U8RAI
 
 3nternational Gbeological 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., 
 
 Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology, Union Theological 
 Seminary, New York; 
 
 STEWART D. F. SALMOND, D.D., 
 
 Professor of Systematic Theology and New Testament Exegesis, 
 Free Church College, Aberdeen. 
 
 IV. HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 
 BY PROF. GEORGE PARK FISHER, D.D., LL.D.
 
 PRINTED BY 
 MORRISON AND OIBB LIMITED 
 
 FOB 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 LONDON: SIMPKIN. MARSHALL, HAMILTON. KENT. AND co. LIMITED 
 
 NEW VORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 The Rights of Translation and of Reproduction are Reserved.
 
 INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 HISTOEY 
 
 OF 
 
 CHRISTIAN DOCTBINE 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE PARK FISHER, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN 
 YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET
 
 FIRST EDITION . , . Afarch 1896 
 
 SECOND EDITION . . December 1896 
 
 THIRD IMPRESSION . , . Atovember 1902 
 
 FOURTH IMPRESSION , . May igoS 
 
 FIFTH IMPRESSION . . . March 1916
 
 PREFACE 
 
 SEVERAL years have elapsed since I engaged to prepare this 
 work. The unexpected delay in its publication is owing chiefly 
 to the pressure of other and more imperative engagements. One 
 reason for it, however, is the fact that, although the subject is one 
 which I had long studied and on which I had given instruction to 
 many successive classes, more time was required for the compo- 
 sition of the book than I had anticipated. This is partly for the 
 reason that it appeared to me, for the present purpose, expedient 
 to abandon for the most part the method which I had always fol- 
 lowed in my Lectures of arranging the matter under the heads of 
 General and Special Doctrinal History. On this topic something 
 more is said in the introductory chapter. This change of plan 
 has involved an entire recasting of the materials to be incorpo- 
 rated into this volume. 
 
 A number of the ablest of the recent German writers on Dog- 
 mengeschichte confine themselves to a description of the rise and 
 establishment of dogmas in the official significance of the term, 
 according to which it denotes simply the accredited tenets of the 
 principal divisions of the Church. The terminus of this branch of 
 study is, therefore, set not later than about the opening of the 
 seventeenth century. In the present work, the history of theolog- 
 ical thought is carried forward through the subsequent essays at 
 doctrinal construction down to the present time. In other words, 
 the present work is a history of Doctrine as well as of Dogmas. 
 Those who hold that such a treatise should have a more restricted
 
 VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 aim are at liberty to look on the chapters which cover all the 
 additional ground, as being, to use the lawyers' phrase, obiter 
 dicta. It is, after all, a question of nomenclature. A history of 
 modern doctrinal theology, none will deny, is a legitimate under- 
 taking. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to say how much, in common with all 
 students of Doctrinal History, I owe to the old masters in this 
 department, among whom the names of Neander and Baur have 
 so high a place. I wish to add here that not unfrequently I have 
 received aid from the writings of my lamented friend, Dr. Schaff. 
 Moller is one of the more recent authors on the general history of 
 the Church who has been specially serviceable. There are three 
 writers of a late date to whom particular acknowledgments are due. 
 These are Harnack, Loofs, and Thomasius. The vigorous and 
 brilliant Dogmengeschichte of Harnack is whatever opinion may 
 be held as to its theological tendencies an indispensable auxiliary 
 in studies of this nature. The numerous references in the follow- 
 ing pages will indicate how much I have been stimulated and 
 instructed by it. From the Leitfaden of Loofs, written from the 
 same general point of view as the volumes of Harnack, I have 
 likewise derived important assistance. The Dogmengeschichte of 
 Thomasius, a conservative Lutheran in his creed, is acknowledged 
 by scholars of all shades of belief to be a work of extraordinary 
 merit. It has been read and consulted by me with no little 
 profit. In particular is it of service side by side with the treatises 
 representing more or less decidedly the prevalent Ritschlian 
 school. I may be permitted to add that I deem the Ritschlian 
 tendency to be justified so far as it lays stress on the fact that in 
 the earlier centuries the types of Greek philosophy then current 
 had no inconsiderable influence in the formulating of doctrine. 
 This, to be sure, is not a new discovery, but has been widely rec- 
 ognized by competent historians, like Neander. Yet it may be 
 well that a new emphasis should be attached to it. Moreover,
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Vll 
 
 there is no room for question that the Reformers mingled in their 
 teachings much that was drawn from Scholastic sources. All this 
 should be conceded to the Ritschlian movement, however large 
 the dissent may be from specific conclusions concerning the 
 extent and character of the modifications of Christian doctrine 
 from extrinsic influences, concerning the real purport of the New 
 Testament teaching, and concerning the trustworthiness of the 
 Gospel narratives. 
 
 The special design of this volume and the limitations of space 
 have compelled the exclusion of a larger amount of critical com- 
 ment than its pages contain. The primary aim has been to pre- 
 sent in an objective way and in an impartial spirit the course of 
 theological thought respecting the religion of the Gospel. What- 
 ever faults or defects may belong to the work, the author can say 
 with a good conscience that nothing has been consciously inserted 
 or omitted under the impulse of personal bias or prejudice. The 
 precept of Othello is applicable to attempts to delineate theolog- 
 ical teachers and their systems : 
 
 " Nothing extenuate, 
 Nor set down aught in malice." 
 
 In the revisal of the proof-sheets, I am glad to acknowledge the 
 generous assistance which I have received from Professor Egbert 
 Coffin Smyth of the Theological School at Andover, whose learn- 
 ing and accuracy eminently qualify him for such a friendly service. 
 I have likewise received a number of valuable suggestions from 
 Professor Arthur Cushman McGiflert of the Union Theological 
 School in New York, who has given in his annotated edition of 
 Eusebius ample proof of the thoroughness of his historical inves- 
 tigations. The index has been compiled by Mr. John H. Grant, 
 a member of the Senior Class in the Yale Divinity School.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Nature and Scope of the Subject Theology Possible Its Relation to 
 Faith Its Relation to Philosophy Its Need and Origin Factors 
 in formulating Christian Truth Development in Theology Divi- 
 sions in the History of Doctrine Sketch of its Course History of 
 the History of Doctrine The Literature of the Subject I 
 
 PART I 
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 PERIOD I 
 
 THE RISE AND EARLY TYPES OF THEOLOGY TO THE COMPLETE SYSTEM 
 OK ORIGEN AND TO THE FULLY ESTABLISHED CONCEPTION OF THE 
 PRE-MUNDANE PERSONAL LOGOS (c. A.D. 300). 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Apostolic Christianity Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism Greek 
 
 Philosophy and Gentile Culture 23 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Ecclesiastical Writers . . 34 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Doctrine in the Apostolic Fathers 41 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Judaic Separatist Parties The Gnostic Sects Marcion . . 48 
 
 ix
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Beginnings of Theology : The Greek Apologists 61 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Rise of the Old Catholic Church The Rule of Faith 'ihe Canon 
 
 The Episcopate The Rise and the Exclusion of Montanism . 70 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Catholic Doctrine in the Asia Minor School: Irenseus, Melito of 
 Sardis in the North African School: Tertullian The Alexandrian 
 Christian Philosophy : Clement 84 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Monarchianism Monarchianism overcome in the East The System 
 of Origen Theology after the Death of Origen Novatian Dio- 
 nysius of Alexandria and Dionysius of Rome Methodius . . 98 
 
 PERIOD II 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PATRISTIC THEOLOGY IN THE EAST AND IN 
 THE WEST. 
 
 In the East, from A.D. 300 to the Death of John of Damascus 
 (c. 754); in the West, to Gregory I. (c. A.D. 600). 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Controversy with Heathenism The Danger of Division The Seat 
 of Authority The Canon, Scripture and Tradition The Grounds 
 of Theistic Belief 117 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Doctrines converted into Dogmas Church and State The Great 
 
 Controversies The Ecclesiastical Writers, East and West . .125
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Development of the Doctrine of the Trinity to the Council of Con- 
 stantinople (A.D. 381) . . . 134 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ to John of 
 
 Damascus 148 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Doctrines not defined in the CEcumenical Councils . . .161 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 The Theological System of Augustine The Pelagian Controversy . 1 76 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Pelagianism and the Theology of the East on the Controverted Topics 
 
 Semi- Pelagianism Gregory 1 194 
 
 PART II 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGY IN THE MIDDLE 
 AGES, AND ITS REDUCTION TO A SYSTEMATIC FORM. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 From Gregory I. to Charlemagne The Work of Mediaeval Theology 
 Theology in the Eastern Church Theology and Education in 
 the West John Scotus 199
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PAGE 
 
 From Charlemagne to the Beginnings of Scholasticism The Adoption 
 Controversy Gottschalk's Doctrine of Predestination Radbert's 
 Doctrine of the Lord's Supper The Penitential System The 
 Tenth Century Controversy of Berengarius and Lanfranc on the 
 Lord's Supper 205 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Characteristics of Scholasticism The Scholastic Maxim Philosophy : 
 Nominalism and Realism Scholasticism and the Universities 
 The Method of Scholasticism 212 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Subdivisions of the Scholastic Era The First Section : Anselm ; Abe- 
 lard; Bernard; the School of St. Victor The Books of Sentences 
 Peter Lombard 216 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Second Section of the Scholastic Era St. Francis and the Fran- 
 ciscan Piety Mysticism Aquinas and Scotus .... 229 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Scholastic Doctrines : Natural Theology and Christian Evidences 
 The Trinity and the Incarnation Divine and Human Agency 
 Original Sin 234 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Scholastic Doctrines : The Atonement Conversion and Sanctification 
 
 Justification The Church and the Papacy 245 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Scholastic Doctrines : The Sacraments 254 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 The Catharists The Waldensians The Mystics Wesel; Wessel; 
 Savonarola The Doctrines of Wyclif Huss The Renaissance 
 and its Influence Erasmus 263
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 PART HI 
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 PERIOD IV 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY THE AGE OF 
 POLEMICS THE CRYSTALLIZING OF PARTIES AND CREEDS. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Theology of Luther . . . . . . . . .269 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Theology of Zwingli The Eucharistic Controversy Parties in 
 
 the Lutheran Church to the Form of Concord (1580) . . . 285 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Theology of Calvin 298 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Rise and Progress of Protestant Theology in England . . . .310 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Sects in the Wake of the Reformation The Socinian System . -317 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Roman Catholic System restated in the Creed of Trent The 
 
 Theology of the Jesuits 326 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Arminian Revolt against Calvinism The School of Saumur 
 
 Pajonism The Federal Theology ' J . ' " \ 337 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century " Rational Theol- 
 ogy " The Latitudinarians 353
 
 XIV CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PACE 
 
 The Arian Controversy in England The English Deistic School The 
 Theology of the Quakers Efforts on the Continent for the Reunion 
 of Churches ........... 370 
 
 PERIOD V 
 
 THEOLOGY AS AFFECTED BY MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENTIFIC 
 RESEARCHES. 
 
 From the Philosophy of Locke and Leibnitz to the Present. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Philosophy on the Continent after Descartes : Spinoza; Leibnitz Phi- 
 losophy in England: Francis Bacon; Locke; Berkeley; Hume; 
 Reid The Writings of Butler and Paley Character of English 
 Theology to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century The Wesleyan 
 Theology 381 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Theology in America in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 
 Theology of the First Settlers Jonathan Edwards and his School 
 ("The New England Theology") The Rise of Unitarianism : 
 Channing; Emerson; Parker The Rise of Universalism New 
 Developments in the New England School The Theology of 
 Horace Bushnell The Theology of Henry B. Smith Calvinism in 
 the Presbyterian Church; Charles Hodge 394 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Theology in England in the Nineteenth Century: The Evangelical 
 School in the Established Church The Philosophy and the Theol- 
 ogy of Coleridge The Early Oriel School: Whateley; Arnold 
 The Oxford Movement : Its Sources and Leaders; its Principles and 
 Aims; the Tracts; the Hampden Controversy; the Conversion of 
 Newman; the Doctrine of the Eucharist and Other Tenets of the 
 Oxford School; the Gorham Case; Canon Liddon; Canon Gore; 
 J. B. Mozley's Theological Teaching 446
 
 CONTENTS XV 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 FACE 
 
 Theology in England in the Nineteenth Century (continued) : The 
 Broad Churchmen The "Essays and Reviews" The Broad 
 Church in Scotland : Thomas Erskine ; McLeod Campbell Theo- 
 logical Opinions of Matthew Arnold The (Christian Agnosticism 
 of Hamilton and Mansel Positivism The Revival of Hume's 
 Philosophy : J. S. Mill The Agnosticism of Herbert Spencer 
 Influence of Darwinism on Theology Agnostic Opinions of T. 
 H. Huxley 473 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Anglo-French Deism Theology in Germany in the Nineteenth 
 Century: Deistic Illuminism in Germany Zinzendorf and the 
 Moravians The Theology of Lessing The Rationalistic Biblical 
 and Historical Criticism : Semler; Eichhorn "The Theology of the 
 Understanding" The Philosophy of Kant The Kantian Ethical 
 Rationalism Jacobi and Herder Two Divergent Currents of 
 Theological Thought ......... 492 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Schleiermacher's Theological System 502 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Liberal Evangelical or Mediating School : The Influence of 
 Schleiermacher ; Dorner ; Julius Muller ; Nitzsch The System 
 of Rothe Lipsius The Confessional Lutherans the Ritschlians 512 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The Pantheistic Development of Philosophy and Theology in 
 Germany : Fichte ; Schelling ; Hegel The Hegelian Interpretation 
 of Christianity The Writings of Strauss Biedermann The 
 System of Baur 531
 
 XVI CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Later Roman-Catholic Theology Indifferentism in the Eighteenth 
 Century The Fall of the Jesuit Order and its Revival Liberalism 
 of Lamennais and his Associates Papal Reign of Pius IX. The 
 Dogma of the Immaculate Conception The Vatican Council and 
 the Dogma of Papal Infallibility The Interpretation of the Dogma 536 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Conclusion ; Certain Theological Tendencies in Recent Times . . 545 
 
 INDEX ., SS9
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE SUBJECT THEOLOGY POSSIBLE ITS 
 
 RELATION TO FAITH ITS RELATION TO PHILOSOPHY ITS NEED 
 
 AND ORIGIN FACTORS IN FORMULATING CHRISTIAN TRUTH 
 
 DEVELOPMENT IN THEOLOGY DIVISIONS IN THE HISTORY OF 
 
 DOCTRINE SKETCH OF ITS COURSE HISTORY OF THE HISTORY 
 OF DOCTRINE THE LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 CHRISTIANITY is the revelation of God through Jesus Christ 
 whereby reconciliation and a new spiritual life in fellowship with 
 Himself are brought to mankind. The religion of Christ is insep- 
 arable from the life and character of its Founder and from his per- 
 sonal relations to the race and to the community of his followers. 1 
 Herein Christianity is differentiated from systems of philosophy. 
 They might remain unaltered were their authors forgotten or never 
 known. Equally is it contrasted with ethnic religions, whether 
 they spring up in the darkness of prehistoric times, or are linked 
 to the names of specific founders, real or imaginary. To under- 
 take to dissever Christianity from Christ is to mistake its nature 
 and to ignore some of its essential requirements. Nevertheless, 
 Christianity is composed of teachings which are to be proclaimed, 
 and which call for a clear and connected interpretation. Al- 
 though not without ritual observances, it is not a religion of 
 mystic ceremonies, the meaning and effect of which it is impossi- 
 
 1 He appears in the character of a second head of the race, the author of 
 a new spiritual creation. See I Cor. xv. 45 (" The last Adam became a life- 
 giving Spirit"). Cf. Rom. v. 12 sq. ; also Eph. i. 22, 2 Cor. v. 17 ("a new 
 creature; the old things are passed away"), Gal. vi. 15. See, also, John xv. 
 5 ("ye are the branches"). 
 
 B I
 
 2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 ble to state or to understand. Its doctrines do not lie outside 
 the limit of intelligible expression. The History of Christian 
 Doctrine is the record of the series of attempts made in suc- 
 cessive periods to embody the contents of the Gospel in clear 
 and self-consistent propositions. 
 
 The History of Doctrine admits of a wider or a more restricted 
 treatment. It may be the aim simply to exhibit the history of 
 dogmas ; that is, of the definitions of doctrine which have been 
 arrived at either in the Church at large, or in leading branches of it 
 definitions which, when once reached, were held to be authori- 
 tative. A dogma is a distinct conception and perspicuous state- 
 ment of a doctrine professed by the body, or by a considerable 
 body, of Christian people. The word 'dogma' denoted in the 
 Greek a tenet or an ordinance. It was either a settled article of 
 faith or a precept sent forth from a recognized authority. In the 
 Bible the term is used in the last of these meanings, that of an 
 edict or enactment. 1 Among the Stoics " dogmas " meant funda- 
 mental truths which have the character of axioms. Their title to 
 credence was conceived to partake of the sanctity of law. So 
 among the Christian Fathers, " dogmas " were not conceived of as 
 the injunctions of a superior, but rather as verities which orthodox 
 believers are agreed in accepting. 2 
 
 It is to be borne in mind, then, that dogmas are not the opinions 
 of an individual merely, but are the interpretations of Christian- 
 ity which have been cast in an explicit form, and have been 
 raised to the rank of doctrinal standards and tests. The history 
 of dogmas is thus an account of the process of formulating the 
 contents of Christianity in the creeds of acknowledged authority. 
 
 By a number of recent writers, of whom one of the ablest and 
 most conspicuous is Dr. A. Harnack, the function of the history 
 of doctrine is confined to the description of the genesis and de- 
 velopment of " dogmas." The plan of Harnack's doctrinal history 
 is conformed to this conception of the subject. The dogmatic 
 interpretation of Christianity, the author justly considers, was at 
 
 1 In the Sept., Dan. ii. 13 (" decree " of Nebuchadnezzar), vi. 9 (interdict 
 of Darius), Esther iii. 9, Luke ii. i (" decree " of Augustus), Acts xvi. 4 (" de- 
 crees " of the apostles and elders), Eph. ii. 15, Col. ii. 14 (ordinances of O.T. 
 law). 
 
 2 On the history of the use of the word ' dogma,' see K. I. Nitzsch, DGM., 
 p. 52; F. Nitzsch, DG., p. I.
 
 INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 first, and to a great extent, a product of Greek thought, work- 
 ing from the points of view and in the spirit peculiar to the 
 Hellenic mind. The outcome of this process of thought, which 
 was carried forward through several centuries of controversy, 
 appears in the ecumenical creeds pertaining to the Incarnation 
 and the Trinity. Through Augustine, the system underwent an 
 essential modification. There came in a practically new element, 
 which stamped upon the theology of the West its distinctive char- 
 acter. In Augustine the old and the new, the Greek and the 
 Latin elements, stand in juxtaposition. Later through Luther the 
 Pauline type of teaching became a more determining factor in 
 dogmatic construction. Through the great Reformer there was 
 achieved an inchoate, incomplete re-formulating of that dogmatic 
 system which had assumed a definite form in the Middle Ages. 
 The result of the Protestant movement in the dogmatic field was 
 threefold : the Lutheran theology, Socinianism, and the restate- 
 ment of the Roman Catholic system at the Council of Trent, 
 this last system being amplified in recent days, especially through 
 the Vatican Council. 1 
 
 But it has been the custom of former writers to give a broader 
 scope to the History of Doctrine. It may undertake to trace the 
 history of theology, not only so far as theological inquiry and dis- 
 cussion have issued in articles of faith, but likewise so far as move- 
 ments of religious thought are of signal interest, and are often not 
 unlikely to influence sooner or later the moulding of the Christian 
 creed. The present volume will include a survey, as full as is 
 practicable within the space at command, of the course of modern 
 theology down to the present day. 
 
 How shall we state concisely the essential truth in Christianity, 
 that truth which Christian theology seeks to explicate? Light 
 is thrown on this question by the response of Jesus to the declara- 
 tion of Peter : " Thou art Christ, the son of the living God." "On 
 this rock," said Jesus, meaning by the "rock," if not this avowal 
 of Peter, the Apostle himself in the character of a leader in the 
 confession and promulgation of the faith, " I will build my 
 church." 2 This living conviction of Peter, it is added, was 
 inspired from above. Identical in substance with this passage 
 
 1 See Harnack, Lehrb. d. DG. (2 ed.), I. l-io; Abriss d. DG. (2 ed.) 
 pp. 1-5, p. 334 sq. 
 
 2 Matt. xvi. 16-18. (Cf. John iv. 42.)
 
 are the words of the Apostle Paul : " No man can say Jesus is 
 ' Lord ' but in the Holy Spirit." l In that title Jesus is recog- 
 nized as the predicted Messenger of God and the head of the 
 kingdom. By way of protest against the denial of the true human 
 nature and experiences of the Christ the Apostle John propounds 
 the test : " Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is 
 come in the flesh is of God." 2 In the New Testament it is con- 
 stantly assumed where it is not expressly affirmed, that mankind 
 in character are alienated from God, and that Christ is the Deliv- 
 erer through whom reconciliation is made and a filial relation 
 reestablished. The substance of Christianity is expressed in the 
 word 'Redemption,' with its postulates and results. 3 
 
 Is theology possible ? Is the human mind capable of forming 
 accurate conceptions and expressions of religious truth ? If not, 
 then the History of Doctrine is nothing more than a register of 
 incessant, but forever abortive, experiments. A denial of the possi- 
 bility of theology is heard from the various schools of Agnosticism. 
 Comte, the founder of the Positivist system, who is not counted 
 technically among the Agnostics, denies that we have any evidence 
 of the reality of either efficient or final causes. All science dwin- 
 dles to a record of bare phenomena, arranged by their sequence 
 in time and their likeness or unlikeness. Of course theology is 
 expunged from the list of sciences and degraded to a level with 
 astrology. Herbert Spencer, affirming the reality of an absolute 
 "Power" at the root of all phenomena, yet asserts that it is utterly 
 inscrutable. It is, but is an " Unknowable." This one step Mr. 
 Spencer takes in advance of the position of Comte. There is, 
 moreover, a theistic and Christian class of Agnostics, who, while 
 they do go farther than barely to admit the existence of the 
 object-matter of theology, still banish it beyond the purview of 
 conceptive thought. We may not know, although we are war- 
 ranted in believing. Kant set out to confute the skepticism of 
 Hume, but Kant, in the theoretical part of his philosophy, so far 
 as the point in question is concerned, really organized skepticism. 
 He substituted for custom or imagination as the source of mental 
 intuitions nothing but a purely subjective necessity and univer- 
 sality. Sir William Hamilton followed in the path of Kant so far 
 as to pronounce our religious beliefs our belief in God and 
 
 1 I Cor. xii. 3. 2 I John iv. 2. 
 
 8 John i. 12, I John iii. I, 2 Cor. v. 19, Gal. iii. 26, Rom. viii. 15-17, etc.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 5 
 
 freedom, for example to be a choice between inconceivables 
 which exclude one another, this choice finding a warrant in 
 moral grounds alone. Hamilton's theory was carried out in a 
 philosophy of religion by Mansel in his " Limits of Religious 
 Thought." 'Faith without science' is the watchword of this phi- 
 losophy. The contention is that all our notions of the infinite and 
 of God, being relative, are merely approximate. They will not 
 answer, therefore, as a basis for reasoning. They constitute no 
 materials for science, strictly so-called. The prop on which Ag- 
 nostics lean is the assumed relativity of human knowledge. Our 
 knowledge, it is alleged, is solely of phenomena, of things as they 
 appear to us. It is only symbols, realities transformed into some- 
 thing different from what they are, that the human mind can 
 discern. But phenomena are not masks; they are revelations 
 of reality, and to know is not to transmute or to create. There 
 are bounds to the knowledge possible to finite intelligence. Em- 
 phatically is this true as concerns the spiritual world. But this 
 circumstance does not justify the casting of discredit upon the 
 knowledge of which we are possessed. It affords no reason for 
 affixing to it the stamp of unreality. 
 
 It has sometimes been contended that theology can never be a 
 science, on account of the infirmities of language. These are said 
 to preclude exact expression. This view was propounded by an 
 eminent American preacher and author, Horace Bushnell. 1 It is 
 an inference drawn from the material origin of language, by which 
 a merely symbolical character is given to all words denoting spirit- 
 ual things. They are attempts to picture things invisible. They 
 are in their very nature figurative a "fossil poetry." Under- 
 neath this opinion there really lies the contention of Occam, the 
 Nominalist leader in the latter part of the Middle Ages, by whom 
 theological nescience was inferred from a denial to man of the con^ 
 ceptive faculty. If the objection were sound, it would be equally 
 valid, for example, against ethics and political science. Intellectual 
 notions "are at the foundation of all science." It is no doubt 
 an important truth that words which signify spiritual states that 
 involve feeling since feeling so varies in depth and warmth 
 mean different things to different persons. 2 The impressions 
 
 1 God in Christ (1849), Preliminary Essay: Christ in Theology (1851). 
 
 2 This fact is instructively dwelt upon by Cardinal Newman, University 
 Sermons, pp. 114, 115, and in his Grammar of Assent. The difference be-
 
 6 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 excited in different minds by the words that denote virtues and 
 vices, and by epithets of praise and blame, differ exceedingly. 
 This difference affects the force of probable reasoning. But, apart 
 from the emotions that are stirred, it is enough to say with J. S. 
 Mill as to abstractions in general, that " in some cases it is not 
 easy to decide precisely how much a particular word does or does 
 not connote." l 
 
 What is the relation of theology to that faith which, as it is 
 the first demand of the Gospel, is the initial element in Chris- 
 tian experience? Discussions concerning the relation of faith to 
 knowledge we shall meet with at every period in the History of 
 Doctrine. 2 First, knowledge is not a stage above that of faith, as 
 if faith were a ladder to be dropped when once the ascent by it is 
 made. This idea of the provisional function of faith is suggested 
 by Clement of Alexandria, yet is not by him consistently adhered 
 to. 3 His partial error is the result of a failure to grasp firmly the 
 Pauline idea of faith. Faith is made by Clement the precursor of 
 knowledge. It is the path to that love and holiness which qualify 
 us to know divine things. 4 It follows from this conception that 
 there is an esoteric Christianity. There is a higher plane than 
 that which the ordinary believer attains to. But faith, we are 
 taught by the Apostle, merges at last, not in science, but in sight. 
 Faith " abides " until beyond the veil it is resolved into vision. 5 
 
 Secondly, there is another view which recognizes that faith has 
 roots of its own, yet holds that scientific knowledge may become, 
 and is destined to become, coextensive with it. That which faith, 
 impelled by the moral nature embraces, theology demonstrates. 
 This is the Scholastic theory. It is traceable to Augustine, and is 
 propounded by Anselm. Stress is laid, however, on the influence 
 of faith in clarifying the intellect and thus empowering it to do its 
 work. Later, in the thirteenth century, the inability of reason to 
 
 tween knowing certain truths and knowing them as they exist in another 
 individual's mind, is illustrated by J. B. Mozley, Miracles, p. xxviii. 
 
 1 Logic, I. ii. 5. 
 
 2 See an excellent essay, " Gedanken fiber Glauben u. Wissen," in Julius 
 Miiller's Dogmatisch. Abhandll., pp. 1-42. 
 
 3 Cf. Neander's exposition of Clement, CA. Hist. (Torry's transl.), I. 529- 
 
 541- 
 
 4 " In Clement's view the supreme End of all is not Love, but Knowledge." 
 Bigg's The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, p. 88. 
 
 6 l Cor. xiii. 12, 13.
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 do more than partially to fulfil its task was more explicitly asserted. 
 The goal is approached, but it is never reached. But according 
 to both Anselm and Aquinas, as fast as science advances faith is 
 displaced. From a point of view in general quite different from 
 that of the Scholastic theologians, Lessing, herein the spokesman of 
 a type of modern Rationalism, regards faith as a temporary leaning 
 upon authority up to the time when reason is so far developed as to 
 be able to cast aside this crutch. Hegel comes to the same result 
 in making faith an unscientific apprehension of that truth which 
 the philosopher evolves in its pure form without help from abroad. 
 The orthodox creed is construed as a popular version of the 
 Hegelian metaphysic. 
 
 The true view is that the faith of the Christian disciple is not 
 the product of science, but science is the intellectual apprehension 
 of its contents. Faith, to be sure, includes a perception of truth. 
 It presupposes ideas, in particular the idea of God and that of 
 moral freedom and responsibility. Its object is Christ, the per- 
 sonal Saviour, coming to minister to the needs of the spirit, dying, 
 rising from the dead, reigning, but not forsaking his disciples. In 
 this faith, as a practical experience, are the materials of theology. 
 It is to be observed, however, that faith is not here taken as in 
 the vocabulary of the Church of Rome, where its object is made 
 to comprehend the entire body of ecclesiastical teaching, which is 
 to be accepted on the ground of authority. 
 
 What is the relation of Theology to Philosophy? For the 
 reason that their problems are to a considerable extent the same, 
 the point of difference between them is to be carefully observed. 
 Christianity is an historical religion. At the foundation of Chris- 
 tian theology are facts which occur within the sphere of freedom, 
 and therefore do not admit of being explained upon any theory 
 of necessary evolution. As students of the Gospel we are in a 
 province where the agency of personal beings is the principal 
 matter. It was the love of God to mankind that led to the mis- 
 sion of Christ. It was a free act of love, the bestowal of an 
 " unspeakable gift." The method of salvation is a course of self- 
 sacrifice which culminates in the cross. These things cannot be 
 made links in a metaphysical chain. They are not so many steps 
 on a logical treadmill. Their analogue is to be found in the 
 purest deeds of love, patience, and self-devotion which the annals 
 of humanity contain. Nevertheless, the facts of Christianity are
 
 g HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 not barren occurrences. They are capable of an explanation. 
 They are not without a significance. They are in fulfilment of a 
 purpose. Their fitness to the end sought, theology with the aid 
 of Scripture seeks to point out. But philosophy has another start- 
 ing-point. It begins with the data of consciousness and builds its 
 structure by a process in which historical events have no place. 
 
 That there is room- for a science of Christian theology is evident 
 for a threefold reason. In the first place, Christianity is set forth 
 in the Scriptures in a popular, as distinguished from a literal and 
 methodical style of teaching. We meet there not the precise 
 phraseology of the schools, but the language of common life. 
 The Gospel was addressed principally to plain people. The 
 Apostles, with a single exception, were not educated men in 
 the ordinary sense of the term. It was for this reason that the 
 impressiveness with which they spoke astonished cultivated hear- 
 ers. 1 The training of the Apostle Paul himself was not acquired 
 from Greek masters. He was a student not of Aristotle, but of 
 Gamaliel. His education was in the lore and by the methods of 
 Rabbinical teachers, although in his case indeed there was mingled 
 a degree of influence from personal contact with Gentile debates 
 and speculation. 
 
 In the second place, the appeal of Christianity was immediately 
 to the moral and spiritual nature. It did not aspire to rival the 
 Greeks, the seekers of "wisdom," 2 on their own field. The 
 awakening of conscience, the new life of faith, the uplifting 
 hopes kindled by the Gospel, are, to be sure, not inwrought as 
 by a magical spell. They imply perceptions of truth. Yet they 
 are distinctively experiences of the heart. Converts embraced the 
 Gospel from practical motives and in a practical spirit. It was the 
 question, "What shall I do to be saved" to which an answer was 
 craved and rendered. In the third place, there is a diversity, 
 not a contradiction, but a diversity in the ways in which the 
 Apostles themselves conceive of the Gospel. For example, there 
 is a Pauline type of doctrine, and a Johannine type of doctrine, an 
 Epistle of James as well as an Epistle to the Romans. There are 
 points of variety as well as of identity, between these various repre- 
 sentations of the Christian revelation. It was looked at from differ- 
 ent points of view. The foregoing remarks may suffice to show that 
 an open space was left for the researches and generalizations of 
 
 1 Acts iv. 13 ; cf. John vii. 15. 2 I Cor, L .
 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 theology. They may serve, also, to make it clear how theology, 
 or the understanding of the Christian Revelation, may be pro- 
 gressive, and yet that Revelation itself not be defective or faulty. 
 
 The incentives to a search for exact and coherent conceptions 
 of Christian truth are not far to seek. We are made to think as 
 well as to feel and to act. The yearning for knowledge, innate in 
 the human mind, could not fail to be stimulated by the teaching of 
 the Gospel and the reception of it. Inquiries would spring up 
 unbidden. Problems would suggest themselves that would press 
 for a solution. Apart from these inducements, opinions clashing 
 with Apostolic teachings and with Christian experience would arise 
 and create a need for definitions of the truth. Theology arose in 
 the Church as a means of self-defence. In resisting assailants, lines 
 of circumvallation are required. These must be related to the 
 positions taken by the attacking force. When, for example, it 
 was asserted, on the one hand, that compliance with the ritual 
 law of the Old Testament is indispensable, and, on the other 
 hand, that the entire Old Testament system is alien to the Gos- 
 pel, the true relation of the Old to the New, of Judaism to Chris- 
 tianity, must needs be defined. Other illustrations are needless. 
 Along the whole course of Church History in a marked way, 
 in the early period the menace contained in erratic speculation 
 has been a spur to theological thought and the precursor of dog- 
 matic definitions. 
 
 Doctrinal history includes the history of heresies. Heresy 
 denotes an opinion antagonistic to a fundamental article of the 
 Christian faith. When Christianity is brought into contact with 
 modes of thought and tenets originating elsewhere, either of two 
 effects may follow. It may assimilate them, discarding whatever 
 is at variance with the Gospel, or the tables may be turned and 
 the foreign elements may prevail. In the latter case there ensues 
 a perversion of Christianity, an amalgamation with it of ideas dis- 
 cordant with its nature. The product is then a heresy. 1 But to 
 fill out the conception, it seems necessary that error should be 
 aggressive and should give rise to an effort to build up a party 
 and thus to divide the Church. In the Apostles' use of the term 
 ' heresy ' contains a factious element. 2 A heretic was likewise a 
 schismatic. The word ' sect ' from the root of sequi means 
 
 1 Cf. Rothe, Anfdnge d. Christl. Kirche, p. 333. 
 ? I Cor. xi. 1 8, 19 ; Gal. v. 20.
 
 IO HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 etymologically the ' following,' or clientele, of a leader, not a frac- 
 tion broken off, as it is sometimes thought to signify (as if it were 
 from the root of secare) . The word ' heresy ' meant originally 
 ' choice ' ; then an opinion that is the product of choice or of the 
 will, instead of being drawn from the divine Word. It is a man- 
 made opinion. Hence the term was given as a name to depart- 
 ures from orthodox teaching which carried in them a breach of 
 church unity. ' Heresy ' is to be distinguished from defective 
 stages of Christian knowledge. For example, the Jewish believers, 
 including the Apostles themselves, at the outset required the Gen- 
 tile believers to be circumcised. They were not on this account 
 chargeable with ' heresy.' Additional light must first come in and 
 be rejected, before that earlier opinion could be thus stigmatized. 
 Moreover, heresies are not to be confounded with tentative and 
 faulty hypotheses broached in a period prior to the scrutiny of a 
 topic of Christian doctrine, and before that scrutiny has led the 
 general mind to an assured conclusion. Such hypotheses for 
 example, the idea that in the person of Christ the Logos is substi- 
 tuted for a rational human spirit are to be met with in certain 
 early Fathers. Attention to what are called heresies fills a consid- 
 erable space in Doctrinal History. This is because they are in 
 themselves interesting, and especially because of their indirect 
 agency in the origination of finally accepted beliefs. It is a sub- 
 ject which is handled more fairly and dispassionately than was 
 formerly the case, when the prominent heresiarchs were often held 
 up to execration. At present it is more clear that moral depravity 
 is not of course the concomitant of intellectual error. 
 
 From age to age, in the spread of Christianity by missionary 
 labor, in the guidance of ecclesiastical affairs, and in the sphere 
 of Christian philanthropy, there have appeared eminent leaders. 
 The same is true in the field of theological thought. Names 
 like those of Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Luther, are them- 
 selves landmarks in the course of doctrinal history. Yet no 
 more than in secular history is the agency of individuals to be 
 magnified. Not only their personal influence, but not less the 
 force of a general current of which it is partly the outflow, is to 
 be taken into the account. They may furnish a voice to wide- 
 spread, albeit undefined and unspoken, convictions, and for this 
 reason may evoke responsive assent from Christian people. 
 
 There are three factors which are, or should be, conjoined in
 
 INTRODUCTION T r 
 
 the framing of theological doctrines. The first is the authorita- 
 tive source of knowledge on the subject, namely the Scriptures. 
 Even the Church of Rome holds that the supplementary contents 
 of tradition are found, obscurely at least, in the sacred writings. 
 Normative authority belongs to the Bible. It is the objective 
 rule of faith. It is not robbed of this character in consequence 
 of modified theories of the mode and extent of inspiration. If it 
 be alleged that Christ is the one authority, yet it is through a 
 critical study of the Scriptures, apart from subjective prejudice, 
 that the knowledge of Christ is to be obtained. But Christianity 
 is designed to mould the inward life. Christian experience, the 
 correlate of the written Gospel, has its place as a touchstone for 
 distinguishing Christian truth from error. Believers are taught 
 by the Spirit. They are enabled to discern spiritual things, which 
 are presented in verbal form on the page of Scripture. 1 The In- 
 tellect, moreover, has an office to perform. Its function is to 
 translate the truth which the Bible teaches and the soul appro- 
 priates in a living experience, into lucid statements. The Word, 
 the Spirit, the Intellect, or Scripture, Experience, Science, are the 
 factors by whose combined agency the Gospel is rendered into 
 systematic expressions of doctrine. When the right relation of 
 these several factors to one another is disturbed, when an undue 
 predominance is accorded to either of them at the cost of its 
 associates, ill consequences ensue. There may be an abuse of the 
 authoritative element. There may be a servile reliance on in- 
 herited interpretations of Scripture, or the adoption of meanings 
 having no other ground than ecclesiastical prescription. The 
 result is a traditionalism, which fails to penetrate to the core of 
 Scriptural teaching. This spirit prevailed in the Middle Ages, and 
 is with difficulty exorcised from most of the branches of the 
 Church. There must be scope for the free activity of the Intel- 
 lect and of Christian Feeling. When Feeling, however, comes to 
 be considered an immediate fountain of knowledge, the intelli- 
 gence is deprived of its rights, and the Bible sinks below its 
 proper level. The result is Mysticism in the objectionable form. 
 This term is not unfrequently used to stigmatize all forms of relig- 
 ious experience in which there enters an unusual warmth of emo- 
 tion. If it be Mysticism to hold that obedience is the road to 
 
 1 For good remarks on the relation of faith to the objective form of Script- 
 ure, see Dorner's Hist, of Prot. Theology, Vol. I. Div. ii. c. 4.
 
 12 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 knowledge, in respect to divine things, and to certainty of con- 
 viction, or to hold that insight into the realities of religious faith 
 presupposes an inward experience, the New Testament is open to 
 the charge of being a mystical book. 1 " It is plain that the relig- 
 ious, the believing, man as such is a Mystic ; for whoever is not 
 conscious of God, does not feel Him, can neither know Him nor 
 revere Him ; but whoever only makes Him an object of thought 
 without loving Him and becoming pure in heart, cannot know 
 Him in a living way." 2 Mysticism may be used as the syno- 
 nym of ecstasy, the transport of feeling in which thought and 
 will are merged. Mysticism, in the sense in which it is produc- 
 tive of error in the sphere of Christian doctrine, is the assump- 
 tion that to the individual there are vouchsafed visions of truth 
 exceeding the limits of the written Revelation. It involves the 
 assumption that feeling is a direct source of knowledge. " When," 
 says Coleridge, " a man refers to inward feelings and experiences 
 of which mankind at large are not conscious, as evidences of the 
 truth of any opinion, such a man I call a Mystic." 3 Illumination 
 is made to stretch over ground not within the circuit of the Chris- 
 tian Revelation. Of course, the Mystic is tempted to undervalue 
 the Scriptures. Why take a lamp in our hands when the sun's 
 rays are falling directly upon us? It is likewise natural for the 
 Mystic to disparage reason and science. Why should the under- 
 standing explore for truth which we have only to look within to 
 behold ? A third species of perversion in the framing of doctrine 
 arises from the exaggeration of the intellectual factor. The con- 
 sequence is Rationalism. Rationalism has been well described as 
 " a usurpation of the understanding." The function of conscience 
 and the affections as auxiliaries in the ascertainment of truth is 
 partially or wholly ignored. The authority of the Scriptures is 
 openly or virtually set aside. The attempt is made to construct 
 theology in the dry light of the understanding, independently of 
 spiritual experience and of objective authority. Under this proc- 
 ess the deeper truths of Christianity, which shade off into mys- 
 tery, are likely to be discarded. In the end religion is spun out 
 of the mind through a metaphysical process in which the facts of 
 Revelation, if recognized at all, are shorn of historical reality, 
 
 1 See John vii. 17, xviii. 37 ; Matt. xi. 15, xiii. 16 ; I John iv. 8. 
 
 2 C. I. Nitzsch, DGM., p. 37. 
 
 8 Aids to Reflection (Conclusion).
 
 INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 Such was the outcome of the modern Pantheistic Schools of 
 speculative Philosophy in Germany. Mysticism and Rationalism 
 are at one in rejecting an objective standard of doctrine, an 
 authority exterior to the individual. The one enthrones feeling, 
 the other enthrones understanding, in the seat of authority. 
 They are different forms of a one-sided subjectivism. But they 
 often afford an illustration of the maxim that extremes meet. An 
 excess of emotion in the one, or the quenching of fervor in the 
 other, leads to an exchange of places. The Mystic cools into 
 the Rationalist ; the Rationalist warms into the Mystic. 1 
 
 Writers in past times on the History of Doctrine have remarked 
 that the principal topics or branches of Christian doctrine have 
 each, to the exclusion of the rest, absorbed the attention of a 
 particular people. Theology, or the Person of Christ and the 
 Trinity, engrossed attention in the ancient Greek Church ; Anthro- 
 pology, the subject of sin and grace, was the subject of investiga- 
 tion in the Latin Church; and Soteriology, or the doctrine of 
 Reconciliation, in the Teutonic Church, the Church of the Refor- 
 mation. It has been said that in each case the subject of absorbing 
 interest corresponded to the mental habit of the people by whom 
 it was especially considered and discussed. Athanasius, Augustine, 
 Luther, stand as representatives of tendencies of thought inherent 
 in the nations or races to which they respectively belonged. It 
 has been objected to this representation, that in no period has it 
 been the real intention to take up and solve a single problem, that 
 the general end of Christianity has been conceived of essentially 
 in the same way, and that the purpose has always been the pur- 
 pose of Greek, Latin, and Teuton to set forth Christianity in its 
 entirety. 2 This criticism is just. The statement should rather be 
 that in each of the epochs the prevailing interpretation of Chris- 
 tianity has corresponded to the special characteristics of time 
 and race. The historic result, however, has been substantially 
 that which is expressed in the statement that is criticised. 
 
