remarkable literary faculty 
 which threw a charm over thoughts which, when 
 weighed in the balance of sober reason, would be 
 found utterly wanting. He was a born writer. 
 When asked in childhood what he intended to do 
 in life his answer was, " I will make books." His 
 own account of his early dreams of ambition re- 
 minds one of De Ouincey's account of the dreams 
 of his childish imagination, stimulated by the 
 beautiful and sublime in the architecture and ser- 
 vices of the grand old church of his childhood. 
 Renan, in the church of Treguier, his birthplace, 
 had dreams too. He tells us, in " Recollections 
 of my Youth " : " During the services in church 
 I used to fall into veritable reveries ; my eye 
 wandered in the vaulted roof; I read there I 
 knew not what ; I thought of the celebrity of the 
 great men books tell of." His taste for literature 
 was further cultivated and developed by an elo- 
 quent and energetic teacher, M. Dupanloup. 
 
 All his work in life shows the effect of this 
 early bent and the influences about him. Accu- 
 racy and truth are made to yield to artistic ex- 
 cellence. He wrote what he felt would be plea- 
 sant to read and would secure the admiration of 
 
ERNEST REN AN 155 
 
 the reader for the author's genius. He wrote to 
 please the many. He seems to have had the 
 effect on the multitude always in view. " I have 
 not existed completely, but for the public," is his 
 own avowal.* 
 
 It is this that has made the skeptical principles 
 of the Tubingen school so widely harmful. The 
 skepticism of it, under a different form from that 
 of the stricter adherents of Baur, yet the same in 
 principle and influence, is brought within the 
 reach of the general public by Renan. The poi- 
 son is the same in both. In one case it is in the 
 root, for the few who delve for it. In the other 
 it is in the fruit, where it attracts the admiration 
 and allures the appetite of the multitude. 
 
 His " Vie de Jesus " is like a romance. There 
 is a charm in the sentences in which that wonder- 
 ful life is described which leads captive the lover 
 of the beautiful in literature, and the imagination 
 finds a stimulus and gratification in the scenes 
 and incidents of the Saviour's earthly career. 
 Canaan, the land that flowed with milk and 
 honey, rises before the mind's eye as another 
 Eden, a very Paradise regained, as one follows the 
 footsteps of the wonderful Galilean through His 
 varied experiences. 
 
 Renan does not show a spirit of hostility, like 
 the ordinary infidel, who exhibits his impiety in 
 
 * " Recollections." 
 
156 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 every utterance. On the other hand, much of 
 the time at least, he seems to invite us to admire 
 Christ. He even speaks in a pious strain. In 
 dedicating the book to his sister, who was with 
 him in the Holy Land and assisting him, and 
 who had died while he was lying unconscious 
 under the power of the same disease which took 
 her from his side, he says, " You were always 
 persuaded that the spirits truly religious would 
 be pleased with it." He seemed to have no doubt 
 that he was one of " the spirits truly religious." 
 
 Yet the denial of the supernatural in this won- 
 derful life underlies all that he says of it, and the 
 main purpose of the book is to eliminate it. But 
 he emphasizes the natural and depicts it with the 
 enthusiasm of the born artist. 
 
 In describing that Being whom angels adore 
 and at whose feet the redeemed fall in the sweet- 
 est rapture of gratitude and love, he lavishes all 
 the terms of florid rhetoric to exalt the beauty and 
 attractiveness of His person, in order to conceal the 
 blasphemous denial of His divinity — a blasphemy 
 none the less wicked and harmful because clothed 
 in such ornaments. It is the more dangerous on 
 this account, because by thus pleasing the es- 
 thetic taste and eliciting the admiration of the 
 reader for Christ as a man he the more easily satis- 
 fies him by making Him such a man, and thus robs 
 Him of His crown as God over all. The thought- 
 
ERNEST REN AN I 57 
 
 less reader, dazzled by the brilliancy of the dis- 
 play, is not aware of his great loss, and, led by 
 the subtle charm along so pleasant and flowery a 
 path, is presently surprised to find himself in the 
 barren desert of unbelief, bereft of a Saviour, and 
 with all the sweet hope of a heaven in the future 
 faded from his soul. 
 
 But, while Renan represents Christ in a very 
 attractive light in some respects, it is not to be 
 inferred that he allows Him perfection. Espe- 
 cially in the latter part of His life he pretends to 
 find not only blunders, but instances of moral 
 dereliction. Thus Renan, who at one time invites 
 us to admire, if not to adore, at another bids us 
 find blemishes and criticise. 
 
 Thus this man, who seems so mild and gentle, 
 at last goes beyond most of the blatant infidels 
 in taking up the challenge of the Saviour, " Which 
 of you convinceth [R. V., " convicteth "] Me of 
 sin?" — a challenge which few have had the dar- 
 ing impiety to accept. 
 
 It is impossible to estimate the amount of evil 
 that has come to the readers of our time from 
 these sources. Thousands who never dream that 
 they are in danger as they bend over the strangely 
 fascinating novel or periodical, but, on the other 
 hand, feel very comfortably pious in finding them- 
 selves so deeply interested in religious reading, 
 are nevertheless imbibing a fatal virus. It is re- 
 
158 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 
 
 ligious reading, but of the Renan sort. M. Doudan 
 has described that very succinctly : "Renan donne 
 aux hommes de sa generation ce qu'ils desirent 
 en toutes choses — des bonbons qui sentent l'in- 
 fini " (" Renan gives the men of his generation 
 what they love in everything — sweetmeats 
 scented with the infinite ").* A religion without 
 the obligation of holiness, without heaven or hell 
 or Bible or God, but with only a delicate and 
 undefined " scent of the infinite," has for many 
 minds a strange fascination. 
 
 Poor dupes ! The fascination is that of a ser- 
 pent whose brilliant hues and graceful coil and 
 facile speech are to rob them of the Eden of their 
 faith by the promise of some higher " knowledge 
 of good and evil." Alas! when their eyes are 
 opened they will find themselves naked indeed, 
 stripped of all that is best — " having no hope, 
 and without God in the world." 
 
 There is a warning for us all in the story which 
 Renan gives of the loss of his faith, though we can- 
 not fully accept his account of it as in all parts cor- 
 rect. When he lays the blame on the architec- 
 ture of the old church which he attended in 
 childhood, we have to take this as one of the 
 freaks of his lively fancy, and to think that this 
 is one of the things which he wrote with a smile, 
 and over against which, " if such things were 
 
 * Elmslie's essay on Ernest Renan, p. 45. 
 
ERNEST REN AN I 59 
 
 usual," he would have written " aim grano." 
 We may well believe that his " dreams " in the 
 old cathedral might have developed his imagina- 
 tion ; but it is hard to credit the assertion that 
 " the cathedral, a masterpiece of airy lightness, 
 a hopeless effort to realize in granite an impossi- 
 ble ideal, first of all warped my judgment. . . . 
 That architectural paradox made me a man of 
 chimeras." 
 
 Not the arcJiitecture, but the teachings of the 
 church were in a large degree responsible for his 
 moral and mental defects. Think of the effect 
 on an active mind of such a sham as he describes 
 a page or two further on, in his " Recollections 
 of my Youth " : 
 
 " Upon the eve of the festival [of St. Yves] 
 the people assembled in the church, and on the 
 stroke of midnight the saint stretched out his arms 
 to bless the kneeling congregation. But if among 
 them all there was one doubting soul who raised 
 his eyes to see if the miracle really did take place, 
 the saint, taking just offense at such a suspicion, 
 did not move, and by the misconduct of this in- 
 credulous person no benediction' was given." 
 
 Is it strange that a boy who was required to 
 believe in such transparent trickery as this should 
 soon cease to believe all that the tricksters taught 
 him? The miracles of Rome may deceive the 
 very dull and ignorant, but the effect of them on 
 
160 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 most minds, where there is a capability for rea- 
 soning, is to make them skeptical about all reli- 
 gion because they see so plainly the fraud in this 
 pretense. 
 
 But much of the fault was in Renan himself. 
 From his own account, in both series of " Recol- 
 lections," he seems to have been most thoroughly 
 selfish, self-conscious, self-indulgent, almost 
 wholly devoid of conscience or a sense of duty. 
 Many shameless expressions, as well as his phys- 
 iognomy, seem to indicate that he was not only 
 an intellectual Sybarite, which he most certainly 
 was, but a physical one too. 
 
 He jests lightly about the most serious mat- 
 ters, and the end in all he says seems to be never 
 to lead to the truth or to benefit any soul, but 
 simply to elicit admiration. He made himself 
 his god, and it was easy for him to disbelieve 
 in a Creator to whom he owed anything or a 
 Judge to whom he would have to account for 
 his life. That life must be to him an " enjoy- 
 ment," and that seems to be his whole view 
 of it. As he recognized no such thing as duty 
 to God, it was natural that he should soon come 
 to disbelieve in Him, and in His disregarded 
 commands and revelation. Sin makes men blind 
 to God and all that is of God. " If any man be 
 willing to do His will, he shall know," etc. A 
 willing and obedient heart is the organ of spirit- 
 
ERNEST REN AN l6l 
 
 ual knowledge. It opens the soul's eyes wide to 
 see and know the truth. 
 
 The utter incapability which Renan exhibits 
 of being serious about anything is such a marked 
 characteristic that some one has called him a man 
 with a " cork soul." He seems incapable of stay- 
 ing below the surface in those dark depths and 
 mysteries which he very often plunges into just 
 to bound away from them and dance on the 
 laughing waves of ironical raillery. 
 
 He speaks ironically and lightly on the most 
 solemn themes, and jests about matters which it 
 should sober every human being to think of. In 
 the preface to his " Recollections and Letters " 
 he says : " I confess I should not feel indifferent 
 at being the object of a fine funeral in Paris. . . . 
 And if they were to introduce in it a little feast- 
 ing and revelry, oh, really, what harm would 
 that do?" 
 
 He can write in the same light vein about the 
 solemn mystery of the experiences of the soul 
 after death : 
 
 " After my death, round the ruined Church of 
 St. Michel, which frowns down on Treguier, my 
 soul shall nightly fly in the form of a white sea- 
 mew, beating the bolted door and barred win- 
 dows, seeking to enter the sanctuary, but ignorant 
 of the secret way, wailing incessantly. ' 'Tis the 
 soul of a priest that wants to say his mass,' the 
 
1 62 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 passing peasant will murmur. ' He will never 
 find a clerk to make the responses,' another will 
 answer. Just so. It is precisely this that has 
 always been lacking in my church — the response," 
 etc. 
 
 Well, he has now gone to those experiences 
 about which his fancy could play so lightly. May 
 we all be ready when called to try them ! 
 
 The Hegelian philosophy doubtless had much 
 to do with bringing Renan to that atheistic pan- 
 theism which took away all reverence and sense 
 of duty, along with all solemnity, from his mind. 
 And that philosophy is robbing many of their 
 faith now, especially in our country and in Great 
 Britain. Many of the most attractive teachers 
 are instilling it into receptive and active minds 
 among college and university students.* 
 
 But we have wandered long enough among 
 the shadows, and it is time to come back to the 
 light. 
 
 * It would be hard to find a better guide to the study of Renan 
 than the essay referred to above, " Ernest Renan and his Criti- 
 cism of Christ," by the Rev. W. G. Elmslie, M.A., " Living 
 Papers," vol. iv. In connection with the " Recollections of my 
 Youth," " Recollections and Letters," and "Life of Jesus," it 
 has been freely used in preparing the foregoing sketch. 
 
XV 
 
 THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND NEW DISCOVERIES 
 —THE "DIATESSARON" 
 
 163 
 
XV 
 
 THE SEARCH-LIGHT AND NEW DISCOVERIES 
 — THE ''DIATESSARON" 
 
 FOLLOWING the rays of the search-light, we 
 now turn to two discoveries of very great inter- 
 est — both of the present decade, and one of them 
 very recent. 
 
 Among the characters to' whom Hippolytus 
 calls our attention by no means the least interest- 
 ing is Tatian. Little is known of his personal his- 
 tory. He was, as he himself tells us, an Assy- 
 rian, and a student of philosophy from his youth. 
 He was born about no A.D. and died in 172. 
 
 He was an earnest and conscientious seeker 
 after truth. After traveling in different coun- 
 tries in his extensive study of the philosophy of 
 various schools, like Justin Martyr, he came to 
 know the books of the Bible. After studying 
 these " barbaric books," as from the standpoint 
 of his Greek culture he at first considered them, 
 his conclusion was that the Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures were " too old to be compared with the 
 165 
 
1 66 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 learning of the Greeks, too divine to be put on a 
 level with their erroneous doctrines." 
 
 Irenaeus tells us * that " he was a hearer of 
 Justin's." Like his master, Justin Martyr, he 
 did not cease to be a philosopher when he 
 became a Christian, considering Christianity the 
 very crown and capstone of philosophy. 
 
 Hippolytus classes him with the heretics, as 
 did Irenaeus before him. Many good men have 
 been thus classed by other good men from whom 
 they differed on some point of doctrine. He was 
 an Encratite, or temperance man, and exalted 
 the duty of self-control, especially in the denial 
 of all fleshly appetites. That Oriental philosophy 
 which was his birthright, the ground principle 
 of which is the essential evil of matter and the 
 goodness of spirit, was calculated to lead earnest 
 minds into just such extreme views with regard 
 to fasting and abstaining from marriage as are 
 attributed to the Encratites. 
 
 Irenaeus tells us that as long as Tatian had the 
 companionship of Justin Martyr " he expressed 
 no such views, but after his martyrdom he sepa- 
 rated from the church," and also that he "com- 
 posed his own peculiar type of doctrine." Among 
 other things, " he declared that marriage was 
 nothingbut corruption and fornication." It seems, 
 also, that he held the opinion that Adam was 
 
 * "Adv. Haeres.," book i., chap, xxviii. 
 
THE " D1ATESSAR0N" 1 67 
 
 never forgiven and saved, because the Scriptures 
 represent that "in Adam all die." Before se- 
 verely condemning him for this peculiar opinion 
 about marriage we should remember that the doc- 
 trine of celibacy, as held by the Roman Catholics 
 and other branches of nominal Christians in our 
 own time, has this view of the marriage state as its 
 unacknowledged, but not the less real, foundation. 
 
 But we are not interested now in Tatian's or- 
 thodoxy so much as in a deed which he did for 
 the world — the production of a work which still 
 exists, a work which in the early days of Chris- 
 tianity was in use in the Christian churches of 
 Syria for a long time, and evidently, in transla- 
 tions, in other countries also; while its recent 
 resurrection, as from a tomb where it had lain 
 buried for many centuries, is a boon to our own 
 times. It is probably the first harmony of the 
 Gospels that was ever made. 
 
 Knowing the bearing which the existence of 
 such a work prepared about 150 A.D. would have 
 on the controversy about the origin of the Gos- 
 pels, it was denied by some skeptical writers 
 that any such book ever existed. In an able an- 
 tichristian book, " Supernatural Religion," pub- 
 lished in England in 1875, the anonymous author 
 ventured to assert that " no one seems to have 
 seen Tatian's harmony, probably for the simple 
 reason that there was no such work." 
 
1 68 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 The sarcasm would most certainly have been 
 withheld if the author could have foreseen that 
 St. Ephraem's " Commentary " on Tatian's 
 " Diatessaron " would be published in May of the 
 following year by Dr. Georgius Moesinger. In 
 1 88 1 Zahn published his monograph, "in which, 
 by means of citations from Ephraem's ' Com- 
 mentary,' ... he restored a considerable part 
 of the original text of Tatian." * 
 
 This publication awakened interest in a MS. in 
 the Vatican library which purported to be an 
 Arabic translation of the " Diatessaron," and led 
 Ciasca, an eminent Oriental scholar connected 
 with the library, to examine it. He did not find 
 time to translate and publish it immediately, and 
 this delay seems to have been providentially di- 
 rected, as many another disappointment and en- 
 forced delay has been, for the best result in the 
 end. 
 
 While waiting for an opportunity to do the 
 work Ciasca one day showed the codex to the 
 apostolic vicar-general of the Catholic Copts in 
 Egypt, who happened to be in the library. As 
 soon as he looked into it he said that there was 
 another copy of the work in the possession of a 
 gentleman in Egypt, and that he could have it 
 brought to Rome. He succeeded in doing so, 
 
 * Article in the London Month, December, 1892, by M. 
 Maher. 
 
THE " DIATESSARON " 169 
 
 and the following is a description of the Egyptian 
 codex : 
 
 " The codex consists of three hundred and 
 fifty-three leaves. There is no date attached, 
 but the MS. seems to belong at the latest to the 
 fourteenth century. The pages are nine by six 
 and one quarter inches, inclosed in an illumi- 
 nated square of golden, red, and purple lines, with 
 an ornamentation of golden asterisks." * 
 
 This second MS. was of very great use, as it 
 supplied lacunae and cleared up obscure readings 
 in the first. 
 
 The first MS. was called the Vatican and the 
 second the Borgian, as it was deposited in the 
 Borgian library. 
 
 Now, in a new edition in 1879, the author of 
 " Supernatural Religion " ventured to say, " It is 
 obvious that there is no evidence of any value 
 connecting Tatian's Gospel with those in our 
 canon." f 
 
 Two years later Zahn's reproduction of a part 
 of Tatian's text appeared ; four years later Ciasca 
 published his description of the codex, contain- 
 ing the text itself, and in 1888 he had his long- 
 delayed translation (into Latin), with the Arabic 
 
 * Article in the London Month, December, 1892, by M. 
 Maher. 
 
 t Vol. ii., p. 157, 1879. Quoted by Dr. Wace in his tract on 
 " The Authenticity of the Four Gospels." 
 
170 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 text, issued from the press of the Propaganda in 
 time to present it to the pope on the occasion of 
 his jubilee. 
 
 These were notable collisions of false assertions 
 with facts which served to demonstrate their 
 falsity and proclaim it, as it were, from the very 
 housetops. 
 
 Many questions crowd for answer here. What 
 is the date of this work ? Are the Gospels of the 
 " Diatessaron " " our Gospels " only, or are there 
 mingled with them parts of apocryphal Gospels ? 
 Does Tatian seem to regard these writings of 
 merely historical interest, or as the record of a 
 divine revelation? Are the Gospels quoted 
 placed in separate columns, or are they inter- 
 woven so as to make a continuous narrative? 
 
 In the endeavor to answer these questions I 
 shall rely chiefly on the account given by Pro- 
 fessor Maher, of Stonyhurst, from whose interest- 
 ing articles in the Month I have already quoted. 
 
 As to the date of Tatian 's work entire certainty 
 cannot be attained. There are indications, how- 
 ever, that it does not belong to the latter part of 
 his life — the Encratite period. These are found 
 in the fact that he does not omit or modify any- 
 thing which would be hostile to his later views 
 on marriage. For instance, he gives in full the 
 account of the marriage in Cana of Galilee. 
 
 The " Diatessaron " is conjecturally dated at 
 
THE " DIATESS/tRON" 171 
 
 A.D. 1 50. It contains our four Gospels, without a 
 trace of any of the later apocryphal Gospels. One 
 or two expressions occur which are not to be 
 found in our " received " text, nor in that of 
 Westcott and Hort, the text chiefly used in pre- 
 paring the Revised Version, but they have been 
 traced to the Curetonian Syriac text, and of the 
 significance of this we will presently catch a 
 glimpse. 
 
 The Gospels do not appear in separate columns, 
 but are interwoven so as to form a continuous 
 narrative. 
 
 Tatian's treatment of these Gospels plainly 
 shows that he regards them as part of the inspired 
 Word of God. The "chaff" of which Cardinal 
 Gibbons speaks had evidently not yet become 
 mingled with the wheat, so as to make it neces- 
 sary for a church council to assemble and go to 
 sifting. Ecclesiasticism was the great cultivator 
 of this fictitious " chaff," as any one will see who 
 will take the Ignatian epistles, for instance, with 
 the shorter and longer recensions in parallel col- 
 umns. The interpolations which make a large 
 part of the longer recension are hierarchical and 
 ecclesiastical " chaff " indeed. 
 
 Tatian's Gospels are our four, and the very 
 name of his work emphasizes it. It is " The Dia 
 Tessaron " — " The Through Four " : the one life 
 through the four evangelists. 
 
172 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 Now, as to the text which Tatian must have 
 used, Professor Maher remarks : " A writer as fa- 
 miliar as Tatian certainly was with all the literature 
 of his time, and personally acquainted with St. 
 Justin and the leading Christian churches, . . . 
 would have been certain to have provided him- 
 self with the best and oldest MSS. within his 
 reach. This fact should never be forgotten in 
 estimating the value of the ' Diatessaron.' " 
 
 Let us remember in forming this estimate such 
 facts as these : Tatian was associated with Justin 
 Martyr, a man of learning and eminence, who 
 spoke with great freedom to Roman emperors, as 
 his two "Apologies" show; and he must have 
 known many Christians who, when John's Gos- 
 pel was written, were of age and could well re- 
 member its first reception among the Christian 
 churches. Could this accomplished scholar, born 
 ten or twelve years after John's death, with such 
 advantages as he had for gaining information, 
 and with so critical a turn of mind, have made 
 the mistake of receiving a spurious document 
 as a Gospel written by the beloved disciple ? 
 
 Notice the way in which he uses both this and 
 the synoptic Gospels. The first words of the 
 " Diatessaron " are those with which the Gospel 
 of John begins : " In the beginning was the Word, 
 and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
 God." Professor Maher tells us, "The greatest 
 
THE " DIATESSAROhl " 173 
 
 care is displayed to adhere as far as possible to 
 the very words of the several evangelists, and 
 brief texts and fragments of texts are industri- 
 ously pieced together, so that an elaborate mosaic 
 is the result." On this Professor Maher remarks : 
 " If Tatian or any other author of his time had 
 merely written that ' the four Gospels are univer- 
 sally believed to be inspired,' it would still be 
 possible to dispute as to what he meant by the 
 word ' inspired.' But the ' Diatessaron ' provides 
 us with an object-lesson which makes the matter 
 plain. The reverent care and labor with which 
 the texts of the four evangelists are interwoven, 
 and their sentences and phrases preserved, proves 
 the belief in the peculiar sacredness, in the mys- 
 terious virtue in their briefest utterances. . . . 
 
 " It is only the conviction of the divine charac- 
 ter of the Gospels, both on the part of the author 
 and his readers, which could have given rise to 
 the attempt at such a harmony." 
 
 This last sentence embodies what must be the 
 conclusion of every thoughtful and unprejudiced 
 mind. What Canon Westcott says of the appear- 
 ance, at nearly the same time in which the " Dia- 
 tessaron " was prepared, of the " Commentary " 
 of Heracleon is entirely applicable here : " Unless 
 the Gospels had been generally accepted, the need 
 of such works would not have been felt." We 
 may further say that, unless these Gospels had 
 
174 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 been not only accepted, but were very highly 
 prized and venerated, and generally and carefully 
 studied by Christians, it is hardly probable that 
 such a work as the " Diatessaron " of Tatian 
 would have been prepared and placed at their 
 service. It would certainly never have been done 
 with the evidences of such reverential care if, as 
 some of our friends would have us believe, at this 
 time everything was in a state of uncertainty 
 about the sacred records, and there was doubt 
 as to what was wheat and what was " chaff." In 
 the clear light and winnowing wind of these dis- 
 coveries, much that has heretofore masqueraded 
 as " impartial criticism " has been found to be 
 very aptly designated by the last word of the last 
 sentence, and forever whirled away from the field 
 of controversy. With all the fine phrases of its 
 vaunted erudition, it is shown to be but " chaff" 
 indeed. 
 
 Tatian, as we have seen, had as his instructor 
 in righteousness no less a person than Justin 
 Martyr. 
 
 Justin, in writing his " Apologies " to heathen 
 emperors, very naturally did not give the names 
 of the evangelists in quoting from them, as this 
 would have added nothing to the weight of what 
 was written with these men. But, in spite of the 
 fact that he was writing to heathen men who 
 were probably ignorant of the writers of the New 
 
THE " DUTESSARON" 175 
 
 Testament, it is remarkable that his arguments 
 are full of quotations from and plain references 
 to these writings. It has been remarked that, if 
 all other sources of information were destroyed, 
 we could learn the main facts of our Saviour's life 
 through the quotations of Justin Martyr alone. 
 I think the statement could be made still stronger. 
 From chapters xxx.-lx. of the first " Apology " 
 alone we could learn all the cardinal facts of 
 our Saviour's life and work. Though, philos- 
 opher as he was, he reasoned in the manner of 
 the philosophers of his day, it is wonderful to see 
 his reasonings saturated with scriptural thought 
 and plentifully intermingled with quotations from 
 the Old and New Testaments. 
 
 The fact that his pupil, Tatian, arranged the 
 four Gospels into a harmony makes it clearer and 
 more indisputable that the four Gospels were al- 
 ready gathered together and fully recognized as 
 the authentic and inspired memorials of the life 
 of Christ, and that the quotations and references 
 of Justin Martyr are not a record of mere verbal 
 traditions handed down among the Christians. 
 That these "memoirs" were already not only 
 gathered, but in constant use in Christian wor- 
 ship, is made perfectly clear by Justin's own 
 words : " On the day which is called Sunday 
 there is an assembly in one place of all who dwell 
 either in towns or in the country, and the mem- 
 
176 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 
 
 oirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets 
 are read as long as the time permits." * 
 
 That these "memoirs of the apostles" were 
 our four Gospels was quite plain before the dis- 
 covery of Tatian's " Diatessaron," for, as Pro- 
 fessor Gildersleeve remarks : " As Irenaeus, 
 Clement, and Tertullian quote our Gospels, the 
 negative theory requires us to believe that in the 
 short interval an entire change of Gospels was 
 made throughout all the different and distant 
 provinces of the Roman empire at a time when 
 concerted action through general councils was 
 unknown, and that, too, in so silent a manner 
 that no record of it remains in the history of the 
 church." 
 
 Since the discovery of Tatian's harmony, doubt 
 is no longer possible, for there we find our four 
 Gospels interwoven by Justin's pupil, Tatian, so 
 as to form a continuous account of our Saviour's 
 words and deeds. 
 
 Let us now turn to a still more recent and ex- 
 ceedingly interesting discovery. We shall find 
 it another of that cloud of witnesses God, in His 
 providence, is raising from the dust, in these lat- 
 ter days of doubt and skepticism, to attest the 
 genuineness of the New Testament Scriptures. 
 
 * First " Apology," chap. Ixvii. 
 
XVI 
 THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 
 
 177 
 
XVI 
 
 "THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 
 
 In the Contemporary Review for November, 
 1894, there appeared a most interesting article 
 by Professor J. Rendel Harris, the eminent text- 
 ual critic, in which he described a palimpsest 
 recently discovered in the St. Catharine Convent, 
 on Mount Sinai. 
 
 Some readers may need to be informed that a 
 palimpsest is a manuscript in which the original 
 writing has been partially erased by the use of 
 pumice-stone or some other means, and written 
 over with some later production. The expensive- 
 ness of parchment led to the frequent use of old 
 manuscripts for later writings in this way. 
 
 The place had already been made famous by 
 the discovery there, in 1859, of the Sinaitic Co- 
 dex, by Tischendorf, and the discovery in 1890, 
 by Professor J. Rendel Harris, of the long-lost 
 " Apology " of Aristides. 
 
 An interesting fact about the discovery of " The 
 179 
 
l8o THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 New Syriac Gospels," * of which Professor Harris 
 gives an account in the Contemporary, is that it 
 was made by a woman. 
 