 Among theories pertaining to the historical development of 
 Christian theology, there have been brought forward in modern 
 
 1 " Die Mystik," says Harnack, " ist in der Regel phantastisch ausgefUhrter 
 Rationalismus, und der Rationalismus ist abgeblasste Mystik." DG. Vol. II. 
 416, N. 2. 
 
 2 Ritschl, Die Christl. Lehre d. Rechtfertigung u. Versohnung (2 ed.), 
 Vol. I. p. 3.
 
 14 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 days two, unlike in their character, that are especially worthy of 
 notice. 
 
 1. The theory of Dr. Baur, the leader of the Tubingen School, 
 was matched to the Hegelian dialectic. In the process of evolu- 
 tion, thesis involves and produces antithesis, thesis and antithesis 
 engender a higher unity. This in turn is differentiated and leads 
 on to like triple movements, until the implicit contents of the idea 
 are completely evolved, and the finality, the developed absolute, 
 is reached. Baur assumed an original Petrine, judaizing type of 
 doctrine, of which the Pauline teaching was the antithesis ; thesis 
 and antithesis resolved themselves into a compromising system. 
 By a process of this kind, catholic theology emerges, the final stage 
 of which is the Nicene definitions. In this naturalistic develop- 
 ment, which runs through several centuries, most of the New Tes- 
 tament canonical writings come in as post-apostolic productions. 
 They are so many landmarks in the progress of the historic evolu- 
 tion. In this theory, retrograde movements, aberrations of greater 
 or less moment, are excluded. The course of opinion moves on 
 under a necessary law. The fundamental postulate, which history 
 must be so construed as to verify, is an ideal Pantheism. 
 
 2. An interesting theory of development has been brought for- 
 ward in later times by distinguished writers of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. It has served as a means of upholding specific tenets and 
 practices for which it is increasingly difficult to find a basis either 
 in the canonical Scriptures or in the primitive Church. The most 
 eminent expounders of the general theory have been De Maistre 
 in France, Mohler in Germany, and the late Cardinal Newman. 
 We confine, our attention here to Newman's exposition. It is pre- 
 sented in his Essay on Development, which was written in 1845, 
 simultaneously with his passage from the Anglican over to the 
 Roman Church. The starting-point of Newman's theory is the 
 avowal that the teaching comprised in the original deposit of re- 
 vealed truth, which was promulgated by Christ and the Apostles, 
 opens its contents in an explicit form only by degrees and as time 
 advances. There has been a continuous unfolding of the latent 
 contents of the original teaching, and this has gone forward under 
 the guardianship of the infallible Church, by which error is kept 
 out. All ideas, it is said, except such as are on the plane of 
 mathematical truth, all living ideas, such as have to do with hu- 
 man nature or human duty, politics or religion, are fruitful ideas.
 
 INTRODUCTION j^ 
 
 They do not remain inert in the minds into which they fall. They 
 are not passively received. They produce agitation, they are 
 turned over and over in reflection, new lights are cast upon them, 
 new judgments arise respecting them, ferment and confusion ensue. 
 At length from all this commotion definite doctrine emerges. The 
 new idea is looked at in its relation to other doctrines and facts, 
 to other religions and philosophies. It is questioned and assailed, 
 it is explained and illustrated. In the case of a moral or theologi- 
 cal truth, the final outcome is an ethical code, a theological dogma 
 or system. The point to be observed is that the germ stands to 
 the outcome in a genetic relation. The latter is the just and ade- 
 quate representation of the original idea. It was in that idea as 
 the blossom is in the bud. It was what the original idea meant 
 from the first. For example, the Wesleyanism of to-day may be 
 said to be the legitimate growth of the seed sown in the last 
 century by its founder. Newman recognizes the possibility of cor- 
 ruption, as in the case of any growth. This interrupts or prevents 
 healthy development. But there are tests which avail to determine 
 whether given phenomena in the religious province are normal or 
 the opposite. These are such as ' preservation of the idea,' ' power 
 of assimilation,' 'logical sequence,' 'chronic continuance,' and so 
 forth. On the basis of this general view, Newman argues that 
 there is an a priori probability of a development in Christianity, 
 and a further probability of the same sort that there will be a 
 developing Authority to discriminate between that which is sound 
 and that which is corrupt. The main contention is that the 
 Roman Catholic religion, as we now behold it, is the legitimate 
 heir, successor, and representative of primitive Christianity. 
 
 There is not a little which is not only striking but well-founded 
 in the preliminary portions of Newman's discussion that part 
 which deals with the vital character of moral and spiritual truth. 
 But as soon as the possibility of corruption through the introduc- 
 tion of alien and false elements is recognized, the question whether 
 there is a constituted authority competent to detect and cast aside 
 what is thus abnormal must be settled, and it must be settled, not 
 by an a priori speculation, but by a searching inquiry into the con- 
 sistency of Roman teaching with itself and with the primitive docu- 
 ments of the Christian religion. The theory must be brought to 
 the touchstone of history. In such a matter, no merely a priori 
 inference, even if it may seem plausible, can be deemed to be con-
 
 !6 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 elusive. Another point of much weight was brought forward by 
 Canon Mozley in his answer to Newman. 1 There may be corrup- 
 tion from mere exaggeration. The circumstance that an opinion 
 or a practice grows out of something true and good does not of 
 itself prove that opinion or practice to be true and right. An over- 
 growth is in itself in abuse. Aristotle's theory of the virtues is 
 that they are a mean between extremes. For example, rashness is 
 courage in excess ; timidity is caution in excess. That a natural 
 and proper veneration of the Virgin Mary runs into the worship of 
 the Virgin is no sufficient defence of such a practice. The theory 
 of Newman was directly at variance with the position taken by the 
 old polemical writers in behalf of Rome, such as Bellarmine and 
 Bossuet. As was early pointed out, Newman's thesis involves the 
 concession that the Roman Catholicism of to-day is not the same 
 as the faith of the primitive Church. The old ground of a literal 
 identity is forsaken. The limit of the contention is that the sys- 
 tem of to-day is an offshoot from the system planted by the Saviour 
 and his Apostles, as that system is disclosed in the documents of 
 the Christian religion and in early Church History. 2 
 
 It has been customary up to a recent date to divide Doctrinal 
 History into two parts, the General and the Special History of 
 Doctrine, and to complete the account of each period before 
 advancing to the next. Under the General History there is pre- 
 sented a sketch of the characteristics of the period, with a notice 
 of the principal themes of discussion and of the principal writers 
 to whom we are to resort for materials. The General History is 
 an outline map of the period to be traversed. Under the Special 
 History the matter is collected under the loci or rubrics of the 
 theological system. This is the method of Miinscher, Neander, 
 also substantially of Baur and of most of the other authors. 
 Baumgarten-Crusius gives the General History as a whole, under 
 successive periods, and lets the Special History follow under like 
 divisions. The same course is pursued by Shedd. Ritschl, in an 
 essay published in 1871, objected to the traditional method of 
 
 1 J. B. Mozley, Theory of Development, a Criticism of Dr. Newman's Essay, 
 etc. (1879). Ambiguities in Newman's theory, and voices against it from the 
 Roman Catholic side, are referred to by Mozley on pp. 196-223. 
 
 2 See Bishop Thirlwall's Charge, Remains, Literary and Theological (Vol. 
 I. pp. 99-144). For a trenchant criticism of Newman's theory, see Fairbairn's 
 The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, B. I. c. i.
 
 INTRODUCTION ,7 
 
 separating the General from the Special History, and to the plan 
 of arranging the matter under the topics of the doctrinal system. 1 
 He styled it an anatomic as distinguished from an organic or phys- 
 iologic method. It fails to give due emphasis to that which is 
 distinctive in the current of thought in each period. Ritschl's 
 essay was a review of the work of F. Nitzsch, who had made an 
 approach to the method approved by him. This method has 
 been exemplified by Harnack and by some other authors. It has 
 the advantage of presenting better in its unity the system of a 
 great theologian, as Origen or Augustine, instead of bringing for- 
 ward its parts the disjecta membra separated from one another. 
 Thomasius, in the part of his work which covers the patristic age, 
 takes up the three " Central Doctrines," one by one, but he con- 
 nects with each leading section, either " peripheral " matter on other 
 topics, or illustrative supplements. In the subsequent periods, this 
 method gives way to a more miscellaneous classification. What- 
 ever plan is adopted, the suggestions of Ritschl ought to be kept 
 in iriind, and a due perspective and a proper unity to be secured. 
 This is measurably effected for example, by Neander through 
 cross-references and brief recapitulation. It is difficult and need- 
 less to carry through all the periods a uniform scheme. 
 
 The chief landmarks in the course of Doctrinal History are 
 easily discerned. The earliest writings of a theological cast were 
 naturally apologetic. Christian truth was defended against assaults 
 without and within the Christian fold. Then followed within the 
 Church widespread controversy on central points of doctrine 
 especially the Trinity and the Incarnation the issue of which 
 was the Catholic theology. In the West there were controversies 
 on Sin and Grace, which settled, on these themes, but with less 
 precision, the bounds of orthodoxy. A period of intellectual stag- 
 nancy ensued, not entirely unbroken, but lasting for several cen- 
 turies. Then occurred the Rise of Scholasticism, and the opening 
 of a new theological era, which extended to the Reformation. At 
 that point begins the modern period in which criticism and essays 
 at reconstruction are defining characteristics. 
 
 The Ancient Period, embracing to speak generally the first 
 six centuries, was productive as regards the contents of the theo- 
 logical system, and certain doctrines were stamped with the seal 
 
 1 Jahrb. d. deutsch. Theol. (1871, pp. 191-214); reprinted in Ritschl's 
 Gesammelt. Aufsdtze (pp. 147-170). 
 C
 
 T g HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of church authority. The Mediaeval Period set in order trans- 
 mitted beliefs and reduced them to a systematic form, with the aid 
 of Philosophy and under the eyes of the Roman hierarchy. The 
 Modern Age has witnessed efforts to reconstruct the system in the 
 light of the Scriptures and in relation to the discoveries of science 
 in its various departments. During the first three centuries dis- 
 cussions went forward without verdicts from a universally recog- 
 nized authority. In the several centuries that immediately follow, 
 there intervenes the authoritative action of oecumenical councils. 
 From the end of the Patristic Period to about the middle of the 
 eleventh century there is an interval wherein save in a brief 
 season in the age of Charlemagne the products of intellectual 
 activity, except in the form of compilations, are scanty. At that 
 date there springs up a fresh intellectual life, the Scholastic era 
 opens, and the work of organizing the system fairly begins. Prot- 
 estantism initiated the attempt to reform the creed on the basis of 
 the exclusive authority of the Bible and of an exchange of the 
 Scholastic theory of Justification for the Pauline teaching. The 
 various Protestant confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies were framed on the basis of the principle of the supreme 
 authority of the Scriptures. With the approach of the eighteenth 
 century there are discerned the beginnings of a new era. It 
 may be described, in a general way, as aiming to conform the 
 theological system to the conclusions of scientific inquiry and criti- 
 cism, or to bring into unity and harmony the knowledge derived 
 from revelation and that ascertained through man's natural powers. 
 It is the modern era in which we are now living. 
 
 In warfare with the Church of Rome and with one another the 
 different Protestant bodies intrenched themselves behind elaborate 
 Confessions. There arose in process of time a kind of Protestant 
 Scholasticism. Resistance was awakened. It was more and more 
 felt that the freedom of thought which Protestantism had seemed 
 to promise was unduly restricted. Owing to this discontent, in 
 conjunction with other causes soon to be adverted to, there sprang 
 up an intellectual revolt. This was unhappily not tempered and 
 kept within bounds by a spirit of practical piety, which had been 
 chilled by theological contention and by the religious wars in the 
 different countries of which the Thirty Years' War was the most 
 prolonged and destructive. The skeptical tendencies of the Re- 
 naissance, which had been stifled for the time by the religious life
 
 INTRODUCTION ig 
 
 of the Protestant Reform, revived in full activity. There were 
 other phenomena of marked effect in the same general direction. 
 Society had advanced to a new epoch in culture. Education was 
 becoming liberated from exclusively clerical control. The partial 
 blight which absorption in theological conflicts had cast for the time 
 upon the literary life of the Renaissance was passing away. Other 
 studies were drawing away a portion of the attention which had 
 been so much concentrated upon theology. Under the auspices 
 of Descartes, philosophy was breaking away from the leading- 
 strings by which it had been held by the Church. The names of 
 Copernicus and Francis Bacon suggest the dawn of the new epoch 
 in the inductive investigation of nature. The cultivation of natural 
 and physical science, and the knowledge thus derived, have brought 
 forward new problems for the theologian to solve. Zeal in his- 
 torical inquiry has kept pace with the ardor felt in the studies 
 which pertain to the material world. Traditional beliefs in theol- 
 ogy, heretofore unquestioned, are confronted with data gathered 
 by historical researches. It might be expected that in this wide 
 range of curiosity, this quest for knowledge in all directions, the 
 Bible would become the object of a more exhaustive scrutiny. 
 Nor is there cause for wonder if the critical spirit, with no spiritual 
 discernment to accompany it, working solely in the dry light of the 
 understanding, should give rise even to extreme developments 
 of Rationalism. That the modern age is scientific is a truism. 
 Men are everywhere seeking for defined and verified knowl- 
 edge. Science, in the comprehensive meaning of the term, 
 requires theology to take account of its teachings and to adjust 
 itself to them. Conflicts thus occasioned, modifications of opin- 
 ion thus produced, characterize the present period of Doctrinal 
 History. 
 
 The Fathers of the second and third centuries who wrote against 
 heresies, especially Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian, were the 
 first authors who brought together materials for the History of 
 Doctrine. Epiphanius, in his polemical treatise, the " Panarion," 
 describes not less than eighty heretical parties. The series of the 
 ancient Greek ecclesiastical historians, of whom Eusebius is the 
 first, are sources of knowledge respecting doctrine as well as 
 Church affairs in general. In the eighth century, the Greek theo- 
 logian, John of Damascus, presents in his theological treatise both 
 a catalogue of heresies and numerous extracts from the Greek
 
 20 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Fathers. In the West, a still earlier writer, Isidore of Spain, 
 furnishes a collection of excerpts from the Latin authors, Augus- 
 tine, Gregory the Great, and others. The Reformation stimulated 
 researches into the tenets of the early Church as well as of later 
 ages. In the " Magdeburg Centuries," and in polemical publica- 
 tions without number, the history of the doctrines in dispute was 
 discussed, of course commonly in a controversial spirit. The 
 great English divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 explored the writings of the patristic and scholastic doctors, and 
 used the learning thus acquired in the contests between Protestant 
 and Catholic, Churchman and Puritan. The famous scholars of the 
 Arminian School, on the continent, devoted to the early Fathers, 
 as well as to the Scriptures, a critical examination. In the middle 
 of the seventeenth century there appeared the first works treating 
 expressly of the history of doctrine. These were two in number, 
 one by a Protestant, the other by a Roman Catholic. The first 
 was written by a learned Scotchman, John Forbes of Corse the 
 Instructiones Historico- Theologies (Amsterdam, 1645). I* was 
 designed to demonstrate the agreement of the tenets of the Re- 
 formed Church with primitive orthodoxy. The second is the work 
 of the Jesuit scholar, Dionysius Petavius De Theologicis Dog- 
 matibus (Paris, 1644-50). It is not only erudite and acute ; it is 
 written with a certain liveliness of style. The concession that 
 Ante-Nicene Fathers contain statements on points of doctrine 
 which fall below the creeds of later date has led to the hasty infer- 
 ence that the author was an Arian in disguise. Bishop Bull's con- 
 jecture that his purpose was to compel his readers to fall back on 
 Church authority as the umpire in doctrinal questions, is equally 
 unsupported. 1 Petavius was not blind to the principle of theo- 
 logical development. In the eighteenth century the contributions 
 of Mosheim to the history of doctrine are thorough and candid. 
 The Rationalistic School, of which Semler was the leader, gave to 
 Doctrinal History its distinct place as a branch of theology. But 
 from the point of view of this school it could only be regarded as 
 a record of clashing opinions. In this period, the most merito- 
 rious author in this department was Miinscher. His text-books 
 are mostly made up of passages from the ecclesiastical writers, 
 arranged under appropriate topics. It is only during the present 
 century that works have been produced on Doctrinal History 
 1 See Bull's collected Works, Vol. V. pp. 12, 13.
 
 INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 which have exhibited a due insight and attained to a scientific 
 form. The History of Doctrine by Baumgarten-Crusius brings 
 together a mass of concisely stated, accurate information, drawn 
 from original sources. But the scientific character of which we 
 speak belongs eminently to Neander's historical writings on the 
 subject, and to the writings of Baur. Gieseler's posthumous frag- 
 ment stops at the Reformation. It is not without value as a sup- 
 plement to his Church History, in which the history of doctrine is of 
 great value for its documentary references and extracts. Hagen- 
 bach's work contains a store of information, but would be more 
 valuable were it less a conglomerate. The American edition (from 
 the author's fourth edition) was enriched by additions on English 
 and American theology from the pen of Henry B. Smith. The 
 excellent book of Friedrich Nitzsch terminates at the end of the 
 patristic period. The Doctrinal History of Harnack, in which 
 the distinction between the General and Special History dis- 
 appears, is a brilliant exposition of the subject, and presents, 
 more especially in the early period, the fruits of a quite thorough 
 investigation of the sources. The author's opinions as to the 
 origin of the New Testament writings and on Christian doctrines 
 are made apparent on its pages. The briefer work of Harnack is 
 a condensed but spirited review of the subject. One of the best 
 of the compendiums is the Leitfaden of Friedrich Loofs. See- 
 berg's Lehrbuch is a valuable aid to students. In Schmid's Lehr- 
 buch (edited by Hauck), the text is brief, but the collection of 
 extracts is judiciously made. The excellent text-book of Thom- 
 asius is the production of a scholar versed in the sources, writing 
 from the point of view of evangelical Lutheranism. Kenan's series 
 Histoire des Origines du Christianismc contains chapters 
 pertaining to doctrine which are well worthy of attention. Shedd's 
 History of Doctrine is a vigorous discussion of leading topics by 
 an earnest defender of Calvinism. It terminates with the rise of 
 the Socinian and Arminian systems. Sheldon's History of Doc- 
 trine is lucid and is brought down to a recent date. 
 
 There is a considerable number of valuable monographs on 
 particular doctrines. Such are Dorner's History of the Doctrine 
 of the Person of Christ, Ritschl on the Doctrine of Justification, 
 Baur on the Trinity and on the Atonement. Treatises not dis- 
 tinctively historical contain much historical matter. Such, for 
 example, are Julius Miiller's work on the Doctrine of Sin, Liddon's
 
 22 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Bampton Lectures on the Divinity of Christ, Fairbairn's "The 
 Place of Christ in Modern Theology." The Protestant Real- 
 Encyklopadie (edited in the new edition by Herzog, Plitt and 
 Hauck), Wetzer and Welte, Kirehenlexikon [Roman Catholic], 
 (2d ed. 1886 sq.), Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian 
 Biography, are instructive on the subject of Doctrinal History. 
 As to the first three centuries, the Prolegomena and Notes of 
 Professor McGiffert, pertaining to this subject, in his edition 
 of the Church History of Eusebius (1890), are very valuable.
 
 PART I 
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 PERIOD I 
 
 THE RISE AND EARLY TYPES OF THEOLOGY TO THE COM- 
 PLETE SYSTEM OF ORIGEN AND TO THE FULLY ESTAB- 
 LISHED CONCEPTION OF THE PRE-MUNDANE PERSONAL 
 LOGOS (c.A.D. 300) 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY PALESTINIAN AND HELLENISTIC JUDAISM 
 GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND GENTILE CULTURE 
 
 THE testimony and teachings of the Apostles constitute the 
 authentic sources of Christian theology. They are comprised in 
 the New Testament writings. The exposition of these documents 
 is the proper work of Biblical Theology, for which the Introduction 
 to the New Testament prepares the way. It is only brief com- 
 ments on the New Testament doctrine that can here find a place. 
 The bond that unites the Old Testament with the New, the 
 religion of Israel with the Gospel, is the idea of the kingdom of 
 God. It is predicted, prefigured, initiated, in the earlier system ; 
 it is realized in the later. The new dispensation is the fulfilment 
 of that which was foretokened in the old. John the Baptist dis- 
 cerned that his office was that of a herald of the messianic king- 
 dom. 1 So it was represented by Jesus. 2 Jesus Himself appeared 
 
 1 Matt. iii. n. 
 
 a Matt. xi. 13, 14 (Luke xvi. 16); Mark ix. 12, 13 (cf. Malachi iii. i). 
 
 23
 
 24 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 in the character of the head of the kingdom. If He avoided 
 publicly proclaiming His regal station, it was to preclude popular 
 demonstrations springing from false ideals of the Messiah and the 
 messianic reign. The Sermon on the Mount was the legislation 
 of the new kingdom. The Mount of the Beatitudes succeeded 
 to the Sinai of the Decalogue. Holiness and peace are offered to 
 those who come to Him and surrender themselves to His guidance. 
 The contrast between the course which He pursued and the ideas 
 and expectations even of those who believed in Him, naturally 
 gave rise to doubts and questionings as to His precise rank among 
 divine messengers and the exact import of His mission. So we 
 may account for the conversation at Caesarea Philippi, 1 and the 
 message of John the Baptist. 2 In the Synoptical Gospels, Jesus 
 stands in such a relation to God that He alone knows God and is 
 known by Him. 3 He is the organ of the self-revelation of God. 
 The devotion to Him required in His disciples transcends that 
 which is due in the dearest and most sacred human relations. 4 
 His acceptance of the designation ' Son of God,' and the added 
 assurance that from that time onward would be made manifest 
 His participation in divine power and honor was felt by the High 
 Priest, who discredited this avowal, to be nothing short of blas- 
 phemy. 5 By Him were to be determined the allotments of the 
 final judgment. 6 Rejected by the Jews, He is nevertheless con- 
 scious that the deadly blow aimed at His cause will open a way 
 to its final victory. His death will be the means of spiritual 
 deliverance, a " ransom " for many, the ground of the forgiveness 
 of sin. 7 The kingdom is to advance gradually, as leaven and as 
 seed planted in the ground. It is to come, and yet it is a present 
 reality. 8 If taken away from the chosen people, it will be carried 
 beyond their limits, even among the heathen. 9 It is in the souls 
 of men ; it is a living force in the bosom of society. Yet there 
 is an apocalyptic side in the Synoptical portraiture of the king- 
 dom. There is a goal in the future, a consummation, or Second 
 Advent of the Christ to judgment. The Disciples, knowing that 
 
 1 Mark viii. 27-31. * Matt. x. 37. 
 
 2 Matt. xi. 2, 3. 6 Matt. xxvi. 64; Mark xiv. 6l. 
 8 Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22. 6 Matt. xxv. 32. 
 
 7 Matt. xx. 28; Matt. xxvi. 28. 
 
 8 Matt. v. 3, 10; Mark x. 14, 15; Matt. xxi. 31; xi. n (Luke vii. 28). 
 
 9 Matt. xxi. 41 ; Mark xii. 9.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 35 
 
 they were living in the " Last Time," the final stage of Revela- 
 tion, looked for the speedy coming of the last day. This antici- 
 pation is more or less distinctly expressed in almost all of the 
 New Testament writings. 1 Principally through the agency of the 
 Apostle Paul, the Gospel of the kingdom, with all its privileges, 
 was first proclaimed to the heathen. The older Apostles, moved 
 by the undeniable evidence of God's approbation of his work, 
 gave him "the right hand of fellowship," it being agreed that 
 while they should preach to the Jews, he, with Barnabas, his 
 companion for awhile, should "go unto the Gentiles." 2 In the 
 Synoptical Gospels it is in the Eschatology that the higher 
 nature and dignity of Christ are most apparent. In the Epistles 
 of Paul, the divine side of His being, His preexistence, His agency 
 in the work of creation, are explicitly taught. 3 The success oi 
 the mission to the Gentiles, the manifest marks of the divine 
 approval of it, the embittered temper of the Jews as time went on, 
 the fall of Jerusalem and the breaking up of the Jewish nationality, 
 had the effect fully to establish that catholic interpretation of 
 the Gospel of which Paul had been the fervent, unflinching cham- 
 pion. That, after the death of Paul, the Apostle John took up 
 his abode at Ephesus is a fact which is too well attested to admit 
 of a reasonable doubt. The influence of his life and teaching, 
 emanating from that centre, is satisfactorily proved. Whatever 
 opinion may be held respecting the Johannine authorship of the 
 book of Revelation, the circumstance that it was so early attributed 
 to the Apostle John 4 is a sufficient proof of his residence in Asia 
 Minor and of his authority in the churches of that region. It is 
 impossible to review here the discussion concerning the author- 
 ship of the Fourth Gospel and of the First Epistle which bears 
 the name of John. The external proof is a cumulative argument 
 the weight of which has seldom been duly estimated by the 
 opponents of the genuineness of these writings. The necessary 
 and pretty steady retreat backward of the adverse criticism, from 
 the date assigned to the Fourth Gospel by Baur and his followers 
 
 1 Matt. xxiv. 29, Luke xviii. 7, 8, John i. 21-23 5 c f- l Jhn ii. 18, I Thess. 
 iv. 1 6, 17, 2 Thess. ii. 7, Phil. iv. 5, I Cor. xvi. 22, I Peter iv. 7, etc. 
 
 2 Gal. ii. 9. 
 
 3 Phil. ii. 6, 7, 2 Cor. viii. 9, i Cor. viii. 6. 
 
 4 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph., c. 8l ; Iren. v. 35. 2 ; Tertullian, Adv. Afardon., 
 III. 14, Ibid. IV. 5 ;^ De Prtescr. Haret. 33.
 
 2 6 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 (c. 1 60), renders the problem of accounting for its origin, if 
 it be considered spurious, more and more difficult of solution. 
 It is now frequently admitted by the negative criticism that the 
 Gospel includes authentic traditions of the teaching of John, 
 edited, it may be, by one of his disciples. In the Fourth Gospel 
 and in the Epistle, the conception of the Son of God is deepened 
 and is carried back into a metaphysical relation of Christ to the 
 Father. The preexistence as well as the divinity of the Messiah 
 are plainly set forth. The term ' Logos ' in the prologue is taken 
 up from current phraseology, which had its roots in the Old 
 Testament and the Old Testament Apocrypha, and which the 
 Alexandrian Jewish philosophy did much to diffuse. The term is 
 adopted by the Evangelist to designate the divine Saviour, the 
 Revealer of God. The new spiritual life through the believer's 
 union with Christ and fellowship with the Father involved therein, 
 is the condensed expression of the benefit imparted by the Gospel. 
 The apocalyptic element, although distinctly present in the Johan- 
 nine teaching, is in the background. The reality of the Incarna- 
 tion is affirmed as a cardinal truth. 1 
 
 Christian believers in common with the Jews received the Old 
 Testament writings as sacred Scriptures. The Disciples of Christ 
 were protected by His teaching from an ensnaring casuistry and 
 from other kinds of sophistry in the interpretation of them. Ex- 
 clusion from the synagogue and the antipathy of the Jews operated 
 to keep off the same or like abuses of exegesis. Yet there were 
 traditional ways of explaining the Old Testament which the early 
 Christians could not but share. The rabbinical habit of attaching 
 double meanings to words, or of finding in them a mystic sense of 
 some sort, was not without its influence on Christian minds. A 
 natural fruit of the idea of verbal inspiration was the allegorical 
 treatment of Old Testament passages, or fanciful inferences from 
 the orthography or sound of words. The Haggada the mass 
 of comment, mingled with legend, which had grown up about the 
 historical, prophetic, and ethical portions of the Old Testament 
 Scriptures contributed something to the stock of Christian 
 beliefs. In the Jewish commentaries there was a union of two 
 distinct elements. There was the scholastic, casuistic element, 
 and there was the fanciful element. These amplified and embel- 
 
 1 I John iv. 2, 3. The common authorship of the Gospel and the Epistle is 
 beyond reasonable doubt
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 37 
 
 lished the writings regarded as inspired. There was, moreover, 
 an influence from the Jewish apocalypses, for example, the 
 book of Enoch, which underwent modification in the hands of a 
 Christian editor. Other books of this class were the Apocalypse 
 of Baruch, the Fourth Book of Ezra, and, among the Hellenistic 
 Jews, the Sibylline Oracles. Papias repeats a prophecy of the 
 wondrous fruitfulness of the vine in the millennial times, when it 
 will bear colossal grapes, a passage taken from the Apocalypse 
 of Baruch. What influence was exerted on Christian thought by 
 speculations in this literature 1 relative to the preexistence of per- 
 sons and things, it is not easy to define. 2 The Jews generally 
 conceived of the Messiah as a mere man. Trypho, the Jew, in 
 Justin Martyr's Dialogue, speaks of the idea of the Messiah's pre- 
 existence as absurd. 3 
 
 It was natural that the Hellenistic Jews should be, as a rule, 
 less rigid and more conciliating towards the Gentiles than their 
 Palestinian brethren. To some extent they stood as mediators 
 between the Jewish religion and Gentile thought. This was true 
 especially of that Alexandrian Judaism of which Philo is the fore- 
 most representative. He was an old man when he headed a 
 deputation of Jews to the Emperor Caligula (A.D. 38 or 39). 
 The germs of his system were of an earlier date. They are seen 
 in the Wisdom of Solomon, an Alexandrian production. It was 
 at Alexandria, the meeting-place of nations, the confluence of 
 streams of thought from all directions, that this eclectic system, 
 this union of Biblical teaching with Platonic and Stoic tenets, 
 took its rise. Philo was a believing Jew, without any thought of 
 perverting the Old Testament, but aiming to extract what he con- 
 sidered its deeper purport. His opinions in religion and ethics, 
 nevertheless, were imbibed from the Greek philosophic teachers. 
 By means of allegory, he undertook to read into the Hebrew 
 Scriptures the tenets of the Academy and the Porch. Where the 
 Scripture had a literal meaning that was unobjectionable, it might 
 be accepted, but even in such a case there lay beneath it an 
 occult sense which unveiled itself to the discerning. In Philo's 
 teaching there is a sharp antithesis between God and the world. 
 
 1 Irenaeus, v. 33. 3; Schiirer, Gesch. d. Judisch. Volkes, etc., Vol. II. p. 644, 
 0.48. 
 
 2 The "Notion of Preexistence" is discussed by Harnack, DG., T. 710 sq. 
 Sec, also, Ewald, Gesch. d. Volkes Israel, Vol. V. p. 73 sq. 3 c. 48.
 
 28 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 This dualism is taken up from Plato. To God we may attach 
 none of the predicates which characterize finite things. To con- 
 nect with Him specific qualities is to divest Him of His supreme 
 rank. There can be no action of God upon the world of matter 
 save through intermediate agents. These are constituted by the 
 Platonic ideas and the efficient causes of the Stoic system, 
 which are, also, the angels of the Jewish religion and the demons 
 of the Gentile mythology. These intermediate Powers are now 
 spoken of as personal, and again plainly fall short of personality, 
 being, rather, vivid personifications. The conception of the 
 Logos has a central place in Philo's system. The Logos is the 
 Power of God, or the divine Reason, endowed with energy, ac- 
 tion, and comprehending in itself all subordinate Powers. Now 
 the Logos is conceived of as personal, and again, to exclude the 
 idea of a separation from God, it is represented as if impersonal. 1 
 The Logos is not only the First-Born of God, the Archangel 
 among angels, the Viceroy of God in the world, but, also, repre- 
 sents the world before God, as its High Priest, its Advocate or 
 Paraclete. The world is not created outright, but is moulded 
 out of matter. Hence evil arises. Souls are preexistent ; while 
 in the flesh they are in a prison. Therefore the end to be sought 
 is to break away from sense, to destroy its control. In this life 
 the highest achievement of the wise and virtuous is to rise in a 
 sort of ecstasy to the immediate vision of God. This direct 
 access to the divine Essence in rapturous contemplation, which 
 is ascribed to the sons of God, is something altogether above the 
 blessing which is open to the "sons of the Logos." Their 
 knowledge of God is in symbols ; their intercourse with the Su- 
 preme is indirect. 2 The idea of an incarnation of the Logos 
 clashes with the fundamental principles of Philo. 3 Nor is there 
 a distinct messianic expectation. Peace will be the inheritance of 
 
 1 Drummond contends that all ascriptions of personality to the Logos in 
 Philo are figurative. " From first to last, the Logos is the Thought of God, 
 dwelling subjectively in the infinite Mind, planted out and made objective in 
 the universe." The cosmos is " a tissue of rational force," imaging the per- 
 fections of God. "The reason of man is the same rational force entering 
 into consciousness," etc. Philo Judatzus, etc., Vol. II. p. 273. 
 
 2 Con/. Ling., 28. Cf. Somn. I. u, SS. Ab. et Cain, 38, Leg. All, III. 31. 
 8 On the contrast between Philo's idea of the Logos and the Johannine 
 
 conception, see Edersheim's Art. " Philo," Diet, of Christ. Biogr IV. 379, 
 3 8o.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 2 g 
 
 those who are established in virtue. Especially will the Israelites 
 be blessed and brought together in their own land. The largest 
 influence of the Philonic teaching was, not on the Jew or the 
 heathen, but on Christian schools of thought. 1 
 
 In the age that preceded the introduction of Christianity, the 
 disruption of nationalities, the increased intercourse of peoples 
 with one another, and other kindred causes, had rudely shaken 
 the old fabrics of mythological religion. The rise of scientific 
 and philosophical inquiry had dealt a mortal blow at the tradi- 
 tional systems of faith and worship. In the writings of Cicero we 
 are presented incidentally with a picture of the skepticism that 
 prevailed in the cultivated classes. There was a growing ten- 
 dency to seek for mental rest through schemes of syncretism, by 
 combining ingredients of various religions and by adopting rites 
 drawn from the most diverse quarters. In the first century there 
 were strong indications of a revival of religious feeling. Augus- 
 tus had undertaken religious reforms which were not wholly inef- 
 fectual. There were attempts to breathe fresh life into the ances- 
 tral forms of worship and to save an almost worn-out creed from 
 extinction. Quite conspicuous was the drift towards monotheism. 
 Faith in a future life and in personal immortality revived from its 
 decay. Serious thinkers, such as Plutarch, whose philosophy was 
 a Platonic eclecticism, made room for the old divinities by reduc- 
 ing them to the rank of subordinate beings. Repulsive tales in 
 the legends of the gods Plutarch connected with the action of 
 inferior demons, in which deities of a higher order had no part. 
 He labored to strike out a middle path between the follies of 
 superstition and the gloom of atheism. Philosophers began to 
 assume an office not unlike that of pastors or confessors. Cynics 
 engaged, on the streets and highways, in a distinctively missionary 
 work, addressing their counsels and rebukes to whomsoever they 
 chose to accost. 
 
 Special attention is required to the influence of the Greek phi- 
 losophy on Christian doctrine. Ethical philosophy owed its begin- 
 
 1 Respecting Philo and his system, the older works of Gfrorer (2 vols. 
 1831) and Dahne (2 vols. 1834) are still of value. In the copious recent 
 literature on the subject, among the authors specially worthy of attention are 
 Schurer, Gesch. d. Jiidisch. Volkes, P. II. pp. 831-886; Zeller, Die Phil. d. 
 Grief Aen, Vol. III.; Drummond's Philo Judieus, or the Jewish Alexandrian 
 Phil, (1888); and Siegfried, Philo von Alexandria, etc. (1875).
 
 jO HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 nings to Socrates. He turned his back on the physics and 
 speculative cosmology with which previous philosophers had 
 busied themselves. As a practical reformer, in opposition to the 
 undermining process of the Sophists, he felt the need of laying a 
 scientific basis for morals. By his method of cross-examination 
 he cleared the minds of his auditors of confusion and elicited 
 accurate definitions. In his ethical doctrine in which virtue was 
 identified with knowledge or insight, he introduced a partial truth 
 which gave rise to a one-sided intellectualism, to the idea of an 
 aristocracy of thinkers. This conception produced far-reaching 
 consequences, not only in the Greek schools, but also within the 
 pale of Christianity. In Plato's doctrine of ideas, there was 
 given to concepts, or abstract general notions, the character of 
 supersensible realities the abiding realities of which concrete, 
 visible things in the world around us things that appear only to 
 vanish somehow partake. Compared with the ideas the world 
 of concrete things is a world of shadows. The ideas are coordi- 
 nated and subordinated, until we reach in the upward ascent the 
 supreme idea of " the good." The idea of the good is the cause 
 both of being and of cognition. Sometimes this idea is identified 
 with God. Yet Plato teaches that God is a personal intelligence, 
 by whom the world is fashioned from the matter which is eternal 
 and is partly intractable. The souls of men enter into material 
 habitations from a preexistence, either conceived of as actual or 
 mythically imagined. Redemption is, therefore, physical or, one 
 might better say, metaphysical, a release from the bondage of 
 sense. It is reached through enlightenment, wisdom and goodness 
 being regarded as inseparable. In the Platonic theory of ideas 
 there was a door opened for Philosophy to pursue afterwards a 
 Pantheistic direction. The theory of the relation of spirit to mat- 
 ter invited to endless vagaries of speculation. The hypostasizing 
 of ideas, through a tendency Oriental in its source, or through 
 an imagination for some other cause lacking in sobriety, might 
 call into being Gnostic mythologies. After the creative epoch of 
 Plato and Aristotle, Philosophy, owing partly to political and 
 social changes, took a decidedly practical turn. Ethical and relig- 
 ious inquiries, pertaining to the individual and to the attaining of 
 tranquillity of spirit, were uppermost in the two principal systems 
 that emerged. Epicureanism with its doctrine of a cosmos self- 
 produced from primitive atoms, of deities unconcerned about
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 7I 
 
 w * 
 
 mundane affairs, and of a morality synonymous with prudent 
 pleasure-seeking, had little affinity with the Gospel and little influ- 
 ence upon its teachers. Respecting Stoicism the case was differ- 
 ent. The metaphysic of Stoicism was borrowed from earlier 
 systems, especially from that of Heraclitus, and had no genetic 
 relation to the nobler system of Stoical ethics. The metaphysical 
 theory was a materialistic Pantheism. But the indwelling force 
 from which all things spring, if it operates blindly, is held to 
 operate rationally. The universe is subject to one all-ruling law. 
 The world, looked at as an organic unity, is perfect. Evil is 
 relative ; all things considered, there is no evil. Zeus, like Provi- 
 dence and Destiny, is another name for the totality of things. 
 There is no space for free agency. Logos, the divine reason or 
 wisdom, designates the power that pervades the universe, yet is 
 corporeal in its nature. It is sometimes styled, according to the 
 analogy of a seed stored with vital energy, the Generative or 
 Seminal Logos. The virtuous man, the Sage, is he who lives 
 according to nature, either his own nature or the nature of the 
 universe, for the discrimination is not always made. He is 
 calm within, murmurs at nothing that is or that occurs, implicitly 
 obeys reason, uninfluenced by sensibility or emotion. The sys- 
 tem of Zeno and Chrysippus parted with much of its rigor in the 
 later Stoicism of the Roman School. In Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, 
 and the Greek freedman Epictetus, there is a recognition, though 
 not uniform and persistent, of the personality of God, of the real- 
 ity of the soul as distinguished from the body, and of the continu- 
 ance of personal life after death. The cosmopolitan element in 
 Stoicism, the idea of mankind as a single community, ripens into 
 the conception of the brotherhood of mankind, and of God as a 
 universal Father. In Seneca, precepts enjoining patience, forgive- 
 ness, benevolence, approximate to the purity and elevation of the 
 precepts of the Gospel, while the metaphysical setting remains 
 quite diverse. The sense of the need of divine help is a new 
 element grafted into the later Stoicism. It is among the New 
 Platonists that Philosophy assumes the most decidedly religious 
 aspect. Philo was a forerunner of this school, Ammonius Saccas 
 its reputed founder ; but it was Plotinus who gave it a systematic 
 form. God was conceived of as the Ineffable One, the undifferen- 
 tiated Absolute. He is incomprehensible. He is utterly separate 
 from the world, for the system is thoroughly dualistic. Asceti-
 
 32 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 cism is the path to the self-purification of the soul. The highest 
 attainment, the ideal blessedness, is the ecstatic state wherein the 
 soul soars to the intuition and embrace of the Supreme Being. 
 The enraptured spirit loses the sense of individuality, and lies, so 
 to speak, on the bosom of the Infinite. 
 