 In the spring of 1892 Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis, 
 the widow of the Rev. S. S. Lewis, the librarian 
 of Corpus Christi College, of Cambridge Univer- 
 sity, England, in company with her twin sister, 
 Mrs. Gibson, also of Cambridge, made a jour- 
 ney to the East, and, induced by their interest 
 in Professor J. Rendel Harris's then recent dis- 
 covery of the " Apology " of Aristides in the 
 library of the Convent of St. Catharine, they 
 went there. 
 
 In the words of Mrs. Lewis, " Among the 
 Syriac books which they [the monks] showed us, 
 I soon picked up a volume of one hundred and 
 seventy-eight leaves, nearly all glued together 
 with some greasy substance. I separated them, 
 partly with my fingers and partly with the steam 
 of a kettle. They had the more fascination for 
 me that no human eye had, evidently, looked 
 on them for centuries ; and I soon perceived that 
 it was a palimpsest, whose upper, or later, writ- 
 
 * For a fuller account the reader is referred to " The Four 
 Gospels in Syriac," translated from the Sinaitic palimpsest by 
 the late Robert L. Bensley . . . and by J. Rendel Harris, M.A., 
 lecturer of the University of Cambridge, etc. (Macmillan), and 
 to " How the Codex was Found," by Mrs. Gibson, and to 
 " Translation of the Four Gospels from the Syriac," by Mrs. 
 A. S. Lewis, the discoverer (Macmillan). 
 
"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" l8l 
 
 ing contained the stories of woman saints, while 
 the under one was the four Gospels." 
 
 She determined to photograph the whole pa- 
 limpsest, which she did, with the assistance of 
 Mrs. Gibson. Great difficulties had to be over- 
 come in order to accomplish this undertaking, 
 but the work was at last completed, and the sis- 
 ters returned to England with their prize. These 
 Syriac Gospels were found to have much in com- 
 mon with those discovered by Cureton, and which 
 bear his name. The colophon of the MS. also 
 indicates its connection with the Curetonian Syr- 
 iac MS. 
 
 Partly owing to the spoiling of some of the 
 photographs in developing, it became necessary, 
 in order to obtain a fully satisfactory result, that 
 another visit should be made to Mount Sinai. The 
 sisters returned to the convent, in company with 
 Professor Harris and Professors Bensley and Bur- 
 kitt, and their wives, and they together worked 
 " from sunrise to sunset " for more than a month. 
 A " chemical reviver " was used, and thereby the 
 old codex, " looking out of its palimpsest prison 
 through the bars of a later writing," was brought 
 more fully into the light. 
 
 The author of " Parchments of the Faith " closes 
 his account, written in 1 894, by saying : " Unfortu- 
 nately for these pages, the publication of the full 
 results of the study of the document is delayed." 
 
1 82 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 The want thus referred to has been supplied 
 by the article of Professor Harris in .the Con- 
 temporary. He tells us that he and his assis- 
 tants " have been able to restore from the actual 
 MS., with the assistance of Mrs. Lewis's photo- 
 graphs, the greater part of the four Gospels from 
 the faded writing in which they appear ; and this 
 we have done, often for whole pages without the 
 loss of a word or a letter. . . . We have, there- 
 fore, a transcript of the four Gospels in Syriac, 
 dating from a very early period, say the fifth 
 century, and representing not unfaithfully a 
 translation which must have been made far back 
 in the second century. Examination shows that 
 it is closely connected with the Syriac version 
 which was edited by Cureton in 1859, and which 
 is called after his name. There is not the least 
 doubt that, as far as Syriac Gospels are concerned, 
 a text has been recovered superior in antiquity to 
 anything yet known, and one that often agrees 
 with all that is most ancient in Greek MSS. ; a 
 text which the advanced critics will at once ac- 
 knowledge to be, after allowance has been made 
 for a few serious blemishes, superior in purity to 
 all extant copies, with a very few exceptions ; and 
 at the same time a text which by its dogmatic 
 tendencies will arrest the interest of theologians 
 of every school of thought." 
 
 We are naturally anxious to know the nature 
 
"THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 83 
 
 of a set of " blemishes " in a text of the New 
 Testament which Professor Harris considers so old 
 and, in general, unusually true to what the best 
 MS. authorities attest as the original text. 
 
 It has been said that, though a vast number ol 
 changes were made in producing the Revised 
 Version of the English Bible, not a single doc- 
 trine is at all affected by the revision. This can- 
 not be said of the text which was discovered by 
 Mrs. Lewis. Should that be followed, belief in 
 the cardinal fact of Christianity — the incarnation 
 of Christ, our Lord — would be overthrown. It 
 is evidently the design of this copy of the Gospels 
 to do this. In the words of Professor Harris : 
 "But the most original feature in our MS., and 
 perhaps the most archaic of its peculiarities, is the 
 suggestion on its very first page of another ver- 
 sion of the birth of our Lord, by readings which 
 definitely and designedly assign to Joseph, the 
 husband of Mary, the paternity of Jesus." 
 
 I need not dwell on this, except to say that the 
 theory of a mistake as the explanation of the in- 
 troduction of these changes into the first chapter 
 of Matthew is untenable. The changes are in- 
 troduced too systematically to admit of any such 
 explanation. They are such as these : Verse 16 : 
 " Joseph [to whom was espoused the Virgin 
 Mary] begat Jesus, who is called Christ." Verse 
 21 \ " She shall bear thee a son," etc. Verse 25 : 
 
1 84 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 " And she bare him a son, and he called His name 
 Jesus." 
 
 Professor Harris reminds us of the formula, 
 " When the cause of a variant is known the vari- 
 ant itself will disappear." The cause of the 
 variant here is very clearly seen. It is the settled 
 purpose to discredit the miraculous birth by 
 which Christ became incarnate. As Professor 
 Harrip says, it is evident that " an enemy hath 
 done this." Who is that enemy? 
 
 Here our saint with his search-light comes to 
 our aid. In the " Refutation of all Heresies," 
 book vii., chapter xxi., we have the following: 
 
 " But a certain Cerinthus, himself being dis- 
 ciplined in the teaching of the Egyptians, asserted 
 that the world was not made by the principal 
 Deity, but by some virtue that was an offshoot 
 from that Power which is above all things, and 
 which yet is ignorant of the God that is above all. 
 
 " And he supposed that Jesus was not gener- 
 ated from a virgin, but that He was born son of 
 Joseph and Mary, just in a manner similar to the 
 rest of men; and that [Jesus] was more just and 
 more wise [than all the human race]. 
 
 "And [Cerinthus alleges] that, after the bap- 
 tism [of our Lord], Christ, in the form of a dove, 
 came down upon Him from that absolute sover- 
 eignty which is above all things." 
 
 Thus we find Cerinthian adoptionism endeavor- 
 
"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" 185 
 
 ing to drive the doctrine of the divine conception 
 and incarnation of Christ from the Scriptures 
 by corrupting the text. 
 
 While we shudder at the horrible wickedness 
 of such speculations about a matter which has 
 been revealed in the Scriptures, we have one 
 reason to be thankful that this text of the Gospels 
 has come to light. Setting aside this variant in 
 the "nativity" passages, the text is an excellent 
 one, and very old. This heresy that has stamped 
 its cloven foot upon it has, in doing so, helped to 
 fix the date of its origin. Says Professor Harris, 
 " It need not be the very Gospel used in Cerinthian 
 circles, but it is certainly sufficiently like to it to 
 share with the Gospel spoken of by Epiphanius in 
 a common designation." Epiphanius, as well as 
 Irenaeus and our own Hippolytus, besides others, 
 tells us of this heresy of Cerinthus. And Cerin- 
 thits was a contemporary of the Apostle John. 
 The tradition that John turned his back upon 
 him in Ephesus, in horror at his impious doc- 
 trines, may or may not be true; but there is 
 nothing improbable in it. 
 
 The gentle John became a very Boanerges, 
 even in his old age, when some began to deny 
 that "Jesus Christ had come in the flesh." The 
 heresy of Docetism is supposed to be referred to. 
 But is not Cerinthianism a twin brother to that ? 
 Cerinthus held that Christ only abode with the 
 
1 86 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PPOLYTUS 
 
 man Jesus for a time, and deserted Him at the 
 time of the crucifixion. Thus Cerinthus en- 
 deavors, like many in our own times, to eliminate 
 from Christianity that which is its central fact, 
 the atoning death of our Redeemer, the efficacy 
 of which depends on the fact which even the 
 heathen centurion who had charge of the cruci- 
 fixion was constrained to acknowledge in the 
 words, " Surely this was the Son of God." 
 
 It seems plain that a version bearing a distinct 
 Cerinthian character must have been made at the 
 time when the Cerinthian heresy was propagated, 
 as it was evidently intended to be an instrument 
 for its propagation. 
 
 Such marks may very generally be relied on in 
 settling the date of a document. They bear an 
 analogy to the geological record, the " testimony 
 of the rocks," in the undesigned and imperishable 
 character of such a record ; but they are much 
 less liable to misinterpretation. We may take an 
 illustration from times much nearer our own, 
 and be able to see more clearly how dates are 
 fixed in this way. 
 
 Suppose that, some hundreds or thousands of 
 years hence, there should be found, among 
 Christians as ignorant of our English tongue as 
 we are of the Syriac of the second century, a 
 copy of an English Bible in which eminent schol- 
 ars among them, who should understand this old 
 
"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 87 
 
 language (as some among us now know the Syr- 
 iac), had observed some remarkable peculiarities 
 which clearly differentiated it from other English 
 versions with which they were acquainted — such 
 peculiarities, for instance, as these : 
 
 Acts xiv. 23: "Ordained to them priests in 
 every church." 1 Timothy v. 1 7 : " Let the priests 
 that rule well be esteemed worthy of double 
 honor." Titus i. 5: "And shouldest ordain 
 priests in every city." James v. 14: "Is any 
 man sick among you ? let him bring in the priests 
 of the church," etc. And then such as these : 
 Matthew iii. 1, 2: "And in those days cometh 
 John the Baptist, preaching in the desert of 
 Judea, and saying, Do PENANCE : for the king- 
 dom of heaven," etc. Mark vi. 12 : " And going 
 forth, they preached that men should do penance " 
 Luke xiii. 3 : " But, unless you shall do penance, 
 you shall all likewise perish." Luke xvi. 30: 
 " No, father Abraham : but if one went unto 
 them from the dead, they will do penance" etc. 
 
 Such scholars would naturally ask, " How is it 
 that the word ' elder,' or ' presbyter,' found in 
 other English versions, the equivalent of the 
 Greek presbnteros, is here replaced by this word 
 ' priest,' which in English designates the men who 
 offered sacrifices under the Jewish law, or minis- 
 tered at heathen altars, the equivalent of which 
 in Greek is hiereus f And what process is this 
 
1 88 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 
 
 which is put under the name of ' doing penance,' 
 and which is made essential for the pardon of sin 
 and escape from ' perishing ' ? " 
 
 Then if these scholars, instead of beginning to 
 theorize, should go to investigating facts, and 
 should turn the search-light of history on the Brit- 
 ish Isles, where English is the common tongue, 
 and on the continent of Europe, they would 
 find that in the sixteenth century a great move- 
 ment, called the Reformation, took place. They 
 would find that this Reformation was accomplished 
 chiefly by giving the Bible to the people in their 
 own language, and that when the waves of the 
 great movement began to agitate England there 
 was felt a great want. The people must have 
 that Bible which had so roused the Germans. 
 Then came a period of Bible translation. God 
 raised up a wonderful man, William Tyndale, to 
 give the Bible to the English people. Other 
 English translations were made with various 
 special aims, of which their pages bear evident 
 traces ; but, whatever patterns may have been 
 wrought into the fabric, Tyndale's constituted 
 the warp and woof of them all. 
 
 Church and state in England were arrayed 
 against the movement. Many lives were sacri- 
 ficed, Tyndale's among the rest. But the people 
 would have the Word of God, in spite of stake 
 and gibbet. 
 
"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 89 
 
 The search-light of history would reveal a rapid 
 progress of the Reformation through the circula- 
 tion of the Scriptures, so that the majority of the 
 nation became its advocates. 
 
 These investigators would naturally inquire, 
 " Why was a reformation needed, and what 
 brought about that state of things which called 
 so loudly for it?" "Who took away this Bible 
 for which there is now such a demand on the 
 part of the people?" 
 
 As they turn the search-light back upon the 
 earlier centuries, they find that this state of 
 things was brought about chiefly by the minis- 
 ters of the gospel being replaced by priests, who, 
 instead of pointing to the great sacrifice of Cal- 
 vary, turned the Lord's Supper into a sacrifice, 
 and bade those whom they would allow to par- 
 take of it believe in it as the very body and blood 
 of Christ. 
 
 Then it would be found that these priests 
 gained more and more ghostly power, and formed 
 themselves into ranks and orders, till at last one 
 of them was placed on a throne, and kings and 
 emperors were made his servants. 
 
 Then the question would arise, " How did these 
 priests accomplish this wonderful feat?" The 
 search-light of history would reveal the answer. 
 It would show these men pretending to stand 
 between men and their God, and to be able to 
 
190 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 forgive their sins. It would dart its rays into 
 thousands of dark cuddies called confessionals, 
 and would show in each a priest sitting, while a 
 penitent man or woman or child knelt and told 
 to the priest the innermost secrets of heart and 
 life. Then the priest would be seen prescribing 
 a "penance" for each penitent, and, whether 
 doing the penance involved self-torture, or the 
 resigning of possessions to the church and going 
 to a convent or monastery, the priest found the 
 requirement, " Do penance or perish," a powerful 
 instrument in his hands, and by it brought down 
 king and peasant. 
 
 Now, when the Reformation began in England, 
 and the English Bible made plain the way of 
 salvation through Christ alone, the " one Media- 
 tor " between God and man, vast multitudes 
 turned away from the priests and confessionals, 
 and, instead of " doing penance," repented of 
 their sins, and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 that they might be saved. 
 