 The influence of Greek Philosophy upon the early Christian 
 theology is too obvious to be questioned. The sciences were the 
 creation of the Greek mind, and theology forms no exception to 
 this general statement. There was a " psychological climate " in 
 which theology took its form. There was an environment of 
 thought and culture from the influence of which it would have 
 been impossible for the theologians of the Church to escape. The 
 point of most importance is to determine the nature and the ex- 
 tent of that influence by which they were necessarily affected. 
 That the form of enunciations of doctrine was affected by it, the 
 bare inspection of the ancient oecumenical creeds is sufficient to 
 show. Newman says that the use of the term ' consubstantial ' 
 by the Nicene Council is " the one instance of a scientific word 
 having been introduced into the creed from that day to this." l 
 There are other terms in the creeds, however, such, for example, 
 as the word ' nature,' which imply a classification of our mental 
 faculties that does not conform precisely to our modern views. 
 Aside from the phraseology of the oecumenical creeds, the patris- 
 tic teaching is stamped with the traces of philosophical ideas that 
 run back as far as Plato and Aristotle. It has been alleged by 
 some scholars in the past, and the assertion has been renewed by 
 certain recent authors, that the substance as well as the form of 
 Christian theology was essentially modified by the Greek moulds 
 into which Christian truth was cast. Views tending in this direc- 
 tion have been presented of late by two learned scholars, Hatch 
 and Harnack. The question for the student to determine is, 
 how far have the ancient creeds, their authors and expounders, 
 gone beyond an intellectual equivalent of the New Testament 
 teaching? What is to be referred to the Gospel, and what to 
 Greek philosophical thought? If alloy may be inwrought from 
 alien sources, it is the task of Biblical and historical scholarship to 
 ascertain its nature and limit. 2 
 
 1 Grammar of Assent, p. 138. 
 
 2 The influence of the Greek Mysteries on Christian usages is a separate, 
 although kindred, topic, Here the point of chief moment is the discipline
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 33 
 
 arcani, embracing the secrecy observed respecting the Baptismal Confession, 
 etc., and the exclusion of non-communicants from being present at the Sacra- 
 ment. Justin describes the Eucharist obviously without any idea of conceal- 
 ment in connection with it (Apol. I. 65 sq.). From about A.D. 150, with the 
 development of the Catechumenate, and under the dangers incident to perse- 
 cution, this sacred reserve the disciplina arcani arose and continued 
 until the Church emerged to a position of safety. But from Justin's time, the 
 Sacraments began to be looked upon after the analogy of the Mysteries, and 
 the effect of this habit of thought is perceptible both upon the language 
 respecting them and, in some degree, on the practices connected with them. 
 Yet the measure of this effect may be exaggerated. On this subject see 
 Zezschwitz's Art., Arkan-Disciplin, in the Real-Encykl., I. p. 637, Moller's 
 Kirchegesch., I. pp. 281, 282. The subject is discussed by Hatch, The Influ- 
 ence of Greek Ideas, etc. (Lect. X.), and by Harnack, DG., I. pp. 176 sq., 
 ft al. (See the Index at the end of Vol. III.) See, also, Anrich, Das antikc 
 Mysterienivesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christenthum (1894).
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL WRITERS 
 
 I. The Apostolic Fathers. This is an inaccurate title given to 
 the group of earliest ecclesiastical writers after the Apostles. The 
 designation is owing to the fact that they were supposed to have 
 been immediate pupils of the Apostles. We have an Epistle of 
 Clement, who is designated in the tradition as the first Bishop of 
 Rome. Whether or not he wore this title exclusively, or was 
 simply the leading presbyter, it is no doubt by him that this 
 letter from the Church of Rome to the Church at Corinth was 
 written. Its date is about A.D. 96. It contains moral injunctions 
 of a general nature, which are followed by special exhortations 
 occasioned by discord in the Corinthian Church, which was 
 thought to pay less than due respect to its presbyters. The 
 document styled the Second Epistle of Clement is a Homily, 
 which not unlikely was addressed, either orally or in writing, to 
 the same church, but is the production of an unknown author, 
 who wrote probably as early as A.D. 150. The first distinct 
 mention of it is by Eusebius. It is not ascribed to Clement by 
 the early ecclesiastical authors. It is the most ancient of extant 
 homilies, Hernias, the author of The Shepherd, wrote his book 
 at Rome. Its division into three parts is from a later hand 
 than the author's. It comprises a series of visions, with which 
 are connected precepts, warnings, and parables. The Church, 
 which communicates the revelations made to Hermas, is personi- 
 fied as an aged woman. Afterwards, in the guise of a shepherd, 
 the " angel of repentance " appears, by whom are delivered the 
 teachings in the closing parts of the book. The date assigned in 
 the ancient tradition (c. 140-155) seems late, in view of the fact 
 that shortly after the middle of the second century, the work is 
 known to have been in circulation in the churches of the East and 
 
 34
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 35 
 
 West. This circumstance, with other indications, leads Zahn and 
 some other critics to place its date as early as about 90-100. It 
 is cited by Irenaeus and by Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria 
 was familiar with it. The Epistle with which the name of Barna- 
 bas is connected, was written, not by the companion of Paul, but 
 by an unknown writer, probably an Alexandrian. It is strongly 
 anti- Judaic in its spirit. There are widely different judgments as 
 to its date. It is placed by some as early as A.D. 70 ; by others 
 as late as the beginning of the reign of Hadrian (117-138). The 
 determination of the question is partly dependent on the relation 
 of the book to the Didache, with which it has chapters in common. 
 This last named work, the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve 
 Apostles, was discovered in 1873 by Bryennios, an Eastern prelate, 
 but was not published until 1883. It is one of the most interest- 
 ing literary discoveries of recent times. It consists of two portions. 
 It is a church manual for catechists and for congregations. The 
 catechetical part, in the first six chapters, presents moral precepts 
 under the scheme of Two Ways, the way of life, and the way of 
 death. The second part contains directions pertaining to worship 
 and church discipline, with statements relating to Eschatology. 
 The first portion of the Didache, the Two Ways, is nearly identi- 
 cal with passages in the Epistle of Barnabas, and in the Apostoli- 
 cal Canons, a work composed probably as early as the beginning 
 of the third century ; and it is found, also, in a more expanded 
 form, in the Apostolical Constitutions. The Didache is assigned 
 by most critics to a time not later than the beginning of the second 
 century. As to its relation to the Epistle of Barnabas, that it is 
 not dependent on the Epistle has been shown by Zahn and others. 
 Harnack has considerable support in the opinion that both books 
 drew from a common source, but not in the conclusion that the 
 Didache has a much later origin (from 1 20 to 165) . The Epistles of 
 Ignatius, mainly from their bearing on the rise of Episcopacy, have 
 long been a subject of discussion. It was a gain when at last the 
 subject of controversy was narrowed down to the question of the 
 genuineness of the seven shorter Greek Epistles. That these are 
 the productions of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who was trans- 
 ported to Rome and perished under Trajan, has been rendered, 
 to say the least, extremely probable, especially since the publica- 
 tion of the works of Zahn and Lightfoot. The objections made to 
 the integrity of the Epistles can hardly be made good, especially
 
 36 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 when it is remembered that the Episcopacy for which Ignatius is 
 a zealous champion is not sacerdotal in its character, but is com- 
 mended as a means of order and unity, and that he is struggling 
 to secure for bishops a degree of authority to which, it would 
 seem, they had not as yet attained. The date of the Ignatian 
 Epistles, according to Lightfoot, is about no. Harnack is pecul- 
 iar in advancing the hypothesis of a much later date for the 
 martyrdom of the author, and so for the composition of his 
 writings. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who had personally known 
 the Apostle John, died as a martyr in 155 or 156. The Epistle 
 to the Philippians, which was in the hands of Irenseus, who had 
 known Polycarp, is unquestionably genuine. Papias, Bishop of 
 Hierapolis, was a contemporary of Polycarp, and is said to have 
 been, like him, a pupil of John the Apostle. But this statement of 
 Irenaeus is called in question, possibly with truth, by Eusebius. 
 The Martyrdom of Polycarp is an account by the Church of 
 Smyrna of the circumstances of the death of their aged pastor at 
 the hands of Roman executioners. It is enlarged and interpolated 
 by subsequent additions, but there is good reason to conclude 
 that it is essentially genuine. Papias wrote, in five books, the 
 Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, of which we have preserved 
 to us a few fragments, one of which is the highly interesting and 
 valuable statement in Eusebius respecting the origin of the 
 Gospels of Matthew and of Mark. Besides comments on the 
 teachings of Christ, the work of Papias included information 
 respecting the Gospel histories which he had gathered from oral 
 sources. 
 
 II. The Apologists. Only a portion of the writings of the 
 authors who first took up the defence of Christianity are ex- 
 tant. These writings were addressed either to individuals, or to 
 heathen readers in general. They belong mostly to the age of 
 the Antonines. Quadratus may have addressed to Hadrian his 
 apology, which is lost. The work addressed to Antoninus Pius 
 by Aristides has lately been in part recovered. We have it in 
 an Armenian translation, also in a Syrian translation, and in an 
 imperfect Greek text. Fragments of an apologetic work of 
 Melito, Bishop of Sardis, addressed to Marcus Aurelius, are 
 preserved in Eusebius. A writing by Claudius Apollinaris, 
 Bishop of Hierapolis, addressed to the same Emperor, and a 
 work of Miltiades, a rhetorician of Athens, addressed to M.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 37 
 
 Aurelius and L. Verus, have both perished. The most important 
 of the writers of this class in the second century is Justin Martyr. 
 He was a native of Samaria, and was born about A.D. 100. He 
 had received a philosophical training, and was himself a philoso- 
 pher by profession. He was a disciple of the Platonic school, 
 but was influenced, also, by the ethical ideas of the Stoics. 
 We have from his pen two Apologies, a longer and a shorter, 
 which, however, originally formed one work, and the Dialogue 
 with Trypho (a Jew). The Discourse of the Greeks and The 
 Exhortation to the Greeks, which are often ascribed to Justin, are 
 by later writers. The Apologies were written not later than 152 
 and not earlier than 138. The Dialogue is a little later than the 
 Apologies. Tatian was born in Assyria and was perhaps of 
 Syrian parentage, but was educated in Greek learning. At Rome 
 he came into connection with Justin. He wrote a Discourse to the 
 Greeks, about 152 or 153. The " Diatesseron " was a work by him, 
 formed by combining selections from the Four Gospels. Besides 
 the Commentary upon the work by Ephraim of Edessa (who died 
 in 373), we have two, possibly three, very free translations of it into 
 other languages. 1 Whether it was first written in Greek or Syrian 
 is uncertain. Tatian became a Gnostic and the leader of an 
 ascetic sect, the Encratites. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, 
 (i68-c. 190) wrote an Apology addressed to Autolycus, a cultivated 
 heathen. It is directed against heathenism in its popular and 
 philosophical forms. The Epistle to Diognet, by an unknown 
 author, written about the end of the second century, is full of force 
 and eloquence, but exhibits an antagonism to the Jewish religion. 
 One of the most cogent of the early defences of Christianity is the 
 Octavius of Minucius Felix, which, were we certain of its early 
 date, would be distinguished as the first of the Latin Apologies. 
 Whether it was composed as early as 180, or as late as the 
 middle of the third century, is still a litigated point. 
 
 III. Irenaus and Hippolytus. By far the most valuable 
 writer, as a source for the History of Doctrine, in the second 
 century, is Irenseus. Born in Asia Minor, about 125 or 130, 
 separated by only a single link from the Apostle John, whose 
 pupil, Polycarp, he had seen and heard, Irenasus became first 
 a Presbyter in the Church at Lyons, as the colleague of the aged 
 Pothinus, and afterwards succeeded him in the bishopric. We 
 1 See Harnack, Gesch. d. Altchrisll. Litt., I. 2, p. 495.
 
 38 
 
 have the record of at least one visit, and probably of two visits, 
 made by him to Rome. Such was his standing that he could 
 address an admonitory letter to Victor, a Roman bishop. His 
 copious work Adversus Hareses was written to confute the 
 Gnostics, about the year 180. He died probably in 202. The 
 wide acquaintance of Irenseus with the churches East and West, 
 the sobriety of his character, and his unimpeached reputation for 
 orthodoxy, render him an invaluable witness, both respecting the 
 tenets of the Gnostics and of the Christians of his time. He was 
 clear in his perceptions, practical, and averse to speculation. The 
 work of Irenseus exists only in a literal and crude Latin transla- 
 tion ; but we are fortunately in possession of copious extracts 
 from the original in Hippolytus, Eusebius, and Epiphanius. 
 Besides this work there are fragments, including the Epistle to 
 Florinus, which contain the reminiscences of Polycarp ; but the 
 " Pfaffian " fragments are of doubtful genuineness. The longest 
 of them is certainly spurious. Hippolytus was a pupil of Irenseus. 
 Although he was a celebrated man in his day, our information 
 concerning his personal history is scanty. He was a Presbyter at 
 Rome when Zephyrinus and Callistus were bishops, the first of 
 whom acceded to office in 199, and the last of whom died in 222. 
 Strenuous in maintaining the strictest theory as to Church dis- 
 cipline, and energetic in opposing Patripassianism, he waged a 
 contest against these bishops, and would appear to have been a 
 bishop of a seceding party in opposition to them. His Refutation of 
 all Heresies, which was found in 1842, and first published in 1851, 
 under the title of Philosophumena, throws much light on the 
 opinions of Gnostic sects, whose errors he traces to the heathen 
 philosophers. Missing parts of the work probably treated of 
 Chaldean and other Oriental opinions. 
 
 IV. The Latin Writers, Tertullian and Cyprian. Tertullian 
 was the first to make the Latin language a vehicle for theology. 
 He was a Presbyter at Carthage, was born about 160, and died 
 about 220. At school, in addition to other branches, he learned 
 Greek. He was trained to be an advocate, and one peculiarity of 
 his writings is the frequent occurrence in them of legal ideas and 
 phraseology. Although not unacquainted with philosophy, he 
 inveighs against the philosophers, going so far as to denounce 
 Plato as the condimentarius of all heretics. Acute and fertile in 
 thought, he infuses into his writings a vehemence which belongs to
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 39 
 
 his temperament. Yet his genius shines through the cloud of ex- 
 aggeration. An enthusiast by nature, he at length became an 
 avowed Montanist. His numerous works are upon a variety of 
 themes. They embrace polemical and apologetic works, against 
 parties without and within the Church, and discussions of an ascetic 
 and ecclesiastical cast. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, who died as 
 a martyr in 258, was largely influenced by the writings of Tertul- 
 lian. His own literary activity was mainly upon topics relating to 
 Church government and discipline. 
 
 V. The Alexandrians. It was at Alexandria, the seat of all 
 science, that philosophical theology first acquired a firm footing. 
 The union of philosophy and theology, of which we see the begin- 
 nings in the Apologists, was there consummated. Catechetical 
 instruction, when cultivated and inquisitive heathen converts were 
 to be taught, necessarily assumed a new form. The school for 
 catechumens developed itself into a school for the training of the 
 clergy. The Alexandrian teachers met the educated heathen on 
 their own ground. Instead of pouring out invectives, after the 
 manner of Tertullian, against the Greek philosophers, they recog- 
 nized in the teachings of the Greek sages materials which Christian 
 teachers might accept and assimilate. Attainments in knowledge 
 which were above the capacity of all believers might be open at 
 least to a part. The scholarship of the Church was at Alexandria. 
 Pantsenus, the first teacher, who began his work not far from 185, 
 had been an adherent of the Stoic school, while mingling in his 
 creed elements of Platonic doctrine. His writings have perished. 
 In his pupil, Clement, who succeeded him, and who taught with 
 an interval of absence on account of the Severian persecution 
 from about 191 until he retired in 202, the peculiarities of the 
 Alexandrian type of theology are distinctly marked. He was born 
 in Greece, and had studied philosophy in different lands and under 
 various masters. In Christianity he found the satisfaction which 
 he had elsewhere sought in vain. In his writings, his large acquisi- 
 tions of learning and the fertility of his genius, as well as his lack of 
 system, are apparent. In his Discourse to the Greeks, the superi- 
 ority of the Gospel to the heathen systems of worship and of 
 thought is insisted on, with a generous recognition, however, of 
 the truth to be found in their poets and philosophers. The Pce- 
 dagogos was designed for the ethical training of converts, as a 
 preparation for gaining an insight into the deeper mysteries of the
 
 40 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Christian teaching. Here Clement intermingles ideas drawn from 
 the Stoical morals. The crowning treatise of Clement is the 
 Stromata, or Patchwork for the term denoted a coverlet made 
 of patches. The author expatiates on the truths of Christianity, 
 without care for systematic arrangement. In a briefer Essay, 
 "Who is the Rich Man that is Saved?" Clement undertakes to 
 evince that not the possession of riches, but an inordinate attach- 
 ment to them, debars from the kingdom. At the same time, in 
 this Essay the ascetic feeling as concerns earthly good and the 
 pleasures of sense finds expression. 
 
 Origen, who in genius stands on a level with Augustine, and is 
 outstripped in power and achievements by none of the Fathers, 
 was a pupil of Clement. Born in 185 of Christian parents, he 
 received a classical as well as a Christian education, and suc- 
 ceeded Clement as a teacher, a post from which he was driven 
 by the Bishop of Alexandria, Demetrius. In consequence of suffer- 
 ings inflicted on him in the Decian persecution, he died at Caesa- 
 rea in Cappadocia, in 253. He was initiated into the study of 
 philosophy by Ammonius Saccas, the Neo-platonist ; but he made 
 himself conversant with the tenets of all the philosophical schools. 
 The writings of this great scholar are exceedingly various. His 
 Hexapla, a comparison of the text of the Septuagint with the 
 Hebrew text of the Old Testament and with other Greek versions, 
 was the fruit of twenty-seven years of labor. His commentaries, 
 of which those on Matthew and John are specially valuable, as 
 exhibiting his theological opinions, extend over nearly all the Script- 
 ures. The treatise De Principiis, or concerning First Truths, is 
 the earliest systematic treatise on doctrinal theology. We possess 
 it only in the very free translation of Rufinus, who omits, also, 
 parts of the original. In his later days Origen composed his 
 Reply to Celsus, a masterly defence of Christianity against the 
 ablest of its assailants, and a work which demonstrates, if proof 
 were required, that the speculations on doctrine which characterize 
 his numerous treatises had not the effect to loosen his hold on the 
 historical facts and essential verities of the Gospel.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 DOCTRINE IN THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS 
 
 WITH the earliest Christian teachers authorship was not a habit 
 or a profession. Like the Apostles themselves, they wrote, as a 
 rule, to meet some exigency. " When the heavens might part 
 asunder at any moment, and reveal the final doom," " there was 
 no care for literary distinction." 1 The Apostolic Fathers are inter- 
 mediate between the New Testament writers and distinctively theo- 
 logical authors. We miss in them the depth and power of the 
 canonical writers. Like these they have in view practical ends. 
 The light which they throw on the contemporary doctrinal beliefs 
 is incidental. And respecting the early ecclesiastical writings, it 
 must be borne in mind that such of them as survive are the relics 
 of a larger number that have perished. What Grote says of the 
 classical literature of Greece is applicable to the literature of the 
 Early Church : " We possess only what has drifted ashore from the 
 wreck of a stranded vessel." 2 Yet it is true of at least a portion 
 of the early ecclesiastical writings that remain, that their preserva- 
 tion is due to the special value that was attributed to them. Hence 
 there is no occasion to speak slightingly of the aid which they lend 
 us in ascertaining the opinions and the modes of thought prevalent 
 in the sub-apostolic age. The theory, which was advocated by 
 Baur, of a radical antagonism in this period between Petrine and 
 Pauline disciples, is now so generally given up that it requires no 
 special confutation. Clement speaks of Peter and Paul as " the 
 good apostles " who merit equal honor. 3 In like manner, the two 
 Apostolic leaders are placed in conjunction by Ignatius. 4 Polycarp 
 makes mention of the wisdom of "the blessed and glorious Paul." 5 
 
 1 Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, p. I. 
 
 2 History of Greece, Vol. I. Preface. 
 
 3 i Cor. 5. * Rom. 4. 8 Phil. 3. 
 
 41
 
 42 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 It may be added that Hegesippus, a Christian writer of Jewish 
 birth, in a fragment of his book, which was written about the 
 middle of the second century, refers with approval to Clement's 
 Epistle to the Corinthians. He is a witness, not for, but against 
 the Tubingen hypothesis. The theory of two opposing parties, 
 amalgamated later by methods of compromise, it is no exaggera- 
 tion to say " can be upheld only by trampling under foot all the 
 best authenticated testimony." * A glance at the career and the 
 teachings of a single man, Irenaeus, is of itself sufficient to dis- 
 prove it. 
 
 The Apostolic Fathers wrote before the writings of the Apostles 
 had been collected into a canon. Although, with a single excep- 
 tion, 2 passages obviously taken from them are not introduced by 
 the formula usually prefixed to quotations from the Old Testament, 
 they are nevertheless treated as authoritative. The Apostolic 
 Fathers make no claim to stand on a level with the Apostles. 
 While they contain references to pre-Christian apocryphal writings, 
 we find in them no distinct references to a New Testament 
 Apocrypha. 
 
 The Apostolic Fathers abound in allusions to the doctrine of 
 free forgiveness through the grace of God in the Gospel. " And 
 so we," writes Clement, " having been called through His will in 
 Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our 
 own wisdom or understanding or piety, or works which we wrought 
 in holiness of heart, but through faith, whereby the Almighty God 
 justified all men that have been from the beginning." 3 This 
 passage is emphatically Pauline in its purport. Yet, at the 
 same time, we meet in Clement, and in the Apostolic Fathers 
 generally, a strain of thought which may be styled legalism, or 
 to borrow a word from the German " moralism." Not only 
 is the Pauline doctrine of justification seldom brought out in 
 so clear and positive a form as in the passage just quoted ; there 
 is besides an emphasis laid upon right conduct, and upon works 
 of obedience, which is somewhat in contrast with the manner 
 of St. Paul when he is defining the method of justification. Even 
 Clement, in the place mentioned above, goes on immediately 
 to insist on the importance of good works. Abraham was found 
 faithful in that he " rendered obedience." 4 It is not merely that 
 
 1 Lightfoot, The Apostol. Fathers, p. 9. 3 I Cor. 32. 
 
 2 Barnabas, 4. * Clement, I Cor. IO.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 43 
 
 "Faith" and "Love "are often conjoined which is especially 
 common in Ignatius. There is a lack of a distinct perception of 
 the genetic relation of faith as the root of Christian virtues. 
 Hermas makes continence the daughter of faith, simplicity to 
 spring from continence, guilelessness from simplicity, etc. 1 In 
 the Didache, we read of " the knowledge and faith and immortality 
 made known" to us through Christ. 2 Allusions to the cross of 
 Christ, to His death for our sins, to salvation through Him, are 
 quite frequent. Yet more often than is the custom of writers 
 thoroughly imbued with the Pauline spirit, the relation of the 
 death of Christ to the procuring for us of the means of repentance 
 and to opening the way to a new obedience is dwelt upon. A 
 large space is given to the preceptive parts of the New Testament. 
 This type of evangelical legalism becomes still more marked much 
 later in the century when the nova lex 3 of the new dispensation is 
 held up to view as being, along with better promises, its defining 
 characteristic. 
 
 This peculiarity of the early Christian writers, it is worth while 
 to reiterate, springs from no conscious dissatisfaction with the 
 teaching of St. Paul. It must be borne in mind that the Apostle's 
 sharply defined and resolute exclusion of the doctrine of salvation 
 by works of obedience was part and parcel of his warfare against 
 a Pharisaic theology. That contest with Judaism and Judaizing 
 Christianity had now passed by. Whether salvation is through 
 faith or on the ground of obedience was no more "a burning 
 question." The special occasion for an energetic uprising to with- 
 stand a narrow and intolerant party, on this subject, no more 
 existed. It must be borne in mind, moreover, that the Apostle 
 Paul himself, when he speaks of the judgment, makes it turn upon 
 " deeds done," upon the personal righteousness or unrighteousness 
 of the individual. The creed of Trent quotes against the Prot- 
 estant doctrine the Apostle's anticipation of the " reward," the 
 " crown of righteousness," which the Lord, " the righteous Judge 
 shall give " him. 4 In short, St. Paul himself uses the terms of the 
 Jewish "scheme of debt and works," terms, however, which are 
 capable of an interpretation consistent with his teaching elsewhere 
 on the adequacy and the life-giving power of faith. 5 It is the 
 
 1 M. II. 8. 8 Tertull., De Prascr. 13. 
 
 2 Didache, 10. 4 Sess. VI. Decree on Justification, CXVI. 
 
 6 On this topic, see the remarks of Stevens, The Pauline Theology, p. 359 sq.
 
 44 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 characteristic of the earliest Christian writers that they bring to- 
 gether the teachings of the different Apostles. They may be said, 
 not so much to strike an average, as rather to combine indiscrim- 
 inately the various passages in the Apostles which relate to pardon 
 and the new life. There is a failure, notwithstanding the Christian 
 fervor of these authors, to penetrate to the inmost meaning and 
 the mutual connection of these various forms of representation. 
 
 We find, especially in Hermas, traces of an ascetic drift, which 
 is in a large measure the result of the earnest reaction of the 
 Christian mind against the immorality, in particular the unchastity, 
 so prevalent in heathen society. This ascetic tendency is con- 
 joined with the legalism just adverted to. It was a question 
 whether repentance would be of any avail in the case of grievous 
 offences committed after baptism, the rite which was understood 
 to bring with it the remission of past sins. The solution in Hermas 
 is, that a single lapse of this character does not shut the door upon 
 the delinquent; but this is the limit beyond which the spirit of 
 leniency in the Church will not go. 1 Second marriages are not 
 forbidden, but abstinence from a second marriage brings "exceed- 
 ing honor and great glory before the Lord." 2 Christian believers 
 fall into different classes as to their degree of holiness, some being 
 on a higher, and others on a lower plane. The distinction between 
 a more exalted and an inferior type of Christian virtue is even 
 more definite in the Didache? 
 
 If in the Apostolic Fathers we miss a firm grasp of the New 
 Testament teaching on the subject of Justification, no such defect 
 appears in their conception of the doctrine of the person of Christ. 
 Inexact as their phraseology naturally is in comparison with what 
 is observed in authors of a later age, it is evident, as well in their 
 habitual tone as in particular passages, that in their minds Christ 
 is dissociated from the category of creatures. Clement styles Him 
 "the sceptre of the majesty of God," who "came not in the pomp 
 of arrogance or of pride though He might have done so, but in 
 lowliness of mind." 4 " To whom," he exclaims in another place, 
 "be the glory and the majesty for ever and ever." 5 In Igna- 
 
 1 L. III. Sim. 7. "Thinkest thou that the sins of those that repent are for- 
 given forthwith? Certainly not; but the person who repents must torture his 
 own soul," etc. 
 
 * M. IV. 4. * i Cor. 1 6. 
 
 8 VI. 2. Cf. Clem. II. Cor. VII. 5 i Cor. 20.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY ^K 
 
 tius, it is a central thought that through Christ man is delivered 
 from the dominion of death and made a partaker of incorruption. 1 
 This is through the Incarnation, and the Resurrection following 
 upon the death on the Cross. The divine life in Christ is in 
 veritable humanity. Docetism, the idea that the human Christ is 
 a phantom, is combated. The mystical tendency of Ignatius 
 appears in his conception of the connection of the bishop with 
 his presbyters about him with the like relation of the incarnate 
 Christ to the Apostles. 2 Ignatius asserts the preexistence of 
 Christ. He "was with the Father before the world, and ap- 
 peared at the end of time." 3 Christ is "His Word (Logos) 
 that proceeded from silence " ; that is, in becoming incarnate. 
 "There is only one physician," Ignatius writes, "of flesh and 
 of spirit, generate and ungenerate, God in man 4 . . . Son of 
 Mary and Son of God." 5 The eternity of Christ is explicitly 
 affirmed : " Await Him that is above every season, the Eternal, 
 the Invisible, who became visible for our sake, the Impalpable, 
 the Impassible, who suffered for our sake." 6 Ignatius gives to 
 Christ repeatedly the name " God," not as if He were God 
 absolutely, yet implying proper divinity. 7 He is " the Son of the 
 Father," through whom the patriarchs and the whole Church enter 
 in. 8 Polycarp declares that " every one who shall not confess that 
 Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is anti-christ," a passage cor- 
 responding to the statement of John (i John iv. 3), from whom it 
 is probably quoted. 9 Barnabas refers to the suffering of Christ, 
 though He was the Lord of the whole world, and interprets the 
 words, "Let us make man in our own image" (Gen. i. 26), as 
 spoken to Him. 10 Hermas says of " the Son of God " that He 
 " is older than all His creation, so that He became the Father's 
 adviser in His creation." n " The Holy Preexistent Spirit," it is 
 said, " which created the whole creation God made to dwell in 
 flesh that He desired." 12 Whether the " Spirit " is here a designa- 
 
 1 a<j>6a.p(ria. 
 
 2 See Lightfoot, Apostol. Fathers, P. II. Vol. I. pp. 39, 359, sq. Cf. Gore, 
 The Christian Ministry, p. 302. See, also, Von der Goltz, Ignatius von An- 
 tiochien ah Christ, und Theologe. Gebh.u. Harnack's Text. u. Untersuch., XII. 3. 
 
 3 Magn. 6. 6 Polyc. 3. 9 Ep. Polyc. 7. 
 
 4 tv ffapKi. 7 Ephes. Introcluct, 18. 10 Barnab. 6. 
 
 6 Ephes. 7. 8 Philad. 9. u Simil. IX. 12. 
 
 12 Simil. V. 6. Cf. IX. I. The passage is obscure, partly because " the ser- 
 vant " in the Parable is said (6) to be " the Son of God," while another, who
 
 46 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 tion of the preexistent Logos a usage of which there are not 
 wanting other examples or, as some think, Hermas considered 
 the Holy Spirit to be one and the same with the preexistent Christ, 
 there is at least here a clear assertion of the Saviour's preexistence 
 and divinity. 1 The personality and distinct office of the Holy 
 Spirit are clearly set forth in Ignatius. 2 The Father, the Son, and 
 the Holy Spirit are brought into close connection. 3 Clement 
 writes : " Have we not one God, and one Christ, and one Spirit 
 of Grace that was shed upon us ? " * 
 
 That Baptism brings the remission of sins and the purifying 
 grace of the Spirit is frequently said or implied in the earliest 
 writers. In one place Ignatius ascribes to the death of Christ a 
 purifying effect upon the baptismal water. 5 "We go down into 
 the water," says Barnabas, "laden with sins and filth and rise from 
 it, bearing fruit in the heart, resting our fear and hope on Jesus in 
 the spirit." 6 As to the formula used in baptism, it is thought to 
 have been, at the outset, in the Apostolic age, the shorter form in 
 the name of Christ. 7 It is remarkable, however, that while in the 
 Didache, baptism " into the name of the Lord " is said to be 
 required for admission to the Eucharist, 8 we have in the directions 
 for administering the rite the injunction to baptize " into the name 
 of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 9 This 
 shows that the shorter form does not necessitate the inference that 
 the longer formula was not in use. 
 
 is called His "beloved son" and "heir" (2), is also spoken of. As to the 
 use of the term " Spirit " (TrveO/ta) to denote the Logos, see Lightfoot's note, 
 Clem. Rom. IX. 4. On the other view, that Hermas does not, in V. 6 and 
 IX. 4, use this term as the equivalent of Logos, see (against Zahn) Gebhardt 
 and Harnack, Patrum Apostolic., Opera, Fascic. III. p. 150 sq. See, also, 
 Harnack, DG. I. p. 160 who considers Hermas an Adoptionist and 
 Prof. McGiffert's Ed. of Eusebius, p. 135. Dorner has a full discussion of 
 the topic, presenting the opposite interpretation, Gtsch. d. Lehre v. d. Person 
 Christi, I. p. 205 sq. But Dorner has a different reading of Simil. v. 6 from 
 that adopted (with Lightfoot, Apostol. Fathers) above. 
 
 1 On the passage in the Didache (X. 6) " Hosanna to the God of David " 
 and the question of the reading (0e or ;/<), see Schaff, The Teaching of 
 the Twelve Apostles, p. 197. 
 
 2 See Ephes. 9. 4 I. Cor. 46. 6 Barnabas, II. 
 8 Philad. Introduct. 6 Ephes. XVIII. 5. 
 
 7 See Acts xix. 5, I Cor. i. 13; cf. Neander, Planting and Training of the 
 Church, p. 29 ; Harnack, DG. I. p. 68, n. 3. 
 
 IX. 5. * * VII. I.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 47 
 
 The Lord's Supper, as we infer from the passages bearing on the 
 subject in Ignatius, was still connected with the Agape, or Love- 
 Feast, as it was in the days of the Apostles. If it had become 
 dissevered when Pliny wrote his letter to Trajan, the separation 
 may, perhaps, have been a local usage, which, it may be, was 
 adopted by the Christians in consequence of the rigid policy 
 introduced by that Emperor. We cannot expect in the Apostolic 
 Fathers clearly defined views respecting the import of the Lord's 
 Supper. Ignatius speaks of the Eucharist as " the flesh of our 
 Saviour, Jesus Christ, which flesh suffered for our sins," * and 
 styles the " one bread " " the medicine of immortality and the 
 antidote that we should not die," 2 etc. We cannot be at all sure 
 that he is not using symbolical language. 3 The bread and the 
 wine were gifts of Christian believers for this sacred use, and, in 
 connection with the prayers, were styled an offering ; but with no 
 other significance. From the prayer of thanksgiving, the rite was 
 styled the Eucharist. From the Didache the character of the 
 Eucharistic prayers can be learned. Thanks are given to God 
 for the food and drink, the natural gifts of God to men, as well as 
 for the " spiritual food and drink " bestowed on believers through 
 Christ. 4 
 
 The Second Coming of Christ is looked upon as an event not 
 remote. In one of the parables of Hermas, it is to follow the 
 building of "the Tower," and "the tower," it is said, "will soon 
 be built." The post-communion prayer in the Didache ends with 
 " Maranatha " "The Lord Cometh." 5 In Barnabas, the tem- 
 poral reign of Christ for a thousand years is expected to follow 
 His advent. Papias, who cherishes the same idea, presented a 
 fantastic picture of millennial bliss and comfort. 6 
 
 1 Smyrn. VII. 2 Ephes . X X. 
 
 3 See Philad. V., Trail. VIII. Cf. Lightfoot (ad Smyrn. VII.). A more 
 literal interpretation is given by Thomasius, DG. I. p. 421. 
 
 4 c. X. 5 c. X. 6 (as in I Cor. xvi. 22). Cf. Didache, c. XVI, 
 rf See infra, p. 88.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE JUDAIC SEPARATIST PARTIES THE GNOSTIC SECTS MARCION 
 
 BEFORE Jerusalem was invested by the army of Titus, there had 
 been a flight of Jewish Christians to places on the east of the Jor- 
 dan in the neighborhood of the Dead Sea. There a portion of 
 these fugitives were brought in contact with the Essenes, and 
 probably adopted some of their tenets and customs. When the 
 rites of Jewish worship were excluded from Jerusalem by Hadrian 
 (A.D. 135), there were Jewish Christians a part of those who 
 had come back to Jerusalem from their temporary exile who 
 joined with the Christians of Gentile origin, thus giving up the 
 Mosaic ceremonies. But there were Jewish Christians who were 
 not ready to part with the ceremonies prescribed in the ancient 
 Law. These constituted the heretical class who were called Ebi- 
 onites. The name was not derived, as Tertullian and other 
 Fathers conjectured, from an imaginary founder named " Ebion." 
 The term was from the Hebrew, and was a name early adopted 
 by Jewish disciples, signifying " the poor," in contrast with their 
 Jewish countrymen, who were higher in rank and more favored 
 of fortune. Justin Martyr distinguishes between different types 
 of these sectaries, and Origen makes a like distinction. 1 The 
 milder class, Justin tells us, do not turn their backs on their Gen- 
 tile brethren who reject circumcision and the Jewish Sabbaths. 
 The more rigid class endeavor to compel Gentile believers to 
 conform to the Old Testament rites. 2 It is not said by Justin that 
 any sharp line of division separates these different phases of Judaic 
 Christianity. They all belong to one group. The name 'Ebi- 
 onites ' and the name ' Nazarenes ' were applied by the Fathers 
 indiscriminately to Jewish Christians, although the differences 
 among them are recognized. The less rigid Ebionites made use 
 
 1 C. Celsum, V. Ixi. 2 Dial., c. 46. 
 
 48
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 49 
 
 of a Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. They accepted the miraculous 
 birth of Christ. They held that He was conceived of the Spirit 
 of God. They made no objection to suffering and death as 
 connected with the Messiah. To the baptism of Jesus they 
 attached great consequence, as the epoch when He was furnished 
 with qualifications for His messianic work. Unlike the more in- 
 tolerant fraction of the Ebionites, they did not deny that Paul 
 was a true Apostle. This class of Moderates are described by 
 Jerome, for in his time they were still in being. They are com- 
 monly called, he says, Nazarenes. He sketches their tenets, and 
 adds that in trying to be at once Jews and Christians, they fail of 
 being either. 1 The rigid, Pharasaic Ebionites insisted that cir- 
 cumcision is necessary to salvation, that the Mosaic ceremonial 
 ordinances are still binding on Christians. They rejected and 
 hated the Apostle Paul. They denied the miraculous conception 
 of Jesus, and regarded Him as literally the son of Joseph. They 
 looked upon Him as a Jew, whose distinction from others lay in 
 His fulfilment of the Law. His legal piety caused Him to be se- 
 lected as Messiah by God ; but of this He, in His humility, was 
 not conscious until His baptism. Then the Spirit was given to 
 Him, and He began His messianic work. It was the work of a 
 prophet and teacher. He wrought miracles and enlarged the law 
 by precepts of greater strictness. This class or school of Ebionites 
 was reluctant to think of the Christ as subject to suffering and 
 death, and preferred to dwell on His laws and teachings, and on 
 His future advent in regal splendor. Then He would establish for 
 Himself and His followers, especially for the pious Jews, a millen- 
 nial kingdom of glory and blessedness. 
 
 With these intolerant Ebionites, Justin will have no fellowship. 
 He denies to them the hope of salvation. As to the treatment 
 proper for the more charitable branch of the party, he would 
 regard them as brethren, although, he tells us, some other Chris- 
 tians were not disposed to do so. At a later day exactly when 
 it is impossible to determine even the moderate class were also 
 banished from Christian fellowship. It is not difficult to recognize 
 in these last, whatever modifications may have come in, the suc- 
 cessors of the Jewish Christians of the Apostolic age who, while 
 observing the ritual for themselves, were not inimical to the Apos- 
 
 1 Dum volunt Judaei esse et Christiani, nee Judaei sunt nee Christian!. Ep. 
 cxii., 13 (ad Augustin.).
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 tie to the Gentiles ; while the rigid Ebionites are the successors of 
 the Judaizers who denied his claim to be an Apostle and pro- 
 nounced the ban on such disciples as failed to conform to the 
 ceremonial parts of the Law. 
 
 There was a third type of Ebionitism which may be denominated 
 Essenian Ebionitism. It embraced distinctive features of Ebionite 
 doctrine, with an admixture of Gnostic elements. Its nascent ten- 
 dencies are clearly seen in the heretical party in the church at 
 Colosse, which is described in St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians. 1 
 How far what are called the Essenian features of the system sprung 
 out of the intercourse of Jewish Christians with the Essenian sect, 
 or were due to indirect agencies of a kindred nature, it is not easy 
 to decide. One faction of the Jewish Christian party, of which 
 the peculiarities are foreshadowed in the Colossian heresy, bears 
 the name of Elkesaites. This title is derived from Elkesai, which is 
 not the name of a man, but of a book prized by the sect. The 
 characteristics of the Essenian Ebionitism appear in a curious work 
 of a much later date, the Clementine romance, or the Pseudo- 
 Clementine writings, the Homilies and the Recognitions, 2 the 
 date of which is probably near the beginning of the third century. 
 They contain a story of one Clement, a fictitious creation who is 
 identified with Clement of Rome and figures as the author of the 
 narrative. Clement, after long wanderings, meets his lost parents 
 and brothers. The tale is merely a vehicle for conveying to the 
 reader a set of religious ideas. It is related of this Clement that 
 he was converted by Peter, and listened to disputations of Peter 
 with Simon Magus, the champion of Gnostic heresies. Among the 
 main Ebionite elements in the Clementine romance is the essential 
 identity of Christianity with Judaism. Christ is the restorer of the 
 pure, primitive religion of Moses. Christ is the last of a series of 
 eight prophets, Abraham, Moses, and Christ being the chief, by 
 all of whom the same truth has been inculcated. There are traces 
 of hostility to the Apostle Paul, and Peter is represented as the 
 founder of the Roman Church. On the other hand, there is a dis- 
 position to find an original religion to which all religions are trace- 
 able ; there is dualism in the idea of matter and respecting the 
 
 1 Lightfoot's instructive Dissertations on " The Colossian Heresy " and on 
 " The Essenes," are prefixed to his " Commentary on the Colossians," and are 
 printed also in his Dissertations on the Apostolic Age (1892). 
 
 2 The Epitome, the third book in the series, is a briefer writing of later date.
 
 AKCIENT THEOLOGtf Jf 
 
 nature of sin, a repudiation of sacrifices, and no expectation of an 
 earthly theocratic kingdom. 
 
 In the absence of authentic information, various hypotheses have 
 been broached respecting the origin of the Clementine writings. 
 Baur conceived that he had found in these productions a warrant 
 for his theory of the prevalence of a Judaic, anti-Pauline theology 
 in the Church of the second century. That no support can be 
 derived from them for such a theory is now generally perceived. 
 Gieseler's conjecture was that a Roman Christian whose mind was 
 distracted by doubts and queries sought and found in the East, 
 among the Elkesaites, religious ideas which were in accord with his 
 predilections, and which he incorporated with opinions having a 
 different source and character. 1 The most plausible suggestion 
 that can be offered at present to account for the phenomena is that 
 old Elkesaite or other Jewish Christian writings were, to some 
 extent, taken up and read with interest by Christians ; that they 
 were worked over in order to render them more edifying and to 
 eliminate from them heretical ideas, and that such were the sources 
 of the Homilies and Recognitions. Not unlikely reflections cast 
 upon the Apostle Paul were not wholly excluded, but traces of 
 them were undesignedly left to stand. 2 As Harnack remarks, " the 
 Pseudo-Clementines contribute nothing to our knowledge of the 
 origin of the Catholic Church and doctrine." Even as concerns 
 the knowledge of the tendencies and inner history of the syncre- 
 tistic Jewish Christianity, they "can be used only with great 
 caution." 3 
 
 The Ebionites would have robbed Christianity of its universal 
 character and world-wide destination, and have narrowed it down 
 to the limits of Judaism. The Gnostics, had they gained the 
 day, would have accomplished just the reverse. Gnosticism 
 would have swept away the barriers by which Christianity, as 
 the one absolute religion, fenced off the manifold systems of 
 mythology and philosophy, and the multiform cults which existed 
 among the heathen. Gnosticism may be described as an eclectic 
 philosophy in which heathen, Jewish, and Christian elements are 
 
 1 Gieseler, Kirchengesch., I. iii. 2, 58. 
 
 2 See Harnack's Discussion, DG., Vol. I., p. 264 sq. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 268. " We are precluded from assigning to the syncretistic 
 Jewish Christianity, on the ground of the Pseudo-Clementines, a place in the 
 history of the origin of the Catholic Church and its doctrine." Ibid. p. 270.
 
 $2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 commingled in various proportions, giving rise to a diversity 
 of systems ; the ideas of these systems being incorporated in 
 mythical or mythological forms. When we speak of Gnosticism 
 as eclectic and as a philosophy, it is not to be understood that its 
 origin was due either to a skeptical or a merely speculative turn 
 of mind. The Gnostic leaders were for the most part deeply 
 interested, from practical motives, in the problems of religion, 
 and laid stress not by any means exclusively on theoretical tenets, 
 but even more on ritual forms, ascetic practices, and other matters 
 pertaining to conduct. In the second century, the flourishing 
 period of the Gnostic systems, while, as we learn from the 
 explicit testimony of the Fathers, the mass of Christians belonged 
 to the humbler and uneducated classes, there were found culti- 
 vated men who could not fail to be inquisitive as to the founda- 
 tions of the Christian teaching, and its relations to the origin and 
 constitution of things. Moreover, the all-prevailing drift in the 
 direction of syncretism, the disposition to amalgamate mythology 
 with philosophy, to explain, and to assimilate, as far as might be, 
 Oriental religious systems and cults, created a ferment on the 
 borders of the Christian societies everywhere. The authors of 
 the different speculative and theosophic systems, the fruit of this 
 passion for a universal solvent of religious and of philosophical 
 problems, would be glad to discover a warrant for their ideas 
 in an authoritative revelation. The canon of the New Testament 
 had not yet arisen. The Old Testament was an authoritative 
 book in the churches. Already the Judaic propaganda, through 
 the Alexandrian Jewish school, had fused by means of allegorical 
 interpretations the facts and doctrines of the Old Testament with 
 the teachings of Platonism and Stoicism. It had given currency 
 to certain theological conceptions; to the dualistic idea of an 
 absolute Deity, separated at the widest remove from the world 
 of matter ; to the idea of a chain of intermediate beings ; to the 
 idea of the Logos, as a second deity, a demiurge, stamping by 
 its energy the divine ideas upon the world ; to the idea of an 
 escape from matter as the true deliverance of the soul. The very 
 earliest Gnostic developments were from the Judaic side. Yet 
 the ideas and tendencies just referred to, being common to the 
 metamorphosed Judaism of Philo and to the Hellenic schools 
 from which he borrowed, we cannot attribute the Gnostic systems 
 generally to the Judaic source. The historical circumstances
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 53 
 
 of their rise would not justify us in this conclusion. The various 
 religions of Syria and Asia Minor furnished copious materials, 
 as well as leaders, to the Gnostical movement. The dualistic 
 religions of Persia and India made their contribution, although it 
 seems probable that it was through an Hellenic appropriation 
 of such elements that they found their way into the Gnostic 
 creations. 
 
 There were two main points to which Gnostic thought was 
 directed. The one was the absolute Being. The other was the 
 origin of Evil. How did man become entangled in the fetters of 
 matter, and how should he be delivered? The Gnostics were 
 necessarily led to the consideration of cosmogony, and they were 
 in quest of a satisfactory theodicy. With all their errors and 
 vagaries, they aspired after a wide view, after a theology in a 
 broad and comprehensive sense, and after a philosophy of history. 
 Underlying the creations of phantasy which puzzle and bewilder 
 us the " aeons " emanating in a well-nigh endless succession, to 
 span the gulf between the transcendent Deity and brute matter 
 there were earnest convictions. It was probably the practical 
 side of the Gnostic teaching, the pastoral, so to speak, rather than 
 the didactic office which the Gnostic heresiarchs assumed, that 
 gave them influence over the body of their adherents to whom 
 the region of abstruse speculation was a terra incognita. 
 
 The two prominent and prevailing peculiarities of the Gnostic 
 systems are the following: 
 
 First, the Gnostics laid claim to a deeper insight (yvwcrt?), or 
 knowledge of divine things than was open to common believers. 
 This Gnosis stood in contrast with Pistis, or the faith of Christians 
 generally. On this higher plane, the Gnostic alone stood. Dor- 
 ner has styled Gnosticism "the Pelagianism of the intellect." 
 In essence it was identical with the postulate of the Greek phi- 
 losophers, who asserted the existence of a race of intellectual 
 patricians. There was an esoteric Christianity something more 
 profound than the popular creed. 
 
 Second, the Gnostic systems agree in this fundamental dogma, 
 that the Creator of the world is not the Supreme God, but is either 
 a subordinate, but not hostile, instrument, or an inferior, antago- 
 nistic being. Hence the God of the Old Testament is not the God 
 who sends the Redeemer into the world, but is another being, 
 the Demiurge.
 
 54 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 In conformity with the requirements of their whole theory 
 respecting the Absolute and the identification of matter with evil, 
 the person of the Redeemer was conceived of in a docetic man- 
 ner ; the divine was not really incarnate, but in temporary juxta- 
 position with humanity. 
 
 It is not strange that in the hands of Gnostic teachers utterances 
 of the Apostle Paul were tortured into props of a theory quite 
 alien to his teachings. He had written of a " wisdom " (o-o^t'a) 
 which was reserved for " the perfect," in contrast with the rudi- 
 mentary knowledge imparted by him to the immature, 1 and of a 
 knowledge (Gnosis) which was possessed in different measures 
 by Christian disciples ; although with the Apostle it was an insight 
 and a practical perception from which none were debarred on 
 account of a deficiency in natural endowments. So the language 
 of the Apostle respecting the law and the Old Testament system, 
 as temporary stepping-stones to something higher, was equally 
 capable of being construed as a warrant for a radical disconnec- 
 tion of the Old from the New. The loose and flexible method of 
 allegory which was applied by Christian as well as Judaic teachers 
 to the ancient Scriptures opened the door for the application by 
 Gnostic theologians of a like method to the facts and doctrines of 
 the Gospel. The habit of looking for symbols everywhere, of 
 regarding historical occurrences as having their value in some 
 occult spiritual suggestion, invited speculative minds to transmute 
 the realities of the Evangelical history into materials for their own 
 use. We know that not a few of the Gnostics busied themselves 
 with the interpretation of the Apostolic writings, and that some of 
 them wrote commentaries upon them. It was not, as a rule, 
 by casting aside these writings, but by devices of exegesis, that 
 they sought for a support for their doctrines. 2 Sometimes, it is 
 true, the documents were altered, and romances in the shape of 
 apocryphal gospels and other apocryphal writings of a kindred 
 character were composed for the diffusion of their ideas. They 
 made much of unwritten traditions of Apostolic teaching. 
 
 Of the forms and the extent of the influence of the Gnostics, 
 we covet more information than we possess. They were found 
 within the churches. Sometimes they formed a circle or sodality, 
 without separation from the societies of Christian believers. 
 
 1 I Cor. ii. 6. 
 
 a See Iren., Adv. Hter. III. ii. 2; Tertullian, De Prccscr. Har., c. 14.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 55 
 
 Often, and more and more, they were organized into distinct 
 bodies, having a cult and discipline of their own. Generally the 
 rites and symbolical ceremonies, and the rules of conduct which 
 were enjoined, formed conspicuous features of Gnosticism in its 
 various ramifications. 
 
 Traces of Gnosticism in its nascent forms are observable in the 
 New Testament, in Simon Magus, who afterwards figures prom- 
 inently in history and legend ; in the Epistle to the Colossians, 
 where the adversaries of Paul are represented as ascetic, and as 
 holding to a God who reveals himself in ranks of angels, one 
 above another ; in the Epistles to Timothy, in a class who busy 
 themselves with Angelology ; in the First Epistle of John, in those 
 who denied the reality of the incarnation ; in the Nicolaitans 
 of the Apocalypse, and in the false teachers referred to in the 
 Epistle of Jude who fell into an antinomian immorality. 
 
 Gieseler gives a geographical classification of Gnostic systems, 
 putting in the first class, the Alexandrian, in the second, the 
 Syrian, and in a third class, the Gnostics of Asia Minor and 
 Rome, including the system of Marcion. In the Syrian systems, 
 the dualism was more pronounced. In the religions of the world, 
 as in human nature, in the room of contrasts of higher and lower, 
 there were held to be absolute contrarieties. Baur's classification 
 is based on the views taken respectively by the several classes 
 of Gnostic systems, of the three principal forms of religion, 
 Christianity, Judaism, and Heathenism. In the first class, these 
 three forms of religion are conjoined ; in the second class are 
 placed the systems which separate Christianity from both of the 
 other religions ; and in the third, those which identify Christianity 
 and Judaism, and oppose them both to Heathenism. Under this 
 third class, Baur places the doctrine of the Pseudo-Clementine 
 writings, which we have placed under the head of Ebionitism. 
 Niedner's classification is not essentially diverse from that of 
 Baur. Niedner also has a second classification based on the 
 more friendly or more hostile relations of pistis and gnosis in 
 the several systems. Neander makes two leading divisions, the 
 criterion being the relation of the Gnostic systems to the religion 
 of the Old Testament. The ground of the distinction is a milder 
 or a sharper dualism. The principle of the world and the state 
 of the world are conceived of either as only making up a lower 
 sphere, or as wholly foreign and adverse to the Supreme Being.
 
 56 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 There was supposed to be either a continuous development 
 running through pre-Christian and Christian times, or there was 
 the denial of any such unity. There was either a connecting, 
 or a sundering, of the Old and the New Testament. The first 
 division embraces the Alexandrian systems; the second, the 
 Syrian. But in the second division, the opponents of Judaism 
 may, or may not, exhibit a leaning towards Heathenism. 
 
 Simon Magus is without doubt an historical person whose 
 existence and influence are attested not only in the book of Acts 
 (viii. 9 sq.), but also by Justin Martyr, who was himself a native 
 of Samaria. 1 Simon was considered by his adherents " that power 
 of God which is great," 2 and was reverenced as the incarna- 
 tion of the godhead. His companion, who wandered about with 
 him, Helena, was styled Ennoia, the first thought, the creative 
 intelligence of the Deity. Simon mingled in his teachings 
 astrology and the arts of magic. An influential follower was 
 Menander, and another Samaritan leader of like character and 
 pretensions was Dositheus. 
 
 Cerinthus may be styled an Ebionitic Gnostic, or a Gnostical 
 Ebionite. He derived his ideas from Alexandria, but came to 
 Asia Minor, where he was a contemporary of the Apostle John. 
 He represented the Supreme God as utterly separate from any 
 immediate relation to matter. Between them are ranks of angels, 
 one of whom, in a lower grade, was the maker of the world and 
 the God of the Jews. Cerinthus rejected the miraculous con- 
 ception, and held that with Jesus at His baptism a heavenly spirit 
 was united, but forsook Him at the beginning of His sufferings. 
 The Roman writer, Caius, imputes to him a sensuous Chiliastic 
 belief, but this statement may be a mistaken inference. Hippoly- 
 tus says that Cerinthus held to circumcision and the Sabbath. 
 
 We begin now with the Syrian Gnosis. Saturninus lived proba- 
 bly in the time of Hadrian. In his system the highest God, the 
 " Father Unknown," creates a realm of spirits in descending 
 gradations, the spirits of the seven planets being on the lowest 
 stage. By them, or by the Demiurge at their head, the visible 
 world was made, and also man. The Demiurge is the God of 
 the Jews. A divine spark has been imparted by the Supreme to 
 the race of men. Over the realm of matter, or the Hyle, Satan 
 presides. The human race is composed of two classes diamet- 
 1 Apol. I, 56. a Dial. c. Tryp. i?p,
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 57 
 
 rically opposed. The good God sends an JEon, Nous, who 
 appears in an unreal body as a Saviour to deliver the spiritual 
 class, not only from Satan, but also from the Demiurge and the 
 associated planetary spirits. The means of deliverance embrace 
 abstinence from marriage and other forms of asceticism. 
 
 Allied in their conceptions to the Saturninians were the Ophites, 
 in their various branches, the Naassenes, the Peratae, and 
 others. The Ophites paid reverence to the serpent, as the 
 symbol of hidden, divine wisdom. The maker of the world and 
 God of the Jews is laldabaoth, Product of Chaos, a narrow, 
 evil being, full of pride, but forced to carry out the plan of 
 the Supreme, as an instrument. To his psychical Christ the 
 Heavenly Christ descends from the pleroma, and, when the for- 
 mer is crucified, places himself at the right hand of laldabaoth, 
 where, invisible to the latter, he guides all spiritual life upward 
 from its debasing mixture with matter into the pleroma. The 
 Cainites, who were a branch of the Ophite class, revered the bad 
 characters of the Old Testament as the really good, belonging to 
 the pneumatic natures. 
 
 Of the Alexandrian type of Gnosticism, Basilides, who, like 
 Saturninus, lived under Hadrian, was the first of the noted 
 leaders. There are two diverse expositions of his system, that 
 given by Irenseus, and that of Hippolytus, which is drawn from 
 different sources. According to the latter, Basilides placed at 
 the head of all things the Being who is pure nothing; i.e., 
 nothing concrete, the Ineffable One. From him comes the world- 
 seed, the seminal, chaotic universe, containing in it potentially all 
 beings, higher and lower, almost numberless, in their distinct 
 spheres. The Archon, who is the God of the Jews, is not hostile 
 to the Supreme, but unconsciously fulfils his designs. The problem 
 is for all beings to develop their nature and to rise each to its 
 appropriate place. It is a scheme of self-evolution. The pneu- 
 matic natures, such of them as require purification, which is 
 the third class of these natures, are delivered through the 
 Gospel, which brings in a new period and redemptive influence 
 from the most exalted sources. Jesus is the Soter, a compound 
 " microcosmic " being ; and at His death, the several parts of His 
 being rise each to its proper home. Basilides taught a moderate 
 asceticism in which marriage was not forbidden, although celibacy 
 was commended, He made use of the canonical Gospels, and.
 
 58 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 according to Hippolytus, of the Gospel of John among them; 
 also, of the Epistles of Paul. The foremost of his pupils was 
 his son, Isodorus. Later disciples, the Pseudo-Basilidians, became 
 degenerate and forsook the better tenets of their master. 
 
 Valentinus was probably an Alexandrian Jew who was con- 
 verted to Christianity. He taught in Alexandria and Rome about 
 A.D. 140. His system has clearer logical and philosophical ideas 
 than any other of the Gnostic schemes, and discovers throughout 
 the influence of Platonism. It is the Gnostic system which was 
 most widely diffused and is best known to us. There is an unfold- 
 ing of the Absolute into finite forms of being in long succession, 
 and in two spheres, a higher realm, the scene of a theogony, and 
 a lower realm, the sphere of sense. This lower world is the prov- 
 ince of the Demiurge, but the human beings formed by him have 
 in them pneumatic elements. Redemption is undertaken by Jesus, 
 the Messiah of the Demiurge, upon whom, at his baptism, the 
 heavenly Soter descends to proclaim divine truth, and by impart- 
 ing the Gnosis for the sake of opening the eyes of the pneumatic 
 beings, to aid them in finding their way to the pleroma above. 
 The Demiurge falls in with the plans of the Soter. The psychical 
 Christ is crucified, but the heavenly Christ prosecutes His redemp- 
 tive work to its completion. In all this, Judaism is not presented 
 as antagonistic, but as subordinate, to the supreme powers. 
 
 Marcion is the most prominent figure among the Anti-Judaic 
 Gnostics. Yet, such are the peculiarities of his system that he 
 stands in important respects by himself. He was born in Asia 
 Minor, and came to Rome about A.D. 140. His intensely practi- 
 cal temper and his moral earnestness are traits which command 
 respect. Deeply moved by the revelation of the merciful char- 
 acter of God in the Gospel of Salvation, and by the Apostle Paul's 
 proclamation of the freedom and universality of divine grace, Mar- 
 cion conceived that the Old Testament system, especially its rep- 
 resentations of the character of God, are in contradiction to the 
 truth which had so profoundly stirred his sympathy. He inferred 
 that the Old Testament could not have had the same origin as 
 the Gospel. He magnified the contrast of law and grace into a 
 direct antagonism. Moreover, nature struck him as imperfect, 
 and therefore as not proceeding from the Father of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. Marcion assumed the existence of three principles : 
 Hyle, or matter, which is eternal ; the God of love, incapable of
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 59 
 
 contact with matter ; and the Demiurge, a being of limited power 
 who strives with but partial success to form and shape matter. 
 The resistance of this element to the Demiurge is concentrated in 
 Satan. The Demiurge is a God of justice, but justice, retributive 
 displeasure, penalty, are incompatible with Love. Christianity, 
 therefore, is an utterly new system, standing in no organic connec- 
 tion with the former dispensation. It is hostile alike to Judaism 
 and heathenism. Without an insight into the progressive char- 
 acter of divine revelation, and not resorting, like so many of his 
 contemporaries, to allegory as a solvent of difficulties, he had no 
 alternative but altogether to discard the Old Testament. The 
 Demiurge, he held, created men after his own image, giving them 
 material bodies, subject to evil desires, and revealed himself to 
 the Jews whom he chose for his own people. He gave them a 
 law made up of externals, together with a defective system of 
 morals, void of an inner, life-giving principle. He promised them 
 a world-conquering Messiah who should bring the heathen to a 
 rigid judgment. But the good God would not suffer this harsh 
 sentence to be carried out. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius, He 
 suddenly descended to Capernaum, in an unreal body, but styled 
 Himself the Messiah. Jesus, however, was not the Demiurge's 
 Messiah, and disregarded his laws. The Demiurge caused Him 
 to be crucified. But His sufferings were only apparent ; the Demi- 
 urge saw himself deceived and his power destroyed. Christ de- 
 scended to Hades and transported the poor heathen to the third 
 heaven. He then revealed Himself to the Demiurge and com- 
 pelled him to acknowledge his guilt in crucifying an innocent per- 
 son. It is only those who reject the fellowship of God who fall 
 under the Demiurge's avenging justice. 
 
 Marcion regarded Paul as the only true Apostle. The other 
 Apostles had corrupted the Gospel. For this reason he accepted 
 no other Gospel except that of Luke, from which he endeavored 
 to eliminate passages not congruous with his ideas of the Law. 
 With this Gospel, which was acceptable to him partly on account 
 of the relation of the author to Paul, he joined ten of Paul's Epis- 
 tles. Marcion asserted no higher place for a gnosis above the 
 faith of ordinary Christians. His code of morals was ascetic. 
 Marriage and the partaking of flesh and of wine were abjured. 
 His system was an aggressive one and was zealously propa- 
 gated. The Marcionites were found in Egypt and Syria, as well
 
 60 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 as in Italy and Africa. The number of polemical books written 
 against them indicates how wide was the diffusion of the sect in 
 its different branches. Its votaries were still found several cen- 
 turies after the death of its founder. 
 
 The danger to which the Church and the Christian religion were 
 exposed from the seductive influences of Gnosticism was far 
 greater than the peril arising from the antipodal heresy of Ebioni- 
 tism. Ebionitism was the struggle of an obsolescent system to 
 maintain its standing. It was a desperate effort to cling to a re- 
 ceding past. The freedom and catholicity of the Gospel were 
 truths too evident to be obscured, and too precious to be surren- 
 dered. The exaltation of Christ in His relation to God was felt 
 to be vitally connected with the Christian experience of Recon- 
 ciliation through Him, and too plain in the Apostolic teaching to 
 be given up. But the Gnostic sects professed to furnish a rational 
 and comprehensive system of religious truth, in which redemption 
 through Christ should have a place of honor. They connected 
 with their doctrines the charm of mystery, holding out to the 
 initiated the welcome promise of light, and alluring many by 
 ascetic prescriptions. Christianity manifested its innate power in 
 withstanding this flood of error. The doctrine of one God, of the 
 origin of sin, not in any natural necessity, but in a moral fall, and 
 the doctrine of a real incarnation, proved to be barriers too strong 
 to be swept away. Gnosticism stands on the page of history as a 
 perpetual warning against all endeavors to substitute a physical or 
 metaphysical for an ethical doctrine of sin and redemption. One 
 of the marked effects of the Gnostical theories was the influence 
 exerted by them in stimulating the development of theology 
 within the limits of the Church. It may almost be said that it 
 was in the storm and stress occasioned by the Gnostical move- 
 ment that Christian theology was roused to grapple with its most 
 weighty problems. The indirect agency of the Gnostic move- 
 ment in determining the character of the old-Catholic church is 
 manifest.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THEOLOGY : THE GREEK APOLOGISTS 
 
 THE beginnings of Christian theology are to be found in the 
 Greek Apologists. These writers treat Christianity predominantly 
 as a body of teachings pertaining to religion and morals. It is 
 true that we must bear in mind the special regard which they 
 have to the character and situation of those whom they address. 
 This circumstance is not sufficient, however, to explain their 
 pervading tendency. It is really the point of view from which 
 they habitually look at the Gospel. Justin Martyr, in the early 
 part of the First Apology, in a summary way describes Chris- 
 tianity as consisting of the doctrine of the true God, in contrast 
 with the superstitions of the heathen who, with the exception 
 of the philosophers, are misled by the demons of the doctrine 
 of virtue, and of rewards and punishments in the world hereafter. 1 
 The Gospel is a new and improved philosophy the truth of which 
 is attested by revelation. There is this heaven-given guarantee of 
 its truth, which is wholly wanting to the heathen in reference to 
 the beliefs which they have in common with Christians. This 
 claim for Christianity that it is a philosophy, and as such merits 
 attention and respect, pervades the Apologetic literature. Even 
 Tatian, who speaks with scorn of the pride of the Greeks and the 
 boasting and wrangling of the philosophers, professed to be the 
 disciple of an older philosophy, superior in its contents, although 
 of "barbaric origin," and having the peculiar merit of being 
 accessible to all, "the rich and the poor," even "old women and 
 striplings." 2 The Apologists are at pains to adduce from the 
 heathen sages ideas and precepts coincident with those of the 
 Gospel. Their teachings, it is affirmed, are mixed to some extent 
 
 1 Apol. I. 9-12. Cf. 6-8, 13-20. 
 
 2 Orat. c. xxxii. Cf. xxxv., xlii. 
 
 61
 
 62 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 with error. They are borrowed, it is sometimes alleged, from the 
 older teaching of Moses and the prophets. Yet, Justin emphati- 
 cally maintains, what is best in Plato and the other philosophers 
 was imparted by the divine Logos, who did not withhold light 
 even from those guides of the heathen. Christ, says Justin, " is 
 the Logos (or Word) of whom the whole human race are par- 
 takers, and those who lived according to reason are Christians, 
 even though accounted atheists. Such among the Greeks were 
 Socrates and Heraclitus, and those who resembled them." l 
 Justin is not silent respecting the work of Christ as a Redeemer. 
 It was a part of the mission of Christ to overcome the demons. 2 
 "He cleansed by His blood those who believed on Him." 3 By 
 His blood and the mystery of His cross, He bought us. 4 Yet in 
 some places there is coupled with expressions of this kind lan- 
 guage indicating that, nevertheless, it is the teaching of Christ 
 which holds the central place in Justin's thoughts. In keeping 
 with this way of looking at Christianity as a collection of tenets 
 respecting God and duty and future rewards and punishments, is 
 the view taken of its proofs. It is true that the Apologists do not 
 fail to refer to the purity and elevation of Christian doctrines, in 
 comparison with ethnic teaching. They dwell, moreover, with 
 emphasis on the restraining and refining power of Christianity as 
 evinced in the lives of its adherents. But the grand proof on 
 which reliance is placed is the miracle of prophecy. The appeal 
 is constantly made to the marvellous correspondence of the 
 history of Christ with the predictions of the Old Testament. 
 Here is the Gibraltar in which the early Greek defenders of the 
 faith plant themselves. 
 
 We proceed now to speak separately of the leading points in 
 the theology of Justin in their proper order. In his writings a 
 certain contrast is perceptible between what strike us as custom- 
 ary phrases respecting the Gospel expressions used, to be sure, 
 with no lack of sincerity and the interpretations of Christianity 
 which spring from his own reflection, under the influence of his 
 philosophical bent. 5 We find him attributing to God all the 
 varied personal attributes and agencies which it is usual for 
 
 1 Apol. I. 46. * Apol. I. 32. Cf. Dial. 40, 54. 
 
 2 Ibid. I. 45; II. 6; Dial. 131. * Dial. 134. 
 
 5 The difference here pointed out is well illustrated by Purves in The 
 Testimony of Justin Martyr to Early Christianity (1889).
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 63 
 
 Christian believers to ascribe to Him. He is the living God, 
 just and compassionate, the Father and Maker of all, knowing all 
 things, ruling all, caring for the individual as well as for the world 
 in its totality. Yet we have presented prominently another con- 
 ception, Platonic and Alexandrian Jewish, of God as the tran- 
 scendent, ineffable One, too exalted to be the subject of definite 
 predicates, the ordinary representations of Him being merely 
 relative to our finite apprehension. It is only through an inter- 
 mediate being that He is revealed. It is through the Logos or 
 Word, that God is manifested. Justin knew and used the Fourth 
 Gospel. It is not reasonable to suppose that the identifying of 
 Christ with the Logos in the extent to which he carries it, is to 
 be explained had he not been conscious of a warrant from Apos- 
 tolic authority. Yet Justin's particular idea of the Logos is not 
 consonant with that of John, but corresponds to that of Plato and 
 Philo. The Logos of Justin is not, as in the Palestinian sources, 
 including John, the Word of God, but the divine Reason. The 
 Logos, impersonal in God from the beginning, becomes personal 
 prior to the creation. " God begot of Himself a beginning, 
 before all creatures, a certain reasonable Power, which is called by 
 the Holy Ghost, Glory of the Lord, at other times Son, Wisdom, 
 Angel, God, Lord, and Logos." * In the production of the Son, 
 God was not Himself changed, more than a man's mind is 
 changed by the utterance of a word, or a fire lessened by having 
 another fire kindled from it. He is the only-begotten by the 
 Father of all things. 2 He is from the Father " not by abscission, 
 as if the Father's essence were divided off." 3 He is not an 
 emanation as the light emanates from the sun. 4 The language of 
 Justin implies that the inner nature of the Son is identical with 
 that of the Father. The sonship of Christ is thus traced back to 
 the ante-mundane generation of the hypostatic Logos. Moreover, 
 the Logos, next to the Father, is the recipient of divine honors. 
 He is associated with the Father when it is said, " Let us make 
 man in our own image" (Gen. i. 26). 5 It was the Logos who 
 appeared in the theophanies of the Old Testament. Neverthe- 
 less, Justin does not fully succeed in taking Christ out of the 
 category of creatures. He is begotten, or assumes a personal 
 form of being, by an act of God's will. He was generated from 
 
 1 Dial. 61. * Ibid. 105. 3 Ibid. 128. 
 
 * Ibid. 128. 6 Ibid. 62.
 
 6 4 
 
 the Father " by his power and will." l The Logos is another " in 
 number," but not in "mind (or will)." 2 There is a personal 
 distinction, but this is not eternal, and it springs from an act of 
 God's will, anterior to the creation of the world. 3 To the Son is 
 assigned the second place in relation to the eternal God. 4 More- 
 over, while the " unbegotten God " does not move, nor is he con- 
 tained in any place, the Logos enters into the limits of place and 
 time. 5 In Tatian and Athenagoras, the Logos is from eternity 
 potentially in God, and " came forth to be the idea and energiz- 
 ing power of all material things." 6 " By his simple will," says 
 Tatian, " the Logos springs forth," " the first-begotten work of the 
 Father," " the beginning of the world." Here is no abscission, 
 there is a participation on the part of the Logos, 7 a function 
 devolved on the Logos, the power or principle from which he 
 springs being still inherent in the Father. 8 Theophilus distin- 
 guishes the internal Logos from the Logos expressed. 9 The 
 former is said to be not distinguishable from God's mind and 
 thought. 10 
 
 The Logos is the organ of divine revelation. It is God who 
 creates, but the rationality of the creation springs from the Logos. 
 He bears, according to Justin, the closest relation to the reason 
 of man. The human reason is akin to the divine, and all of 
 its perceptions of truth are derived, in a way that is only vaguely 
 indicated, from the Logos. Justin speaks of the " seminal Logos " 
 of whom all men partake. To the Logos are ascribed functions 
 which a riper theology, in conformity with Scripture, attributes 
 to the Holy Spirit. Justin says that it was the Logos who caused 
 the Virgin Mother to conceive." Little space is left in human 
 history for the activity of the Holy Spirit. It is the Logos which 
 inspires the prophets and is everywhere active. Yet Justin speaks 
 
 1 Dial. 128. He is novoyevris (only-begotten) Dial. 105. When He is 
 called first-born (TrporriroKos) it is not implied that beings and things below 
 Him are begotten in the same sense. On this topic see the remarks of Engel- 
 hardt (in answer to Weizsacker), p. 146. 
 
 2 Cf. Dial. 56, 62, 128, 129. 8 Apol. II. 6. 
 
 * Dial. 127, cf. 34, 60. 
 
 6 Ibid. 127 ; cf. 34, 60. Athenagoras, 10. 
 
 6 Athenagoras, 10. 
 
 7 He comes into being Karct nepurpbv. Tatian, c. 5. 
 
 8 tvSidecTos. 1 Ad. Autol. II. IO, 22. 
 
 * wpofiopiKos. u Apol. I. 33.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 65 
 
 of the Spirit in conjunction with the Father and Christ, in such 
 terms as naturally to imply that the Spirit is regarded as distinct 
 from both, although subordinate to them. 1 It is evident that 
 his conception of the Holy Spirit and of the relation of the Spirit 
 to the Father and Son is not well defined in his own thoughts. 2 
 
 It is clear that Justin considered the humanity of Christ a reality 
 and not an illusive appearance. But in one particular a question 
 arises respecting his views on this subject. In one passage he 
 
 1 Apol. I. 13, 61, 65, 67. Cf. Dial. I, 4, 29. 
 
 2 In Apol. I. 6, Justin enumerates as the objects of Christian worship the 
 most true God, the Son who came from Him, " and the host of other good 
 angels," and the Spirit of Prophecy. The placing of the angels in the list 
 before the Spirit was probably an accident, being suggested not unlikely by 
 the mention of the Son as sent from God; that is, as a messenger, the literal 
 sense of " angel." But what of the worship which is said to be accorded to 
 angels ? As Justin nowhere else refers to a worship of angels, but asserts that 
 only the Father, Son, and Spirit are to be worshipped (Apol. I. 13, 61,65, 66), 
 it is probable that the term ' worship ' is used in Apol. I. 6, without reflection, 
 in a loose sense, his aim being here to confute the charge of atheism. The 
 Christians, he would say, are not so destitute, as you assert, of celestial objects 
 of veneration. The apologetic motive leads Justin here to show that these 
 are numerous. (On this point, see Baumgarten-Crusius, DG., p. 175, note I. 
 The various opinions upon the sense of the passage are given in Otto's ed. of 
 Justin, ad loc.) It must be observed, however, that Justin represented mate- 
 rial things and the care of men to have been committed to the charge of 
 angels (Apol. II. 5). There is ground for the remark of Neander, that "we 
 may observe a wavering between the idea of the Holy Ghost as one of the 
 members of the Triad, and a spirit standing in some relationship with the 
 angels." (Church History, Vol. I. p. 609. See especially the note on the 
 same page.) On this subject, there is an instructive passage in Engelhardt, 
 p. 146. His quotation from Nitzsch (DG., p. 186) is worthy of attention. 
 Athenagoras makes a part of Christianity, " rb 6fo\oyucbv jit^pos " or the doc- 
 trine of God the affirmation of a multitude of angels and servants " mean- 
 ing, probably, angels that are servants whom the Creator has appointed to 
 occupy themselves with the elements, and the heavens and the world and the 
 things that are in it, and with the regulating of them" (Emb. 10. Cf. c. 24). 
 Here there seems to be the recognition of divine beings of a secondary class. 
 The subordination of all these to the one God and Father was felt to be 
 adequate to the securing of monotheism. " So fluctuating (fliessend) and 
 indeterminate," says Thomasius (DG., I, 175) "is everything as yet. The 
 above-named Church teachers are themselves still struggling for the expression 
 that shall correspond to the common Christian faith." Or, in the words of 
 Neander, " the common (Christian) feeling did not find at once its correspond- 
 ing expression in the forms evolved by the understanding." (Church History, 
 I. 609.)
 
 66 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 speaks of Christ as composed of body, Logos, soul. 1 Since he 
 elsewhere analyzes human nature into three elements, spirit, soul 
 that is, animal soul and body, it is inferred that in his con- 
 ception of Christ, the Logos takes the place of the rational human 
 spirit. It is not certain, however, that he might not use " soul " 
 in the more comprehensive sense. 2 It is not unlikely that the 
 question was not in his own mind a subject of discriminating 
 thought. 
 
 Justin asserts creation to have been by an act of the divine will. 
 But it is principally to the ordering of the world, the forming of 
 the cosmos, that his attention is directed. There is no explicit 
 rejection of the doctrine of the eternity of the preexisting matter, 
 the chaotic material. 3 Even if he himself did not hold the Pla- 
 tonic view, as did his pupil, Tatian, he nevertheless does not 
 consider that opinion an error of sufficient moment to call for a 
 denial of it. 
 
 In common with the other Apologists, Justin is strenuous in his 
 repudiation of Stoic fatalism. His earnestness in asserting the 
 liberty and responsibility of the individual carries along with it 
 the failure adequately to perceive the power of sinful habit. Sin, 
 he teaches, was brought into the world by the agency of demons, 
 but not without the consent of the transgressor in each case of 
 guilt. And it is still in the power of men to cast off sin by the 
 exertion of their own wills. 4 There is no predestination to sin, 
 but simply foreknowledge of it. All men will be judged, each 
 for himself, " like Adam and Eve." 5 
 
 It has been remarked that when Justin makes the ordinary 
 statements respecting the efficacy of the cross, it is not an expia- 
 tory work of Christ which is prominent in his mind. It is the 
 Incarnation rather than the Atonement that interests him. Yet 
 a passage quoted by Irenseus from Justin's lost work against Mar- 
 cion, suggests that in the other writings not extant Justin may 
 have had something more definite to teach on this last theme. 
 In this passage, he speaks of the only-begotten Son as sent into 
 
 u%^ Apol. II. IO. 
 
 2 The interpretation of Justin is impartially discussed, with a statement of 
 arguments on both sides, by Dorner, Person Christi, I. 433 sq. 
 
 3 The attitude of Justin on this point is well explained by Engelhardt, pp. 
 139, 140. 
 
 * Apol. I. 28, 43, 44; Apol. II. 7; Dial, 88, 102, 140, 6 Dial. 124.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 67 
 
 the world from the Father, and "gathering in Himself the work 
 of His own hands suum plasma in semetipsum recapitulans." 
 In Irenseus, as we shall see, the gathering up (recapitulatio} of 
 mankind in Christ as their head is the thought at the root of his 
 exposition of the Atonement. 1 
 
 Justin believed in the doctrine of a temporal millennium, which 
 in the second century was widely diffused. Christ was to come 
 in a visible advent, and make Jerusalem the centre of His king- 
 dom, which was to continue for a thousand years and was to be 
 followed by the resurrection and the judgment. In the Dialogue 
 with Trypho he teaches that there will be two resurrections, sepa- 
 rated by the interval of the millennium. 2 The Second Advent 
 was not far distant. The Jews are not described as to be in any 
 way distinguished in the triumphal advent of the Lord. Nothing 
 is said of a restoration of them to Jerusalem. 
 
 Justin departs from Plato in affirming that souls are not essen- 
 tially immortal. Their continuance in being depends forever on 
 the will of God. The statement is not seldom reiterated, that 
 punishment in the world to come is eternal. The idea that it is 
 supposed by Justin to terminate, and that immortality in the strict 
 sense is made conditional on being righteous, is erroneously in- 
 ferred from what is said of dependence on the will of God for 
 the continuance of being. " Immortality " in Justin, as in other 
 Apologists, includes the vision of God and blessed fellowship 
 with Him. This it is that the wicked are to be forever deprived 
 of. " I affirm," he says, " that souls never perish for this would 
 be in truth a godsend to the wicked." 3 "We have been taught 
 that they only will attain to immortality who lead holy and vir- 
 tuous lives like God ; and we believe that all who live wickedly, 
 and do not repent, will be punished in eternal fire." 4 
 
 Of the intermediate state of the condition of souls, whether 
 righteous or wicked, prior to the resurrection, nothing definite 
 is said by Justin. 
 
 The Church, in Justin's conception of it, was a Gentile commu- 
 nity. The number of Jews who had accepted the Gospel is said 
 to be small. He would not deny fellowship to Jewish believers 
 who kept up the Mosaic ceremonies, provided they did not strive 
 to induce Gentile Christians to adopt them, This was the limit 
 
 1 Irenaeus, Adv. Har. IV. 6, 2. 8 "Eppaiov. Dial. 5. 
 
 2 Dial. 81, 113. * Apol. I. 21. Cf. Dial. 130, Apol. I. 28.
 
 68 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of his charity in this direction. In his teaching relative to the 
 origin of the new life in the Christian soul, and its continuance, 
 there are found what have been not inaptly called Pelagian 
 statements in juxtaposition with teaching of an opposite character. 
 On the one hand, the Christian life is said to begin in the vir- 
 tuous choice, a choice that is spoken of as if it were wholly self- 
 originated and self-sustained ; and, on the other hand, there is 
 not wholly wanting a recognition of an opening of " the gates of 
 life" by divine grace, "the grace of understanding." 1 Now 
 Baptism is spoken of as ensuing upon a conviction of the truth 
 of Christianity and a self-dedication to a life of virtue, and again 
 it is described as " regeneration " and as bringing " illumination " 
 to the soul. 2 Baptism brings the remission of sins previously 
 committed. It thus clears the way to a hopeful endeavor to 
 voluntary efforts to obtain the rewards of heaven through a course 
 of obedience. 3 As regards the Lord's Supper, nothing is said of 
 any direct effect of it to remove sin or guilt. But our flesh and 
 blood are said to be nourished by assimilating 3 the bread and 
 wine of the sacrament, nourished, the meaning probably is, 
 with reference to the resurrection and the future life of " incor- 
 ruption." The food thus received is said to be " the flesh and 
 blood of Jesus." 4 The idea of Justin appears to be that the 
 divine Logos is mysteriously present in the bread and wine, as in 
 the Incarnate Christ. There is no probability that literal tran- 
 substantiation is meant. 
 
 The pearl of the Apologetic literature is the Epistle to Diognetus. 
 None of the early writings of this class rival it in spirit and impres- 
 siveness. The author fails to discern, as it would seem, the pre- 
 paratory office of the Mosaic system, and puts the sacrifices and 
 ceremonies of the Jews as on the same level with the external ser- 
 vices rendered by the heathen to their divinities. The true char- 
 acter of Christian disciples and the cruelty with which they were 
 treated he depicts with nervous eloquence. The incarnation and 
 divinity of Christ are asserted with all earnestness. The Creator 
 of the Universe has sent to men, not an angel or any other 
 subaltern, but "the Artificer and Creator of the Universe Himself," 
 by whom He made and ordered all things. He sent Him not to 
 
 1 Dial. 7, 30. 2 Apol. I. 61. Ibid. I. 66. 
 
 * The passage is in Apol. I. 66. This is the sense of /Aera/SoXijj'. See 
 Otto's Justin, I. p. 180 (ed. 3).
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 69 
 
 inspire terror. He sent Him to use persuasion, not force. He 
 sent Him "as sending God," and "as [a man] unto men." 1 " He 
 sent His only-begotten Son." He communicated His merciful 
 plan to His Son alone. 2 He planned everything in His mind 
 with His Son. 3 "The Word, who was from the beginning. . . . 
 He, I say who was eternal, who to-day was accounted a Son " 
 by Him the riches of grace are bestowed on the faithful and on all 
 who seek for it. 4 If Justin touches lightly the Atonement, the 
 opposite is true of the author of this Epistle. God " in pity took 
 on Him our sins, and Himself parted with His own Son as a ran- 
 som for us, the holy for the lawless, the just for the unjust. . . . 
 In whom was it possible for us lawless and ungodly men to have 
 been justified, save only in the Son of God? O the sweet ex- 
 change. . . . that the iniquity of many should be concealed in 
 One Righteous Man," etc. 3 The love and pity of God are set 
 forth in glowing words ; yet the penalty that awaits the wicked and 
 unrepenting is "eternal fire." 8 
 
 1 Epist. ad Diognet. c. 7. 2 c. 8. 8 c. 9. 4 c. II. 6 c. 10.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE RISE OF THE OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH THE RULE OF FAITH 
 THE CANON THE EPISCOPATE THE RISE AND THE EXCLUSION 
 OF MONTANISM 
 
 THE course of the development of doctrine is intimately con- 
 nected with the rise of the Ancient Catholic Church. An essen- 
 tial element in this historic change is indicated in the new mean- 
 ing which came to be attached to the term 'Catholic.' In Ignatius 
 it signifies Christians generally, the Church of which Christ is the 
 centre, in contrast with each local church, the centre of which is 
 the bishop. The contrast is between the Catholic Church and a 
 particular body of Christians. 1 Later, in the age of Irenaeus, the 
 Catholic Church has come to signify orthodox Christianity in its 
 organized form in the world at large, as this Church stands aloof 
 from heretical sects. The three principal topics which we have to 
 consider under the general subject are the Baptismal Confession 
 or "Apostles' Creed " and the "Rules of Faith," Tradition and 
 Scripture, including the rise of the Canon, and organization under 
 the developed Episcopate. 
 