 Now our investigators would find that the 
 period of English Bible translation, in connection 
 with this great movement, the Reformation, be- 
 gan with the publication of Tyndale's translation 
 of the New Testament in 1526, and of the whole 
 Bible in 1535, and ended with the publication of 
 King James's version in 161 1. 
 
 They might never have turned their search- 
 
"THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 191 
 
 light on Rheims or Douay ; yet, from the peculi- 
 arities of the version which had in it the " priest " 
 and " do penance " features, they would have no 
 hesitation in saying, "A priest hath done this." 
 They would feel sure, too, that it was done dur- 
 ing this period of English Bible translation ex- 
 tending from 1526 to 161 1. Having found that 
 it had been for centuries the policy of the priests 
 to keep the Bible from the people, and that for 
 this purpose they had kept it locked up in a dead 
 language, they would see that when they now 
 translated it into the English language they did 
 it because they felt obliged to change their policy 
 to some extent, though not the principle underly- 
 ing it. Circumstances forced them to do it. By 
 the translation of the Bible into English the light 
 had been turned on, and the people as they read 
 began to find the scales falling from their eyes. 
 They saw that in the New Testament there was 
 nothing about priests and penances in the Chris- 
 tian church. The priests and sacrifices belonged 
 to the preparatory dispensation of those types and 
 shadows which pointed to Christ, the great High 
 Priest, who should offer for our redemption the 
 sacrifice of Himself. " So Christ was once offered 
 to bear the sins of many " (Heb. ix. 28). " For by 
 one offering He hath perfected forever them that 
 are sanctified." The people were rapidly learning 
 this great truth, and were turning away from the 
 
192 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 altars where pretended priests were offering an 
 endless succession of pretended propitiatory sacri- 
 fices of the mass. 
 
 What shall the priests do ? They make a des- 
 perate resolve. If these things are not in the 
 Bible they will put them there. Hence comes 
 the " priest " and " penance " version of Rheims 
 and Douay. 
 
 It was an artful scheme to use the very sledge- 
 hammer that had broken the bars of the people's 
 prison for forging their fetters anew. If they 
 must know of the Bible from English translations, 
 they shall have one that shall teach them of 
 priests and penances. " For by this craft we 
 have our wealth." 
 
 Thus the Douay version, if in a future age it 
 should be found without colophon and date, could 
 easily be identified and dated by the finger-marks 
 of the priests. The close of the sixteenth or the 
 beginning of the seventeenth century would be 
 set down as its birth-hour. 
 
 Just so the new codex of the Syriac Gospels 
 discovered by Mrs. Lewis at Mount Sinai is 
 marked, by the footprints of Cerinthianism in it, 
 as belonging to the period of this heresy. 
 
 The connection traced by Professor Harris be- 
 tween the new Syriac Gospels and the Curetonian 
 Syriac text gives another indication of the very 
 early origin of the text of the former. This 
 
"THE NEW SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 93 
 
 connection is of such a kind as to indicate quite 
 clearly the superior antiquity of the newly dis- 
 covered text. 
 
 The Curetonian emphasizes the virginity of 
 Mary by changes in the very text which Cerin- 
 thus or his followers changed in the endeavor to 
 make the " nativity " passages teach, not the su- 
 pernatural incarnation of Christ, but the natural 
 birth, by ordinary generation, of Jesus. The 
 changes are such as these: In Matthew i. 25, in- 
 stead of " took his wife," the Curetonian has 
 " took Mary." In i. 20, the words of the angel, 
 " fear not to take to thee Mary thy wife" are 
 changed to " fear not to take to thee Mary thine 
 espoused." In i. 19, "Joseph, her husband" ap- 
 pears simply as "Joseph." 
 
 Hence it seems clear, as Professor Harris tells 
 us, that the Curetonian text is the result, as to 
 this feature, of an endeavor to correct the Cerin- 
 thian error. 
 
 Of course the text on which corrections are 
 made must be older than the corrections. A 
 document must be older than a corrected edition of 
 itself. It seems almost certain, then, that the 
 text of the Gospels discovered at Mount Sinai is 
 one of which the Curetonian is a correction ; 
 therefore it must be older than the Curetonian. 
 As the " Diatessaron " of Tatian shows, accord- 
 ing to Professor Harris, a connection with the 
 
194 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 Curetonian, the inference is that it, too, is more 
 recent than the newly discovered Cerinthian text. 
 This makes it look as if the latter was the text 
 used in Cerinthian circles. 
 
 Now this Cerinthian text was a corruption of 
 an original, doctored in the " nativity " passages 
 to sustain the adoptionist theory. This text in 
 which the changes in these passages were made 
 must, of course, have been older than the cor- 
 rupted Cerinthian text. The passages changed 
 make the text in these places inconsistent with 
 itself in other places, and thus point to an older, 
 self-consistent, unmutilated text. 
 
 We find, then, in these newly discovered Gos- 
 pels, another indication of the existence of this 
 part, at least, of the New Testament within the 
 first century. 
 
 Our quest is well-nigh ended. There has been 
 no effort to present the whole body of evidence 
 of the genuineness of the New Testament Scrip- 
 tures. We have only traveled through the ob- 
 scure ways of this comparatively little-known age 
 by the help of our saint's search-light. 
 
 We have found, even by an examination of the 
 ground on which this light falls, clear and cumu- 
 lative evidence that the New Testament came 
 down from apostolic times, and that from the first 
 it was received as the authority to which all 
 parties appealed. 
 
"THE NEIV SYRIAC GOSPELS" 1 95 
 
 Our first excursion for research was along the 
 path of Hippolytus's spiritual ancestry, and we 
 found Irenaeus, his teacher, quoting in his extant 
 works every book of the New Testament, with 
 the exception of two very brief epistles, while 
 Polycarp, the teacher of Irenaeus, in the only 
 writing of his which is extant, quotes the New 
 Testament so extensively that the letter is a mo- 
 saic made up, in large part, of gems from the 
 New Testament writings. And Polycarp was 
 contemporary with the Apostle John for almost 
 forty years. This of itself would be sufficient ; 
 but we find corroborative testimony. 
 
 Our second excursion was by the way of the 
 Gnostic heresies to which Hippolytus introduces 
 us, and we found Valentinus and Basilides (the 
 latter a younger contemporary of John) quoting 
 the New Testament writings and appealing to 
 them as the recognized authority in religious 
 discussion, while we found Heracleon, a disciple 
 of Valentinus, actually writing a commentary in 
 which he shows a strict view of the inspiration of 
 the New Testament. 
 
 Our third inquiry was concerning Tatian, of 
 whom Hippolytus speaks, and in his newly dis- 
 covered " Diatessaron " we found a harmony of 
 the four Gospels in which the most punctilious 
 regard was paid to the very words and phrases 
 of the evangelists, as Tatian interweaves them 
 
196 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 into a continuous narrative. This indicates that 
 these Gospels had long been accepted as the gen- 
 uine " memoirs of the apostles " concerning the 
 Lord Jesus, of which Justin Martyr tells the 
 Emperor Antoninus Pius that they were used in 
 Christian worship along with the Old Testament 
 Scriptures. 
 
 And at last, guided by our saint's light, we 
 found Cerinthus, a contemporary of John, teach- 
 ing that our Lord was born of human parents, by 
 ordinary generation, and lo! there rises from its 
 tomb on Mount Sinai a codex of the four Gospels 
 with the footprints of this heresy in it. 
 
 Thus we find these four roads converging to a 
 point within the apostolic age. As we approach 
 it, first from one direction and then from an- 
 other, we behold, rising in the distance there, 
 that sublime structure from which has shone 
 through the ages a celestial light, and from whose 
 threshold flows a life-giving stream — the finished 
 temple of divine revelation. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE FIRST 
 CENTURY 
 
 
 197 
 
XVII 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE FIRST CENTURY 
 
 No one acquainted with the subject will con- 
 tend that the books of the New Testament were 
 gathered together into a volume by supernatural 
 means as soon as they were written, and that as 
 soon as the last word was indited every church was 
 found in possession of a completed New Testament. 
 
 While the New Testament writings are, as we 
 verily believe, of supernatural origin and char- 
 acter, "inspired," — God-breathed (Theopneustai), 
 — they were produced through natural agencies, 
 were called forth, as some of the epistles espe- 
 cially show, by certain exigencies, and bear the 
 mark of the natural powers, tastes, and culture 
 of their authors. The distribution of them was 
 doubtless by natural means too, and undoubtedly 
 some churches received some of them before other 
 churches. The multiplication of copies was ac- 
 complished by the slow and tedious process of 
 writing and was far from instantaneous. Dr. B. B. 
 Warfield, in the Presbyterian Quarterly, April, 
 1895, we ^ describes the process as follows: 
 199 
 
200 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 " The Bible was circulated only in hand copies 
 slowly and painfully made, and an incomplete 
 copy, obtained, say, at Ephesus in A.D. 68, would 
 be likely to remain for many years the Bible of 
 the church to which it was conveyed, and might, 
 indeed, become the parent of other copies, incom- 
 plete like itself, and thus the means of providing 
 a whole district with incomplete Bibles. Thus, 
 when we inquire after the history of the New 
 Testament canon, we need to distinguish such 
 questions as these: I. When was the New Tes- 
 tament canon completed? 2. When did any one 
 church acquire a completed canon? 3. When 
 did the completed canon, the complete Bible, 
 obtain universal circulation and acceptance? 
 4. On what ground and evidence did the churches 
 with incomplete Bibles accept the remaining books 
 when they were made known to them?" He 
 answers the first question thus: "The canon of 
 the New Testament was completed when the last 
 authoritative book was given to any church by 
 the apostles." His conclusion on the whole mat- 
 ter is: " But from the time of Irenaeus down, the 
 church at large had the whole canon as we now 
 possess it." 
 
 Pursuing the four ways made plain by the 
 search-light of our saint, we have at each ap- 
 proach to the apostolic age found the New Tes- 
 tament already in existence. We have looked, 
 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY 201 
 
 as it were, from four standpoints on the verge of 
 the first century, and each time we have caught 
 a glimpse of this divinely erected edifice. Have 
 we been mistaken ? Was it a mere mirage, a re- 
 flection back into the first century of what only 
 grew to its completion late in the second ? 
 
 Whether what we have seen is a mirage or a 
 reality will be best determined by a close ap- 
 proach and a careful examination. This exam- 
 ination we must make for ourselves, as the results 
 have so important a personal interest for us and 
 a mistake would be so disastrous ; but in making 
 the approach we need not disdain such assistance 
 as that of Renan and Baur, men who have care- 
 fully examined this region and who should be 
 competent guides for this purpose, so far as the 
 possession of the requisite information goes. 
 
 Renan says of the four epistles of Paul which 
 occur first in our New Testament, those to the 
 Romans, the Corinthians, and the Galatians, that 
 they are " incontestables et incontestees " (" in- 
 disputable and undisputed"), and also that " les 
 critiques les plus severes, tels que Christien Baur, 
 les acceptent sans objection " (" the most exact- 
 ing critics, such as Christian Baur, accept them 
 without objection ").* 
 
 As these four epistles are admitted by the most 
 
 * "St. Paul," pp. v., vi. Quoted by Dr. Wace in " Evidential 
 Conclusions from the Four Greater Epistles of Paul," pp. 3, 4. 
 
202 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 advanced critics as the writings of the Apostle 
 Paul, we need not discuss their authenticity. 
 Taking our stand, then, in this part of the New 
 Testament, we may at least begin our examina- 
 tion of this part of what Christians hold to be the 
 completion of God's revelation. 
 
 What must strike any one as remarkable about 
 these four epistles is that they proceed upon a 
 certain set of facts, that these facts are many of 
 them altogether out of the mere natural order, 
 and that they all cluster about a PERSON who is 
 entirely unlike any historical character. We find 
 the acknowledged writer of these four epistles 
 showing every conceivable sign of the utmost 
 sincerity as he unfolds these facts, and deduces 
 certain doctrines from them, and lays down cer- 
 tain rules of practical conduct for those to whom 
 he is writing, while he evidently accepts these 
 doctrines and rules as the norm of his own think- 
 ing and living. 
 
 Now, as we look further into the New Testa- 
 ment, we see that these facts which Paul presup- 
 poses and builds upon in these epistles are given 
 in detail in four other books called "Gospels," 
 written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and 
 chiefly by the first three of these. The very 
 natural presumption is that these Gospels, or some 
 of them at least, had been written when Paul 
 wrote these epistles which are acknowledged to be 
 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY 203 
 
 his. It is not claimed at all that this conclusion 
 is absolutely necessary, but it is certainly reason- 
 able and probable. The use which Paul makes 
 of these facts concerning Christ implies that he 
 had definite and full information about them, and 
 we find such information in these Gospels. 
 
 It seems clear, then, that as these facts about 
 Christ underlie all the teaching of these epistles, 
 and as the system called Christianity (which is 
 absolutely unique) is precisely the same as pre- 
 sented in these epistles and in the life, death, 
 resurrection, ascension, and teachings of Christ 
 recorded in these Gospels, it is incredible that the 
 Gospels could have originated in a later age, as 
 the Tubingen school contended. 
 
 Here we can again allow M. Renan to take us 
 by the hand and lead us into these rooms which 
 we have been viewing from other apartments, 
 though we protest in advance against any con- 
 clusions he might wish us to adopt as to what 
 we see in them. We prefer to see and conclude 
 for ourselves. We will take his hand, but keep 
 our eyes. Renan acknowledges that the Gospel 
 of Luke is in all probability genuine. He says : 
 " As to Luke, doubt is scarcely possible. 
 The author of this Gospel is certainly the same as 
 the author of the Acts of the Apostles. Now the 
 author of the Acts seems to be a companion of 
 St. Paul, a character which accords completely 
 
204 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 with St. Luke."* He concludes: "We think, 
 therefore/that the author of the third Gospel and 
 of the Acts is in all reality Luke, the disciple of 
 Paul." 
 