 I. The authoritative source of Christian knowledge was always 
 considered to be the Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve 
 Apostles, which forms the title of the Didache. In phraseology 
 of this kind the teaching of the Apostle Paul was understood to 
 be included. The instruction given to the young and to the con- 
 verts was not confined to an inculcation of the precepts of the 
 Gospel such as we find in Hermas and the Didache. The 
 baptismal formula, as we find it in Matthew, was early expanded 
 into a brief statement of fundamental truths. As thus enlarged it 
 was repeated by the candidates for baptism and served as the 
 basis of preliminary instruction. Probably as early as the third 
 
 1 Smyrn. 8. See Lightfoot, Ignatius and Polycarp, II. I, p. 310. 
 70
 
 n 
 
 century the story had sprung up that this Confession of faith was 
 not only made up of elements common to the Apostles' teaching, 
 but also that it was composed by the Apostles themselves, each 
 of them contributing a portion. The legend grew until it finally 
 embraced the statement that the creed was brought to Rome by 
 Peter. The oldest form of this Confession of which we have any 
 knowledge is the Roman Symbol. It was in use in the Church 
 at Rome before the middle of the second century. It read as 
 follows : " I believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in Christ 
 Jesus his only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy 
 Spirit and the Virgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate and 
 was buried, on the third day He rose from the dead, (He) as- 
 cended into Heaven, (He) sitteth at the right hand of the Father, 
 whence He will come to judge the quick and the dead ; and in 
 (the) Holy Spirit, the Holy Church, the remission of sins, the 
 resurrection of the body. Amen." 1 This creed is thought by 
 Zahn to have been in use in Ephesus as early as i3O. 2 There are 
 not wanting arguments in favor of the opinion that it originated 
 in Asia Minor. 3 Near the end of the century it is found in 
 Smyrna, in Southern Gaul, and in Carthage. In somewhat modi- 
 fied forms the creed spread among the churches of the East and 
 West. 4 In the shape which it assumed in Southern Gaul, probably 
 in the fifth century, it established itself in the churches in com- 
 munion with Rome, superseding the older forms. In the East it 
 was not ascribed to the Apostles, and since there was no check 
 upon mutations in its text, it melted away, never gaining a perma- 
 nent lodgment among the authoritative creeds. 
 
 Under the influence of the disciplina arcani the obligation of 
 silence respecting the mysteries of the Christian faith the 
 Apostles' Creed was not committed to writing or disclosed to the 
 heathen. But under the name of " rules of faith," we find in 
 Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen, statements of Christian doctrine 
 which are equivalent to a paraphrase or expansion of the creed. 
 
 1 Hahn, Biblioth. d. Symb., etc., 15. See the texts and critical remarks in 
 Kattenbusch, Das Apostol. Symbol, I. pp. 59-78. 
 
 2 Zahn, Apostol. Symbol, etc. (2 ed. 1893), p. 47. 
 
 3 Kattenbusch, however, maintains the reverse that the " Grundstock " of 
 the Oriental symbols is the Roman. Ibid. I. 368-392. 
 
 * See the collection of these forms in Denziger, Enchirid. Symboll. 
 Definitt., pp. 1-8.
 
 72 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 These are the regulce fidei. 1 They are not the same, save as to 
 their substance, in the different writers. In Irenaeus the Rule of 
 Faith is presented, in three places, in as many different forms. In 
 Tertullian also there are three varying forms of the regula. But 
 the Rules of Faith are represented to be the belief of " the Church, 
 scattered through the whole world," the belief " which has been 
 received from the Apostles and their Disciples." - In this definite, 
 authoritative teaching, the Church everywhere finds a bulwark 
 against Gnostical innovations and perversions. It is a wall about 
 the Church for defence against open and covert assaults. If one 
 would ascertain what the Apostles taught, we are told that it is 
 only necessary to repair to the churches which they planted and 
 within which their doctrines have been preserved. 3 These churches 
 are so many witnesses against the novelties of heresy. 4 
 
 II. At the beginning of the second century there was no Canon 
 of the New Testament. 5 That is to say, there was no body of 
 New Testament writings which were recognized by the churches 
 as authoritative scriptures. As far as writings are concerned, the 
 Old Testament was in the foreground of their thoughts and con- 
 stituted their Bible. It was to the Old Testament that they 
 referred their adversaries in proof of the divine mission of Jesus 
 and of the facts of the Gospel. They appealed to the correspond- 
 ence between prediction and fulfilment. At first the eyes of 
 Christian believers were directed upwards with a yearning expec- 
 tation of the advent of the Lord. For a time tradition did not 
 become in a perceptible degree insecure. The combined influence 
 of oral narration and writings of Apostles and their disciples suf- 
 ficed for the understanding of what Christianity was. There was 
 no distinct impression of the fact that the period of revelation had 
 
 1 They are collected in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, II. 12 sq. 
 
 2 Iren. Adv. H<zr. I. 10, i. 
 
 3 Tertullian, de Prascr. c. 36. Iren. Adv. Htzr. III. 3, i sq. 
 
 4 Tertullian, de Pr<zscr. c. 21. 
 
 5 The title " Canon " as a designation of the normative Scriptures first 
 appears in the 59th Canon of the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 363) and in the 
 Festal Epistle of Athanasius. On the origin and meaning of the term ' canon,' 
 see Westcott, Hist, of the Canon, p. I and App. A. For the names given to 
 the Bible, "The Scripture," "The Scriptures," "The Holy Scriptures," 
 "The Scriptures of the Lord" (at Kvpia.Ka.1 ypa<paf), "The Prophets," "The 
 Prophets and Apostles," "Testament," "Old and New Testament," "Instru- 
 ment," "Instruments," etc. see Zahn, Gesch. d. N. T. Kanons, I. i. 85-150.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 73 
 
 come to an end. Moreover, the Apostolic writings had not been 
 altered by heretical leaders or mingled with forged compositions. 
 But when an opposite state of things arose, the importance of pre- 
 serving, collecting, and distinguishing the authentic documents of 
 the Christian Revelation, was appreciated. More and more, oral 
 traditions became less secure. Heretical parties set up the claim 
 to possess traditions of their own. by which they sought to sustain 
 their novel speculations. The Apostolic writings began to undergo 
 alteration. Works having no title to be ranked with them were 
 brought forward by sectaries. The means of forming the Canon, 
 as soon as the need of it was felt, were at hand. From the outset, 
 there had been a circulation of Apostolic writings from one church 
 to another. 1 Basilides, the Gnostic, quotes as Scripture, the Epistle 
 to the Romans, and the First to the Corinthians. 2 Paul's Epistles 
 were so regarded when the Second Epistle of Peter was written. 3 
 The authority of the Apostles' Writings was not questioned in the 
 churches. They are referred to by Ignatius, at least by implica- 
 tion, as a class of writings in the same rank with the prophets. 4 
 Clement of Alexandria divides the Christian books into the Gospel, 
 the Apostles, or "the Apostle," and the Prophets. 5 "Take 
 up the Epistle of the blessed Paul the Apostle," writes Clement of 
 Rome to the Corinthian Church. 6 It is "the voice of God," Justin 
 affirms, which Christians believe, that voice " which is both 
 spoken again through the Apostles of Christ and proclaimed to 
 us by the prophets." 7 "The preaching of the Church," Irenseus 
 declares, " is on all sides consistent and continues like itself, and 
 hath its testimony from the prophets and apostles." 8 When 
 Hegesippus found in the churches which he visited the doctrine 
 taught by "the law and the prophets and the Lord," 9 we cannot 
 be sure, although it is possible, that other New Testament writings 
 besides the Gospels are referred to. 10 The " Memorabilia " of 
 which Justin speaks, and of which he says that they were written 
 
 1 See Col. iv. 16. The Ep. to the Ephesians may have been addressed to 
 the circle of churches in Asia Minor. See Weiss, Einl. in d. N. T,, p. 261. 
 
 2 Hippolytus, Har. Ref. VII. xiii., xv., xiv. 
 
 8 2 Peter iii. 16. 4 Phil. 5, 9. 
 
 5 Strom. III. 455 (ed. Potter), V. 561, VI. 659, 676, VII. 757, IV. 475. 
 See Reuss, Hist, of the N. T., II. 303. 
 
 6 I Ep. 3. 8 Iren. III. 24, I. 
 
 7 Dial. 119. 9 Euseb. H. E. IV. 22. 
 10 See Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 319.
 
 74 
 
 by Apostles and their companions and were read on Sunday in the 
 meetings of the churches in city and country, were the Gospels, 
 and the evidence that they embraced the Four of the Canon is 
 convincing. That any other evangelical narrative besides these 
 is referred to by him under this title cannot be safely inferred. 1 
 Marcion made up a canon composed of a mutilated Gospel of 
 Luke and ten Epistles of Paul. It is not at all probable that he 
 was the first to set about a work of this kind. In relation to the 
 subject before us, the Muratorian Fragment, which was probably 
 composed about 170 or 180, is an invaluable monument. It is 
 clear that it contained all of the New Testament books except 
 i John, i Peter, the Epistle of James, 2 Peter, and the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, i John is quoted at another place in the Fragment. 
 The only book added is the Apocalypse of Peter, which is said, 
 however, not to be universally received. 2 In the Peshito, which 
 represents the Canon of the Syrian Church at the end of the second 
 century, there are wanting only 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and 
 the Apocalypse. From the way in which the collections in each 
 case were brought together, it could not be expected that the con- 
 tents would be the same in all of them. The bare fact of the 
 omission of books here or there does not warrant an unfavorable 
 verdict respecting their origin and claims. In the early part of 
 the third century, Tertullian, Clement and Origen give ample tes- 
 timony to the existence and acceptance by the churches of a New 
 Testament Canon. Yet the second part of the Canon, that which 
 follows the four Gospels, was not inclosed by definite lines. The 
 criteria for deciding what books should be considered inspired and 
 normative had not been determined. While, therefore, the New 
 Testament Canon, when Irenaeus wrote, or in the last decades of 
 the second century, had attained to an equal authority with the 
 Canon of the Old Testament, there were still open questions 
 respecting the books to be included in it. Its boundary was 
 unsettled. A century later, as we learn from the report of Euse- 
 bius, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apocalypse, James, 2 and 3 
 John, 2 Peter, and Jude were not universally received. There 
 
 1 See my Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, p. 190 sq. It is prob- 
 able that the apocryphal Gospel of Peter is not referred to by Justin. See 
 Salmon, Int. to the N. T. (yth ed.), p. 587 sq. 
 
 2 For a correct text of the Fragment, see Westcott, Hist, of the Canon, 
 App. C.
 
 7$ 
 
 were two considerations which were practically influential in the 
 ultimate decision of doubtful points relating to the limits of the 
 Canon. The first was the historical test. Was the authorship 
 of books apostolic, or, if not, did their authors have such a relation 
 to Apostles as to raise their books to the level of the Apostles' 
 writings? Secondly, had the contents of a given book such a 
 character, such a spirituality and elevation, as to make it worthy 
 of this rank ? In a word, the test was partly external, and partly 
 internal. By the use of these tests, certain books, as the Epistle 
 of Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas, which for a considerable 
 time were not unfrequently read in churches, were dropped from 
 the recognized body of authoritative Scriptures. 
 
 According to the legend which originated .among the Alex- 
 andrian Jews, the seventy authors of the Septuagint version were, 
 each of them writing independently of the others, inspired to 
 make the same translation. A similar conception of the passiv- 
 ity of the human mind when inspired with the visions of prophecy 
 prevailed among the heathen. So the relation of the divine 
 Spirit to the soul was conceived by Plotinus. It was natural 
 that a like extreme view should be entertained by Christian 
 teachers. The Alexandrian legend is accepted as true by Ire- 
 naeus. 1 Athenagoras, 2 Theophilus, 3 and Tertullian 4 describe the 
 prophets as organs of the Spirit, who are moved upon as are 
 the flute or the lyre. The Montanists held to ecstatic inspiration. 
 Tertullian made the ecstatic condition the characteristic of the 
 inspired state. 5 The position of the Montanists on this point 
 was disputed by orthodox opposers, or possibly by Miltiades. 
 As regards the inspiration of the New Testament writers, Irenaeus 
 rejects the theory of passivity. Notwithstanding his belief in 
 verbal inspiration, he accounts for the transpositions of words 
 in Paul by the " velocity " of his utterance, and the vehemence 
 of his spirit. 6 The Alexandrian writers, Clement and Origen, 
 taught that the New Testament writers were in the conscious 
 exercise of their own powers. Origen says of the prophets that 
 the Spirit's influence made their own minds clearer. 7 Origen 
 
 1 Iren. III. 21,2. 2 Embassy, 7. 
 
 8 Ad Autol. II. 9. * Adv. Marc. IV. 22. 
 
 6 " Amentia," " excidat sensu," are his terms of description. 
 
 6 Adv. Hcer. III. 7, 2. " Spiritus " signifies the Apostle's own mind. 
 
 7 C. Cehum, VII. 4; Comm. on John, T. I. c. v.
 
 7 6 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 ascribes the peculiarities of style in the New Testament authors 
 and their linguistic errors to their natural traits. Human agency 
 was thus made one of the factors in the production of the Apos- 
 tolic writings. He held to a difference in the degree of inspira- 
 tion among the sacred writers. The inspiration of the Apostles 
 was not the same as that of the prophets. In the former are many 
 passages which spring from no immediate divine influence. Yet 
 the New Testament writers were shielded from every kind of error. 
 
 In the interpretation of the Scriptures, the Fathers, not only 
 Irenaeus and Tertullian, but still more the Alexandrian teachers, 
 disprove the sophistical and fanciful exegesis of the Gnostics by 
 appealing to tradition as a witness to its error. The contents 
 of the " rule of faith " were known to be accordant with the 
 Scriptures, because the doctrines affirmed in it had been handed 
 down in the churches. Hence no interpretation at variance with 
 these doctrines could be correct. There was this barrier against 
 erroneous interpretation. The characteristic fault of the orthodox 
 interpreters was their allegorical exegesis. This method of under- 
 standing the Sacred Writers was derived from the Jews. It was 
 generally adopted, but was carried to the farthest extent by the 
 Alexandrian School, as it was in Alexandria that Jewish allegoriz- 
 ing had flourished most. 
 
 III. The tradition of Apostolic teaching came to be considered 
 as under the special guardianship of the line of bishops, and the 
 unity of the Church to be secured through the unity of the epis- 
 copate. Clement of Rome with whom ' bishop ' and ' presby- 
 ter ' are one and the same tells us that the office of "the episco- 
 pate" was instituted by the Apostles, who appointed presbyters 
 as ministers in each church and, to prevent contests later, pre- 
 scribed that "other approved men" should succeed them. Pres- 
 byters who were appointed by the Apostles, or by other men of 
 weight (eXXoyt/iwv), with the consent of the whole church, ought 
 not to be ejected from the ministry without good cause. 1 An 
 uninterrupted succession was secured by a mixture of appoint- 
 ment and popular election. The precedence of the bishop over 
 the presbyters had arisen gradually. A certain superintendence 
 was exercised by James at Jerusalem, which was probably not 
 without influence as an example. 2 Clement of Alexandria 
 
 1 Clem. Ep. ad he., XLII, XLIV. 
 
 2 According to Hegesippus (Euseb. H. E. III. n), another relative of
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 77 
 
 records a tradition that the change whereby the bishop was 
 endued with higher authority than the presbyters associated 
 with him took place in the Asia Minor churches, under the 
 direction of the Apostle John. 1 The same tradition is implied 
 in Tertullian. 2 The early episcopacy where it existed, as we 
 see from the Epistles of Ignatius, was valued as a means of 
 preventing division and preserving order. It was local, not 
 diocesan, and it was purely governmental. At as late a period 
 as the age of Irenaeus, a sacerdotal function was not yet as- 
 cribed to it. If there was a bishop at Philippi who was distin- 
 guished from other presbyters in that church when Polycarp wrote 
 his Epistle to the Philippians, the distinction between the two 
 offices was so slight as to be deemed by him not worthy of notice. 3 
 The Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians is of such a 
 character that allusion would certainly have been made to the office 
 of bishop had such an office, raised above that of the presbyters, 
 existed then at Corinth. It is a letter of one church to another. 
 The author makes no reference to himself as bishop. He makes 
 no mention of himself at all. The recently discovered Didache 
 shows that episcopacy had not spread in the region where this 
 book was in use. 4 Jerome's statement respecting the church at 
 Alexandria admits of no reasonable interpretation except that 
 which points to an original identity of the bishop and presbyter. 
 This he asserts to have originally existed in the churches. 5 It was 
 long recognized at Alexandria in the appointment, by the presby- 
 ters, when a bishop died, of one of their own number, to take his 
 
 Jesus, Simeon, succeeded James. The choice was still from the family of 
 Jesus. 
 
 1 QMS Div. Safo. 42. 2 Adv. Martian, IV. 5. 
 
 3 Instead of there being a vacancy, it is " more probable that the ecclesias- 
 tical organization there was not yet fully developed." Lightfoot, Ignatius 
 and Polycarp, P. I. Vol. I. 578. 
 
 4 " Episcopacy has not yet become universal." Lightfoot, Apostolic 
 Fathers, p. 216. The reference of Ignatius (Eph. iii.) to "bishops established 
 in the farthest parts " (/card rd Trepara) cannot be pressed in opposition 
 to specific facts. If it were stronger than it is, it might not be more of 
 an hyperbole than Justin's assertion as to the spread of the Gospel {Dial. 
 117), or even the Apostle Paul's language (/ Thess. i. 8) on the spread of the 
 faith of the Thessalonians " in every place," or the same Apostle's language 
 in Col. 5. 6 or in Rom. i. 8. On this expression of Ignatius see Lightfoot, Ignat^ 
 and Polycarp, Vol. I. p. 381. 
 
 6 The passages are cited in Gieseler, I. iii. 34, n. I.
 
 78 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 place. If there was any ordination or consecration, it is implied 
 that it was by those who selected him. 1 It is one of a great 
 variety of proofs tending to show that the episcopate was de- 
 veloped out of the presbytery, and began in a simple presidency 
 in the board of presbyters. Its beginnings, however, were very 
 early, not improbably within the lifetime of some of the Apostles, 
 and the spread of the primitive, rudimental form of the episcopate 
 was so rapid that it was not very long before it became universal. 2 
 In the latter part of the second century it was usual to assume 
 that existing ecclesiastical arrangements were of Apostolic origin. 
 This habit is illustrated in the erroneous assumption by Irenseus 
 that it was bishops and presbyters, and not presbyter-bishops, as 
 Luke plainly relates, who met the Apostle Paul at Miletus (Acts 
 xx. 17 sq.). 3 Bishops are looked upon as the guardians of 
 Apostolic doctrine. Importance is attached to the idea of an 
 
 1 Mr. Gore questions the correctness of Jerome. But Mr. Gore is not will- 
 ing to stake his view of Apostolic succession on the validity of the doubt. He 
 falls back on the supposition that the episcopal office may have been com- 
 mitted to presbyters by their ordination (see Gore's Ministry of the Christian 
 Church, pp. 143 sq., 72 sq.). This view makes room for a temporary jure 
 divino Presbyterianism. 
 
 2 A theory as to the offices in the early Church, which is in some respects 
 peculiar, was proposed by Hatch and is advocated in a somewhat modified 
 form by Harnack. It is held by him that at the outset, in the Gentile 
 churches, the presbytery the " elders " - were not technically officials, but 
 simply the older men. To these was left the work of pastoral guidance and 
 discipline. There were bishops who, in connection with the subordinate 
 officers, the deacons, were appointed to see to the cultus, especially to the 
 receiving and distributing of alms. Later in the Apostolic age, it is held, 
 the presbyters became a select official body. The bishops sat with them. 
 According to Hatch, the members of the body thus constituted were called 
 indiscriminately " elders " or " bishops" So much is evident from Acts xx. 
 17 sq., Titus i. 5, 7, I Tim. iii. I, 8. The standing of the bishops increased 
 with the increasing importance of their functions. Harnack thinks that the 
 bishop owed his advancement largely to his being considered to have, as the 
 apostles, prophets and teachers had previously, a relation to the entire Church, 
 in contrast with the local relation of the elders. (See Harnack's Texte u. 
 Untersuchungen, etc., II. 140.) How one of the bishops rose above the 
 others is not made clear. For the exposition of the theory, see Hatch's The 
 Organization of the Early Christian Churches, and the additions of Harnack 
 to his German translation of this book; also Harnack's discussion just referred 
 to. The theory has to encounter quite serious difficulties. Some of the most 
 weighty of them are stated by Weizsacker, Theol. Lit. Zeit., 1884, p. 312. 
 
 8 4dv. Har. HI. 14, 2.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 79 
 
 unbroken chain of succession. It was like the Roman idea of 
 the continuity of an office, the prerogatives of which were con- 
 ceived to pass down without a break from each incumbent to 
 his successor. Hegesippus was interested in tracing the succes- 
 sion of bishops at Rome and elsewhere. 1 He conferred with 
 bishops respecting the traditions of doctrine in their respective 
 churches. It was not a historical work that he wrote, but a com- 
 pilation of " the plain tradition of Apostolic doctrine." 2 Irenseus 
 attributes to bishops a certain gift of grace for the custody of the 
 truth, a function of which Ignatius has nothing to say. In Clem- 
 ent of Rome the providing for an orderly succession, as already 
 said, was to keep off divisions. Irenseus goes so far as to say that 
 the bishops standing in the succession have received " a sure gift 
 of the truth " " charisma veritatis certum." 3 Hence separatists 
 who withdraw from the " principal succession " are to be looked 
 upon as heretics and schismatics. They have broken away from 
 the truth. It is an " incorrupt guardianship " by which Christian 
 teaching and sound exposition of the Scriptures have come down 
 to us in the Church, with its "several successions of bishops." 4 
 The bishop is no longer the mere head of a local church ; he has 
 a relation to the Church Universal. He has a part in the episco- 
 pate, which is one and single. The truth is guarded by the 
 Church as a " treasure in a precious vessel." Within the Church 
 is the Holy Spirit. " Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of 
 God, and where the Spirit of God, there is the Church." 5 It was 
 an easy, yet a marked step, in advance of Irenseus, when Cyprian, 
 in his book on the " Unity of the Church," not only gives in- 
 creased emphasis to the conception of Irenaeus, but attributes a 
 distinct sacerdotal function to the bishops. Phrases in Tertullian 
 and Origen that might seem to sanction a like view, are shown by 
 other passages not to bear this interpretation. 6 
 
 1 Euseb. H.E. IV. 22. Cf. c. n. 
 
 2 Ibid. IV. 8. See Weizsacker's remarks in Herzog and Plitt's Real- 
 Encycl, d. Theol. u. Kirche, V., sub voce Hegesippus. 
 
 * Irenaeus, IV. 26, 2. 
 
 4 Ibid. IV. 33, 8. If Clement and Origen broach a like view, they neither 
 rigidly nor uniformly adhere to it. See the passages in Gieseler, I. iii. c. 4, 67. 
 
 6 Ibid. III. 24, I. 
 
 6 See Lightfoot, Dissertations, pp. 222, 224. Expressions of Hippolytus 
 (Haer. Ref., Proem) may imply that sacerdotal terms in reference to the 
 clergy were coming into vogue.
 
 So HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 The exalted position of Rome, in comparison with other 
 churches, consists, according to Irenseus and Tertullian, in the 
 signal advantages belonging to the Roman Church for the custody 
 of the doctrines transmitted by the Apostles. The trustworthiness 
 of the traditions preserved there, Irenaeus tells us, is preeminent. 1 
 There the great Apostles, Peter and Paul, had taught and died. 
 The idea that Peter was the first bishop of Rome is first met 
 with not far from the end of the second century. The gradual 
 elevation of Peter to this post of dignity, and the partial obscura- 
 tion of Paul, spring from no opposition to the latter, no wish 
 to cast discredit upon him. The special controversy which 
 the Apostle Paul had carried forward with so much energy had 
 ceased to have any practical interest. The commission to the 
 Twelve to proclaim the Gospel through the Roman world, and 
 the relation of Peter to the Twelve as their head, were prominent 
 in the thoughts of Christians. Justin remarks on the " twelve 
 obscure men who went out from Jerusalem to proclaim the truth 
 to the race of mankind." 2 To the mission of the Twelve, Aris- 
 tides makes reference in the Fragment of his Apology. The 
 mission of the Twelve, their unity in doctrine, an oecumenical 
 Church, the episcopal precedence of Peter, Rome as the seat of his 
 bishopric, the corresponding rank of his successors in comparison 
 with other bishops, these formed a group of conceptions closely 
 connected. Cyprian, who did not hesitate on occasions to assert 
 his episcopal independence even in reference to Rome, could 
 still speak of Rome as the "See of Peter," " the principal church, 
 whence sacerdotal unity proceeded." 3 In the Dittache, the 
 Apostles (or Evangelists), prophets and teachers, who are bound 
 to no one place of abode, but stand in relation to all the churches, 
 hold the chief place of honor. To quote from Lightfoot, " the 
 itinerant prophetic order has not yet been displaced by the 
 permanent localized ministry." 4 But the second century wit- 
 nesses a remarkable change. It is this permanent ministry, with 
 the bishops at their head, who are foremost. To them is attrib- 
 uted a special illumination by the Spirit. Not a mere local, but 
 
 1 This is the meaning of the noted passage (III. 3, z) on the impossibility 
 that other traditions should disagree with the traditions of the Church at Rome. 
 
 2 Apol. I. 39. 
 
 3 " Unde unitas sacerdotalis cxorta est." Epist. xii. 14, ad Cornelium 
 Migne, pp. 317, 321. * Apostol. Fathers, p. 215.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY tf r 
 
 a catholic, relation is ascribed to the chief pastors. They fill the 
 station vacated by the Apostles chosen by Jesus. The Synods, 
 which began to be held in opposition to Montanism, increase 
 their dignity. A sharp line of distinction is drawn between the 
 clergy and the laity. The former constitute an order elevated 
 in rank above the plebs. It is Tertullian who first applied these 
 terms to the ministry and the people, although he says that it 
 is the authority of the Church which has made the difference 
 between the two. 1 Moreover, to carry back to the first centuries 
 the associations of diocesan episcopacy, would be an anachronism. 
 The position of the bishop of a city " in many respects resembled 
 that of the rector of a parish surrounded by his assistant clergy 
 rather than that of the modern bishop of a diocese, containing 
 perhaps several large towns." 2 During several centuries, it was 
 the custom for presbyters to sit with bishops in the synods and 
 to take an active part in their proceedings. 
 
 In the last decades of the second century the Ancient Catholic 
 Church thus emerges to view, a single, visible, compactly united 
 Body, with officers succeeding to their stations under fixed rules, 
 and conceived to be endowed in virtue of their office with exalted 
 functions committed to them by Christ. Whether this system 
 was a normal and wholesome development of the Christianity of 
 the Apostolic age, is a question on which men's minds are still 
 divided. One thing is certain; it was a change momentous 
 in its results. 
 
 It was a change that awoke manifestations of repugnance. Mon- 
 tanism unquestionably partook of the character of a reaction against 
 ecclesiasticism, or institutional Christianity. It was, however, a 
 reaction pushed by its promoters to an extreme. It gave rise to 
 an excess of enthusiasm which had no warrant in the precedents 
 of the Apostolic age. But Montanism was one form of protest 
 against restraints upon freedom of utterance under the influences 
 of the Spirit; it was a demand for stricter discipline in the 
 Church, for more disconnection with the world and its ways ; it 
 was a revival of apocalyptic hopes ; it was an uprising in behalf of 
 ideals which it was felt had been realized in the Apostolic age, but 
 which were now vanishing under the blight of officialism. Mon- 
 tanus, the leader, appeared in Phrygia shortly after the middle of 
 the second century. His movement embraced the proclamation 
 
 1 De Exhort. Cast. .7. 2 Cheetham, Ch. History, p. 128. 
 
 G
 
 8 2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of himself as the inspired organ of the promised Paraclete, and 
 the announcement of the restoration of the primitive gifts of the 
 Spirit. The Father and the Son were now really to take up 
 their abode in the souls of believers. Prophets and prophetesses 
 were again supernaturally inspired to utter heaven-given messages. 
 Joined with Montanus were two prophetesses conceived to be thus 
 illuminated, Prisca and Maximilla. The Lord Himself was shortly 
 to come in person, and to establish His kingdom at Pepuza in 
 Phrygia. In this place Christians were summoned by the new 
 prophets to assemble. To prepare for this kingdom, an austere 
 strictness of life was enjoined. Celibacy was to be practiced, 
 fasting was to be strict and was to be regulated by fixed rules. 
 Delinquents were to be subjected to severe ecclesiastical penalties. 
 Such as were excommunicated from the Church were not to be 
 received back. Montanism spread in Asia Minor and in other 
 places. It attracted a qualified sympathy in the churches of 
 Southern Gaul, and was regarded for a time at Rome with con- 
 siderable favor. In North Africa especially, it won numerous con- 
 verts, of whom Tertullian is the most famous. Not a few, and 
 among them Irenseus, were not disposed to question the reality of 
 the revived gift of prophecy, but rejected the extravagant notions 
 which the Montanists associated with their tenet on this subject. 
 Montanism was condemned so far as it was unfriendly to the insti- 
 tutional system, which was too firmly established to be weakened. 
 The ground taken by Tertullian was that the power of binding and 
 loosing belonged not to the bishop, but that to the prophet as the 
 organ of the Spirit it belonged to determine whether the repenting 
 offender in any case is forgiven of God. He may be thus forgiven 
 without being received back into the communion of the visible 
 Church, which is bound in its discipline to prevent in the future, 
 as far as it can, transgressions of the same character. 
 
 The contests in the Church on this matter of the discipline of the 
 excommunicated or of those deserving this sentence, and on the 
 connected question of the authority of the bishop, were strenuous 
 and long continued. It was against the lax principles of Callistus, 
 the Roman bishop (217-222), respecting the treatment of such as 
 had fallen into mortal sin that Hippolytus led a schismatical party. 
 It was a resistance to what was considered a secularizing spirit 
 that had crept into the Church along with its growth in numbers. 
 In North Africa, Cyprian, who was at first a rigorist on the disci-
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 3 
 
 plinary question, engaged in a struggle against the schismatics, 
 led by Felicissimus, who contended that the certificates of faithful 
 confessors of the faith should secure readmission to the Church 
 for such as had forsaken the faith in the Decian persecution. 
 The formidable schism of Novatian was in opposition to Corne- 
 lius, Bishop of Rome, who was chosen to this office in 251, and 
 was on the side of leniency. Cyprian was induced to favor on the 
 whole the cause of Cornelius. The Novatians made a distinction 
 between forgiveness by God and reception into the communion of 
 the Church. The one might take place without the other. The 
 Church must guard its purity with sedulous care. It must keep 
 its doors shut against those who had been guilty of a mortal sin. 
 This tenet was a direct denial of the doctrine that without the 
 Church there is no salvation. Numerous Novatian churches were 
 formed. They sprung up in almost all parts of the Empire. The 
 broader theory, which laid stress on the truth that the tares must 
 grow with the wheat, and made higher claims for the hierarchy, 
 prevailed. But it was not until after the Donatist controversy, 
 near the end of the fourth and in the beginning of the fifth cen- 
 tury, that the catholic and hierarchical view gained a fully decisive 
 victory. The exclusion of the Montanist societies was only one 
 step in the advance towards it. But Montanism left behind a 
 marked influence upon the spirit and polity of the Catholic 
 Church. The clergy were brought under severe rules of disci- 
 pline from which the laity were exempt. An impetus was given 
 to the tendency to recognize two types of Christian life and char- 
 acter, the lower or merely salvable type and the ascetic type, 
 standing on a higher plane as to sanctity of conduct and the 
 prospect of heavenly rewards.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE IN THE ASIA MINOR SCHOOL : IRENyEUS. 
 
 MELITO OF SARDIS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN SCHOOL : TERTULLIAN 
 
 THE ALEXANDRIAN CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY : CLEMENT 
 
 IREWEUS was born in Asia Minor. With the traditions in the 
 churches there he is familiar. His type of thought is not with- 
 out traces of the Johannine teaching, the influence of which 
 prevailed in the region where he spent his youth. In his appre- 
 ciation of the truth of redemption through the incarnate Christ, 
 the truth to which is given the central place in his system, 
 he rises above the point of view of the Greek Apologists. 
 Nevertheless, in his writings elements akin to their more rational- 
 izing apprehension of Christian doctrine mingle here and there 
 with more positive and profound interpretations of the Gospel. 
 And side by side with views which are incongruous in their 
 tendency he admits the chiliastic tradition in Eschatology. The 
 antagonist of Gnostic speculation, Irenseus, in the cast of his 
 mind, is intensely practical. We are not to swerve from the 
 plain teaching of the Scriptures and from the rule of faith which 
 embodies it in outline. 1 That is his maxim. What if we 
 cannot discover solutions of all questions ? This is no reason for 
 forsaking what is plainly taught. " Such things we ought to leave 
 to God." Nature, too, is full of mysteries. What causes the rise 
 of the Nile and the ebb and flow of the ocean? Instead of 
 prying into things inscrutable pertaining to God, we should seek 
 to rise to Him in love and devotion. Apostolic teaching, attested 
 by Scripture and tradition, is the norm of faith. The divine 
 essence is inconceivable. Our knowledge of God is relative. 
 The language which we utter concerning Him is figurative. 2 
 
 1 Adv. Har. II. 27, 28. 2 Ibid. II. 13, 3, 4. 
 
 84
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 85 
 
 God creates the world out of nothing. 1 Sin in men and angels 
 is a free act. Why some fall and others do not is a mystery. 2 
 Yet Irenseus suggests that in order to train men to avoid evil 
 and cleave to the good, it was necessary for them to have a pre- 
 liminary experiment of both, God meantime foreknowing what 
 would occur and having in mind His plan of deliverance. 3 
 Punishment is the necessary consequence of sin. It is provided 
 for, in the foresight that sin would come in. 4 There is no inter- 
 ference with human freedom. The hardening of Pharaoh's heart 
 is not a direct act of God. It is the incidental result of Pharaoh's 
 own character. The same is true of judicial blindness in those 
 who reject the Gospel. 5 Christ is the only-begotten Son of God, 
 the Logos, through whom God reveals Himself. He was forever 
 with the Father. 6 The idea of emanation is rejected. The mode 
 of the generation of the Son is incomprehensible. 7 The Logos is 
 included in the divine Being, but the distinction of the immanent 
 and expressed Word is not admitted. There is no separation 
 between the Son and the Father, yet they are not confounded. 
 That the personal distinction of Father and Son is eternal is not 
 distinctly affirmed, but it is implied. 8 The Holy Spirit is likewise 
 ever with the Father. It is " the Word and Wisdom, Son and 
 Spirit," by whom and in whom God freely does all things. 9 The 
 Holy Spirit, as well as the Son, is included in God. As there is a 
 certain subordination of the Son to the Father, so the Spirit is 
 subordinate to both. 10 But the special offices of the Spirit are left 
 in a measure indefinite. The incarnation had for its end to bring 
 mankind back to fellowship with God. Through sin man is 
 alienated from God and made a prey to corruption and death. 
 The Son of God becomes man in order to reunite God and man. 
 It is not, in truth, until after the fall that the union of man to 
 God is, in and through Christ, fully realized. " It became the 
 Mediator between God and man, through his intimate relation- 
 ship to both to bring both into friendship and concord, and, while 
 presenting man to God, to make God known to men." u In many 
 
 1 Adv. H<zr. II. 28, 3; 30, 9. ? Ibid. II. 28, 4, 5. 
 
 2 Ibid. II. 28, 7. 8 See Duncker, Des heilig. Iren. Christol., p. 50 sq. 
 8 Ibid. IV. 39, i. 9 Irenseus, Adv. Htzr. IV. 20, i. 
 
 * Ibid. II. 28, 7. 10 Ibid. I. 3, 5, in the Greek text. See Loofs, p. 127 
 
 5 Ibid. IV. 29, 30. " Ibid. III. 1 8, 7. 
 
 6 Ibid. II. 30, 9; III. 18. ij II. 25, 3.
 
 86 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 ways the full humanity of Christ is emphasized. If the reality of 
 both the human and the divine nature is not explicitly affirmed, 
 it is clearly implied. When, in insisting on the unity of the 
 person of Christ, it is spoken of as a mixture of the divine and 
 human, 1 such expressions are not to be construed as implying that 
 there was literally a confusion of the two. 2 Christ, the Son incar- 
 nate, is the second head of the race. His relation to mankind is 
 designated as a recapitulatio? By this it is meant that in Christ 
 there is a restitution and renewal of the race, a taking up anew 
 of the development at the point where it was broken off by sin. 
 The term includes the idea that the incarnation and work of Christ 
 exert their influence backward as well as forward. Mankind in 
 Christ reverse the course which was entered upon at the fall. 
 There is a renewal of allegiance to God, a renewal and consumma- 
 tion of the life in union with Him. " He [Christ] was made that 
 which we are that He might make us completely what He is." 4 
 This is the supreme end which He has in view. Hence it was 
 necessary for Christ to go through the successive stages of human 
 life, from infancy onward, that He might sanctify them all. 5 In 
 the conception of the work of Christ there are blended, without 
 analytic separation in the author's mind, the two elements of 
 redemption and reconciliation or atonement. He refers to the 
 death of Christ as a substitution for our death. He speaks of the 
 Lord as having redeemed us with His own blood, and given His soul 
 for our souls and His own flesh for our flesh." 6 He gave His life 
 as a " ransom " for those in captivity. His death was the salvation 
 of such as believe in Him. 7 Yet the context of such passages in- 
 dicates that the perfecting of the union of Christ with mankind, and 
 the communion of man with God which is thus consummated, is 
 the most prominent thought. Christ is said to have done the work 
 of a High Priest, propitiating God, dying that man might come 
 out of condemnation. 8 But this bearing of the Saviour's death is 
 not dwelt upon. It is not carried out in any definite form. The 
 central element in the work of Christ is His obedience, whereby 
 
 1 Adv. Har. IV. 20, 4. 
 
 2 See v. 14, i; III. 17, 4. Cf. Loofs, DG. p. 94. 
 
 3 On this term and the conception involved, see Duncker, Des heilig. Iren. 
 Christol. p. 163 sq. ; also Dorner, Person Christi, I. 485 sq. For the doctrine 
 of Irenaeus, see especially, Adv. Hcer. III. 16, 6; 18, i, 7; V. 14, 2; 19, i ; 21, i. 
 
 * Adv. Ha-r. V. Pref. 6 Ibid. V. I, 2. 8 Ibid. IV. 8, 2. 
 
 5 Ibid. II. 22, 4. 7 Ibid. IV. 28, 3.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 87 
 
 the disobedience of Adam is cancelled. The end attained as 
 regards men is the destruction of sin and its consequences, the 
 imparting of a new spiritual life which carries with it incorruption, 
 salvation from death. The dominion of Satan was not subverted 
 by force, but in a way befitting order and righteousness ; that is, 
 by a moral conquest over the souls enslaved by him. 1 The 
 " ransom " is not spoken of as a prize given to Satan. This view 
 comes into theology at a later day. While, therefore, Irenseus 
 appreciates the importance of the death of Christ and conceives it 
 as vicarious, the idea of a penal satisfaction is not prominent. 
 Yet the atonement is objective and has an essential place in the 
 righteous order which sin has invaded. 
 
 The view taken of the sacraments in Irenseus is in keeping 
 with his idea of the external Church as the exclusive dwelling- 
 place of the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is inseparably associated 
 with baptism. The same term designates the rite and the new 
 birth itself. " Baptism is our new birth unto God." 2 In Baptism, 
 we are regenerated. 3 In one passage there is some reason to 
 think that the baptism of infants is recognized. 4 In the Lord's 
 Supper, the bread after its consecration " is no longer common 
 bread, but a Eucharist constituted of two things, an earthly and 
 a heavenly." 5 The heavenly element in the bread and wine is 
 the body and blood which the divine Logos mysteriously connects 
 with them. Thus the bread and wine of the sacrament nourish 
 in us a life out of which springs the incorruptible body at the 
 Resurrection. The bread and wine are brought to God as an 
 offering with a prayer of thanks. The act is a symbol that all 
 that the believers have, and not a tenth alone, is to be brought to 
 God. 6 The later idea of a specific offering to God by the hands 
 of a priest is not involved in this teaching. " Observing the law 
 of the dead," Christ descended into Hades, where He abode for 
 three days, and thither His followers likewise descend. Thence 
 they come forth at the resurrection of the body." 7 Irenaeus 
 holds the chiliastic doctrine, quoting the statement of Papias 
 
 1 This is probably the sense of "suadelam" (in VI. i, i). See Dorner 
 (against Baur), Person Christi, I. p. 479 n. 
 
 2 Adv. Her. I. 21, I. 3 Ibid. III. 17, I. 
 
 4 Ibid. II. 22, 4. See Neander, Church History, I. 311. 
 
 5 Ibid. IV. 8, 5. 7 Ibid. IV. 32, z, 
 5 Ibid. IV. 1 8, 2.
 
 88 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 relating to the vineyard with its colossal grapes. 1 The punish- 
 ment of the wicked is eternal. The impression that Irenaeus 
 teaches the doctrine of the eventual annihilation of the wicked is 
 founded on a misapprehension of the meaning which he attaches 
 to the term ' continuance ' and to certain other terms, and is 
 contradicted in not a few unambiguous passages. 2 
 
 The influence of that ethical, as distinguished from evangeli- 
 cal, apprehension of the Gospel, which we have noticed in the 
 Apologists, appears here and there in Irenseus. This is seen in 
 the peculiar guilt attached to sins committed after baptism. It 
 is seen in the conception of faith in the place where he says that 
 the eternal reward is given to such as believe Christ, " being 
 righteous," adding, "Now to believe Him is to do His will." 3 
 Faith is more often the synonym of belief in the truths which are 
 brought together in the rule of faith, or the word is used, in an 
 objective way, to denote these truths collectively considered. 
 "We ought to fear," he says, "lest perchance, after the knowl- 
 edge of Christ, we do something which is not pleasing to God, 
 and thus have no further remission of sins, but be excluded from 
 His kingdom." 4 There are two phases of doctrine in Irenseus. 
 On the one hand, there is the higher, evangelical conception of 
 the new life through the incarnate Son in whom the grace of the 
 Father is revealed. This conception has gained a lodgment 
 in his mind. On the other hand, there are the traces of the 
 " moralism " of the Apologists, which exalts the teaching ele- 
 ment in Christianity and makes everything depend on the free 
 choice of the path of obedience. There is a corresponding dif- 
 
 1 Adv. Har. V. 31, 2. 
 
 2 The opinion that Irenseus accepts the doctrine of " conditional immortal- 
 ity" rests on one passage (II. 34, i, 2, 3), where " continuance " (perseveran- 
 tia) and " length of days " are said to be the exclusive reward of the righteous. 
 But " life," " length of days," " perseverance," which the wicked forfeit, is the 
 better life which comes to the regenerate. " Separation from God is death "; 
 it is the rejection of the good things of God. (See V. 27, 2. Cf. V. 4, 3.) 
 The eternity of punishment is taught in various places. See, especially, IV. 
 28, I, 2; also, IV. 39, 4; IV. 27, 4; III. 23, 3. In one of the Pfaffian frag- 
 ments (XL. ed. Stieren, p. 889), it is said that Christ is to come to destroy 
 all evil and to reconcile all things (reconcilianda uni versa), that there may 
 be an end of all impurities. This suggests, not annihilation, but restoration; 
 but it is a paraphrase of Col. i. 20, and probably means the purification of the 
 righteous. Moreover, the genuineness of the fragment is quite doubtful. 
 