 Baur, by his doctrine of " tendencies," tried to 
 make the world believe that our Gospels represent 
 the stages of religious discussion of the first and 
 second centuries, and Strauss, by his " mythical " 
 theory, also endeavored to give them a late origin 
 and a spurious character. But Renan, while shar- 
 ing their hostility to Christianity as of divine and 
 supernatural character, is constrained by plain 
 evidence to acknowledge the genuineness of Luke, 
 though he holds that all statements implying the 
 supernatural are legendary. Of him Dr. Wace 
 says :f 
 
 " No one doubts his perfect familiarity with 
 the whole range of criticism represented by such 
 names as Strauss and Baur, and no one questions 
 his disposition to give full weight to every objec- 
 tion which that criticism can urge. Even without 
 presuming that he is prejudiced on either one 
 side or the other, it will be admitted on all hands 
 that he is more favorably disposed than otherwise 
 to such criticism as we have to meet. When, 
 therefore, with this full knowledge of the litera- 
 ture of the subject, such a writer comes to the 
 
 * Preface to Renan's " Vie de Jesus." 
 
 t " The Authenticity of the Four Gospels," p. 17. 
 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY 205 
 
 conclusion that the criticism in question has en- 
 tirely failed to make good its case on a point like 
 that of the authorship of St. Luke's Gospel, we 
 are at least justified in concluding that critical 
 objections do not possess the weight which un- 
 believers or skeptics are wont to assign to them. 
 M. Renan, in a word, is no adequate witness to 
 the Gospels, but he is a very significant witness 
 as to the value of modern critical objections to 
 them." 
 
 But Renan not only acknowledges that the 
 evidences of Luke's authorship of the Gospel 
 which has his name attached to it and of the Acts 
 of the Apostles are clear, but says he : " To sum 
 up, I admit the four canonical Gospels as serious 
 documents. They all go back to the age which 
 followed the death of Jesus," etc.* 
 
 While Renan's theory that the supernatural 
 cannot be admitted led him to reject the Gospels 
 as the divine revelation which we believe them 
 to be, his knowledge of the evidences constrained 
 him to acknowledge that they were " serious 
 documents " and therefore not forgeries, and that 
 they were written at the time when we suppose 
 them to have been written, in "the age which 
 followed the death of Jesus." 
 
 When we come to examine the Gospels them- 
 selves we find everything to indicate that they 
 
 * Preface to " Vie de Jesus," p. lxxxi. 
 
206 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 originated at this time and that they were written 
 by the authors whose names they bear. If a 
 book has always borne the name of a writer from 
 its first introduction, and there is no reason to 
 believe that there is any intention to deceive in 
 the matter, we do not hesitate to believe that the 
 person whose name the book bears is its author. 
 If we are asked long afterward to believe that 
 such a person was not the author, but that some 
 one else wrote it, the one making such a demand 
 is under obligation to furnish proof of what he 
 avers. 
 
 The Gospels have borne the names of their re- 
 puted authors from their first appearance, so far 
 as we can learn. Indeed, everything is in favor 
 of the supposition that the persons whose names 
 they bear are those to whom they have been at- 
 tributed from the first. We have seen the clear 
 testimony of Irenaeus, who could certainly have 
 learned from his teacher, Polycarp, the facts of 
 the case. Polycarp could not have been mistaken, 
 for the last Gospel was written in his lifetime and 
 by his own teacher, according to the statement 
 of Irenaeus. 
 
 The well-known testimony of Papias of Hierap- 
 olis, whom Irenaeus calls " a hearer of John and 
 a companion of Polycarp," is clear and explicit as 
 to the authorship of the Gospels of Matthew and 
 Mark. 
 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY 207 
 
 Eusebius* quotes Papias as saying, " Matthew 
 composed the oracles in the Hebrew tongue, and 
 each one interpreted them as he could." 
 
 This shows that the first Gospel was attributed to 
 Matthew from the beginning. The use of the word 
 " oracles," too, reminds one of the expression of 
 Paul in Romans iii. 1, where he evidently means 
 the Holy Scriptures. Papias, it would seem, 
 then, instead of referring only to the discourses 
 of our Lord, intends to rank the Gospel of Mat- 
 thew with the rest of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 Of Mark Papias says : " Mark, having become 
 the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately 
 everything that he remembered. . . . 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." 
 
 Thus we see that these two Gospels bearing the 
 names of Matthew and Mark are attributed to them 
 as their authors by a man who was a younger 
 contemporary of the last of the apostles. 
 
 Now, as we turn to examine the contents of 
 those books whose traditionary authorship, from 
 the very age in which they were produced and 
 for a long time after it, was undisputed, f we shall 
 
 * " Hist. Eccl.," book iii., chap, xxxix. 
 
 t The case of the Alogi no real exception. See Neander's 
 " Hist, of Ch.," p. 374 (Rose's trans.). 
 
208 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPO LYTUS 
 
 find them exhibiting several characteristics which 
 confirm the tradition concerning them and attest 
 their genuineness. 
 
 There is one thing about the first three Gospels 
 which stamps them as productions of the period 
 preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in the 
 year 70. In all of them there is recorded that 
 remarkable prophecy of our Saviour about the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, His own coming, and 
 the end of the world. 
 
 These events are all evidently in the future 
 when these Gospels are penned. The prophecy, 
 recorded with some variations of language in the 
 different Gospels, has one marked characteristic 
 in each and all of them. That characteristic makes 
 it very difficult to interpret. It is this : the future 
 events are so described that it is not absolutely 
 certain in some expressions which of the events 
 named is referred to. Indeed, some parts of the 
 prophecy seem to be capable of bearing different 
 senses, in one of which it will be applicable to one 
 of these events, while in another it would apply to 
 another of them. Like many other prophecies, 
 it seems to have the " springing and germinant " 
 quality of Bacon's celebrated aphorism, having 
 different fulfilments in various ages and " reach- 
 ing its height and fullness in some one age." 
 
 It is the oak-in-the-acorn principle. Some of 
 the first fulfilments may be as insignificant, when 
 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY 209 
 
 compared to the "height and fullness " which it is 
 to reach, as the mustard-seed compared to the 
 future " tree " in whose branches the birds will 
 build. These great events are in this prophecy- 
 foreshortened and apparently intermingled, and 
 this characteristic marks the date of the writing 
 as preceding that first fulfilment, which occurred 
 in the destruction of the Holy City. If it had al- 
 ready occurred the writer could not but have seen 
 that it was a different thing historically from the 
 second advent and the end of the world. 
 
 To use a very plain and homely illustration, 
 when we are traveling along a road beside which 
 a telegraph runs, the poles ahead of us may seem 
 very close together, and from certain positions we 
 do not see the spaces between them; but when 
 we pass one of these, we see from our changed 
 point of view that there is a wide interval between 
 it and the next one ahead, against which it just 
 now seemed to be leaning. These writers evi- 
 dently had not passed the first of the events, and 
 hence the foreshortening and commingling of 
 these great events with much in common in great 
 principles, but widely divided in time. 
 
 When we come to examine the fourth Gospel 
 we find that it is written as if by an eye-witness 
 of much that is related, while the author, evi- 
 dently from delicacy, often studiously refrains 
 from mentioning his own name. This is espe- 
 
2IO THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 daily noticeable in his mention (i. 37) of "the 
 two disciples " who heard John the Baptist say as 
 he looked on Jesus, " Behold the Lamb of God ! " 
 " One of the two," he informs us, " was Andrew, 
 Simon Peter's brother." He does not mention 
 that he himself was the other, but only leaves it 
 to be inferred. The author was evidently the 
 questioner at the table as to who the traitor was, 
 but he does not mention his name. Instead of 
 this, he draws the ever-memorable picture in 
 which those who love the Lord Jesus have ever 
 since recognized him. " Now there was leaning 
 on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus 
 loved." At the cross, in that tenderest of all the 
 scenes about it, the author's name does not ap- 
 pear. " When Jesus therefore saw His mother, 
 and the disciple standing by, whom He loved," 
 are his words. At the sepulcher Peter is named, 
 but he himself is "the other disciple." At the 
 Sea of Galilee, in the wonderful scene of the mi- 
 raculous draft of fishes, and the restoration of 
 Peter by the risen Lord, he is still " the disciple 
 whom Jesus loved." And in the next to the last 
 verse of the Gospel we are told, " This is the dis- 
 ciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote 
 these things : and we know that his testimony is 
 true." He is still the unnamed eye-witness. But 
 the veil of delicacy which John uses does not and 
 was not intended to obscure his authorship of this 
 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY 211 
 
 Gospel, as this distinct and clear attestation at the 
 close of it shows.* 
 
 Thus, while on entering this central apartment 
 with its four portals we saw over the lintels the 
 superscriptions, " The Gospel according to Mat- 
 thew," " according to Mark," " according to 
 Luke," " according to John," we find, as we come 
 within and examine the handiwork and the ma- 
 terial, indications that this structure was builded 
 in " the age which follotved the deatJi of Jesus" 
 and by those who were " eye-witnesses of His 
 majesty," or their companions, to whom, with the 
 vividness of personal knowledge, they communi- 
 cated the wonderful facts and words which form 
 the foundation-stones and unearthly splendors of 
 that monument of divine grace and love for lost 
 men which we call " The New Testament." 
 
 There are personal reminiscences like these : 
 " We beheld His glory, the glory as of the only 
 begotten of the Father;" "That which was from 
 the beginning, which we have heard, which we 
 have seen with our eyes, which we have looked 
 upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of 
 life; . . . that which we have seen and heard declare 
 we unto you." It is all in the manner of another 
 eye-witness who says, "For He received from God 
 
 * The supposition of Godet and others, that these are the 
 words of editors, is plausible ; but the style of the last chapter 
 proclaims it John's. 
 
2 12 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 the Father honor and glory, when there came such 
 a voice to Him from the excellent glory, This is 
 My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. 
 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, 
 when we were with Him in the holy mount" (2 
 Pet. i. 17, 18). 
 
 The omissions in the fourth Gospel can be ex- 
 plained only by supposing that it was written 
 after the other three and that the author knew 
 their contents. The omission of an account of 
 the selection of the twelve apostles is one of these. 
 Christ's Galilean ministry is omitted, while accounts 
 of five sojourns in Jerusalem and Judea are given. 
 The extended discourses at and after the institu- 
 tion of the Lord's Supper are given, but the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount and the great body of the 
 parables are omitted. The account of the institu- 
 tion of this sacrament is omitted, while the scene 
 of it is portrayed at length, and many occurrences 
 and sayings omitted by the other evangelists are 
 inserted here. This shows quite plainly that the 
 author of this Gospel knew that the things omitted 
 had been already recorded. This is no doubt- 
 ful evidence (and the evidence of silence is 
 often the most convincing) of an apostle that the 
 synoptic Gospels were already written when he 
 wrote. 
 
 The closer our examination of all these Gospels, 
 and other books of the New Testament, the clearer 
 

 IN THE FIRST CENTURY 213 
 
 will be the evidence that they were written in the 
 apostolic age. 
 
 The first four epistles, Romans, 1 and 2 Corin- 
 thians, and Galatians, are allowed even by the 
 most exacting critics, even by F. Christian Baur 
 himself, to have been written by Paul. We find 
 that the rest which bear his name also bear clear 
 marks of the same hand. No writings ever more 
 unmistakably bore the impress of their author. 
 The claim in the epistles, unvarying tradition, the 
 style, and the "undesigned coincidence" with the 
 Acts of the Apostles, unite in testifying to Paul 
 as their author. But in addition to this, Paul, the 
 unique character that he is, is seen and felt every- 
 where in them. 
 
 Phidias is said to have executed that wonder 
 of art, the shield of Athena, in such a way that 
 portraits of his patron, Pericles, and of himself, 
 the sculptor, also, were seen on it. In all the 
 Pauline epistles the lineaments of Christ shine 
 forth, but everywhere in them we find Paul ever 
 unconsciously revealing himself also, in the act of 
 portraying his Master. 
 
 The abrupt conclusion of the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles indicates that Luke, of whom Paul said, " Only 
 Luke is with me," perished with the apostle. The 
 sudden breaking off without recording Paul's mar- 
 tyrdom is most naturally explained by supposing 
 that the Acts was written before that event. 
 
214 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 Without further particularizing as to the evi- 
 dence of the authorship of the books of the 
 New Testament, it is sufficient to draw attention 
 for a moment to the way in which they fit into 
 the history of the time in which they claim to 
 have been written, to show that they could have 
 been written at no other period. 
 
 For one thing, the political peculiarities of the 
 period covered by the transactions related in the 
 New Testament were such that no writer could 
 have forged the accounts at a later time without 
 falling into many mistakes. The government of 
 the country was administered in five distinct forms 
 during this period. Even the astute and clear- 
 headed Tacitus seems to have been unable suc- 
 cessfully to thread the mazes of a situation so 
 complicated, and the most skilful forger who in 
 the second century should have attempted the 
 telling of such a story as that of the Gospels and 
 the Acts would have tripped at almost every step. 
 How is it with the New Testament writers ? Here 
 is the answer of one who has examined the mat- 
 ter most carefully : 
 
 " The writers of the New Testament nowhere 
 betray any perplexity. They mark, quite inci- 
 dentally and without the slightest trace of strain 
 or effort, the various phases, extraordinary as they 
 were, of the civil government of Palestine. Thus 
 at the era of the advent we (i) find the country 
 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY 2 1$ 
 
 subject to the sole government of Herod the 
 Great (Matt. ii. 1 ; Luke i. 5) ; then (2) we have 
 his dominions partitioned among his sons, while 
 one, Archelaus, reigns over Judea with the title of 
 £///£• (Matt. ii. 22) ; then (3) we see Judea reduced to 
 the condition of a Roman province, while Galilee, 
 Iturea, and Trachonitis continue under native 
 princes (Luke iii. 1); then (4) in the person of 
 Herod Agrippa I. we have the old kingdom of 
 Palestine restored (Acts xii. 1); and finally (5) 
 we observe the whole country reduced under 
 Roman rule, and Roman procurators (Felix, Acts 
 xxiii. 24; Festus, Acts xxiv. 27) reestablished, 
 while a certain degree of deference is paid to 
 Herod Agrippa II., to whom Festus refers Paul's 
 case as presenting special difficulties." * 
 
 But this is only the vestibule of a great laby- 
 rinth in which none but persons living in the lands 
 and in the time of which the books of the New 
 Testament give us accounts could possibly have 
 avoided being hopelessly confused. 
 