 8 Adv. Her. IV. 6, 5. * Ibid. IV. 27, 2.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 8 9 
 
 ference in the explanations given of the relation of the old dis- 
 pensation to the new. Now the Old Testament is exalted to the 
 place of equality assigned to it by the Apologists, and now its 
 subordinate, preparatory function is pointed out. The source of 
 the contrast so marked in Irenseus would appear to be that, not- 
 withstanding his abundant citations from Paul, the roots of his 
 religious life were not in the distinctive teaching of the Apostle, 
 to the core of which he did not penetrate with a vivid insight. 
 The whole bent of Irenseus was practical. His attention was con- 
 centrated upon the defence of Christianity. 1 
 
 One of the most highly esteemed of all the writers of the Asia 
 Minor School was Melito, Bishop of Sardis. 2 His literary activity 
 began about A.D. 150. Unhappily, of his numerous works there 
 remain only a few fragments. But these furnish valuable materi- 
 als for the History of Doctrine. In one of them, it is said that the 
 works of Christ after His baptism " showed His godhead concealed 
 in the flesh." " He concealed the signs of His godhead " before 
 His baptism, "although He was true God from eternity." " Being 
 perfect God and perfect man, He assured us of His two essences," 3 
 His godhead and His manhood. Here is a distinct declaration 
 that in Christ there were two natures, nothing, however, being 
 said of the particular mode of their union. In another fragment, 
 the genuineness of which is extremely probable, Christ is desig- 
 nated " the perfect reason, the Word of God, who was begotten 
 before the light, who was Creator together with the Father," who 
 was " in the Father the Son, in God God," God who is of God, 
 " the Son who is of the Father, Jesus Christ, the King for ever and 
 ever." Melito was one of the principal lights in the group which is 
 characterized by Lightfoot as "The Later School of St. John." 4 
 
 1 On the two Testaments, see Adv. H<zr. IV. 9, 2 ; IV. 32, 2. On the 
 combination of the " apologist-moral " with the " Biblical-realistic " ingredients 
 in Irensus, see Harnack, DG. (Grundriss), 101 sq., and Loofs, DG., p. 95. 
 See especially the important work of Werner, Der Paulinismus d. Iremzus, 
 etc., in Gebhardt u. Harnack's Altchristl. Lit. VI. 3 (1889). 
 
 2 On Melito and his writings, see Lightfoot, Essays on Supernatural 
 Religion, p. 223 sq. The subject of the fragments is fully discussed by Har- 
 nack, in Gebhardt and Harnack, Texte u. Untersuchungen, etc., p. 240 sq. 
 But see also Harnack in Altchristl. Literatur, I. p. 250, where he concludes that 
 the four Syrian fragments belonged to one work, of which Melito was the author. 
 
 3 o&ras. 
 
 4 Contemporary Review, Feb. 1876. Reprinted in Essays on the Work 
 entitled " Supernatural Religion" pp. 217-250.
 
 gO HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Tertullian, more than any other, is the founder of Latin the- 
 ology. He deserves to be called the forerunner of Augustine. 
 He disdains the philosophers, going so far as to call the serenity 
 of Socrates in the presence of death a forced or affected com- 
 posure. Yet he was not ignorant of the philosophers, and his 
 power as a thinker is not less marked than his extravagance. 
 His genius and eloquence atone for his faults of temperament. 
 He was partly Latin and partly African, and he blends in himself 
 the qualities of his mixed parentage. 
 
 Tertullian goes farther than Irenaeus in asserting the authority 
 of tradition. He dwells on the insufficiency of the Apostolic 
 Scriptures, which heretics can pervert without stint. It is useless 
 to argue with them on the basis of these writings, which really 
 belong only to those who have, together with them, the "rule 
 of faith." To this the appeal is to be made. Christ chose and 
 sent out the Apostles ; 1 these founded churches and made them 
 the depositories of their teaching; in the churches there have 
 been the successions of bishops, the custodians of the tradition. 2 
 Hence, heretics are met with a prascriptio a demurrer. Their 
 dissent from the doctrine of the churches, the novelty of their 
 teaching, throws them out of court. Tertullian's argument here 
 is an example of his appropriation of legal ideas, a characteristic 
 of his writings. 
 
 Tertullian was much influenced by the Asia Minor theology. 
 The influence of Stoicism is also quite apparent in his theological 
 conceptions. In agreement with Stoic doctrine is his materialis- 
 tic view of the constitution of the soul, which he contends for at 
 length in his treatise De Anima? Indeed, his opinion is that noth- 
 ing exists that is not of a corporeal nature. The soul is of a finer 
 species of matter. It is like the wind or the breath. It was 
 breathed into man by the Creator. We are not to deny even 
 that it has color and form, its form being like that of the body. 
 Along with the body it is generated. 4 It has a seminal beginning. 
 Tertullian was thus a Traducian, in opposition to the doctrine 
 that each soul originates in a distinct, creative act. 
 
 On the subject of the evidence of the being of God, Tertullian, 
 instead of marshalling, as other Christian Apologists of the time 
 were apt to do, the concessions of heathen writers, points to what 
 
 1 De Prescript. 20, 21. 3 See e.g., cc. 5, 7. 
 
 2 See, for example, de Prescript. 36. 4 De Anima, 27.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY g r 
 
 he calls the testimony of " the naturally Christian soul " to the 
 divine existence and unity. He invokes the untutored, unsophis- 
 ticated soul to give its witness. Its unpremeditated expressions 
 such as "Which may God grant," "If God will," "May God 
 repay," "God shall judge between us" spring out of the depths 
 of the heart and are the best attestation to the truth. 1 Tertullian 
 insists, also, on the evidence from design. 2 
 
 As Tertullian is the first to use the word ' Trinity,' 3 so is he 
 the first distinctly to say that tri-personality pertains to the one 
 God as He is in Himself. 4 He plants himself on this ground in 
 antagonism to the Monarchian theory, which rejected the idea of 
 a diversity of persons as immanent in God. The Father, Son, 
 and Holy Ghost are " of one substance " / they are susceptible of 
 number without division. 5 The Son is from the essence of the 
 Father, proceeding from him, not by emanation, as the Gnostics 
 taught, yet by a self-projection or "prolation." The Son or 
 Logos is eternal, since the Logos is the reason and word of God. 
 The Father projected the Son, as the root the tree, and the foun- 
 tain the river, and the sun the ray. But there is no separation. 6 
 
 While Tertullian insists on the unity of substance and the tri- 
 plicity of persons, he fails of reaching the full Trinitarian state- 
 ment. The Logos is represented to be the impersonal reason of 
 God (ratio), and does not become the Word (Sermo), does not 
 emerge into personality, until the work of creation is to begin. 
 Moreover, subordinationism in the Trinity is presented in the 
 crude form of a greater and less participation of the divine sub- 
 stance on the part of the several persons. " The Spirit is third 
 from God and the Son, as the fruit out of the tree is third from 
 the root, and as the branch from the river is third from the 
 fountain, and as the apex of the sunbeam is third from the sun." 7 
 "The Father and the Son," we are told, "differ from one another 
 in measure." 8 The meaning is made clear in the next sentence : 
 " For the Father is the whole substance, but the Son a derivation 
 
 1 De Test. An. i, 2. 2 Adv. Marc. I. 1 1-13. 
 
 3 Adv. Prax. 3. But Theophilus (ad Autol. XV.) has T/oidSos. 
 * Ibid. 2. G Ibid. 2. 
 
 Ibid. 8. 9. An indirect influence of this book of Tertullian on the 
 shaping of the Nicene doctrine will be referred to later. The " unius sub- 
 stantiae " appears as the Homoousion. 
 
 1 Ibid. 8, 8 Ibid. 9.
 
 g 2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 and portion of the whole." But the notion of an actual division 
 of the substance is guarded against, when, for example, Tertullian 
 connects with the illustrations just cited (of the branch, the 
 river, the fountain, etc.) the statement : " Yet nothing is parted 
 (alienatur) from the source from which it derives its properties." 
 Tertullian brings out more definitely than any of the Fathers 
 before him if we except the fragment of Melito the full 
 humanity of Christ and the distinction of the two natures, each 
 retaining its own attributes. 1 There is no confusion, but a con- 
 junction of the human and the divine. This conception of Christ 
 as possessed of a rational human spirit is the only one consistent 
 with his psychology, in which there is no possible disjunction of 
 soul and spirit. 2 This teaching must govern the interpretation of 
 looser expressions in which man in Christ is said to be mixed 
 with God. On the importance of the death of Christ in its 
 relation to human salvation, Tertullian is emphatic. 3 But nothing 
 is said of any transaction with Satan for the release of man. 
 Satan was overcome in the temptation of Jesus. Christ was not 
 cursed of God, but by the Jews. Nor is anything said of a 
 satisfaction rendered by Christ to divine justice, although Tertul- 
 lian conceives of justice as having in it a retributive element. 
 Justice appears even in nature, in the separation of things that 
 differ, as the day from the night. 4 The power of God creates, 
 the justice of God orders and arranges. The " satisfaction " of 
 which Tertullian speaks is that which is required of the penitent 
 Christian who, having grievously sinned, would be reconciled to 
 an offended God. Tertullian is fervent in his exaltation of the 
 mercy of God in its relation even to the wayward believer. Yet 
 a certain legalism pervades his teaching on the whole subject of 
 repentance and God's acceptance of the repenting sinner. He 
 speaks of the " reward " offered to repentance, even the repent- 
 ance in which the Christian life begins. 5 He speaks of making 
 "satisfaction" unto the Lord, by repentance, for later sins, 6 of 
 release from penalty as "a compensatory exchange for repent- 
 ance." 6 Satisfaction is made by confession ; by repentance " God 
 is appeased." 7 By fasting and other forms of " temporal mortifi- 
 cation," the penitent is able "to expunge eternal punishment." 8 
 
 1 Adv. Prax. 27. 4 Ibid. II. 12. 7 Ibid. 7. 
 
 2 De Anima, 12. 6 De Pcenit. 5. 8 Ibid. 9. 
 8 Adv. Marc. III. 8, 6 Ibid. 6.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 93 
 
 The expressions of contrition are " a self-chastisement in the matter 
 of food and raiment." 1 Tertullian is cautious about applying the 
 term ' merit ' to repentance : " so far as we can merit," is the 
 phrase which he uses. 2 
 
 The freedom of the will is a part of God's image and likeness 
 in man. 3 There is entire freedom in " both directions " 
 towards the right and towards the wrong. It is a part of 
 Tertullian's Traducianism that evil is propagated in the soul. 
 There is evil in the soul malum animce derived from its 
 corrupt origin ex originis vitio ; and the evil has become in a 
 sense a second nature. " The corruption of our nature is another 
 nature." 4 Yet this suggestion of an inborn corruption, in which 
 Augustine is anticipated, is qualified and, in some places, virtually 
 excluded. The offspring of one Christian parent is said to be by 
 " the seminal prerogative " not unclean. In arguing for the post- 
 ponement of baptism, it is asked : Why should this innocent age 
 hasten to procure the remission of sins? 5 It is said that the 
 original good in man is obscured rather than extinguished. " It 
 cannot be extinguished because it is from God." " In the worst 
 men there is something good, and in the best something bad." 6 
 As regards regeneration, we are told that the grace of God is 
 more potent than the will, which is the faculty within us possessed 
 of autonomy. 7 " The soul in its second birth is taken up by the 
 Holy Spirit." 8 Yet, as on the subject of innate depravity, there 
 are occasional passages which seem to teach that grace is irresist- 
 ible ; but these contravene frequent assertions of a reserved power 
 and a concurrent agency in the will. 
 
 Christ, after His death, descends into Hades, the abode where 
 the evil and the good await the resurrection. The martyrs are 
 by themselves in a more exalted place : whether it be within or 
 without the limits of Hades is not quite clear. 9 There is a first 
 and a second resurrection. There is a millennial reign of Christ, 
 but all sensuous, Jewish conceptions of it are repudiated. Tertul- 
 lian dwells on the spiritual blessings to be enjoyed in that inter- 
 mediate state. The Holy Land, he says, is not Judea, but rather 
 
 1 De Pa-nil. II. * De Anima, 41. "> Ibid. 21. 
 
 2 Ibid. 6. 6 De Bapt. 18. 8 Ibid. 41. 
 
 8 Adv. Marc. 7. 6 De Anima, 41. 
 
 9 See Adv. Marc, IV. 34, v. 17; De Resurrect. 17, 25. In De Anima, 
 c. 7, the patriarchs and the bosom of Abraham are placed in Hades.
 
 94 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the flesh of the Lord. The friendship of God is the supreme 
 good. Hell, " the treasure-house of eternal fire," is in the interior 
 of the earth, and the flames issuing from the mouths of volcanoes 
 have their source in hell. 1 
 
 When we pass from Tertullian to Clement of Alexandria we 
 find ourselves in a very different atmosphere. We no longer hear 
 invectives against philosophy. "The multitude," 2 he says, "are 
 frightened at the Hellenic philosophy, as children are at masks, 
 fearing lest it should lead them astray." 3 Clement, the first of 
 the Alexandrian teachers whose writings have come down to us, 
 is full of the thought that the mission of the Christian theologian 
 is to build a bridge between the Gospel and Gentile wisdom, to 
 point out the relations of Christianity to universal knowledge, to 
 give to the religion of Christ a scientific form, to show how the 
 believer may rise to the position of the true " Gnostic." Clement 
 is apart from all contact with the teaching of the West. Irenaeus 
 and Tertullian cast their theological thoughts in a polemical form, 
 their aim being to beat back the invasion of error. The Alexan- 
 drians undertake a more direct and positive task. It was the work 
 of Origen to fulfil this task of giving to Christian truth the unity 
 of a system. Clement, the precursor of Origen, although copious 
 in suggestions, fails to mould them into a consistent or complete 
 whole. 
 
 The sources of knowledge respecting divine things, according 
 to Clement, are Scripture and reason. But, as nothing which 
 would cast dishonor upon God is worthy of belief, a high place 
 of authority is given to reason. Moreover, the method of allegory 
 applied in interpreting Scripture opens a wide door for the intru- 
 sion of subjective speculations. Yet the road to insight, the path 
 upward to the plane of the true Gnostic, is the attaining of purity 
 of heart. Thus knowledge and holy character are not put asun- 
 der. Clement abounds in passages in which the philosophy of 
 the Greeks is said to have sprung from a partial divine revelation, 
 although he occasionally makes their wisdom a plagiarism from 
 the Hebrew prophets. 4 This is a specimen of the contradictions 
 in his writings. The bond of union between Gentile science and 
 the religion of the Gospel is in the conception of the Logos, which 
 is common to both. Clement follows the Greek masters in repre- 
 
 1 De Pcenit. 12. s Stromata, VI. 10. 
 
 2 ol Tro\\ot. * E.g. Ibid. V. 14, VI. 7.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 95 
 
 senting God as incomprehensible, transcendent, above the sphere 
 where distinctions and differences have a place. " Human speech 
 is incapable of uttering God." l The Logos is the Revealer, first 
 in the Creation, in which the Logos takes part, by whom wisdom 
 is stamped upon it ; again, in the light of reason imparted to man- 
 kind ; then in special disclosures of divine truth ; and, finally, 
 through the Incarnation in Christ. The light derived from the 
 Logos by the Gentiles may serve as the stepping-stone to the height 
 on which shines the full effulgence of the Gospel. " The Greek 
 Philosophy," says Clement, "purges the soul, as it were, and pre- 
 pares it beforehand for the reception of faith, on which the Truth 
 builds up the edifice of knowledge." 2 The Father, Son, and Holy 
 Spirit are the "Holy Triad." 3 When we seek to ascertain the 
 relations of the Three to one another, the utterances of Clement 
 lack clearness and harmony with one another. There is an essen- 
 tial unity between the Father and the Son. This unity has existed 
 forever. But the distinction of Father and Son is affirmed. 4 Yet 
 in some passages the personal distinction seems to fade out. But 
 the prevailing view is that of the Son as a distinct hypostasis. 5 
 The Logos is said to undergo no change, and the distinction of 
 immanent and spoken Logos is rejected. 6 The Logos is conceived 
 of, after the manner of the Stoics, as the seminal reason diffused 
 in all beings to whom reason is given. There is a vagueness on 
 this point as there is in Philo's conception. The Holy Spirit is 
 spoken of as a distinct hypostasis, but how the Spirit is related to 
 the Father and the Son is not made clear. But there is no ambi- 
 guity in the assertion of the true divinity and the true humanity 
 of Christ. "He [Christ] became man that man might become 
 God." 7 Christ is our ransom; 8 yet it is not said to whom the 
 ransom is paid. He is our propitiation. 9 But the ordinary repre- 
 sentation in Clement is that the obstacle to the salvation of men 
 is in themselves. Pardon is made to include deliverance from 
 ignorance, the source of sin. Redemption is not so much the 
 undoing of the past, as the lifting of man up to a higher state than 
 
 1 Strom. VI. 18; cf. V. II, 12. 3 Ibid. V. 14. 
 
 2 Ibid. VII. 3. * Ibid. IV. 25. 
 
 5 On this subject, see Dorner, I. p. 443 sq.; especially p. 446; Thomasius, 
 DG. I. 201 sq.; Bigg, p. 67. 6 Strom. V. I. 
 
 7 Protr. i. For other passages, see the references in Bigg, p. 71. 
 
 8 Quis Div. Salv. 37. 9 Pad. III. 12.
 
 96 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 pertained to unfallen man. Man was created upright. The free- 
 dom of the will belonged to his nature. 1 In the exercise of it, he 
 sinned. But Adam is the typical example of sin, rather than the 
 foundation whence it is spread through the race. Freedom of 
 choice remains, although the soul depends on the Spirit for its 
 renewal. 2 The regenerated life begins in baptism. It includes 
 the forgiveness of sins. Henceforward there is a twofold possi- 
 bility. There is a lower stage of Christian character, that of the 
 ordinary believer who attains to holiness under the influence of 
 fear and hope ; and there is the higher life, where fear is cast out 
 by love. Simply to be saved is something very different from 
 salvation in the nobler sense. 3 This is the life of knowledge, 
 the life pf him to whom divine mysteries are revealed. There 
 is higher truth which may not be communicated even to Chris- 
 tians not inwardly prepared to receive it. This is the doctrine 
 of Reserve. Clement was not a mystic. He goes so far as to 
 appropriate from Stoicism the notion of apathy, and love is de- 
 picted as being, in relation to our fellow-men, passionless. The 
 true Gnostic does not desire anything. He is free from all per- 
 turbations of spirit. 4 There is but one absolution from mortal sin 
 committed after baptism. Respecting the Eucharist, how vague 
 and indeterminate his explanations are is evident from the cir- 
 cumstance that by some he has been thought to regard it as a 
 mere memorial, while others with even less reason have attributed 
 to him the doctrine of transubstantiation. 5 Justice is divested of 
 the retributive element. The principal design of punishment is 
 the correction of the transgressor. Another object is the restraint 
 of others. 6 After death and until the judgment chastisement con- 
 tinues as a cure for sin. Then probation comes to an end. But 
 Christ, and the Apostles after Him, preached the Gospel in Hades. 
 In some places, the preaching is said to have been addressed to 
 such as simply lacked knowledge, the bent of the heart being 
 right ; but the heathen generally are also said to have the offer 
 of salvation presented to them in the intermediate state. 7 It 
 would not be just, it is said, to deprive them of the opportunity 
 to be made acquainted with the way of salvation. At the deluge, 
 
 1 Strom. I. 17, II. 15. * Ibid. VI. 9. 
 
 2 Ibid. II. 19, IV. 26. 5 See Bigg, p. 105 sq. 
 
 Ibid. VI. 14. 6 Pad. I. 8; Strom. IV. 24. 
 
 1 For the principal statements on the subject, see Strom. VI. 6.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 97 
 
 punishment was inflicted on the antediluvians for their correction. 
 Clement rejected the Millenarian theory with antipathy. At the 
 Resurrection it is not a literal body of flesh that is raised, but a 
 spiritual body ; 1 but the Writing of Clement on this special subject 
 
 is lost. 
 
 1 Pad. II. 10.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MONARCHIANISM MONARCHIANISM OVERCOME IN THE EAST THE 
 SYSTEM OF ORIGEN THEOLOGY AFTER THE DEATH OF ORIGEN 
 
 NOVATIAN DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA AND DIONYSIUS OF 
 
 ROME METHODIUS 
 
 IN answering the first and foremost question, " What think ye 
 of Christ?" Christian theology, beginning with Justin and the 
 Apologists, had taken up the conception of the Logos, blending 
 together the Jewish and the Platonic meanings associated with 
 that term. On the basis of this conception the doctrine of the 
 divinity of Christ was moulded. In Irenaeus and Tertullian, the 
 Holy Ghost was so connected with the Father and the Son as 
 to form the Trias. The safeguard set up against dyotheism and 
 tritheism was the idea of subordination and of the precedence of 
 God the Father. But the theological construction which had the 
 Logos for the starting-point did not establish or complete itself 
 without a struggle, and a prolonged struggle, against opposition 
 within the Church. The dissatisfaction with it grew partly out of 
 the feeling that the doctrine of a hypostatic trinity was too meta- 
 physical, and savored of Gnosticism, but chiefly arose from the 
 conviction that this doctrine trenched upon monotheism. To 
 this antagonistic opinion, in its different varieties, was given the 
 name of Monarchianism, a term first used by Tertullian. 1 The 
 opinion held in common by the Monarchians was that God is a 
 single person as well as a single being. But the two principal 
 types of the Monarchian theory were widely distinct from one 
 another. The adherents of the first, the dynamic or adoptionist 
 doctrine, contended that Christ was a mere man, chosen of God 
 
 1 On Monarchianism and its different forms, see Harnack, Real-Encykl. 
 VIII. 178 sqq., and DG. I. 604-709; also the elaborate discussion in Dorner, 
 Person Christi, I. 497-562, 697-732. 
 
 98
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 99 
 
 and by Him supernaturally inspired and exalted. He was the 
 Son of God, not in virtue of a metaphysical relationship to the 
 Father, but by adoption. The adherents of the second, on 
 the other hand, maintained that Christ was truly divine, but as 
 divine was indistinguishable from God the Father, being one 
 mode or manifestation of the divine being. These were termed 
 in the West Patripassians. In the East they were usually grouped 
 together under the name of Sabellians. There is no good ground 
 for supposing that the first or humanitarian class was ever numer- 
 ous in the Church, whether in the East or the West. But the 
 opposite is the fact respecting the Medalists. It is to these that 
 Origen and Tertullian have reference when they speak of the 
 Monarchians as numerous. 1 It is of the Medalist opinion in 
 contrast with the "ceconomy," that is, with the idea of the 
 trinity as a distinction of persons in the Divine Being Himself in 
 relation to creation and redemption that Tertullian says : " To 
 be sure, plain people, not to call them ignorant and common of 
 whom the greater portion of believers is always comprised 
 inasmuch as the rule of faith withdraws them from the many gods 
 of the [heathen] world to the one and the true God, shrink back 
 from the ceconomy. . . . They are constantly throwing out the 
 accusation that we preach two gods and three gods. . . . We 
 hold, they say, the monarchy." 2 When Monarchianism in either 
 of its two forms took its rise, it is impossible to say. Both types 
 seem to have made their appearance first in Asia Minor, where in 
 the second century there was so much discussion and diversity of 
 opinion. But as all ways led to Rome, so all sorts of doctrine 
 were likely to be carried thither. The dynamic or humanitarian 
 theory resembled the Ebionite opinion : Modalism had a docetic 
 tendency; but the former, as far as can be ascertained, had no 
 historic connection with Ebionitism, nor had Modalism with the 
 
 1 Origen, in Johann. T. ii. 2. Tertullian, Adv. Prax. 3. Hase {Kirchen- 
 gesch. p. 99) remarks : " Justinus fiihrt es noch als eine Christliche Meinung 
 an den Herrn fur einen blossen Menschen zu halten, und widerwillig bezeugt 
 Tertullian dass es in seiner Umgebung die Volksmeinung war." This is an 
 error respecting Tertullian. As to Justin's words, " Some of our class," etc. 
 (Dial. 48), the reading 'your ' for ' our ' is defended by Bull, Thirlby, and 
 others. It is not rejected by Neander (Ch. Hist. I. p. 363). It is not approved 
 by Otto (see his note ad loc.}, nor in the edition of Justin, in the "Oxford 
 Library of the Fathers," p. 129. But 'your ' is found by Harnack t& be the 
 correct reading. DG. (3d ed.) I. 282 n. 2 Adv. Prax. 3.
 
 I00 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 docetism of the Gnostics. That Ebionitism was the doctrine of 
 the early Church, that the Church of Rome in the second century 
 was Ebionite, that Modalism was the fruit of a reaction against 
 that doctrine, that the Logos theology came forward as a mediat- 
 ing and reconciling system, these propositions, which were in- 
 volved in Baur's speculative scheme, have at present no foothold 
 among scholars. 
 
 In the first class of Monarchians are commonly reckoned the 
 "Alogi." 1 This designation is a nickname which was given to 
 them by Epiphanius. 2 They appeared about A.D. 170, in Asia 
 Minor. They were prompted, by their extreme antipathy to 
 Montanism, its ideas as to prophecy, and its doctrine of the Para- 
 clete, to discard both the Apocalypse and the Gospel of John. 
 The Gospel they ascribed to Cerinthus. It is possible that they 
 rejected the doctrine of the Logos, but it is not clear that they 
 denied the divinity of Christ. They supported their repudiation 
 of the Fourth Gospel by critical objections drawn from a com- 
 parison of it with the Synoptics, partly in respect to points of 
 chronology. The brevity and the mildness of the notice of them 
 in Irenaeus warrants the inference that their number was small. 3 
 The leading opponents of Montanism, both in Asia Minor and 
 elsewhere, were not in accord with the opinion of the Alogi as 
 to the Fourth Gospel. If it were not for the lost writing of 
 Hippolytus concerning the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse, 
 and the confutation which Epiphanius borrowed from one or 
 more writings of this Father, we should have no proof that when 
 Hippolytus wrote there was anything left of the opposition of the 
 Alogi to this Gospel. 4 
 
 1 The Alogi of late have been the subject of much discussion in Germany. 
 The topic is handled by Harnack in his brilliant article on " Monarchianism" 
 in the Real-Encykl. (Vol. X.) and in his DG. It is considered at length in 
 the first half of the first volume of Zahn's History of the New Testament Canon 
 (1888). This last publication called out a polemical review from Harnack, 
 in which the Alogi form one of the prominent themes : Das Neue Test, um 
 das Jahr 200, etc. (1889). In Zahn's brief pamphlet in reply to Harnack 
 (i 889), however, this particular topic is not taken up. The subject is interest- 
 ing now for its connection with the debate respecting the authorship of the 
 Fourth Gospel. See my Paper in Papers of Am. Ch. Hist. Soc. (1890); also, 
 Sanday, Inspiration (1893), PP- *4 X 5 64. 
 
 2 Har. 51. 8 Irenseus, Adv. H<er. III. n, 9. 
 
 * Among the lost works of Hippolytus was one bearing the title, Concern- 
 ing the Gospel according to John and Apocalypse. According to Eben Jesu
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY tOl 
 
 Theodotus, the Currier, came to Rome from Byzantium, and 
 was expelled from the Church by its bishop Victor (about A.D. 
 195). 1 Theodotus taught that Christ was a mere man. He held 
 to the miraculous conception of Christ and held that at His bap- 
 tism the " Holy Spirit " descended upon Him in the form of a dove, 
 but that on this account He could not be called God. Caius, the 
 probable author of the " Little Labyrinth " quoted by Eusebius, 
 styles Theodotus the " inventor " of the humanitarian heresy. 
 Whether or not he was directly connected in any way with the 
 Alogi depends on the interpretation of a doubtful phrase in Epi- 
 phanius. He accepted the Gospel of John, but interpreted it in 
 his own peculiar way. Epiphanius cites a comment by him on 
 John viii. 40. His doctrine was not tolerated at Rome. One of 
 his disciples was a second Theodotus, the Money Changer, whose 
 followers are said to have taught that the " Holy Spirit " was 
 present in Melchizedek in a higher mode of presence and activity 
 than in Jesus. Hence they were called Melchizedekians. These 
 Monarchians are said to have been students of Aristotle, Theo- 
 
 (in Asseman), among the writings of Hippolytus was a defence of the Gospel 
 and the Apocalypse. Probably the title just given was the title of this work. 
 It indicates that there remained some of the Alogi, and adherents to their 
 opinions may have made their way to Rome. The same thing is thought to 
 be implied in what is said of John's Gospel in the Muratorian Canon; but 
 whether the statements there have really an apologetic intent is uncertain. 
 
 1 Euseb. H. E. V. 28. Eusebius, as above stated, calls Theodotus " the 
 inventor " of the heresy that Christ was a mere man. What is especially 
 important, Hippolytus, in the Kef. Omn. fftzr. (X. 23), expressly states it to 
 be the doctrine of Theodotus that, at the baptism of Jesus, Christ descended 
 upon him in the form of a dove, precisely the doctrine which Hippolytus, 
 shortly before, ascribes also to Cerinthus. In another passage (VII. 36) Hip- 
 polytus likens the opinion of Theodotus to that of the Gnostics. In the former 
 passage, however, he speaks of " that Spirit " which descended [and] which 
 proclaims him to be the Christ. Harnack is disposed to think that Hippoly- 
 tus may have erred in denominating the Spirit which was said by Theodotus 
 to have descended " Christ," and to question whether Theodotus did thus 
 designate the Holy Spirit as "Christ" (Harnack, DG. I. 623, n. 2). This 
 last suggestion is connected with Harnack's interpretation of Hermas (Lib. 
 III., Simil. V.), which makes him identify the Holy Spirit with the Divine in 
 Christ. It may be added that Epiphanius, after connecting Theodotus with 
 the Alogi, adds that he had converse or communication (<rvyyev6fjLet>os^) with 
 other heretics before named and contemporary with them. Harnack's state- 
 ment that nothing more than contemporaneity is here meant, can hardly be 
 justified.
 
 102 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 phrastus and Galen, and to have been addicted to a grammatical 
 exegesis. They made an abortive attempt to set up a separate 
 church. The last representative of the adoptionist creed, who 
 appeared at Rome, was Artemon (about 230 or 24O). 1 The 
 Artemonites were fond of Aristotle. Like other Theodotians, 
 they were critical and rationalistic. Their view of the person of 
 Christ may have somewhat differed from that of the Theodotians. 
 The espousal, by the Bishop of Rome, Zephyrinus, of the 
 Modalistic doctrine, which the Artemonites could with reason 
 pronounce an innovation, enabled them to assert with a color of 
 plausibility that their doctrine had prevailed down to the time of 
 Victor ; an assertion which was confuted by their opponents. It 
 is clear that Artemon is to be reckoned with the Adoptionists. 
 After the middle of the second century, the Humanitarian opinion 
 has practically no influence in the West. It reappears in the East 
 in the person of Paul of Samosata. 
 
 Among the Monarchians of the second class, one of the princi- 
 pal names is Praxeas. He was equally inimical to Montanism 
 and to the doctrine of inherent personal distinctions in God. 
 Tertullian alleges that he was the first to import this heresy into 
 Rome. " He drove out the Paraclete and crucified the Father." 2 
 He came to Rome from Asia Minor about the end of the second 
 century, and was received with favor by the Roman bishop, Victor. 
 Passing over into Africa, he won a great many adherents. The 
 Medalists were called Patripassianists, for the reason that their 
 doctrine implied that the Father suffered on the cross. This 
 designation belongs preeminently to another leader, Noetus, of 
 Smyrna, who through his followers, Epigonus and Cleomenes, 
 acquired much influence at Rome. Zephyrinus and his successor, 
 Callistus, embraced the Patripassianist opinion. The determined 
 opponent of Callistus was Hippolytus, who advocated the hypo- 
 static doctrine, and refused to accept formulas devised by Callistus 
 for terminating the controversy. Callistus excommunicated his 
 antagonist, perhaps, also, Sabellius ; so that there were two dis- 
 senting parties, at the head of one of which, as a rival bishop, was 
 Hippolytus. Hippolytus tells us that Callistus combined the 
 notions of the Noetians and the Theodotians. 3 By Praxeas it was 
 not taught directly that the Father suffered. The Father assumed 
 
 1 Eusebius, H.E. V. 28. 2 Adv. Prax. i. 
 
 8 Ref. Omn. Hair. X. 27.
 
 103 
 
 the flesh of humanity and thus became the Son ; but the Spirit in 
 Christ, which is God the Father, did not suffer. 1 Noetus affirmed 
 that the Father himself " was born and suffered and died." 2 He 
 maintained that his doctrine " glorified Christ." 
 
 Beryl, Bishop of Bostra in Arabia, rejected the personal pre- 
 existence of Christ, and is probably to be considered a Modalist, 
 with some peculiarities which it is difficult accurately to ascer- 
 tain. He certainly held that Christ did not preexist as a divine 
 person distinct from God the Father. He was converted from 
 his opinion by Origen, at a Council held at Bostra in 244? 
 
 The most famous representative of Modalism was Sabellius. 4 
 He is often said to have been a Libyan by birth, but of this we 
 are not certain. He spent some time at Rome at the beginning 
 of the third century. Sabellianism underwent various modifica- 
 tions, and as we have only a few fragments of the writings of 
 Sabellius, it is not easy to define precisely his teaching save in 
 a few chief points. He distinguished between the unity of the 
 divine essence and the plurality of its manifestations. He proba- 
 bly advanced upon Noetus in connecting the Holy Spirit with the 
 Father and Son. The three manifestations follow one another in 
 order, like dramatic parts. God as Father is the Creator and 
 Lawgiver ; through the incarnation the same God fulfils the office 
 of Redeemer, up to the time of the ascension ; and, lastly, as 
 Holy Ghost regenerates and sanctifies. The three persons would 
 be thus equalized, each being a mode of action on a level with 
 each of the others. 5 The Sabellians are said to have compared 
 the triplicity of God to the Sun, the light of the Sun, and its heat. 
 Athanasius ascribes to Sabellius himself the statement that the 
 Father extends or dilates Himself into " Son and Spirit," and 
 hence infers that " the name of the Son and Spirit will of necessity 
 cease when the need of them has been supplied." 6 If Athanasius 
 is correct, a primacy is here attributed to the Father. For the 
 proper human soul of Christ Sabellianism substituted God Him- 
 self, in one mode of manifestation, streaming through a human 
 body. 
 
 About the year 262, Paul of Samosata was Bishop of Antioch, 
 
 1 Tertullian, Adv. Prax. 29. 2 Hippolyt., Adv. Nat. I. 
 
 3 Eusebius, H.E. VI. 33. 
 
 * For the sources respecting Sabellianism, see Harnack, Real-Encykl. X. 208. 
 5 See Athanasius, Adv. Ar. III. 4. 6 Ibid. IV. 13, I.
 
 104 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 which was then under the rule of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. 1 
 There he exercised an authority almost equivalent to that of a 
 viceroy. He propounded a peculiar form of the dynamic theory. 
 Denying personal distinctions in the Deity, holding that Christ 
 was a man born of the Virgin, he taught that the Logos inspires 
 Him. But the Logos is an impersonal attribute of the Father, 
 and the light that dwells in Christ is not the Logos in its essence. 2 
 By this divine power there is effected a union of Christ with God, 
 a union of will, not of essence, a union consisting in a love that 
 is carried to perfection. By reason of this ethical union, Christ 
 is exalted by the Father, is clothed with a divine dignity, and 
 may even be called " God." Political influences played an im- 
 portant part in the long controversy occasioned by the promulga- 
 tion of this novel opinion. Three synods were held at Antioch, 
 by the third of which Paul was declared to be excommunicated 
 and deposed. He continued, however, to retain his position 
 until the conquest of Zenobia by the Romans in 272, when the 
 Emperor Aurelian compelled him to give up the church building. 3 
 The decisive blow against Monarchianism was struck by the 
 Alexandrian School, through its great representative, Origen. In 
 his work De Principiis Concerning First Principles, or the 
 fundamental truths of Christianity we have the first example 
 of a positive and rounded system of doctrine. 4 Origen argues 
 against the Gnostics and the Monarchians, and against other 
 parties deemed heretical, but all this is incidental to the end in 
 view, which is to present a direct exposition of the body of Chris- 
 tian doctrine. In this respect he stands apart from the Apologists, 
 and from Irenaeus and Tertullian. His refutation of disbelievers 
 and assailants is given in a special treatise, his Confutation of 
 Celsus. Unfortunately we possess the De Principiis, with the 
 exception of a few passages, only in the diffuse and inaccurate 
 translation of Rufinus. Yet the general tenor of the treatise, 
 and the other writings of its author, render it possible for the 
 
 1 For the sources on Paul of Samosata, see Harnack, Real-Encykl. X. p. 193. 
 
 2 So says Athanasius, De Decrett. c. v. 24. 
 
 8 The Letters of the bishops who condemned him (which are found in 
 Eusebius, H.E. vii. 27-30), give chiefly the personal, rather than the doctrinal, 
 charges against him. But all the proceedings show clearly the strong opposi- 
 tion of the Church to the humanitarian doctrine. See Hefele, I. b. i. c. 2, 9. 
 
 * Baur argues for the other possible meaning of the title, "First Things." 
 DG. I. 276.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 10$ 
 
 most part to check the translator's deviations from the original. 
 When we take up the De Principiis of Origen, we seem to rind 
 ourselves in the presence of a modern man. The atmosphere is 
 free from prejudice and polemical bitterness. The vocabulary 
 of denunciation is sparingly drawn upon. There is a warm 
 appreciation of the value of all knowledge, and of the possibility 
 and the importance of discerning the relationship of the Gospel 
 to philosophy and science. Not everything in theology is con- 
 sidered to be settled. We are pointed, beyond the borders of 
 ascertained truth, to a broad margin of ground not yet so far 
 explored that differences of opinion are precluded. In reference 
 to problems not yet solved, the author is content to set forth 
 an opinion, freely granting to others the liberty of dissent. 1 Such 
 open questions, for example, are whether the Traducian view 
 or its opposite is true, whether the Deity is absolutely immate- 
 rial or not, the doctrine of the Holy Ghost in some important 
 particulars. 2 
 
 But Origen plants himself on the rule of faith. This embodies 
 the justly recognized teaching of the Apostles, preserved by a 
 trustworthy tradition. 3 Although a free-minded student, and nat- 
 urally of a speculative turn, his position is that nothing is to be 
 received which is contrary to the Scriptures or to legitimate de- 
 ductions from them. Origen is emphatically a scriptural theolo- 
 gian. He has an astonishing familiarity with the contents of the 
 sacred books, and calls up from all parts of them passages apposite 
 to the subject which he is handling. All Christian truth, he holds, 
 is to be traced to Christ, who spoke through the prophets and 
 Apostles. 4 
 
 Yet the allegorical method of interpretation leaves room for an 
 exegesis based really, although not with conscious intention, on 
 suggestions purely subjective in their origin. This allegorical 
 character of the Bible, Origen supports by appealing to particular 
 interpretations by the Apostle Paul and by other arguments. 8 
 The Scripture has a threefold meaning, answering to the trichot- 
 omy, body, soul, and spirit, in man. 6 As to the first, there are 
 not wanting certain narratives which cannot be taken in their 
 literal sense, since the historical meaning implies something orTen- 
 
 1 See, e.g., De Princip. I. viii. 4. 4 Ibid. I. i. I. 
 
 2 Ibid. I. i. 5, 9. s Ibid. IV. i. 13. 
 
 3 Ibid, I. i. 1,2.. 6 Ibid. IV. i. II.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 sive to Christian feeling, or is, for other reasons, wholly improba- 
 ble. 1 Examples are the story of Lot and his daughters, and the 
 "morning and evening" before the sun was made (Gen. i). 
 Passages of this class are meant to be " stumbling blocks " to 
 drive us to the discovery of a higher significance in them. Fall- 
 ing under the second head are the psychic interpretations, which 
 relate to the individual soul in this life, to its ethical relations, 
 including its relations to God. It is the third sense, the occult, 
 spiritual intent of Scripture, which embraces in it the riches of the 
 divine word. This profounder meaning is sealed to all save the 
 mature believer. 2 It is dark to others : it is a mine into which he 
 only can descend. It is the wisdom which is open only to " the 
 perfect." This theory furnishes the warrant for the doctrine of 
 Reserve in communicating truth. Pearls are not to be cast before 
 swine. There are aspects of Christian doctrine of which it is true 
 still that believers not yet ripe in faith and purity " cannot bear 
 them now." One example of this esoteric creed was the doctrine 
 of Restorationism, which it would not be expedient to proclaim 
 abroad. 3 The Reserve, which is legitimate within due limits, was 
 of course carried to a wrong extreme when it was used as a war- 
 rant for a tacit sanction, and, perhaps a more than silent counte- 
 nance, of opinions considered by the enlightened class to be 
 erroneous. 4 
 
 God, as He is in Himself, is incomprehensible. Here the New 
 Platonic conception is appropriated. He reveals Himself to us 
 partially in Nature, more fully in Christ. Our knowledge of God 
 being thus relative, it is of course inadequate. 5 Even ' substance ' 
 in the literal sense is not to be predicated of Him. 6 Absolute 
 causality belongs to Him. The exercise of His attributes, such as 
 omnipotence and righteousness, is conditioned on the creation. 
 In order to be righteous, in any other than a potential sense, there 
 must be things over which He can righteously rule. 7 Not only 
 must His omnipotence be eternally in exercise ; it is in full exer- 
 cise. He has done all that can be done. Yet He can set 
 
 1 De Princip. IV. i. 12 sq. 2 Ibid. I. i. 2. 
 
 3 Adv. Celsum, VI. 26. 
 
 4 See Bigg's remarks, The Christ. Platonists of Alexandria, p. 141 sq. 
 
 5 Adv. Cels. VI. Ixv. 
 
 6 tvtKfiva. vov KO.I ovfflas. C. Celsum, VII. 38. Cf. De Prin. I. i. 6. Other 
 references in Dorner, Person Christi, I. p. 661, n. 22. 
 