 No attempt will here be made to exhibit in 
 detail the many complications which would have 
 furnished snares and pitfalls for any forger who 
 might have attempted in the second century to 
 write such accounts. We can only take a pass- 
 ing glance at the situation. The writer just 
 
 * " Historical Illustrations of the New Testament Scriptures," 
 by Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D., p. 6. 
 
2 16 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 named has summed up the difficulties which such 
 an attempt would have met under five heads : 
 
 i. The political condition of Palestine (just 
 mentioned). 
 
 2. Roman emperors and administrators. 
 
 3. Jewish kings and princes. 
 
 4. Condition of the Jewish nation. 
 
 5. The Greek and Roman world. 
 
 Under each of these heads there is an intricate 
 array of particulars. 
 
 Many with a zeal against Christianity, which 
 sharpened their vision for the discovery of mis- 
 takes, have endeavored to show that the writers 
 of the New Testament have in some cases fallen 
 into error, but a fuller investigation and the light 
 of archaeological discoveries have shown that their 
 zeal has been " not according to knowledge." A 
 notable case in point is that of the " enrolment " 
 under Augustus, which providentially caused our 
 Lord's mother to go with Joseph to Bethlehem, 
 their " own city," where our Lord was born ac- 
 cording to the prophecy which assigned the city 
 of David as the birthplace of the Messiah. 
 
 Much has been written to prove that Luke was 
 guilty of an anachronism, because Cyrenius (or 
 Quirinus) became governor of Syria when our 
 Lord was about ten years old. But, as Maclear 
 says, " There has been no serious refutation of the 
 view, first developed by Zumpt, that Quirinus 
 

 IN THE FIRST CENTURY 21 J 
 
 was twice governor, once in B.C. 4, when he began 
 the census, and once in A.D. 6, when he carried 
 it to completion." Suetonius tells of three such 
 enrolments in the reign of Augustus.* 
 
 In another case Luke has been accused of 
 making a mistake. He calls Sergius Paulus the 
 " proconsul " (" deputy" in the Authorized Ver- 
 sion ") of Cyprus, while many scholars contended 
 that Cyprus was an imperial province and that 
 the title of Sergius Paulus was "propretor." 
 Closer examination, however, has shown that the 
 emperor had transferred Cyprus to the control 
 of the senate, so that the governor's title would 
 properly be "proconsul." Luke's accuracy in 
 the matter has been demonstrated, too, by the 
 discovery of coins of the time, on which is the 
 name of the Emperor Claudius, and the title of 
 the governor as "proconsul" Besides this, an in- 
 scription has been discovered bearing the names 
 of two other governors of Cyprus, and in it the 
 title is "proconsul." Thus Luke is thoroughly 
 proved to have been right. 
 
 When we see in the New Testament incidental 
 mention of the changing phases of civil adminis- 
 tration in Palestine ; of the intricate complication 
 of Jewish and Gentile customs; the different 
 modes of marking time ; Roman and Jewish 
 watches ; civil and ecclesiastical taxes ; modes of 
 * See Maclear, " Historical Illustrations," p. 12. 
 
218 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 punishment, Roman and Jewish; the interlacing 
 and intricate adjustments of authority of con- 
 querors and conquered ; the Roman emperors of 
 the time ; the Roman governors, such as Pilate, 
 Felix, Festus, Sergius Paulus, and Gallio, with 
 glimpses of the characters of all of them and a 
 very full portraiture of some; the Jewish kings 
 and princes, Herod the Great, Archelaus, Herod 
 Antipas, Herod Philip II., Herod Agrippa I., and 
 Herod Agrippa II., and find that they stand be- 
 fore us on these pages with marked characteristics, 
 and then turn to the accounts of Tacitus, Sueto- 
 nius, and Josephus, and find that the portraitures 
 of these men on their pages are the likenesses of 
 the same persons taken from different points of 
 view, we see a proof, which nothing can overturn, 
 that the men who wrote these books of the New 
 Testament must have lived in " the age which 
 followed the death of Jesus." In the words of 
 the author of " Historical Illustrations " : 
 
 " There have been, it must be allowed, signal 
 triumphs won by the genius of poetic and literary 
 imagination ; but in all literature there is no 
 other instance of the existence of a number of 
 separate and independent documents bound up 
 in a single volume, relating to an historical period 
 which had its records, its archives, its monuments, 
 and purporting to give an account of events oc- 
 curring within that period, that can be shown to 
 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY 219 
 
 teem with such minute and truthful incidental 
 allusions to facts, at first sight of the most insig- 
 nificant import, but which on examination are 
 found to have momentous bearing on those 
 events. 
 
 " Every quotation from Josephus, Tacitus, or 
 Suetonius, every fresh archaeological exploration 
 in Palestine, Asia Minor, or Greece, only serves 
 to illustrate the minute accuracy with which their 
 titles are given to Roman procurators and pro- 
 consuls, Greek ' politarchs,' and Asiatic ediles, 
 and to demonstrate the fidelity with which dual 
 systems of government, of military forces, of cap- 
 ital punishment, of language, and of religious life 
 are described as blending together and coexisting 
 side by side, at the only period when that coexis- 
 tence zvas possible, among the strangest of all 
 strange people, the Jewish nation, whether living 
 in its own land or scattered throughout the Roman 
 empire." 
 
 Here is a jewel of more than earthly price and 
 luster, and here is its setting. Its figure is com- 
 plicated and absolutely unique, yet its setting 
 exactly fits it. When we apply this story of the 
 gospel to its historical connections and surround- 
 ings we find that it fits into them perfectly. As in 
 all literature there is no other such jewel, so in all 
 history there is no other such setting. This story 
 of the Christ belongs to just this place in history, 
 
220 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 and if the wicked hand of infidelity could tear it 
 away and hide its light the annals of nearly nine- 
 teen centuries would be thrown into remediless 
 confusion, while their great series of events would 
 be rendered utterly inexplicable. 
 
 We would not only have to erase the brightest 
 pages of the histories of the nations that have 
 marched on to the noblest triumphs and gained 
 the richest rewards of a Christian civilization, but, 
 as the author .just quoted has shown, we would 
 have to tear out passages from the annals of hea- 
 then writers, like Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny 
 the Younger, and make a new edition of the 
 works of Josephus. 
 
 The jewel belongs to this setting, the New Tes- 
 tament to this time, the apostolic age. 
 
 It is clear that these books of the New Testa- 
 ment were written in the apostolic age. This 
 implies another fact, namely, that they have 
 apostolic authority. For they could not have 
 been universally accepted as authoritative, and 
 have been appealed to by both the orthodox and 
 heretics, unless they had received the approval 
 of those who were recognized as the divinely 
 appointed guides of the church, the apostles of 
 our Lord. Originating in the apostolic age as 
 they did, they would have been instantly repu- 
 diated by the apostles and those under their in- 
 struction if they had been forgeries. But instead 
 

 IN THE FIRST CENTURY 221 
 
 of such repudiation we find indications of their 
 acceptance from the very first. Paul speaks of 
 the Gospel of Luke as " Scripture " on a level 
 with Deuteronomy (i Tim. v. 18): "For the 
 Scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox," 
 etc. (Deut. xxv. 4). " And, The laborer is worthy 
 of his hire " (Luke x. 7). Peter speaks of Paul's 
 epistles as wrested by some, like " the other 
 Scriptures" (2 Pet. iii. 16). 
 
 We have already seen that John's Gospel was 
 evidently supplementary to the three synoptic 
 Gospels, and that the epistles of Paul (and we 
 may say the same of all the epistles and of the 
 Revelation) were built upon the facts of these 
 Gospels as their necessary foundation. Thus in 
 the New Testament books themselves we see 
 plain evidence that some of them were already 
 known when others were written. 
 
 But some have asserted that the writers of the 
 New Testament do not themselves claim inspira- 
 tion and divine authority for their writings. That 
 they do not define the mode of inspiration is freely 
 acknowledged, and there may not be assertion of 
 authority anywhere ; but is it not implied in the 
 whole matter and manner of the New Testament 
 Scriptures? A father may not very frequently 
 remind his children of his position and authority, 
 but the very nature and tone of his commands 
 lead them to feel and recognize his relation to 
 
222 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 them as one of authority over them more effec- 
 tually than any verbal assertion of that authority 
 could do. 
 
 But do not the New Testament writers speak 
 with a divine authority? 
 
 Look at the very opening words of most of the 
 epistles. We find such expressions as : " Paul, an 
 apostle (not from men, neither through man, but 
 through Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who 
 raised Him from the dead)" (Gal. i. i, R.V.); 
 " Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of 
 God " (2 Cor. i. 1 ; Col. i. 1 ) ; and, " Peter, an apostle 
 of Jesus Christ " (1 Pet. i. 1) ;" Simon Peter, a ser- 
 vant and an apostle of Jesus Christ " (2 Pet. i. 1) ; or, 
 " This then is the MESSAGE which we have heard 
 of Him, and declare unto you" (1 John i. 5). 
 Here certainly, not only in tone and manner, 
 but in plain words, we have authoritative asser- 
 tions. 
 
 Are not the communications in keeping with 
 such introductions? 
 
 In 1 Thessalonians iv. 12 Paul speaks of "the 
 charge we gave you through the Lord Jesus." 
 In 2 Thessalonians ii. 15 the authoritative nature 
 of his preaching and of his letters is plainly as- 
 serted : " Hold the traditions which ye were 
 taught, whether by word, or by epistle of ours." 
 In 2 Thessalonians iii. 14 the same Christians are 
 commanded, " If any man obey not our word 
 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY 22 1 
 
 by this epistle, note that man, and have no com- 
 pany with him," etc. 
 
 The epistles were evidently to be read as Scrip- 
 ture in the assemblies of Christians. In i Thes- 
 salonians v. 27 the solemn charge is given, "I 
 charge you by the Lord, that this epistle be read 
 unto all the holy brethren." 
 
 The Colossians were commanded to read and 
 to circulate these Scriptures, and in the direction 
 given in the body of the epistle (Col. iv. 16) we 
 perhaps have an example of injunctions given 
 through the bearers of other epistles as to the 
 obligation to read and circulate them. The di- 
 rection is, " And when this epistle is read among 
 you, cause that it be read also in the church of 
 the Laodiceans; and that ye likewise read the 
 epistle from Laodicea." Whether this last-named 
 epistle was our Epistle to the Ephesians, or a 
 duplicate of it sent to Laodicea, or a distinct 
 epistle written to the church of Laodicea and 
 containing matter specially designed for these two 
 churches alone and not intended for the church 
 of future ages, we may never be able to determine. 
 But it evidently comes with the stamp of apostolic 
 authority to the Laodiceans and Colossians. 
 
 But what shall we say of the claim of authority 
 when we find at the close of the whole body of 
 writings which we call the New Testament such 
 words as these? 
 
224 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 " If any man shall add unto these things, God 
 shall add unto him the plagues that are written 
 in this book : and if any man shall take away from 
 the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall 
 take away his part out of the book of life, and out 
 of the holy city, and from the things which are 
 written in this book." 
 
 This book undoubtedly comes with the most 
 solemn assertion of divine authority that we can 
 imagine. As it was evidently intended to stand 
 last among the New Testament writings, is it not 
 evident that, while the primary reference of this 
 warning is to the Book of Revelation, it takes in 
 the whole series of writings of which this book 
 forms the fitting and awful close? 
 
 Here some may smile, for it is the fashion to 
 be very free in such matters just now. But rev- 
 erence and awe, we think, are more fitting as we 
 hear the last words of the Revelation of our Lord, 
 and, longing to be " presented before the presence 
 of His glory with exceeding joy," we cry, " Come, 
 Lord Jesus, come quickly." And " He who tes- 
 tified! these things saith, Surely I come quickly." 
 
XVIII 
 THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 
 
 225 
 

 XVIII 
 
 THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 
 
 The crowning proof # of the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures is a quality in them which the devout 
 reader instinctively recognizes as divine. The 
 precious ointment " bewrayeth itself." This is 
 the evidence on which the faith of the great body 
 of believers rests. They may know nothing of 
 the history of the New Testament and nothing 
 of the many external evidences of the divine ori- 
 gin of Christianity about which scholars reason, 
 but, in common with the much smaller company 
 of the learned, as they bend over this marvel 
 among books they feel that, along with much 
 that is human, there is that which is divine. The 
 characteristics of the many human authors are 
 clearly seen, but a divine Author is recognized 
 as guiding them into all truth. One speaks here 
 as never man spoke. He Himself has said, " My 
 sheep hear My voice," and with the ear of faith 
 they hear it in the words of His gospel. To the 
 227 
 
2 28 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 believer the contents of the New Testament are its 
 most convincing evidence. 
 
 But even for those who are still among the 
 spiritually deaf and cannot say when Jesus speaks, 
 " This is the voice of my Beloved," the New Tes- 
 tament, and especially the Gospels, must bear the 
 marks of authenticity and inspiration. No theory, 
 however ingenious, can account for certain fea- 
 tures in it if its truthfulness and divine origin be 
 denied. 
 
 Take but one view of the contents of this book : 
 consider only the Person who is revealed in it. 
 The greatest intellects have recognized in this 
 wonderful portraiture of Christ in the Gospels a 
 Person to whom no human hero can be for a 
 moment compared, and the conclusion of every 
 capable and unprejudiced student must accord 
 with the oft-quoted words of Rousseau : " How 
 petty are the books of the philosophers, with all 
 their pomp, compared with the Gospels ! Can it 
 be that writings at once so sublime and so simple 
 are the work of men ? Can He whose life they 
 tell be Himself no more than a mere man? Is 
 there anything in His character of the enthusiast 
 or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what 
 purity in His ways! what touching grace in His 
 teachings! what loftiness in His maxims! what 
 profound wisdom in His words! what presence 
 of mind ! what delicacy and aptness in His replies ! 
 

 THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 229 
 
 what an empire over His passions! Where is the 
 man, where is the sage who knows how to act, to 
 suffer, and to die without weakness and without 
 display?" When we come to study Christ as 
 portrayed in the Gospels we must conclude, with 
 Rousseau, that "men do not invent like this!" 
 
 That Christ was a real person and not a mere 
 myth is evident, for one thing, from a most re- 
 markable unity in the four descriptions which the 
 evangelists give of Him. 
 
 There are indeed apparent discrepancies be- 
 tween their accounts in some points, such as we 
 always find in the testimony of independent wit- 
 nesses about almost any series of occurrences. 
 These seeming disagreements, while they clearly 
 prove that the evangelists wrote independently 
 of one another and thus thoroughly exclude the 
 theory of collusion as the explanation of this 
 unity, do not serve in any way to mar it. There 
 are indeed great differences between the four 
 accounts. 
 
 We find Matthew writing, apparently, chiefly 
 for "the house of Israel," his "brethren accord- 
 ing to the flesh." Consequently, references to 
 fulfilments of prophecy are prominent, and dis- 
 courses and parables occupy a large part of his 
 pages. Christ had long ago said, " I will speak 
 unto them in parables." 
 
 Mark writes succinctly and does not give the 
 
230 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 long discourses so fully or so frequently, but 
 pictures vividly the actions of Christ, in descrip- 
 tions which we may easily believe to be the repro- 
 duction of the lively impressions on the susceptible 
 mind of Peter, borne in his memory till they were 
 related again and again, with ever fresh interest, 
 to his many hearers, and recorded by Mark, under 
 his direction.* 
 
 Luke seems to have viewed Christ chiefly as 
 He who came to seek " that which was lost" and 
 he alone gives us the vivid pictures of the lost 
 coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son. 
 
 The Gospel of John is almost wholly unlike the 
 others in style and manner and contents. While 
 the first three evangelists write, each evidently 
 without the knowledge of what others had written, 
 John, as. we have seen, indicates by omissions 
 and by what he takes for granted as already 
 known that he did know of the other Gospels 
 when he wrote. In this Gospel Christ's divinity 
 is the prominent feature, as it is the subject of its 
 very first sentence : " In the beginning was the 
 Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
 Word was God." 
 
 There is great diversity, and yet there is won- 
 derful unity, in the portraiture which illumines 
 
 * See Eusebius, " Hist. Eccl.," book vi., chap. xxv. Hippol- 
 ytus gives a realistic touch in describing Mark as " he of the 
 maimed finger." 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 23 1 
 
 the pages of the four evangelists. The repre- 
 sentations of Christ's treatment .of sin and sinners 
 furnish a striking illustration of this unity in 
 diversity. 
 
 Matthew lets us hear the terrible denunciations 
 which He uttered against the " scribes and Phari- 
 sees, hypocrites" (Matt, xxiii.),. and describes 
 His driving the traders in holy things from the 
 temple. Luke (vii. 36-50) draws the picture of 
 the lost woman kneeling in grief and tearful pen- 
 itence to hear His assurance of her forgiveness 
 and His approval of her love for Him who had 
 saved her, set in contrast to the cold criticism of 
 Simon, the Pharisee at whose table He was sit- 
 ting. 
 
 It was riot because He underrated in any de- 
 gree the sin of impurity. Matthew lets us hear 
 Him on this point (v. 27-29), and we find that 
 He who was "holy, harmless, and undefiled " 
 had a spirit as sensitive to the slightest taint of 
 impurity as the brightest mirror to the faintest 
 breath, and that He so abhorred and dreaded its 
 effect on His people that He warned against the 
 look that indicated the rise of unholy thought 
 and desire, as adultery in the heart. Yet, while 
 He has nothing but scathing invective for sin in 
 the garb of sanctity, He has nothing but words 
 of tenderness and encouragement for the fallen 
 and penitent. 
 
2$2 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 Here we see apparent diversity in this stern- 
 ness in the one case and tenderness in the other, 
 but they exist in harmony in the character of that 
 Being whose praises the psalmist spoke in the 
 words (Ps. ci. i), " I will sing of mercy and judg- 
 ment" and of whom the apostle says, " Behold 
 the goodness and severity of God." 
 
 When Christ is accused of sin by His enemies 
 it is instructive to see how He answers their al- 
 legations. One thing appears in all the Gospels : 
 He never admits that He has sinned in any de- 
 gree or in any way. For a human being to take 
 such a position we all feel would be extravagant 
 folly. We know by observation and experience 
 what our fallen humanity is, and we know that 
 the claim by any man of sinlessness would be 
 presumptuous and false. But Christ never admits 
 that He has been in fault. His challenge from first 
 to last is, "Who is he that convicteth Me of sin?" 
 
 On one occasion His disciples are charged with 
 Sabbath-breaking, and He Himself also by impli- 
 cation, as He was with them and had authority 
 over them. On the Sabbath morning, when per- 
 haps they had enjoyed no morning meal or had 
 partaken of an insufficient supply of food, the disci- 
 ples appeased their hunger by taking advantage 
 of a law (Deut. xxiii. 25) which allowed them to 
 pluck with their hands the heads of the wheat 
 along their way. The Pharisees had no word of 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 233 
 
 blame for this, for it was lawful ; but the disciples 
 rubbed out the grains of wheat in their hands as 
 they went along, and this formed a ground of accu- 
 sation, as it was the Sabbath, and their critics 
 claimed that this was work and that any work was 
 unlawful on the Sabbath. Our Saviour answers 
 the charge first from the broad principles of 
 common sense, and shows from the case of David 
 that necessity was a valid excuse for this amount 
 of exertion, and that the Sabbath was made for 
 man's benefit and not man for the Sabbath. 
 
 But that which should have convinced them 
 that there had been no breach of the Sabbath law 
 by His disciples was the fact that He was " Lord 
 also of the Sabbath day." He was their Lord and 
 the Lord of the Sabbath too, so of course He 
 would not allow them to violate His own ordi- 
 nance (Matt. xii. 1-8; Mark ii. 23-28; Luke vi. 
 
 i-5). 
 
 John tells of the charge of Sabbath- breaking 
 made against Him personally on another occasion, 
 because He had on the Sabbath healed the im- 
 potent man at the Pool of Bethesda (John v. 1-9). 
 The Jews persecuted Him for doing this good 
 deed, and even sought to slay Him. What is 
 His answer? "But Jesus answered them, My 
 Father worketh hitherto, and I work." 
 
 The Father's work of preserving and governing 
 goes on uninterruptedly, and Christ works in 
 
234 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 unity and unison with the Father. He rises to this 
 sublime truth again, that He is Lord and there- 
 fore that His work cannot but be right. Thus 
 on different occasions He is represented by dif- 
 ferent evangelists as in a contest with these self- 
 righteous ecclesiastics in whose hands the Sabbath 
 law, which was meant to be a source of blessing, 
 had been transformed into an instrument of torture 
 and oppression by their rabbinical additions; and 
 each time He rises to the assertion of His Lord- 
 ship and divinity. 
 
 The Sabbath, designed for man's comfort and 
 relief, a season for the cessation of worldly care 
 and work that the higher nature might have its 
 exercise in spiritual duties and aspirations, an or- 
 dinance fruitful in blessing, had in their hands, 
 along with all religion, withered to a dead husk 
 of outward formalities. He who is its Lord as- 
 serts His right over it, announces its real design, 
 and thereby rebukes their mistaken censorious- 
 ness. He thus answers their accusations practi- 
 cally in the same way in both instances. There is 
 diversity in the occasions, the acts, and the words, 
 but unity in the great principles announced. 
 
 Matthew has preserved for us the inspiring 
 words, "Ye are the light of the world." John 
 does not record this saying, but presents us with 
 another which at first sight seems inconsistent 
 with this: "/am the Light of the world." 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 235 
 
 The reconciliation is easy when we find that 
 our Saviour is the light-giver and they are its 
 receivers (John viii. 12), and that He gives light 
 by first giving life (i. 4). " In Him was life ; and 
 the life was the light of men." This power of life 
 which He communicates, like the power of elec- 
 tricity under the right conditions, breaks out in 
 them into effulgence, and they individually " shine 
 as lights in the world," while together they be- 
 come "the light of the world." Yet is He the 
 light-giver and therefore " the Light of the world " 
 in the highest sense. 
 
 John does not tell of the institution of the 
 Lord's Supper, but he does tell of the mysterious 
 " eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the 
 Son of man," of which spiritual act of receptive 
 faith the Lord's Supper is a visible symbol. 
 
 John does not record the parable of the lost 
 sheep, but he does tell of the sheep who can never 
 be lost, and in each case is presented the same 
 loving, all-powerful, divine-human Shepherd, out 
 of whose hand, as out of His Father's, no man 
 or demon can pluck His sheep. 
 
 We continually see in the Gospels this emer- 
 gence of the human and the divine united in Christ. 
 He lies down to sleep so absolutely exhausted that 
 the howling of the winds and the tossing of the 
 billows do not awake Him. He rises up to calm 
 the storm with a word — the word of omnipotence. 
 
236 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 He sits weary on the well, hungry and thirsty 
 — a man in His weakness and need. Presently 
 He does what not all the angels of God could do 
 — gives the water of life to human souls, to be in 
 them wells of water springing up into everlasting 
 life ; and we see that He is very God, who hath 
 life in Himself even as the Father hath life in 
 Himself. 
 
 We find Him at one time taking little children 
 in His arms with human love and tenderness for 
 little ones. At another we behold Him stretch- 
 ing forth, as it were, arms of omnipotence and 
 saying to all humanity, " Come unto Me, all ye 
 that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give 
 you rest." 
 
 We see Him a homeless wanderer, having not 
 where to lay His head, and afterward saying to 
 His disciples, " In My Father's house are many 
 mansions. I go to prepare a place for you." 
 
 He hungers and thirsts, and is fed from the 
 loving gifts of devoted followers; yet He invites 
 thousands to partake of feasts that come into 
 being without the labor of a single human hand. 
 
 When the Greeks come to Philip, saying, " Sir, 
 we would see Jesus," the announcement to Him 
 leads Him to say strange things. He is about to 
 suffer, and there, under the shadow of the cross, 
 His humanity shrinks and trembles at the near 
 prospect of the untold anguish He is about to 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 237 
 
 endure, and His cry to the Father is like that of 
 Gethsemane, as He prays, " Father, save Me from 
 this hour." Then, in the triumph of submission, 
 with divine knowledge and by divine power He 
 says, " But for this cause came I unto this hour. 
 Father, glorify Thy name." And, as if in spirit 
 hearing in the approach of these Greeks the foot- 
 falls of the countless millions who should in the 
 ages to come crowd to His cross from the heathen 
 world, He exclaims, " And I, if I be lifted up 
 from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." 
 
 He speaks with just as perfect ease of the 
 unseen as of the visible, of the eternal as of the 
 temporal. Eternity, past and future, seems as 
 clearly in His view as the present. He walks 
 with easy tread on the sublime summits of truths 
 too high for human discovery and too mysterious 
 for full comprehension when revealed, because 
 His vision was not bounded by mortal horizons, 
 but^ swept across celestial scenes and took in 
 eternal verities. 
 
 He came forth from the Father and therefore 
 could speak of the glory which He had with Him 
 " before the world was " ; could speak of Himself 
 while on earth as the " Son of man, which is in 
 heaven " ; could say, " He that hath seen Me hath 
 seen the Father," and even, " I and My Father 
 are one." 
 
 He is betrayed and arrested, but as He is led 
 
238 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 to His trial as a lamb led to the slaughter, by a 
 sentence addressed to one of His followers, He 
 for a moment draws aside the veil that hides the 
 unseen, and we catch a glimpse of an ambush of 
 angelic legions ready at a word to spring to His 
 rescue. 
 
 The high priest adjures and threatens Him. 
 His answer presents the august scene in which 
 they who now thirst for His blood and reject and 
 dishonor Him "shall see the Son of man sitting 
 on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
 clouds of heaven." 
 
 Here such questions as these suggest them- 
 selves : 
 
 How is it that these four writers, each in a 
 different way, each giving different facts from the 
 others, or facts seen from a different standpoint, 
 present us a portraiture which is in its great out- 
 lines the same in them all, and such a portraiture 
 as has never been conceived by human mind or 
 drawn by human hand before ? 
 
 Whence comes the inimitable skill by which 
 these four men, each in a somewhat different way, 
 depict a character full of tenderness and ready to 
 bring sympathy, tears, and all possible help to 
 the sufferer, even though that sufferer be a sinner, 
 while this same character is represented as abso- 
 lutely stern and uncompromising in exposing im- 
 penitent iniquity under whatever guise, even that 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 239 
 
 of religion, and pronouncing judgment and doom 
 upon it? 
 
 How is it that they all so make this portrai- 
 ture that we see in each presentation of it the 
 insoluble mystery of the union of a divine and a 
 human nature in one Person ? 
 