 7 De Princip. I. ii. 10.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 IO7 
 
 limitations upon the exercise of His attributes. So strenuous is 
 Origen in asserting the freedom of man that he attributes to God 
 a restriction of His own prescience in order to leave unimpaired 
 the liberty of the human will. Creation springs from God's wis- 
 dom and benevolence. Inseparable, of course, from Origen's idea 
 of the divine attributes, is his doctrine that creation is eternal. 
 It is creation, not a Gnostic emanation ; but there was never a 
 time when God existed alone, and when the world of rational 
 beings was not. 
 
 The Mediator between God and the world, through whom the 
 world is made, is the Logos. In the Logos are all the ideas 
 which exist in an inscrutable unity in the Father, and are em- 
 bodied in the creation. In relation to the Logos the Father " is 
 one and simple " ; while it is in the Logos that the world finds its 
 unity. The Logos is personal and without beginning. 1 He is 
 generated of the Father, but this generation is eternal. 2 Origen 
 rejects the proposition which afterwards became a watchword of 
 the Arians, "There was (a time) when He was not." 3 The 
 generation of the Son is, therefore, timeless. It is no momentary 
 act. He is without beginning. God is eternally a Father, a 
 statement which is fundamental in the later Athanasian theology. 
 The personal Son or Logos is the complete manifestation of the 
 hidden Deity. 4 He is the Wisdom of God, without which He 
 would not be God. How is the Son generated? Origen dis- 
 cards every notion of sensuous emanation, and every notion of 
 division or partition. The Son is likened to the radiance of a 
 torch. The relation of the Son to the Father is compared to the 
 proceeding of the will from the mind in man. 5 He is said, in one 
 place, to be generated from the substance of the Father. 6 There 
 are numerous expressions of this general character which appear 
 to leave nothing wanting to the conception of the true and proper 
 divinity of the Son. Yet, in Origen's idea, the Father is the foun- 
 tain-head of Deity. 7 The Father, moreover, is God as He is, in 
 and of Himself; the Father is " God " with the article prefixed to 
 
 1 De Princip. I. ii. 2. 
 
 2 De Princip. I. ii. 4; In Jerem. 9, 4. 
 
 3 Fragment in Athanasius, De Decrett. 27. 
 
 4 De Princip. I. ii. 7, 8. 5 Ibid. I. ii. 7. 
 
 6 Frag, of Pamphil. ad Hebr. (See Dorner, Person Christi, I. 633) : " Ex 
 ipsa Dei suhstantia generatur." 
 
 7 In Johann. II. 5, 6, 18.
 
 108 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the term : whereas the Son is God, with the article omitted. 1 He 
 is " the second God," a kind of repetition or duplicate of God. 2 
 He is even said to be of another substance or essence. 3 He is 
 from the will of the Father. 4 In one place He is even called " the 
 most ancient of all creatures." 5 It is in such expressions as these 
 that, at a later day, the Arians found satisfaction. Their opponents 
 appealed to the former class of representations. How to reconcile 
 Origen with himself on this subject is a question that has naturally 
 provoked much discussion. It must be remembered that the terms 
 involved had not acquired the precision of meaning which they 
 attained subsequently. It must be remembered, likewise, that 
 Origen, while insisting on the divinity of Christ, is solicitous to 
 fend off the Monarchian inference of the identity of the Father 
 and the Son, as well as Gnostic theories of emanation. This 
 motive it is which moves him to emphasize the difference between 
 Father and Son. 
 
 How can the Son be derived from the will of God, and yet be 
 not created, but begotten ? It cannot be denied that the two 
 classes of statements in Origen on this subject seem at first to be at 
 hopeless variance with one another. So Baur judges them really 
 to be. 6 But there is a method of reconciliation which is certainly 
 more than plausible. 'Will,' like 'spirit,' 'truth,' is embraced in 
 the transcendent, inscrutable unity of the divine being. In the 
 objectifying of God the Father, or in His mysterious self-revelation, 
 will becomes explicit in the person of the Son. 7 Occasionally, as 
 we have seen, the Father is said to be super-substantial. 8 Even 
 ' substance ' when predicated of Him would be a limitation. Hence 
 the Son is spoken of as another in substance. In this way His 
 
 1 In Johann. II. 2. 
 
 2 C. Celsum, V. 39. In C. Celsum,Vlll. 12, 13, Origen is concerned only 
 to show that the Father and the Son are one in the harmony of their wills. 
 See Thomasius, DG. p. 203, n. 2. 
 
 8 De Or at. I. 15. Others take oiiffla. here in the sense of hypostasis. So 
 Neander, DG. I. 162; Bigg, 163, n. 3; Robertson, Athanasius, p. xxxi. 
 
 4 De Princip. I. ii. 6. 
 
 5 Hebr. I. 3. Cf. C. Celsum, V. 37. 
 
 " So vereinigt Origenes die beiden entgegengesetzten Lehrbegriffe, den 
 athanasianischen und den arianischen, im Keime in sich." DG. I. 453. 
 
 7 See Thomasius, DG. I. 202 sq. 
 
 8 Origen says that a discussion about ' substance ' and whether God is 
 " beyond substance," would be long and difficult. C. Celsum, VI. 64.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 personal distinction and subordination to the Father are guarded. 1 
 "The generation," says Harnack, "is an indescribable act, which 
 can be represented only in inadequate similitudes ; it is no emana- 
 tion . . . but is rather to be designated as an internally necessary 
 act of the will, which for this very reason is an effluence of the 
 nature." 2 Two things are plain in the review of Origen's whole 
 teaching on this topic. One is the subordinationism that pervades 
 it. The other is the room left for a diversity of interpretation by 
 the seemingly inharmonious phrases to which we have adverted. 
 
 Concerning the incarnate Christ, Origen is at pains to show, 
 against the docetic opinion, that He is possessed of a human soul 
 in inseparable unity with the Logos. 3 This human soul was a pure, 
 unfallen, preexistent spirit, chosen on account of these qualities. 
 Yet its freedom of choice is exercised, after the incarnation, in its 
 victory over temptation, a victory which is carried to completion. 
 To indicate how the Son incarnate is capable of revealing the 
 Father, he uses the illustration of the statue. 4 There is a colossal 
 statue, so large as to fill the world, which therefore cannot be seen. 
 Yet a small statue precisely like it in form and material would en- 
 able us to know what it is. Christ, the express image of the 
 Father, becomes such to us by divesting Himself of His glory. 
 Yet the human nature of Christ is not unaffected by its indissoluble 
 union with the divine Logos, just as a bar of iron which is in the 
 fire remains iron, although it is different in its effects from what 
 it would be if it were not in the fire. This soul elected to love 
 righteousness, and the holiness which at first depended on the will, 
 was changed by custom into nature. 5 It is perpetually in the 
 Word, in Wisdom, in God. 6 
 
 The Holy Spirit is associated in dignity with the Father and the 
 Son. Whether or not He is created, writes Origen, has not been 
 clearly determined. The Holy Spirit has not that immediate rela- 
 tion to the Father which belongs exclusively to the Son. Yet the 
 Holy Spirit has a direct knowledge of the Father, perceiving 
 
 1 See Dorner, Person Christi, p. 661. 
 
 2 Harnack, DG. I. 581. See, also, Denis, De la Philosophic d'Origene, 
 p. 93 sq. In De Princif. v. 15, 1 1, in speaking of Mark x. 18 (" There is none 
 good save one"), Origen says that the Son is, as the Father is, aya.06s, but 
 not drrapaXXd/cruj aya06s. The Father is the aboriginal fountain of good- 
 ness. The passage was altered by Rufinus. 
 
 3 De Princip. II. vi. 3. 8 Ibid. II. vi. 5. 
 
 4 Ibid. I. ii. 8. 6 Ibid. II. vi. 6.
 
 IIO HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 directly the deep things in the mind of God. He does not derive 
 this knowledge from the Son. 1 The Spirit is an object of worship. 
 And if the rendering of Rufinus is here to be trusted, Origen says 
 that he has found no passage in the Scriptures where it is taught 
 that He is a creature. 2 The Holy Spirit is confined in His agency 
 to the souls which He renews and sanctifies. 3 Christians derive 
 existence from the Father, rational existence from the Son, holiness 
 from the Spirit. 4 
 
 In order to understand Origen's ideas relative to man and to the 
 doctrine of sin, we must keep in mind how uniform and strenuous 
 in opposition to fatalism is his assertion of freedom. 5 The 
 original creation consisted exclusively of rational spirits. They 
 were co-equal as well as co-eternal. A different view would imply 
 that the creation was defective. It would leave unanswered the 
 question why the creation was partly deferred. Moreover, Origen 
 is led by his general views to the conclusion that all inequalities were 
 due originally to " merits and qualities " pertaining respectively to an- 
 gelic beings. 6 The preexistence of men is involved in the theory of 
 creation. This supposition alone meets the objections to the 
 divine justice. 7 The preexistent fall of men from holiness is not 
 only presupposed in their present character from birth ; it is the 
 ground and reason of the existence of the material world. 8 The 
 fallen rational spirits become souls, and are clothed with bodies. 
 The preexistent spirits have an innate capacity to be thus incorpo- 
 rated in the flesh, but this potential materiality becomes actual in 
 consequence of their voluntary misdoing. Matter is called into 
 being for the purpose of supplying an abode and a means of disci- 
 pline and purgation to these fallen spirits. Whether the souls 
 which are supposed to animate the heavenly bodies are tainted 
 with sin, or have special offices to fulfil, not the consequence of 
 any transgression on their part, is not made clear. Thus the world 
 in which we live is made as a theatre of redemption. Its suffer- 
 ings and sorrows and the ordinance of death, are, to be sure, an 
 
 1 De Princip. I. iii. 4. 8 Ibid. I. iii. 5. 
 
 2 Ibid. I. iii. 3. * Ibid. I. v. 8. 
 
 5 See, e.g., Ibid. II. i. 2, III. i. 2 sq. Passages of like purport abound 
 in Origen's writings. 
 
 6 Ibid. I. viii. I sq. 7 Ibid. III. iii. 5. 
 
 8 Ka.Taf3o\ri (Matt. xxiv. 21) is said to mean dejection or fall, which gives 
 rise to the present state of being. De Princip. III. v. 34.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY IU 
 
 infliction of justice, but justice is a form of mercy. 1 The earth is a 
 school for the recovery of the sinful. It is to be observed tnat, 
 notwithstanding the preexistent fall, even in this life sin does not 
 begin until reason awakes and there is a voluntary election of evil, 
 with no constraint from within or without. Origen is the earnest 
 foe of the doctrine of unconditional predestination. The end and 
 aim of all divine influence, and of the orderings of Providence, is to 
 bring men back to holiness and blessedness. Origen's interpreta- 
 tions of St. Paul in the seventh of Romans, of what is said in the 
 Bible of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, and of what is said 
 respecting the "judicial blindness" to which the wicked are given 
 over, are in general accord with modern Arminianism. 2 Only 
 Origen goes farther in maintaining that in such examples as that 
 of Pharaoh, the method of the divine cure of sin is like that pur- 
 sued by physicians in certain physical maladies. It is slow and 
 gradual. 3 It involves at certain stages severity and the infliction 
 of anguish ; but these are merciful in their intent and in their 
 ultimate effect. 
 
 Respecting the work of Christ, Origen includes the current 
 view of a conquest by Christ over the powers of evil by which men 
 are delivered from their sway. He broaches the doctrine of a 
 deceit practised on Satan, who accepts the soul of Christ as a 
 ransom, not knowing that he could not endure the presence of 
 a sinless soul. 4 But this is far from being the exclusive doctrine 
 of Origen in regard to the significance of the Saviour's death. It 
 is a vicarious death in behalf of the race. It is an offering for sin, 
 typified in the sacrifices of the Old Testament. Under this head, 
 he teaches that for sin an atonement is necessary, the value of 
 which is measured by the value of the blood that is shed. The 
 death of Christ is thus vicarious. In his interpretation of Romans 
 iii. 25, he makes the death of Jesus to be a propitiation. 5 
 
 It is through the Logos that light goes forth upon mankind, 
 not upon a part alone, but upon all. It is first through natural 
 
 1 De Princip. II. v. I. 2 Ibid. III. i. IO sq. 
 
 8 Ibid. III. i. 17. See Origen in Matt. XVI. 8; XII. 28; XIII. 8, 9; Rom. 
 II. 13. For other passages, see the excellent monograph of Thomasius, p. 223, 
 or Redepenning's Origenes, p. 405 sq. In this conception, Satan fills the 
 place of the demiurge of the Gnostics. 
 
 4 E.g., C. Celsum, VII. 17, I. 31. 
 
 5 Cf. In Johann. J. XXVIII. 14.
 
 II2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 law, and through the specially revealed law, which is given to 
 one nation by way of preparation for the higher light to come 
 through the Logos incarnate. But the redemptive influence of 
 the Logos extends beyond this life. Pharaoh was overwhelmed 
 in the Red Sea, but was not annihilated. 1 He is still under the 
 divine superintendence. Not only men who have lived on earth 
 and died, but all fallen spirits, not excluding Satan and evil angels, 
 are visited by the redemptive influences. As a part of esoteric 
 doctrine, of the deeper disclosure of the Gospel, vouchsafed 
 to such as are prepared for it, the restitution of all was accepted 
 by Origen. 2 But so far did he carry his idea of the freedom and 
 mutability of the will that he appears to have held to the possi- 
 bility of renewed falls hereafter, and of worlds to take the place 
 of the present for the recovery, once more, of inconstant souls. 3 
 
 The conception of the Sacraments is spiritualized in Origen. 
 Baptism is the symbol of the cleansing of the soul by the divine 
 Logos. Yet it is the real beginning of gracious influences for 
 believers who are inwardly fitted to receive them. So the Lord's 
 Supper is the symbol of the living word of truth which is 
 the true, heavenly bread given of Christ in like manner to all 
 who are spiritually qualified to receive it. To these, but only 
 to these, is the sanctifying influence which is connected with the 
 bread and wine after their consecration of any benefit. 4 
 
 In discarding Chiliasm, Origen cast aside, also, the crass con- 
 ception of the nature of the Resurrection. There is a living 
 power, a germ, in the present body, which gives to it shape and 
 form, and will give rise to a spiritual organism conformed to the 
 nature of the particular soul, be it good or evil, that receives it. 
 It is only a small fraction of disciples to whom the door of 
 blessedness in the vision of God is open immediately at death. 
 Generally speaking, the righteous enter into a state where they 
 are still under training, are advanced higher and higher in the 
 scale of knowledge, and are purified from the remains of sin. 
 Finally they reach the culmination of holiness and bliss. The 
 wicked are subjected to a discipline which has the same end 
 in view, but which includes pains of conscience of which fire 
 
 1 De Princip. III. I, 14. 2 E.g., see Ibid. I. vi. I, III. vi. 3. 
 
 3 See Jerome's Letter (CXXIV.) to Avitus. Cf. Thomasius, Ortgenes, 
 
 P- 259- 
 
 4 See Neander's exposition of Origen's opinion, Ch. History, I. 648, 649.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY n^ 
 
 is the symbol, and they may even suffer outward inflictions. 
 For them the goal is remote, but it is eventually reached. 
 
 It was far from the intent of Origen to call in question the 
 essentials of the Christian teaching, to which he was profoundly 
 attached. That teaching, to be sure, comes from him, steeped in 
 an infusion of Greek Philosophy, besides being strongly tinctured 
 with certain other elements, the exclusive product of his own spec- 
 ulation. But perhaps what is eccentric in his opinions excites 
 attention somewhat more in a brief sketch of his system than in 
 his own copious expositions. The influence of this great theo- 
 logian was wide-spread and lasting. One evidence of this fact is 
 the series of attacks upon his opinions and the heated controver- 
 sies respecting his orthodoxy. How attractive and impressive he 
 was when he taught with the living voice, is described by a pupil, 
 the saintly Gregory Thaumaturgus. He gained a new title to 
 reverence through his sufferings and steadfastness in the Decian 
 persecution. As is true of not a few pioneers in theological 
 inquiry, there lay in his writings the seeds of systems not in 
 accord with one another. So powerful was the stimulus imparted 
 by his genius to religious thought. 
 
 In the West, in the latter half of the third century, the theology 
 of Origen had no considerable influence. Novatian, who after 
 the election of Cornelius as Bishop of Rome (A.D. 251) led the 
 revolt against the relaxation of discipline in the case of the lapsed, 
 was a man of mark, and is praised for his talents and learning by 
 Cyprian. He wrote a treatise on the Trinity, which, with some 
 deviations, reflects the teaching of Tertullian. He is very decided 
 against Monarchianism. He says that the Son was " always in the 
 Father ; else the Father would not always be the Father." l The 
 Son, however, may be said to have a beginning, and in a certain 
 sense the Father precedes Him. Yet the Son was begotten and 
 born when the Father willed it, and proceeded from Him of whose 
 will "all things were made." 1 The Son is in all things obedient 
 to the Father from whom He derived His beginning. There is a 
 community of substance between the two. 1 The incarnate Son 
 is God as well as man. But the true and eternal Father is the 
 one God by whom is imparted the divinity of the Son ; and the 
 Son at the end remits to the Father " the authority of His divin- 
 ity." In the incarnation, " the legitimate Son of God " assumes 
 
 1 Novatian, De Trinitate, c. 31. 
 
 i
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 that "Holy Thing," and thus makes the Son of man what He 
 "was not naturally" the son of God. 1 It is a proof of the 
 divinity of Christ that the Holy Spirit receives from Him what the 
 Spirit declares, and is thus evidently " less than Christ." 2 
 
 Nowhere was the influence of Origen so great as at Alexandria. 
 One of the most eminent of his pupils was Dionysius, who was 
 bishop there from about 247 to 268. The fragments of his writ- 
 ings that remain show him to have been a man of remarkable abili- 
 ties. He wrote " Concerning the Promises," in answer to Nepos, 
 an Egyptian bishop, the author of a book defending Chiliasm 
 and opposing the allegorical interpretation of the Apocalypse. 
 The Alexandrian bishop defended the opinions of Origen. He 
 manifested critical ability in the reasons which he assigned for 
 regarding the book of Revelation as not from the pen of the 
 Apostle John, but as, perhaps, the work of another bearing the 
 same name, and said to have likewise a tomb at Ephesus. 
 In a series of letters to certain bishops in the Pentapolis who 
 held Sabellian opinions, which were still prevalent in that district, 
 Dionysius was led by his zeal in behalf of the distinction of per- 
 sons not only to deny that the Son is coessential (Homoousios) 
 with the Father, but to deny also that He is coeternal. He even 
 said that "the Son is a creature ... in essence alien from the 
 Father, just as the husbandman is from the vine, or the ship- 
 builder from the boat; for that, being a creature, He was not 
 before He came to be." 3 The namesake of the Alexandrian 
 Bishop, Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, informed of what he had 
 said, wrote a letter on the subject to Alexandria, and a personal 
 letter to its bishop. By way of response, the latter composed 
 a book, entitled Refutation and Defence, which was addressed 
 to the Roman Dionysius. Athanasius, from whom we ascertain 
 the contents of this correspondence, defends the orthodoxy of the 
 bishop who was complained of. This he does in his treatise on 
 the Decrees of the Nicene Council, and in a short special writing 
 on " the Opinion of Dionysius." Dionysius explains to his Roman 
 brother that in the use of the obnoxious expressions, which he 
 admits might have been more carefully chosen, his intent was to 
 guard on the one hand the distinction of the Son from the Father 
 and, on the other hand, to give emphasis to the fact of the genera- 
 
 1 De Trinitate, c. 24. 2 Ibid. c. 16. 
 
 3 Athanasius, De Sentent. Dionys. 4.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY !!$ 
 
 tion of the Son from the Father. The term ' made ' he had used 
 only in a wide and vague sense, not in the sense of an artificer, 
 but more as a philosopher is said to be the maker of his own dis- 
 course, or as men are said to be "doers of the law," or even as it 
 is applied to inward qualities, such as virtue or vice. 1 At the same 
 time, he had also said that the Word was like " a river from a 
 well, and a shoot from a stock," as "light from light," and "life 
 from life." 2 He did not object to the word 'Homoousios' if it 
 were not understood as confounding the persons. 3 It helps to 
 explain the position of Dionysius to bear in mind that the third 
 synod at Antioch (268), in the case of Paul of Samosata, rejected 
 this term, doubtless for the reason which prompted the objection 
 of Dionysius. How strenuously the Roman bishop protested 
 against all language implying that the Son was made, may be 
 seen in a copious extract given by Athanasius. 4 He calls it blas- 
 phemy. The "divine triad" is to be preserved, and at the same 
 time " the holy preaching of the Monarchy." 5 Both the eminent 
 bishops, who seemed at first to be on the edge of a conflict, 
 were united against whatever called itself Sabellianism. The 
 Alexandrian in answer to objections from the Sabellian side, as 
 was natural, magnified subordinationism. The Roman simply 
 held fast to unity and tripersonality, with no philosophy on the 
 subject. 
 
 The Asia Minor theology, which was derived from the Apolo- 
 gists and from Irenseus, did not give place at once to the teaching 
 of Origen. That theology was not without its effect as a factor in 
 the subsequent shaping of the orthodox system. The novelties in 
 Origen's teaching could not fail to evoke dissent among some who 
 held him in reverence, and opposition from others who might 
 regard him with less esteem, but whose views in general bore the 
 impress of his influence. Among these partially hostile critics, 
 forerunners of more vehement assailants to arise afterwards, 
 Methodius should be specially mentioned. He was Bishop of 
 Olympus, and then of Patara in Lycia, and later still of Tyre. 
 He died as a martyr in 311. He was a devoted student of the 
 writings of Plato. In several of the writings of Methodius, in 
 particular in his book on "Things Created," and his book on the 
 Resurrection, he attacked certain opinions of Origen. He under- 
 
 1 Athan., De Sentent. 20, 21. * De Decrett. VI. 
 
 2 Ibid. 19. 3 Ibid. 18. 6 Ibid. VI. xxvi.
 
 H6 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 takes to confute the doctrine of the eternity of the creation, and 
 the conception of the material world as the prison-house of the 
 soul. He combats Origen's spiritualized conception of the Res- 
 urrection. He brings forward, also, a doctrine of "recapitulation " 
 allied to the conception of the headship of Christ which was pro- 
 pounded by Irenseus, a teacher whom Methodius in some other 
 points followed. He presented, moreover, a mystical view of the 
 relation of the Logos to the race, renewed humanity, as a whole, 
 being looked upon as the second Adam. Within each soul the 
 Logos, coming down once more from Heaven, must effect a 
 mysterious spiritual union with man. As the means of attaining 
 to this mystical union, it is not knowledge that is chiefly valued, 
 but rather asceticism and especially virginity. In the presence of 
 this ideal of self-mortification and inward unity with Christ, His 
 objective work does not, to be sure, disappear, but retires into the 
 background. In one of the fragments of Methodius there is an 
 hypostatic trias not dissimilar to Origen's doctrine. There is the 
 Father Almighty, uncaused and the cause of all, the begotten Son 
 and Word, and the person of the Spirit and His procession. 
 Methodius is far from discarding allegory. In opposing interpre- 
 tations of Origen, he substitutes one allegory for another. * There 
 were others besides Methodius who felt called upon to come out 
 against the peculiar views of Origen which clashed with the tradi- 
 tional beliefs. One was Peter, Archbishop of Alexandria, appointed 
 to this office A.D. 300, who wrote against Origen's opinion relative 
 to the preexistence of souls. He contended that the body and 
 soul of Adam were contemporaneous in their origin. 
 
 A striking proof and illustration of the substantial victory of the 
 theology which grew up in connection with the idea of the Logos, 
 a victory which was owing in a great degree to Origen, is the fact 
 of the introduction into the baptismal creed, in the principal 
 churches of the East, even before the close of the third century, 
 of theological statements respecting Christ as the Logos, and His 
 generation from the Father prior to the creation. 2 This orthodoxy 
 assent to propositions in theology pertaining to the person of 
 Christ was made part and parcel of the Christian faith. 
 
 1 Respecting the opinions of Methodius, see Harnack, DG. I. 696-705. 
 3 On this point, see Loofs, DG. p. 141 (c).
 
 PERIOD II 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PATRISTIC THEOLOGY IN THE EAST 
 AND IN THE WEST 
 
 IN THE EAST, FROM A.D. 300 TO THE DEATH OF JOHN OF DAMASCUS 
 (c. 754) ; IN THE WEST, TO GREGORY I (c. A.D. 600) 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CONTROVERSY WITH HEATHENISM THE DANGER OF DIVISION 
 THE SEAT OF AUTHORITY THE CANON, SCRIPTURE AND TRA- 
 DITION THE GROUNDS OF THEISTIC BELIEF 
 
 THE Dioclesian persecution proved that Christianity in the 
 Roman Empire was not to be extirpated by force. The Church 
 was inspired with a consciousness of strength. No doubt this was 
 owing in no inconsiderable degree to the political triumph of the 
 Christian cause. It was felt to be safe under the shield of impe- 
 rial protection. The result of the reaction under Julian (361-3) 
 plainly showed that heathenism had not vitality enough to enable 
 it to regain its ascendency. Events and changes running through 
 a number of centuries had provided the defenders of the old 
 religion with some new materials for assault, and the Church with 
 some fresh grounds both of attack and defence. This is illus- 
 trated in the literary attack of the Emperor Julian and in the 
 refutation of it by Cyril of Alexandria. Julian directs his assault 
 partly against the Old Testament. He charges the narrators of 
 the creation and of the early history of mankind with absurdity. 
 He animadverts upon the Old Testament conception of God as 
 concerned for only one nation, to the exclusion of the rest of 
 mankind, and to the ascription in it of human passions to the 
 Deity. Christians have forsaken the old divinities for Judaism, 
 
 117
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the religion of a despicable people. Yet they have abandoned its 
 legally ordained rites and have violated its laws by paying divine 
 honors to a deceased man. It was easy for Cyril to meet these 
 and like reproaches by pointing out the pedagogical nature of the 
 old dispensation. But it was not so easy to dispose of the accu- 
 sation that Christians had deserted the doctrine of their Master 
 when they persecuted heathen and heretics, worshipped martyrs, 
 and treated as sacred their graves and monuments. The standing 
 accusation of the heathen was that after Christianity had begun 
 to flourish, the Roman Empire had been stripped of its former 
 glory and been afflicted with numberless disasters. At the close 
 of the fourth century this complaint was heard everywhere in the 
 West. It was taken up by Augustine in his great work De Civi- 
 tate Dei, wherein he brings forward the fact that calamities, great 
 and various, had befallen Rome before Christ was born, and the 
 principle that earthly good fortune is not always associated with 
 true virtue. The prosperity which Rome had enjoyed had been 
 bestowed upon her, not by the pagan divinities, but by the only 
 living God. The City of God, the divine State, has been from 
 the beginning the end and aim of God's Providence. This City 
 embraces in it all sincere worshippers of the true God, who will 
 finally attain to everlasting blessedness. In contrast with the City 
 of God is the City of the World, composed of the wicked, who 
 may be possessed of earthly bliss, but are destined to everlasting 
 misery. Early apologetic writers, as Tatian and Tertullian, had 
 not confined themselves to the defensive, but had carried the war 
 into the enemy's camp. They had assailed the doctrines and rites 
 of heathenism. The same is true of the later Apologists. The 
 futility of the attempt to justify the old religion by an allegorical 
 treatment of its mythology, after faith in it had vanished from 
 cultivated minds, was exposed. Eusebius of Caesarea dwells on 
 the contradictory character of the symbolical explanations. He 
 insists that by them religion is transformed into physics, and that 
 atheism is the logical outcome. Augustine deals in the same way 
 with the heathen allegorists. As to the philosophers, they were 
 charged by Christian writers with having borrowed their best ideas 
 from Moses and the prophets, and with being at swords' points 
 among themselves on fundamental issues. They were reproached 
 with hypocrisy for joining in the popular worship when they knew 
 it to be folly. Porphyry, from the New Platonist School, is said
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 to have been bitter in his tone, but he was certainly one of the 
 keenest assailants of the Scriptures on the ground of alleged incon- 
 sistencies. The prophecy in the book of Daniel, he maintained, 
 was not prophecy, but history, the book being by a later Macca- 
 bean author. It is to be regretted that the reply to Porphyry by 
 Eusebius has not been preserved. He was the most learned of 
 the Apologists. The Prceparatio Evangelica and the Demonstratio 
 Evangelica are really two parts of one work. The earlier part is 
 devoted to showing that in renouncing the Greek religion and 
 philosophy and in accepting the Hebrew Scriptures, Christians 
 have not been actuated by blind faith, but by good and sufficient 
 reasons. The later part, which we have in an incomplete form, 
 vindicates them for departing from Judaism, and proves the corre- 
 spondence of the Christian truths with prophecy. Eusebius shows 
 that the character of Jesus is incompatible with an intention to 
 deceive, and that fraud in the case of the Apostles is out of the 
 question, owing to the injunction to be truthful which Christ had 
 laid upon them, to the circumstance that their testimony brought 
 to them no gain, but only loss, and to the candor with which they 
 record their own faults. The argument from miracles and prophe- 
 cies continued to be urged by Apologists. A new force was given 
 to the proof from the spread of Christianity in the face of all its 
 adversaries and from its victory, notwithstanding the seeming weak- 
 ness and insignificance of its founders. Its doctrines were con- 
 sidered foolish ; yet even the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, 
 who perished on the cross, had won its way to acceptance. 
 
 The Church in the first three centuries had done more than to 
 maintain itself against violence and coercion, and against the 
 weapons of argument and ridicule. It had so far preserved the 
 integrity of its doctrine as to avoid a fusion or compromise with 
 parties whose creeds incorporated a large admixture of heathen 
 speculation. It had rejected from its theology Ebionitism and 
 Sabellianism. Its teaching respecting Christ had been developed 
 on the basis of the conception of the Logos, and of the instru- 
 mentality of the Logos in the work of creation and of redemp- 
 tion. The system of Origen and his influence constitute a fact of 
 capital importance in relation to the period of theological history 
 that was now to open. He had distinguished faith from phi- 
 losophy. He had avowedly left many problems unsolved. More- 
 over, his positive teaching contained elements which, if not
 
 120 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 strictly inharmonious, were capable of leading different inter- 
 preters in diverse directions. We shall find that, in the progress 
 of theological discussions and conflicts, his distinction of faith and 
 philosophy vanished, that the neutral ground, if one may so term 
 it, was taken within the enclosure of dogma, that his questionable 
 opinions were set aside, and that finally his orthodoxy was widely 
 impeached, the result being the surrender of that intellectual 
 freedom of which he had been a signal example. 
 
 Could the Church be kept in unity in its profession of Christian 
 doctrine, or would it break into antagonistic sects ? There were 
 great diversities of mental tendency. The West was not like the 
 East. In the East, where thought was so restless, and contro- 
 versy apt to be so heated, such divisions in matters of belief 
 might arise as would be fatal to unity of organization. The 
 episcopate was not an adequate safeguard of unity. No single 
 bishop was considered infallible in his doctrinal verdicts. As to 
 the Episcopate, as a whole, how could it be expected to speak 
 with one voice ? In truth the episcopate involved possibilities of 
 endless division. The great patriarchates which arose on the 
 basis of Constantine's division of the Empire into dioceses might 
 be, and often were, at hopeless variance with one another. They 
 might become centres of mutually hostile sects. They might 
 foment rather than quell emulation and strife. There were these 
 perils, but there were forces at work to counteract them. The 
 course of events took such a turn that the See of Rome, on the 
 whole, maintained its ascendency, and each of the other principal 
 sees were prevented from subjugating the others. The preserva- 
 tion of unity in doctrine was the effect of a concurrence of causes, 
 among which the agency of Constantine is to be counted among 
 the most important. He was the powerful guardian of the unity 
 of the Church, and this unity involved the profession of a com- 
 mon creed. Another instrument in preventing the perpetuation 
 of dissonant creeds and of keeping Christian theology from taking 
 on a characteristic heathen stamp, was Athanasius, by whom, 
 notwithstanding the fury of the tempest, a final shipwreck was 
 averted. His name, in the relation of a conservator of unity, has 
 not unfitly been coupled with that of Constantine. 1 
 
 Before proceeding to relate the theological history of the 
 period, we have to touch upon those presuppositions in respect 
 
 1 Harnack, Grundriss d. DG. p. 142.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY I2 j 
 
 to the seat of authority and natural theology, on which interpreta- 
 tions of revealed truth were grafted. What were the postulates, 
 themselves experiencing change from time to time, which were 
 tacitly or explicitly assumed in discussions of doctrine ? 
 
 We begin with Scripture and tradition. Here the first topic is 
 the Canon. Soon after the death of Origen we find that the 
 Epistles of Peter, John, Jude, and James are received as canon- 
 ical. They are spoken of as a single group James being at the 
 head of the list and bear the name of the "Catholic epistles." 
 As an effect of Origen's influence, the Epistle to the Hebrews is 
 included among the Pauline writings. The book of Revelation is 
 also received as canonical notwithstanding the critical objections 
 of Dionysius of Alexandria. Eusebius leaves undetermined the 
 question whether it belongs among the Homologoumena. The 
 Council of Nicaea did not take up the question of the author- 
 itative sources of doctrine. By the middle of the fourth century 
 the need was felt for fixing the limits of the Canon. As the 6oth 
 Canon of the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 363) is of uncertain 
 genuineness, its enumeration of Biblical books is left in doubt. 
 Athanasius gives the name of Apocrypha exclusively to writings 
 of heretics bearing the name of honored men of the Bible. He 
 makes room for a class of books l which, although not canonical, 
 may profitably be read in Church assemblies and put into the 
 hands of catechumens. This class includes our Old Testament 
 Apocrypha, from which the twenty-two books of the Hebrew 
 Canon are distinguished. As late as Chrysostom the term ' Ca- 
 nonical ' signifies the books which the Church has fenced off 
 from other writings. But soon this term comes to signify the 
 books which are the rule of faith, and the word ' apocryphal ' is 
 used to designate books which the Church expressly rejects. In 
 the latter half of the fourth century, the Apocalypse is absent 
 from the lists of Biblical books in Cyril of Jerusalem and Gregory 
 of Nazianzum, and from the Canon of the Council of Laodicea ; 
 and no mention of it is made by Chrysostom and Theodoret. 
 Later, it is received by Cyril of Alexandria, by Basil and Gregory 
 of Nyssa, as it had been by Athanasius. In the fifth century, its 
 place in the Canon is no longer doubted, and it stands in the 
 oldest Greek codexes. In the East, at the end of the fourth cen- 
 tury, the Canon had acquired definite bounds, with the exception 
 
 1 dva.yivuffK6ft.eva.
 
 122 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of remaining doubts in respect to the Apocalypse. In the West, 
 the distinction made by Hilary, Rufinus, and Jerome, between the 
 Old Testament Canon and the Apocrypha, had no influence. 
 The Council of Hippo (A.D. 393), and that of Carthage (397), 
 put the Old Testament Apocrypha in the same rank with the 
 books of the Canon. In the lists of both these Councils, the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews is included. It had gradually been intro- 
 duced among the Western Churches during the fourth century, 
 and its general reception was secured by the powerful influence of 
 Augustine. But on the limits and contents of the Canon, there 
 was in the West no verdict possessed of binding authority on the 
 Church as a body. 
 
 The extent to which the legend was credited that the books 
 of Moses were lost during the Exile, and restored by the pen 
 of Ezra, through the Holy Ghost, and the credence given to the 
 notion that the authors of the Septuagint version, even in their 
 deviations from the Hebrew text, were divinely guided in order 
 to accommodate the Scriptures to the heathen a notion accepted 
 by Augustine indicate the prevailing idea of Biblical inspiration. 
 Augustine, in his " Harmony of the Gospels," illustrates at once 
 his candor and his faith in scriptural inerrancy. Comparing the 
 accounts given of the denials of Peter, he decides that Peter at 
 the moment was not where Jesus could have looked upon him, and 
 concludes that it was not a glance proceeding from the Lord " with 
 the eyes of the human body," but was a look cast from Heaven. 1 
 In scholars like Chrysostom and Jerome there are indications of a 
 more critical discernment of the distinction between the human 
 and divine factors in the composition of the Scriptures. It is 
 only in the School of Antioch, however, and especially in Theo- 
 dore of Mopsuestia, that we are met by more modern views of the 
 progressive nature of the Biblical revelation, and by consequent 
 qualifications of the doctrine of Inspiration. 
 
 There was always a conservatism of the past. It was always 
 deemed to be a valid reason for condemning an opinion if it could 
 be shown to be contradictory to what had been handed down. 
 New opinions, when accepted, were regarded as an explication of 
 doctrines held from the beginning. Great writers of the fourth 
 century, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Augustine, assert the 
 sufficiency of the Scriptures to acquaint us with whatever is 
 * P, IV. c. vi. I.e., the Lord touched his heart. Cf. V. 1681 c., 558 a.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 123 
 
 essential to faith and conduct. There is no underrating of the 
 necessity of having Biblical proof for what we are to believe. 
 All this implies that the contents of the Scriptures and of Catho- 
 lic tradition are considered to be essentially coincident. This 
 was the general view, despite occasional statements in certain 
 Fathers that tradition is a source of supplementary truth. In the 
 debates on Christology, tradition was appealed to in support 
 of a certain interpretation of passages in Scripture, and this was 
 made a touchstone of orthodoxy. Councils came to be regarded 
 as authorized expounders of the Catholic faith. This was emi- 
 nently the fact respecting the general councils, through which 
 it was assumed that the voice of the Holy Ghost was heard, 
 speaking through and to the Church. The decisions were held 
 by Augustine to advance with the growing insight of the Church 
 at large, the Christian consciousness. He taught that the declara- 
 tions of the earlier Councils might be improved by those which 
 are later. 1 The idea of a progress from a less to a more definite 
 explication of doctrine in successive Councils, is set forth by 
 Vincent of Lerins, with whom originates the traditional test of 
 orthodox doctrine ; namely, that it must have been believed 
 always, everywhere, and by all. With the rise of general councils, 
 the old appeal to Apostolic succession as securing the transmission 
 of Apostolic teaching, fell into the background. 
 
 In this period it was universally considered that the Church 
 is the ark of safety, within which alone salvation is possible. 
 In the East as in the West it was the visible Church to which this 
 distinction was attached. It is remarkable that in the East, while 
 there grew up an immovable orthodoxy resting upon the councils 
 and the Fathers and embodying likewise the whole system of 
 symbolical rites, comparatively little was done to formulate a 
 doctrine respecting the Church. In the West, on the contrary, 
 in the age of Augustine, in connection with contention against 
 antagonistic parties and opinions, the distinction between the 
 ideal and the actual Church, and the criteria of the Church 
 as distinguished from sects, received, as will be hereafter ex- 
 plained, an exposition that became authoritative. The Roman 
 bishops gained an increasing influence as arbiters in doctrinal 
 
 1 Cont. Donatist. II. c. 3. ' Emendari ' is the term used. It is not safe 
 to infer that he meant anything more than the determination of points left 
 ambiguous or undecided. See Neander, Ch. Hist., Vol. II. p. 210,
 
 124 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 disputes. Their supreme judicial authority was distinctly asserted 
 by Leo I. 
 
 That a true knowledge of God is attainable only by Revela- 
 tion, and especially through Christ, was the common opinion. 
 This, however, did not deter the Fathers from bringing forward 
 evidences for the being of God from the light of nature. For 
 example, the proof from design in material nature is sometimes 
 urged, 1 as well as the cosmological argument from the mutable 
 character of the world of things finite. The lack of purity of 
 soul is said by Athanasius to be the hindrance to the perception of 
 God, 2 and the same thing is taught by Gregory of Nazianzum. 
 Theologians as Augustine imbued with New Platonism, 
 found the belief in God on an ontological ground. Yet Augus- 
 tine sees a testimony to God in the heavens and the earth and in 
 all things, by which disbelievers are made inexcusable. Like 
 utterances are frequent in both the Greek and Latin Fathers. 
 Where the conception of the Divine Being was New Platonic, our 
 knowledge of Him was made to be not objective, but relative 
 to our limited apprehension. Creation was a free act of God, 
 through the Logos, the repository of the ideas realized in cre- 
 ation. The end of creation was the manifestation of the divine 
 goodness and the imparting of a share in the divine blessedness. 
 From the end of the third century, angels and demons assume 
 a constantly increasing prominence in the thoughts of Christians. 
 Constantine named a church after Michael, but this was not a 
 dedication of the edifice to him. It only signified that he was 
 believed to appear in it. 3 The Council of Laodicea, about A.D. 
 360, forbade the worship of angels, 4 but the only check to the 
 practice was found subsequently in efforts to draw a line between 
 that homage which was admissible and the rendering of divine 
 honors, which was prohibited. 
 
 1 E.g. Greg. Naz. Or at. XXVIII. 6, XIV. 33. August. Con/. X. 6. 
 
 2 Adv. Gent. I. 3. 8 Sozomen. H.E. II. 3. 
 
 * Canon 35. It forbids "a cultus of the angels" and styles it a "hidden 
 idolatry." Hefele contends that this was not intended to exclude "a regu- 
 lated worship of angels." Hist, of Councils, I. p. 317.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 DOCTRINES CONVERTED INTO DOGMAS CHURCH AND STATE 
 
 THE GREAT CONTROVERSIES THE ECCLESIASTICAL WRITERS, EAST 
 AND WEST 
 
 WE are now familiar with the fact that during the first three 
 centuries the struggle of the Church in the field of doctrine was 
 with Judaism and Heathenism, and with systems compounded of 
 both or embracing elements deeply antagonistic to Christian truth. 
 In this period of self-defence, carried forward on the basis of a 
 common faith, there were brought forward doctrinal conceptions, 
 interpretations of the Gospel, more or less tentative and differing 
 from one another. Now the Church, except in the short reign of 
 Julian, is neither molested by persecution from without, nor, save 
 in a comparatively small degree, by alien speculations arising be- 
 yond its borders. The area of controversy is within the Church. 
 Conflicting tendencies are pushed in different directions. Con- 
 tests necessarily spring up, which extend far and wide. In the 
 turmoil, while there is much sincerity and honest zeal, human 
 passions inevitably mingle. The grounds of mutual sympathy are 
 frequently forgotten, and intellectual differences, not reaching to 
 the essentials of the Gospel, provoke bitter warfare and division. 
 In this great productive period of doctrinal history, when so many 
 theological leaders expounded the Gospel in a positive form, or 
 crossed swords in debate, certain main doctrines through the action 
 of oecumenical Councils were converted into dogmas. This is 
 one characteristic of the present period in contrast with the era 
 which preceded it. 
 