 The only rational answer is that such a Person 
 really existed and that the writers were divinely 
 guided in presenting the portraiture of Him which 
 we have in the Gospels. Men do not invent thus 
 and do not describe thus. Effects necessarily 
 imply causes, and adequate causes. That from 
 the pages of all the evangelists, with all their 
 differences, there should shine forth this unique, 
 marvelous, and infinitely lovely and lovable char- 
 acter, and in them all the same character, involves 
 a miracle no less wonderful than the greatest deed 
 of divine power recorded in the Gospels. Says 
 Principal Cairns, in his essay on " Christ, the 
 Central Evidence of Christianity " : 
 
 " One Gospel is a marvel ; what shall we say of 
 four, each with its distinct plan, its enlargements 
 and omissions, its variations even where most 
 coincident, its problems as yet unsolved, but 
 always yielding something to fresh inquiry, and 
 only making more manifest the unchallengeable 
 oneness and divinity of the history? The diffi- 
 culties of the Gospels from divergence are as noth- 
 ing as compared with the impression made by 
 
240 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 them all of one transcendent creation, and, for my 
 part, if I rejected inspiration I should have reason 
 to be still more astonished. Some slight mistake 
 could so sadly have impaired perfection, or yet 
 more easily lowered divinity ; some careless han- 
 dling might have deranged the balance at the most 
 critical point, or pulled down the structure in 
 hopeless disaster. Yet, though we see how dif- 
 ferent the plan of each Gospel is, there is not any 
 such trace of failure. The long discourses are left 
 out by Mark, but in action his Christ equals that 
 of Matthew. Luke has his own type both of 
 parable and miracle, but the same inimitable 
 figure starts up from all. The sorest trial to the 
 familiar features comes from the fourth Gospel, 
 without a parable and hardly a miracle like the 
 foregoing, and with so great a flood of novelty, 
 especially toward the end. But unity in diver- 
 sity is only the more marvelous. The Christ of 
 the fourth Gospel is the Word of God, but He is 
 still the Son of man." 
 
 Many have professed to believe that apocryphal 
 " Gospels " and other writings with the claim of 
 apostolic authorship or authorization have as good 
 a right to our confidence as those books which 
 form what we now call the New Testament. This 
 subject cannot be treated with any fullness here, 
 but a mere glance at these documents is sufficient 
 to convince us of the falsity of this claim. 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 24 1 
 
 The late origin of these spurious "Gospels," 
 " Acts," "Epistles," etc., is a proof of the falsity 
 of the claims which they make or which are made 
 for them as contemporary and inspired writings. 
 The fact that our saint's teacher, Irenaeus, born 
 about twenty years after John's death and taught 
 by Polycarp, who was John's pupil and his con- 
 temporary for nearly forty years, represents that 
 there were only four Gospels, and even endeavors 
 to show that there could be no more, should be 
 sufficient to convince us of the falsity of such 
 assertions as have been referred to. Put more 
 absolutely convincing still is the character of the 
 writings themselves when brought into compari- 
 son with the New Testament; and there is no 
 point in which that comparison brings out a 
 sharper contrast than that presented in the various 
 portraitures of Christ in these writings and that 
 one found in our Gospels. 
 
 The following is the testimony of one who has 
 made a special study of the apocryphal Gospels : 
 
 " The case stands thus. Our Gospels present 
 us with the picture of a glorious Christ; the 
 mythic Gospels with that of a contemptible one. 
 Our Gospels have invested Him with the highest 
 conceivable form of human greatness ; the mythic 
 ones have not ascribed to Him a single action that 
 is elevated. In our Gospels He exhibits a super- 
 human wisdom ; in the mythic ones a nearly equal 
 
242 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 superhuman absurdity.* In our Gospels He is 
 arrayed in all the beauty of holiness ; in the mythic 
 ones this aspect is entirely wanting. . . . The 
 miracles of the one and the other are contrasted 
 in every point. A similar opposition of character 
 runs through the whole current of their thought, 
 feeling, morality, and religion, "f 
 
 The same author tells us of these writings : 
 " To two of them is assigned as early a date as 
 the end of the first half of the second century ; 
 the remainder are of a later date. They enable 
 us to know for certain what was the class of ac- 
 tions which during these times writers of fiction 
 were in the habit of ascribing to our Lord. The 
 incidents which they record are confined to two 
 periods of His life, viz., His childhood and early 
 boyhood, on which our Gospels are almost silent, 
 and His passion and resurrection; and they omit 
 the history of His ministry and teaching. The 
 miracles which they attribute to Him are for the 
 most part of a grotesque character and are devoid 
 of moral impress. They are too painful for quo- 
 tation, being little better than caricatures of the 
 Holy One of God." \ 
 
 * See the account of the resurrection in the so-called Gospel of 
 Peter, for instance ; also B. H. Cowper on apocryphal Gospels. 
 
 t " The Jesus of the Evangelists," by Prebendary Row, p. 381. 
 
 t Essay on " The Unity of the Character of the Christ of the 
 Gospels," in " Living Papers," vol. iv. 
 
 The most grateful acknowledgments of obligations are due to 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 243 
 
 Yet it must be remembered that the writers of 
 these spurious productions had the four Gospels 
 before them, and therefore, one would think, 
 would have been able to avoid these absurdities. 
 
 Here we may make a passing reference to the 
 way in which fiction has dealt with Christ in our 
 own day. Two instances will suffice to show that 
 where an attempt is made to improve upon the 
 Christ of the Gospels the result is a complete 
 failure. 
 
 Sir Edwin Arnold, of " The Light of Asia " 
 fame, has dipped his brush in some very startling 
 colors and produced a picture which no doubt he 
 considers very superior to that of Matthew, Mark, 
 Luke, and John. Yet, with all the advantage 
 of "great eyes, blue and radiant," and though 
 "wine-color shone His hair, glittering and waved," 
 we hardly think that this Christ would have 
 awakened the enthusiasm of a Paul or have 
 moved thousands to face death rather than deny 
 Him. 
 
 The same doubt may be expressed about the 
 creation of a still more imaginative writer, Marie 
 Corelli, who in her recent book, " Barabbas," has 
 given her conception of the Saviour. As we look 
 
 the essays of Dr. Wace, Canon Row, Godet, Principal Cairns, and 
 Dr. Maclear, published in the very valuable ten volumes called 
 " Living Papers," for whatever of worth is to be found in the last 
 two chapters of this volume. 
 
244 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 at her picture, we are glad to say, " This is not 
 our Lord." That man whom she portrays as 
 standing at Pilate's bar, " with a slight, dreamy 
 smile of the beautiful curved lips, and a patient 
 expression in the down-dropped eyelids," is not 
 the Christ of the Gospels, the Lord of glory. He 
 is no weakling, however, for, " still as a statue of 
 sunlit marble, He stood erect and calm, His white 
 garments flowing backward from His shoulders 
 in even, picturesque folds," with arms " suggest- 
 ing such mighty muscular force as would have 
 befitted a Hercules." 
 
 Such raving, painful to read because it verges 
 so closely on blasphemy, would not be quoted 
 but to draw attention to the divinely given self- 
 restraint of the Gospels, in which the personal 
 appearance of Christ is never once mentioned. 
 
 How is it that these " ignorant and unlearned 
 men," who witnessed the wonderful deeds and 
 heard the wonderful words of Christ, are never 
 betrayed into one false touch of an unwise en- 
 thusiasm, but have left for us the perfect picture 
 of Him who has evoked the admiration and 
 adoration of men for more than eighteen cen- 
 turies? 
 
 Even the great Milton is thought by some to 
 have drawn on his glowing canvas not the Christ 
 of the Gospels, but the Christ of Arianism. 
 
 Even when the glorious character is taken up 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 245 
 
 by the hands of genius a false image is the result. 
 It is besmirched and falsified and belittled in the 
 very attempt to magnify it. Even in adding false 
 paint and gilding there is always some awkward- 
 ness, and it falls from the unskilful hands and is 
 broken to shivers, so that all who know and love 
 Christ exclaim, like Mary at the empty tomb, 
 "They have taken away my Lord!" 
 
 How is it that these four men have presented 
 the one glorious Lord and Saviour without a single 
 touch of false coloring? How is it that, as this 
 Christ of the Gospels becomes known, instinctively 
 the knees bow and the tongues confess " that He 
 is Lord, to the glory of God the Father"? 
 
 The only reasonable explanation is that the 
 authors of this fourfold description spoke of a real 
 person who was " the Christ, the Son of the living 
 God," and were guided in their delineation by 
 the Holy Spirit, who taught them all things and 
 brought all things to their remembrance. 
 
 As we look from the Gospels into the Acts, the 
 Epistles, and the Revelation, we find the same 
 blessed Saviour presented in all. There is no 
 disappointing change. We find the same Christ 
 more fully revealed in His relations to us and in 
 His fitness for the work of our salvation. 
 
 In these books we see more clearly than in the 
 Gospels why He is called " the Christ " — " the 
 Anointed One." We find that He has been 
 
246 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 anointed, not with the oil of consecration, which 
 was applied to mere human prophets, priests, and 
 kings, but with the Holy Ghost without measure. 
 We see why it is that, along with His humanity, 
 His divinity is so clearly revealed in all the Gos- 
 pels and in the other New Testament Scriptures. 
 We need a Prophet who with a human heart 
 can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, 
 and with a human tongue can teach us that which 
 He knows with a divine and infallible knowledge. 
 The human soul longs and the human hand feels 
 for the clasp of a hand that can guide infallibly 
 through the darkness of this world up into the 
 glory of that which is to come. Our consciences 
 cry for cleansing in blood that cleanseth from all 
 sin, because it is the blood of a Man who is the 
 only begotten Son of God. We, together with all 
 that can affect us, have need of the controlling 
 hand of a divine-human King who shall reign "till 
 His enemies [and ours] be made His footstool," 
 and who can bring it about that, in the almost 
 infinite intricacies of the machinery of providence, 
 all things shall work together for our good. We 
 feel the need of a Saviour who can not only 
 present us a perfect ideal, the goal to which we 
 are to press forward, but who can, out of His 
 divine fullness, give " grace for grace," and thus 
 enable us to reach that to which we are led to 
 aspire, so that at the last we may "be like Him." 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 247 
 
 The blessed Saviour, the Christ of the New 
 Testament, meets all these requirements of our 
 case, and as soon as the penitent soul comes to 
 know Him the recognition is a joyful one. The 
 song which breaks from the lips is : 
 
 " Thou, O Christ, art all I want, 
 All in all in Thee I find." 
 
 We may search all history and all literature, but 
 we shall find no other like Him. More than this, 
 we might take all the noblest characters presented 
 by enthusiastic admirers, who have skilfully drawn 
 a veil over their faults while they have extolled 
 their virtues, and we might cull the choicest at- 
 tributes from all these, and unite them to make 
 one character which should combine in itself the 
 excellences of all, and yet we should not have a 
 Christ. Should we go to the realms of fancy, 
 to fiction, to poetry, to the drama, yea, even to 
 mythology, with its divinities and impossible 
 heroes, yet we could not from them all make up 
 a CHRIST. Still He would be to this as Hyperion 
 to a satyr. 
 
 When all human genius, in all ages and all 
 lands, has never invented such a character, can 
 we suppose each of these four " ignorant and un- 
 learned men " capable of doing it, and each in a 
 somewhat different way from the other three? 
 
 To ask the question is to answer it. Thus, 
 
248 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. H1PP0LYTUS 
 
 following the rays of our saint's search-light, we 
 have found, standing in the first century, the 
 completed temple of revelation. 
 
 As we have looked from room to room, from 
 the great central shrine of the Gospels to the 
 chambers of the Acts and the Epistles, and down 
 the long vista of the corridor of The Revelation, we 
 have seen mirrored in each, with some differences 
 of light or shade or point of view, the same Christ 
 Jesus, the divine-human Redeemer and blessed 
 Saviour. Mind and heart join in saying, This is 
 " He whom my soul loveth." This is One in 
 whom is "life; and the life is the light of men." 
 From this temple, completed in the first century, 
 the light has shone out through all the centuries 
 that have followed. 
 
 Guilty Rome placed herself between this light 
 and the people, as the moon comes between the 
 sun and the earth to produce an eclipse, and the 
 long, cruel Dark Ages — that " break of a thousand 
 years in the history of civilization " — came; and 
 now, wherever she can shut out the light from the 
 people, the shadows still linger. But wherever 
 the Bible has gone and been received, there 
 blessings immeasurable have followed. This ra- 
 diance has awakened the human intellect and led 
 it to its most brilliant exploits. It has guided in 
 the path of all true progress. It has lighted the 
 lamps of learning, and colleges and universities 
 
THE PORTRAITURE OF CHRIST 249 
 
 have sprung up and flourished in its beams. Good 
 government, abundant charities, happy homes, 
 glorious characters, and saved souls have been its 
 fruits. Can this be a false light? 
 
 Ezekiel in his vision saw waters flowing from 
 the sanctuary, and was told : *' Everything shall 
 LIVE whither the river cometh. . . . And by 
 the river upon the bank thereof, on this side 
 and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, 
 whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit 
 thereof be consumed : it shall bring forth new 
 fruit according to his months, because their 
 waters they issued out of the sanctuary : and the 
 fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof 
 for medicine." 
 
 Thus He who is the Light sends forth from 
 the fountain of the temple of revelation that 
 stream which gives life wherever it flows. At its 
 coming to any people who receive it, the wild- 
 erness and the solitary place are glad for them, 
 and the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose. 
 
 This Book has done more to benefit and bless 
 mankind than all other books together. Can it 
 be false, then? If so, the most poisonous foun- 
 tain sends forth the purest and most healthful 
 stream, and we can gather grapes of thorns and 
 figs of thistles, and the corrupt tree brings forth 
 good fruit. In other words, TO SUPPOSE THE 
 New Testament a spurious and false book 
 
250 THE SEARCH-LIGHT OF ST. HIPPOLYTUS 
 
 INVOLVES THE SUPPOSITION THAT THE INDIS- 
 SOLUBLE TIE BETWEEN CAUSE AND EFFECT IS 
 BROKEN — an unspeakable absurdity. 
 
 He is the " true Light " who has brought 
 blessings ineffable to all hearts and homes, to all 
 tribes and nations, that have received Him. The 
 only rational conclusion is that the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, the Bible in the Old and New Testaments, 
 thus revealing Him to the world, must be the 
 Word of God. 
 
 Looking over the sad world that so sorely needs 
 Him, we would say : 
 
 " Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, 
 And you, ye waters, roll, 
 Till, like a sea of glory, 
 
 It spreads from pole to pole. K 
 
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