 Another defining characteristic is the interference of the State 
 in doctrinal controversies. The Church was contemplated as a 
 unity. Its unity was one of the main pillars of the unity of the 
 Empire. Even on political grounds uniformity in doctrinal 
 
 125
 
 126 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 teaching was considered indispensable. Christian Emperors as- 
 sume the part of custodians of orthodoxy. More and more, es- 
 pecially in the East, where the Empire continued in the vigorous 
 exercise of authority, they use force for the extermination of her- 
 esy. Their authority is often invoked by contending parties. It 
 is by the Emperors that the general councils are called together, 
 and in the doings of these assemblies their will is potent. The 
 tide of battle turns to one side or the other, according as one 
 or another Court faction gets the upper hand. At length the 
 Byzantine rulers undertake practically to exercise a kind of Cae- 
 sarian papacy. The humiliation of the Roman bishops in the 
 short interval of active Byzantine supremacy in Italy, after its 
 conquest by the generals of Justinian, shows how much the spir- 
 itual power of the See of Rome was indebted for its growth to 
 its isolation as regards secular interference. 
 
 The second period comprises, loosely speaking, the second 
 three centuries. But as far as the East is concerned, it properly 
 includes the Monothelite Controversy, the last phase of the de- 
 bate respecting the two natures of Christ. A not unsuitable ter- 
 minus is the death of John of Damascus, the last eminent Greek 
 theologian, about 754, although he might be not unfitly classified 
 among the Scholastic authors. In the West, the second period 
 carries us to the death of Gregory I. (A.D. 604). He stands on 
 the line of division between the ancient and the mediaeval age. 
 
 In Philosophy, while Platonism is still largely in the ascendant 
 in the Church, and exerts a proportionate influence on Church 
 doctrine, there is an advance in the influence of Aristotle. Es- 
 pecially is this true of the dialectics of the Stagyrite, which we 
 find, from the close of the fourth century, more and more called 
 into service in doctrinal definitions and disputes. Late in this 
 period, on the Latin side, Boethius was a commentator on Aris- 
 totle. Occasionally there appeared a kind of religious idealism, 
 derived from a blending of Christian and Platonic elements, as in 
 the writings of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais in Egypt, who died 
 in .412 or 413. The writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, composed in 
 Egypt, probably late in the fifth century, are permeated by a 
 peculiar mysticism in which Platonic and Christian teaching, are 
 fused together. 
 
 An important fact in the doctrinal history of this period is the 
 appearance and enduring influence of two rival schools in theol-
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 127 
 
 ogy, the school of Alexandria and that of Antioch in Syria. In 
 this place it is sufficient to say that while the Alexandrians made 
 the most of the divine factor in the person of Christ and in re- 
 demption, planting themselves on an uncompromising supernat- 
 uralism, the Antiochians attributed to the human factor a larger 
 determining agency. 
 
 A noteworthy event in this period is the spread in the Roman 
 Empire of Manichaeism, a system originating (245 A.D.) with 
 Mani, a Persian religious teacher. He incorporated in his system 
 notions in religion which were imbibed from the Mandaeans or 
 other sects of " Baptisers," whose creed was tinged with Christian 
 elements. Manichaeism was rather a distinct religion than a 
 Christian heresy. Its groundwork was the Semitic or Babylo- 
 nian religion, although Persian beliefs were involved in it. Mani 
 was put to death in 276 for his deviation from the orthodox Par- 
 sic religion. He held to dualism, a kingdom of light and a 
 kingdom of darkness. Through Satan, a product of the kingdom 
 of darkness, both these elements were mingled in human nature. 
 Deliverance is accomplished by a physical process, and is the 
 achievement of a succession of prophets, of whom the celestial 
 Christ not the Jesus of the Jews is one. Mani himself was 
 the promised Paraclete. The system was ascetic as well as dual- 
 istic. At the head of the sect were twelve apostles. The " elect " 
 were a class above the " auditors " or novices. The Manichaean 
 converts were very numerous in the East as well as the West. 
 The curiosity and hope kindled by its mysteries and its promise 
 of illumination attracted many desponding or skeptical minds. 
 For nine years Augustine was an " auditor." From the time of 
 Diocletian, the Manichaeans were under the ban of the civil 
 power. Under Justinian, to be a Manichaean was a capital 
 offence. 
 
 The interest in the doctrinal history of this period centres 
 in several great controversies respecting cardinal points in the 
 Christian faith. These are, first, the Arian Controversy, on the 
 relation of Christ to God and on the Trinity ; second, the Christ- 
 ological Controversy, on the person of Christ ; third, the Pelagian 
 Controversy, on Sin and the function of Grace in man's recovery. 
 Theology, Christology, Anthropology, are the several themes. 
 The " Origenistic Controversies " were of much moment, and 
 covered incidentally a variety of topics, besides the question of
 
 128 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the doctrinal soundness of the great Alexandrian. The course 
 of theological discussion in the East, from the beginning of the 
 fourth century, developed an increasing sense of the importance 
 of orthodoxy in opinion, a growing deference for tradition as 
 dictating what ought to be believed, a narrowing of the space 
 open to speculation and diversity of thought. The idea of prog- 
 ress in theology became more and more repugnant. Some of 
 Origen's opinions, as we have seen, had been avowedly esoteric. 
 Portions of his teaching were taken as the starting-point of move- 
 ments recognized as heretical. Personal and partisan motives 
 mingled among the causes of the ultimately successful crusade 
 against the theological standing of the Father of Greek Theology, 
 whom Athanasius had held in honor. Like influences were opera- 
 tive with similar results, against the repute of the most eminent 
 leaders of the Antiochian school. 
 
 In the East, where Greek tendencies prevailed, it was the 
 more speculative side of Christianity, the subjects of the Trinity 
 and the relation of the two natures in the person of Christ, that 
 were ever in the foreground. In the West, it was rather the 
 doctrine of sin, and the subject of the will in relation to Grace, 
 that especially attracted attention. The West was not an indif- 
 ferent spectator of the conflicts of the fourth and fifth centuries 
 in the East. It was obliged, especially at important crises, to 
 take some part in them. The position of Rome was not unlike 
 that of a powerful neutral, prone to be steadfast and conservative 
 and able on several great occasions to speak the decisive word. 
 Greek theological writers were introduced by translations and 
 otherwise to the knowledge of Western readers, and perceptibly 
 modified opinion. On the other hand, the great Master of Latin 
 Theology had no influence in the East. The effect of his teaching 
 was confined by Latin boundaries. In speaking of the theological 
 peculiarity of the East, it is necessary to guard against exaggera- 
 tion. If the Greek teachers emphasized mainly the Incarnation 
 and the fellowship with God thereby brought to mankind, another 
 side of the work of Christ, that which had among the Latins 
 greater prominence, was far from being ignored. " That the work 
 of Christ was his achievement (Leistung)," says Harnack, "that 
 it culminates in his sacrificial death (Todesopfer), that it signifies 
 the vanquishing and effacing of the guilt of sin, that salvation 
 consequently consists in the forgiveness, the justification, and the
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 129 
 
 adoption of man, are thoughts which in no Church Father are 
 wholly absent. In some they stand out boldly. In the case of 
 most they make their way into the explication of the dogma of 
 redemption." l It must not be overlooked that the best of the 
 Greek Fathers Athanasius is a striking example if they 
 seemed to be contending for a metaphysical distinction, had at 
 heart the interest of practical piety, which they judged to be 
 identified with it. Nevertheless, the love of contention on nice 
 speculative points might easily, even in the popular mind, become 
 a malady quite harmful to genuine devoutness and destructive of 
 Christian charity. A graphic picture of " the rage " for doctrinal 
 disputation at Constantinople, during the Arian Controversy, is 
 drawn by Gregory of Nyssa : 2 " Every corner and nook of the 
 city is full of men who discuss incomprehensible subjects ; the 
 streets, the markets, the people who sell old clothes, those 
 who sit at the tables of the money-changers, those who deal in 
 provisions. Ask a man how many oboli it comes to, he gives you 
 a specimen of dogmatizing on generated and unregenerated being. 
 Inquire the price of bread, you are answered, ' the Father is 
 greater than the Son and the Son subordinate to the Father.' 
 Ask if the bath is ready, and you are answered, ' the Son of God 
 was created from nothing.' " 
 
 We have now to glance at the principal writers in this age, so 
 prolific in authorship. We begin with the Alexandrians. One of 
 the last of the Catechetical Teachers was Didymus, who died in 
 395. Although he was blind from his childhood, he was one of 
 the most learned men of his time. Of most of his works only 
 fragments remain. Athanasius was bishop from 328 until his 
 death in 3 73. His principal writings relate to the Trinity. Among 
 these his four Discourses against the Arians is the work of chief 
 importance. As there is a unity of purpose in his life, so is there 
 a singleness of aim in his literary productions. His "immortal 
 name," says Gibbon, "will never be separated from the Catholic 
 doctrine of the Trinity, to whose defence he consecrated every 
 moment and every faculty of his being." 3 His writings, which 
 are tainted with no false rhetoric, breathe the earnestness that 
 belonged to his character. Unhappily deficient in the spirit of 
 
 1 DG. II. 50. 
 
 2 De Deitat. Fil. et Spirit. Sanct. See Neander, Ch. Hist. II. 423 n. 
 8 Decline and Fall, Vol. III. p. 69 (Smith's ed.). 
 
 K
 
 130 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 wisdom and love which characterized the first great foe of the 
 Arians, was the later Alexandrian, the Patriarch Cyril, who died 
 in 444. Among his works, which include a treatise on the Trinity, 
 besides Epistles, Commentaries, etc., the most noteworthy is his 
 polemical production (in five books) against Nestorius. Here 
 we may place a reference to a number of authors who exhibit the 
 tone of the earlier Alexandrian School and illustrate the profound 
 influence of Origen. One of them was Eusebius of Csesarea, who 
 was bishop there from 315 to 340. He is best known through 
 his Church History and his eulogistic Life of Constantine ; al- 
 though much importance belongs to his apologetic and exegetic 
 writings. Under the same category belong the three Cappado- 
 cian Fathers, who, like Origen, were proficients in classical learn- 
 ing, and were likewise imbued with Origen's humane and tolerant 
 temper. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, called Basil the Great, is 
 famous as an administrator and as the great patron of the mo- 
 nastic life, and for his instructive Letters, which afford a picture 
 of the times. Yet he was the author of other works the Hexae- 
 meron, for example, treating of the Six Days of Creation. In 
 the capacity of a defender of the Nicene doctrine, he wrote his 
 book against Eunomius, and his Writing on the Holy Spirit. 
 Gregory of Nazianzum, for a short time Bishop of Constantinople, 
 the intimate friend of Basil, was surnamed, for the ability of his 
 discussions on the Trinity, " the Theologian." He was a brilliant 
 orator. He wrote against Julian, and was the author of numerous 
 orations, essays, letters, and poems. He died in 390. Gregory 
 of Nyssa, the brother of Basil, was more speculative in his dog- 
 matic writings than the two Fathers just named. His leading 
 work is the treatise against Eunomius. His teaching has always 
 been regarded with profound reverence in the Greek Church. 
 In connection with a list of disciples of Origen may be put, by 
 the association of contrast, the name of Epiphanius, Bishop of 
 Salamis, in Cyprus, who died at an advanced age in 403. An 
 ecclesiastic of very wide influence, but of an intolerant spirit, and 
 untiring in his hostility to Origen, he left as his principal work his 
 uncritical but invaluable Panarion, or Drug-Chest. Here he de- 
 scribes eighty heresies and undertakes to furnish the proper anti- 
 dotes of sound doctrine. Among the most prominent Syrian 
 teachers were Eusebius of Emisa, who died about 360, an effec- 
 tive defender of the Nicene theology, Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY j^I 
 
 (who died in 386), whose Catechetics exhibits instructively the 
 character of the popular teaching then in vogue, and Ephraim 
 Syrus, who died about 378, a copious author, by whom Greek 
 theological science was introduced into Syria. There are three 
 foremost representatives of the Antiochian school. The first is 
 Chrysostom, who was born in 347 and died in 407, the most cele- 
 brated of the ancient preachers. His theology is to be studied in 
 his exegetical homilies, but with due allowance for the circumstance 
 that they are popular discourses. The second is Theodore, Bishop 
 of Mopsuestia from 393 to 428, a great light in the Antiochian 
 school, whose commentaries, as far as they are extant, exist partly 
 in the original Greek and partly in Oriental translations. They 
 exemplify the grammatical and historical style of exegesis which 
 was characteristic of the Antiochians, in contrast with the Origen- 
 istic and Philonian method of allegory. The third of the leading 
 Antiochians is Theodoret, Bishop in Cyrus in Syria (west of the 
 Euphrates) from 423 to his death, about 457. He wrote com- 
 mentaries on the whole Old Testament, with the exception of 
 Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, a continuation of the Church 
 History of Eusebius from 322 to 428, apologetic and polemical 
 writings, and numerous letters of value. The other continuators 
 of Eusebius are Socrates (from 306-439), Sozomen (323-423), 
 and Evagrius (431-594). 
 
 We turn to the Latin Writers of the fourth and fifth centuries. 
 Hilary was bishop in his native place Poictiers, from about 350 
 to his death in 368. He was a highly cultivated man prior to 
 his conversion to Christianity. A supporter of the Athanasian 
 theology in opposition to Constantine, he was banished and spent 
 a number of years in the Asiatic provinces, where he increased 
 his acquaintance with the Greek language. In his exegetical 
 writings he was influenced in a marked degree by Origen. An 
 able man and independent in his thoughts, he defended in several 
 treatises as the de Synodis, the de Fide the Nicene doctrine 
 against its adversaries. Jerome, who was born on the border 
 between Dalmatia and Pannonia, spent his life partly in the East, 
 and became in a scholarly way a connecting link between the 
 East and the West. Originally a disciple of Origen, he was 
 transformed into a vehement opponent. He served the Church 
 mainly through his extensive learning. By revising the old Latin 
 translations of the New Testament, and rendering the Old Testa-
 
 132 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 ment from the Hebrew into the Latin, he became the framer 
 of the Vulgate Version. Rufinus was an Italian by birth. He 
 was born about 340. He rendered important service as a trans- 
 lator of Origen, of whom he was a devoted admirer and defender. 
 His " Exposition of the Apostolic Symbol " furnishes us with valu- 
 able information respecting its history. He died in 410. Am- 
 brose, the Archbishop of Milan, was born in 340 and died in 398. 
 As far as his writings relating to doctrine are concerned, he was 
 dependent on Origen, Athanasius, Basil, and others, and in set- 
 ting forth the duties of the clergy he did not hesitate to refashion 
 the de Officiis of Cicero. Yet in his teaching, as in ecclesiastical 
 administration, he displayed the qualities of a strong, self-respect- 
 ing mind. On the subjects of sin and the relation of the will to 
 divine grace, he deviated from the Greek teachers, and paved 
 the way for Augustine. 
 
 Of the characteristics of Augustine and of his influence more 
 will be said hereafter. He was a voluminous author. His mind 
 was in perpetual motion. He was a deep thinker, but was one 
 who wrote mostly in response to practical exigencies. His opin- 
 ions did not remain unaltered, and his Retractationes are a 
 review and partial correction of earlier utterances. He composed 
 works, such as the Contra Academicos, relating chiefly to phi- 
 losophy and specifically to the philosophy of religion. His con- 
 troversial writings are in opposition to the Manichaeans, the 
 Donatists, and the Pelagians. Apart from polemics, he composed 
 books on subjects of doctrinal theology. His great apologetic 
 treatise is the de Civitate Dei. Beyond the limits of this classifica- 
 tion fall his exegetical homilies and other sermons, his numerous 
 epistles, in which religious themes are handled, his Autobiography 
 under the title of Confessions, and so forth. Prosper of Aqui- 
 taine was a zealous advocate of Augustine's opinions, in the Pela- 
 gian Controversy. The position of Leo I., Bishop of Rome from 
 440 to 461, and the active part which he took in relation to the 
 doctrinal disputes of the time, render his letters and sermons of 
 theological value. 
 
 After the beginning of the sixth century the theological writ- 
 ers in the West and the East are reduced to a small number. 
 Boethius, the trusted counsellor of Theodoric, King of the Ostro- 
 goths, and a victim (in 525) to his false suspicions, was a man 
 of scholarly tastes and profound acquisitions. Through his studies
 
 133 
 
 in Aristotle and his book on the " Consolations of Philosophy " 
 he stimulated thought and was much esteemed in the Middle 
 Ages. Cassiodorus, who died about 560, was first a statesman 
 under Theodoric and his successors, and then a monk. His writ- 
 ings relate to history and theology. John Philoponus, an Aristo- 
 telian at Alexandria in the first part of the sixth century, and a 
 Monophysite in his theology, applied his philosophy in such a 
 way to the Trinity as to expose himself to the charge of being 
 a Tritheist. Gregory, Bishop of Tours (573-595), wrote a work 
 on Miracles the Miracula and an Ecclesiastical History of 
 the Franks. The theology of Gregory I., Bishop of Rome (590- 
 604), is to be learned from his treatise called Moralia, founded 
 on the book of Job, and from his homilies and letters.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY TO THE 
 COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (A.D. 381) 
 
 ARIUS was a presbyter in the Church at Alexandria. He had 
 been a pupil of Lucian, who conducted a school of theology at 
 Antioch, and died as a martyr. Some other leading men who 
 were in sympathy with Arius had also been taught by this exegeti- 
 cal teacher ; but his own opinions, probably always, certainly in 
 his closing years, were not in accord with the extreme views which 
 they advocated. 1 He accepted the Origenist doctrine of the 
 Logos. Arius propounded the opinion that in the case of the 
 preexistent Christ, generation is not to be distinguished from 
 creation. 2 He is the first of created beings, through whom all 
 other things are made. In anticipation of the glory that He was 
 to have finally, He is called the Logos, the Son, the only-begotten. 
 He may be called God, although not God in the full reality 
 implied by the term. 3 He began to be, not strictly speaking in 
 time, but before time, 4 since time begins with the creation ; yet 
 He began to be from the non-existent through a momentary act of 
 God's will. 5 Before this, " He was not." 6 It was on account of 
 the foresight of his victory over temptation, that he was chosen 
 of God. It is a victory achieved by the Logos, since in the incar- 
 
 1 Respecting Lucian, see Euseb. H.E. viii. 13, and ix. 6, and Theodoret, 
 H.E. i. 3 (in the Letter of Alexander), and i. 4 (Letter of Arius to Euseb. of 
 Nic., " his fellow-Lucianist"). See, also, Harnack, DG. II. 184 sq., and Rob- 
 ertson's Athanasius (Nic. and Anti-Nic. Fathers), p. xxvii. But a different 
 view is given of Lucian by Gwatkin, Studies ofArianism, p. 18 et al. " There 
 is really nothing against him but the leaning of his disciples to Arianism ; and 
 this can be otherwise accounted for." 
 
 2 yevvdv is iroieir. * irpib XP^ VUV Kal aldivuv. 
 8 a\r)6iv(>s 0e6j. 5 (I- OVK 
 
 6 1jv Sre oiiK ^v or trplv ytvvr]6y O&K 1)v. 
 
 134
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY J35 
 
 nate Christ the Logos takes the place of a rational human spirit. 
 The rank assigned to Christ in the Arian theology is really that of 
 a demi-god. The demons, the inferior deities, were styled by the 
 heathen 'gods,' and as such received a homage proportional to 
 their rank. 1 It was not a mistake on the part of the orthodox to 
 look on Arianism as in reality an introduction of a species of poly- 
 theism into Christian theology. Arius was possessed of logical 
 acumen, was skilful as a disputant, and his austere life helped to 
 draw to him respect and sympathy. Alexander, the Bishop of 
 Alexandria, met these views with strenuous resistance. In letters 
 to other prominent bishops, he set forth clearly the opposite doc- 
 trine of the divinity of Christ, in which the defining characteris- 
 tics of the system of Arius are denied and denounced. 2 Arius 
 likewise sent out letters to counteract the influence of Alexander 
 and to win support. In 321 or 322, at a large synod at Alexan- 
 dria, Arius was deposed and excommunicated. He issued a book 
 called Thalia, a miscellaneous collection in prose and verse, and 
 songs for sailors, millers, and pilgrims. In this method of propa- 
 gating his opinions he followed a practice then in vogue. He 
 thus embodied his ideas in a portable and easily remembered 
 form. Eusebius of Nicomedia, who held the same opinion as 
 Arius, wrote a letter to the Bishop of Tyre in his favor. Eusebius 
 of Caesarea, who was an Origenist and much more conservative 
 in his spirit than the Nicomedian bishop, was in favor of tolerating 
 him. Arianism was really a new doctrine. The springs of it can 
 easily be seen in one class of Origen's statements, taken apart 
 from his teaching as a whole, and in expressions like those of 
 Dionysius of Alexandria. Such was the excitement of the conflict 
 in Egypt, and so wide-spread was the agitation elsewhere, that the 
 Emperor Constantine sent Hosius, Bishop of Cordova, his trusted 
 adviser, to Alexandria, with letters to the contending parties. The 
 disputes were petty, the Emperor said. The disputants were 
 agreed on the doctrine of Divine Providence ; let them bear with 
 
 1 For the sources in respect to what is left of the writings of Arius and the 
 history of the Controversy, see Gwatkin, Moller (Art. Arius and Arianism in 
 Real-Encykl.\. 620 sq.), and Schmid-Hauck, DG., p. 51; also Rolling, Gsch. 
 d. Ar. Hdresie. 
 
 2 Letter of Alexander to the Bp. of Const., in Theodoret, H.E. I. 3. The 
 Letter of Alex, to his fellow-ministers of the Catholic Ch. is in Socrates, H.E. 
 1.6.
 
 136 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 one another as concerns minor differences. 1 But the conflict was 
 not to be pacified so easily. Hosius had a deeper understanding 
 of the grave nature of the controversy. At length, in 325, the 
 Emperor convoked a General Council at Nicsea. 2 It consisted of 
 not far from three hundred bishops, almost all from the East, 
 besides a large attendance from lower orders in the ministry. 
 Alexander was there, and with him his archdeacon, Athanasius, 
 who was in full sympathy with him and was destined to be the 
 life-long champion of the anti-Arian doctrine. 3 
 
 The Arians in Council stood for their opinion that the Father 
 alone is without beginning, that the Son did not exist prior to His 
 generation, which was by an act of the Father's will, " before all 
 ages," to be sure, since time began with the creation. Respect- 
 ing the person of the incarnate Christ, Arius, as we have said, had 
 espoused the opinion that in Him the Logos takes the place of the 
 rational human spirit. 
 
 How far Athanasius was personally influential in the Council it 
 is impossible to determine. The conclusions reached were in full 
 accordance with his convictions, and he was afterwards the most 
 renowned and effective expounder of them. His theology centres 
 in his view of redemption. Unless Christ is truly God, is divine 
 in the literal sense, He is a creature. In this case, in fellowship 
 with Him we are brought no nearer to God ; the vital truth of re- 
 demption, union to God in virtue of our union, through faith, to 
 Christ, is lost. This is the practical motive which underlies the 
 doctrine of Athanasius. It was the inspiring principle of his 
 undying hostility to the Arian formulas. The Arians discarded 
 Origen's conception of a " timeless " or eternal generation. This 
 Athanasius re-asserted. But the generation of the Son is an inter- 
 nal, and therefore an eternal, act of God. The Arian formula 
 "there was [a time] when He was not," is false. Secondly, the 
 
 1 Constantine's Letter is given in full in Eusebius, Vita Const. II. 64-72, 
 and fragments of it in Socrates, H.E. I. 7. 
 
 2 The two principal authorities respecting the doings of the Council are 
 Eusebius of Csesarea, Vita Const. III. 6 sq., Epist. (in Theodoret H.E. I. u), 
 and Athanasius, De Decrett. Syn. Nic,, and Epist. ad Afros. Neither of these 
 witnesses is without a bias. For a full statement of the sources, see Hefele, 
 Counciliengtsch. I. b. ii. c. 2, and Gass's Art. Nicaenisch. Koncil (Real-Encykl. 
 X. p. 530). 
 
 3 For a highly interesting description of the Council, see Stanley's Hist, of 
 the Eastern Church, lect. II.-VII.
 
 137 
 
 Son is not " from the non-existent," but from the essence of the 
 Father; and thirdly, He is of the same substance homoousios 
 with the Father. God is the Father. Fatherhood is essential to 
 His being, as truly so as omniscience or omnipotence. But were 
 it not for the Son, He would not be the Father. God the Father 
 could not be that which He is without the Son, just as the Son 
 could not be that which He is, without the Father. He is God's 
 son by nature, and not by an act of will. 1 It is the idea of Atha- 
 nasius that one and the same essence belongs to the Father and 
 the Son. This identity or numerical sameness is set forth through 
 the illustrations of the sun and its radiance, the same light being 
 in both, and of the river and the fountain, the same water being 
 in both. There are direct statements, positive and negative, of 
 the same purport. 2 As to the meaning of generation, the expla- 
 
 1 See, e.g., Oratt. C. Ar. III. 60-64. 
 
 2 See De Decrett. Nic. 20, Expos. Fidei, I. Or C. Ar. IV. I. In this last 
 passage it is said that while the Father and the Son are two, the Monas of the 
 Deity (SCO'TTJTOS) is indivisible and inseparable (ddialperov Kal &<TX<-O-TOV), and 
 more to the same effect. In C. Ar. III. 3, the identity (ratn^TTjTa) of the 
 Deity (^TTJTOS) and the oneness of the essence (lv6rr)Ta TTJJ oi/crfas) are 
 distinctly asserted. The term ova-ia (essence), in Aristotle, signified, first, a 
 thing in the concrete, which is a subject and cannot be a predicate, an indi- 
 vidual object, the supporter of attributes; and, secondly, a class, be it a species 
 or a larger class, a genus. (Arist. Categ. 5, p. 20, Metaphysic., 6, II, p. 1037.) 
 This double capacity of the word to signify either physical or logical unity 
 made the Homoousion a convenient term for the Athanasians to apply to the 
 unity and plurality of the godhead, as the Latins from the same motive em- 
 ployed the word ' consubstantial.' (See Hampden, The Scholastic Philosophy, 
 etc., p. 126 sq.) The Sabellians held to a merely logical (or nominal) unity; 
 the Arians, to a merely physical unity; the orthodox, to both. The distinc- 
 tion of Father and Son is one of essential relations. The entire Deity is in 
 each. The divine attributes, such as wisdom and power, are not to be spoken 
 of as plural. The whole Deity was " transfused from the Father to the Son." 
 In one place {Expos. Fidei, 2) Athanasius distinguishes /fo#*0ousion from 
 Monoousion ; but this is to exclude the Sabellian idea of the personal oneness 
 of the divine being, the exclusive physical unity, without the logical (Hamp- 
 den, Ibid. p. 127). Aquinas insists on the importance of guarding against 
 the notion of the singularity of the divine being. In another passage {De 
 Synodis, 51, 53) men are said by Athanasius to be coessential. Here the 
 point on which he is insisting is the complete, and not merely generic, likeness 
 of the Son to the Father. The context (51, 52) emphasizes the point that the 
 Father and the Son are not divisible, as the analogies adduced might be 
 thought to imply. It is evident from the course of the Arian controversy that 
 the term ' Homoousion ' did not always avail, of itself, to exclude the merely
 
 nations of Athanasius are mostly negative. One aim is to shut 
 out materialistic associations of the term. In its own nature, it is 
 inscrutable. The standing figure to represent the relation of the 
 Son to the Father is the radiance of a luminous body which 
 would not be a luminous body if it did not shine. 
 
 When it came to the shaping of the creed, neither of the parties 
 comprised at the outset more than a minor portion of the mem- 
 bers of the Council. There was a great middle party, constituting 
 a majority, who were far from being agreed among themselves on 
 the questions in debate, but were united in opposing the introduc- 
 tion of new terminology. They wanted to frame a statement of 
 belief that would satisfy all, and thus pacify the disputants. They 
 were generally opposed to the Homoousion, a part from fear of 
 a Sabellian interpretation, and another part because they were 
 Arians from conviction. The middle party found a representa- 
 tive in Eusebius of Caesarea, whom the Emperor regarded with 
 special honor. He brought forward the programme of a creed 
 which was identical with that of his own Church of Caesarea. In 
 
 generic likeness of Arians, or its antipode, the singularity or solitude of the 
 Sabellians. The safeguard was contained in the idea of 'generation' and in the 
 eK Tijs ov<rias. The safeguard was the idea of the co-inherence of the divine 
 persons (John xiv. n), called by the Greeks Trepix<i>pr)<ris and by the Latins 
 circumincessie (see Ath. C. Ar. III. 22, 3 sq.). Athanasius would not quar- 
 rel with those who would shun the word ' Homoousion,' but held to the absolute 
 likeness of the Son to the Father, and the co-inherence. ( Tom. ad Antioch. 
 6, 8.) In truth, he had no special fondness for that word and seldom uses it. 
 
 Instructive remarks on the history of the word 6fjMov<nos, on the influence of 
 Rome and the East in reference to it, and on its probable relation to the 
 "unius substantiae" of Tertullian (through Hosius), are made in a note of 
 Harnack (DG. II. pp. 228-231). See, also, the references in this note to 
 other passages in Harnack's DG. and to a passage in Bigg, The Christian 
 Platonists (p. 164 sq.). The explanation of terms in Hampden, Lect. III., 
 with the Notes in the Appendix, is valuable. 
 
 That Athanasius teaches a numerical unity is at present the prevailing 
 opinion of scholars. See Niedner, Kirchengesch. p. 355; Thomasius, DG. 
 228 sq.; Zahn, Marcdlus von Ancyra, p. 20; Harnack, I. 212 sq. Petavius 
 maintained the opposite interpretation. He is supported by Cudworth, The 
 True Intellectual System of the Universe (London ed. 1845), Vol. II. 431 sq. 
 The same ground is taken as to the sense of the Nicene Creed (with differ- 
 ences, however, as to the particular conception of Athanasius), by Munscber 
 (in Henke's Neues Magazin, Vol. VI. and in his DG. I. 74, p. 234 sq.) ; by 
 Meier, Gsch. d. Trinitats Lehre, I. p. 157; by Gieseler, DG. pp. 309, 310; 
 and in an article in The New World (Dec. 1894) by L. L. Paine.
 
 139 
 
 it Christ was styled, " the Word of [or from] God," "God of God, 
 Light of Light, Life of Life," " begotten of the Father before all 
 the ages." Eusebius relates that his proposal was well received, 
 but that Constantine who no doubt followed the suggestions of 
 Hosius and the other Homoousion bishops recommended cer- 
 tain amendments. These were adopted. They gave a decisively 
 anti-Arian character to the creed. The Son was declared to be 
 "from the substance of the Father," "begotten, not made," "con- 
 substantial (Homoousion) with the Father." Anathemas were 
 appended against those who professed the distinctive Arian for- 
 mulas, " once He was not," etc., or held that He is of (or from) 
 another substance "Usia or Hypostasis," the terms being used 
 as synonymous than that of the Father. Eusebius, not without 
 delay and with reluctance, accepted the creed as thus amended. 
 In his letter to his church, 1 he explained his action by minimizing 
 the significance of the terms to which he had at first objected. 
 He had no better reason to give for assenting to the anathemas 
 than that the phrases proscribed were not in Scripture and engen- 
 dered controversy. His real opinion was that the Son is a second 
 substance and owed His being to the Father's creative will. But 
 he was sincere, if not logical, in shrinking from the conclusions 
 which the Arians drew from the same premises. Arius, with the 
 Egyptian bishops who stood with him, were banished. Later, 
 Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea, who refused to 
 break off communion with Arius, were likewise banished. 
 
 The Nicene Creed was carried in the Council by the pressure 
 of imperial influence, against the judgment and inclinations of the 
 major part of the body. Such an act could not terminate the 
 battle. The defeated middle party, who acquired the name of 
 Homceousians, or Eusebians (from Eusebius of Nicomedia), con- 
 tinued to assert that the true predicate to be attached to the pre- 
 existent Son is that of likeness to the Father. The Homoeousians 
 charged their opponents with Sabellianism ; these in turn accused 
 the Homceousians of tritheism. 
 
 It only needed a change of mind in Constantine, which was 
 prompted indirectly by his sister, to move him to recall the ban- 
 ished bishops and to decree the restoration of Arius to his office. 
 Athanasius, who succeeded Alexander as bishop in 326, interposed 
 resistance. The prejudice of Constantine against him, which was 
 
 1 This letter, with his proposed creed, is inTheodoret, I. 12.
 
 146 
 
 fomented by false accusations of a political nature, was removed 
 for a time, but only for a time, by a personal interview (332). 1 
 Being deposed by a Synod at Tyre (335), he was banished by the 
 Emperor to Treves. In the same year Arius, who was then eighty 
 years old, having presented to Constantine a creed, couched in 
 Scriptural language, was to be solemnly received back into the 
 Church ; but on the evening before the day appointed for the 
 ceremony, he suddenly died. 
 
 In 337 Constantine himself died. Constantius procured the 
 return of Athanasius to his flock. But the new Emperor, swayed 
 by the Eunuchs, the chamberlains at Court, took the side of the 
 Eusebians. Athanasius was at once involved in new contests with 
 his opponents. He was deposed by the Eusebians at a Synod at 
 Antioch in 341, and Gregory, a rough Cappadocian, was put in his 
 place. The Emperor being hostile, Athanasius, although warmly 
 supported by the greater portion of his people, was obliged to 
 take refuge in the West, where Constans was an adherent of the 
 Nicene confession. The Roman bishop, Julius, was of the same 
 mind, invited the exile to Rome, and with a Synod which met 
 there in 342, gave judgment in his favor. The East and the West 
 were now arrayed against each other. Anxious to avoid a rupture 
 between them, the Orientals, at another Antioch Council, issued, 
 one after the other, a series of symbols. 2 These fell in with the 
 Nicene definitions, with two vital exceptions : they asserted the 
 homoeousion and the generation of the Son by an act of the Father's 
 will. 
 
 The cause of Athanasius was weakened by the approach to 
 Sabellianism of a friend, Marcellus of Ancyra, and by the more 
 radical departure in this direction of Photinus of Sirmium. Mar- 
 cellus, 3 who had been a determined adversary of Arianism at 
 Nicaea, was anxious to dispose of the Arian objections, while hold- 
 ing fast to the Homoousion. Accordingly he brought forward the 
 opinion that the Logos is immanent and therefore eternal in God, 
 
 1 Of this interview Gibbon, who shows a genuine admiration of the charac- 
 ter of Athanasius, says : " The haughty spirit of the Emperor was awed by the 
 courage and eloquence of a bishop who implored his justice and awakened 
 his conscience." Decline and Fall, Vol. III. c. xxi. 
 
 2 Hahn, Biblioth. d. Symb., pp. 103-105. 
 
 3 The best exposition of the doctrine of Marcellus is by Zahn, Marcellus 
 of Ancyra (1867).
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 141 
 
 but not begotten and not personal. The divine Energy l so named 
 comes forth from the Father to accomplish the work of creation 
 and redemption. Only at the incarnation did the Logos become 
 personal. The incarnation was a union with an impersonal human 
 nature. 2 It is only the incarnate Logos who in Scripture is called 
 the Son of God, and when the Saviour's work ends, the Logos 
 returns to its pre mundane relation to the Father. A like doctrine 
 was held respecting the Spirit ; both the Logos and the Spirit 
 being, in the sense defined, consubstantial with the Father. It 
 is not explained what becomes of the body of Christ when the 
 work of redemption is finished. Photinus regarded Christ as a 
 man, the Son of Mary, conceived of the Holy Ghost and under 
 the influence of the divine Logos, his idea being that the Logos, 
 as was held by Marcellus, was an impersonal power of God. In 
 336, in a Synod at Constantinople, Marcellus was condemned by 
 the Orientals, and Eusebius of Csesarea was charged with the task 
 of preparing a confutation of his opinions. But Athanasius and 
 Julius of Rome persisted in recognizing him as within the pale of 
 orthodoxy. Athanasius at a later day controverted his doctrine, 
 but avoided any attack upon him personally. 3 
 
 The Antiochian Synods (341-345), of which mention has been 
 made, having failed to bridge the chasm between the East and 
 the West, the Western Emperor, Constans, prompted by Julius, 
 the Roman Bishop, persuaded his brother Constantius to call a 
 general Synod. In 347 this was ready to assemble, but the two 
 sections of the Church were deterred by mutual suspicion from 
 meeting in one body. The Orientals demanded in vain a recog- 
 nition of the deposition of Athanasius and Marcellus. Accord- 
 ingly the Occidentals met at Sardica and the Orientals in a much 
 smaller number at Philippopolis in Thrace. The latter planted 
 themselves on the fourth Antiochian symbol. 4 The former de- 
 clared for Nicaea and Rome. Julius prevailed on Constans to 
 
 1 evtpyeia 
 
 2 Zahn, p. 164: "Aber diese impersonliche Menschennatur ist nicht ein 
 todtes Werkzeug, sondern Selbstdarstellung des Logos." 
 
 3 It is of the doctrine of Marcellus that Athanasius writes in C. Ar. Oratt. 
 iv. 4-24. This passage is discussed by Zahn, p. 198 sq. It had been consid- 
 ered in its relation to Marcellus by two German writers, Rettberg and Kuhn; 
 also by J. H. Newman, Ath. Treatises, pp. 497-511. Cf. Gwatkin, p. 82. 
 
 4 Hahn, p. 407. The documents framed by the two Synods are fully dis- 
 cussed by Hefele, Vol. II. B. IV.
 
 142 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 procure from his brother, who for political reasons did not wish 
 to offend him, the return of Athanasius to Alexandria (346) ; but 
 the death of Constans, in 350, exposed the resolute bishop once 
 more to the intrigues of his enemies. In the proceedings relat- 
 ing to Marcellus and Photinus, an occasion was found for all the 
 Anti-Niceans to combine. Photinus was anathematized by the 
 Antiochian Synod of Eusebius in 344. He was condemned after- 
 wards in a series of synods held by the Eusebians and by the 
 orthodox. At the first Sirmian Synod (351) a creed, the first of 
 a series of four, framed at the same place, was adopted. 1 The 
 Sirmian creeds rejected Arian formulas, but avoided the strict 
 definitions of Nicaea. A great effort was made to move Rome 
 and the West to abandon the support of Athanasius. Constan- 
 tius, after he conquered Magnentius in 353, was sole Emperor 
 until his death in 361. By cunning management and by force he 
 succeeded in bringing the Western bishops into ecclesiastical 
 fellowship with the Eusebians, through the Synods of Aries and of 
 Milan (355). There were a few of the bishops at Milan who 
 could not be deluded or coerced, and these were sent into banish- 
 ment. Athanasius, thus condemned, found a refuge with faithful 
 monks in Egypt. 
 
 In this way the Anti-Nicene party for the time was everywhere 
 triumphant. Its success was the signal for its disruption. Relieved 
 from external pressure, the union of its really discordant parts was 
 broken up. Two of the Anti-Nicene leaders, Ae'tius of Antioch 
 and Eunomius of Cyzicus in Mysia, denied the Homo3ousion; 
 that is, asserted that the Son is not like God. There sprung up 
 thus the new faction of Anomceans. And the Eusebians, who 
 opposed them, were further divided among themselves. The 
 " Homoeans " would not go a step beyond the affirmation of a 
 "likeness," meaning a likeness in will and active energy. The 
 bishops at the Court were eager to stave off an open rupture in 
 the Eusebian ranks. Their prescription was to abjure the use of 
 the unbiblical word usia, the centre of the contention. In the 
 second Sirmian creed (357), the members of which were Western 
 bishops, it was declared that no more mention should be made 
 of either ' Homoousion ' or ' Homoeousion.' The spirit of the 
 connected statements was decidedly Arian. A Synod of conserva- 
 tive Semi-Arians at Ancyra in 358 issued a Letter affirming that 
 
 1 For the first two, see Hahn, p. 115 sq.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY ^3 
 
 the term ' Father ' implies in itself the Son's likeness in substance. 
 In a third Sirmian Creed, several symbols were put together 
 one of which was one of the Antiochian Creeds of 341. The term 
 ' Homoousion ' was avoided. Liberius, the Roman bishop, was 
 induced to agree to this attempt at compromise. A fourth symbol l 
 was composed at Sirmium, in which the Son was pronounced to 
 be like the Father, "according to the Scriptures," an ambigu- 
 ous phrase. The Easterns were assembled in a Council at Seleu- 
 cia and the Westerns at Rimini, by the dictatorial Constantius. 
 The last Sirmian formulary was modified by dropping the phrase 
 " according to the Scriptures." 2 The use of the words ' Homoou- 
 sion ' and ' Homoeousian ' was renounced, and the Anomoeans 
 anathematized. On the accession of Julian, Athanasius returned 
 to his diocese (362). One more banishment he had to endure 
 under Valens, whose wife was an Arian ; but Valens was per- 
 suaded by Valentinian to desist from persecution. This removed an 
 obstacle to the progress of the Nicene theology. Athanasius, in 
 his latter days, fell in with efforts to unite all the anti-Arians. The 
 spirit of conciliation characterized a Council at Alexandria assem- 
 bled in 362. He did not repulse advocates of the Homoeousion 
 who held to the likeness of the Son to the Father in all respects. 
 There arose a class of moderate Nicseans, of whom Meletius of 
 Antioch was one, who incurred the displeasure of both extreme 
 parties. A "Younger Nicsean Party" appeared, counting in it 
 leaders who "were heirs" through Eusebius and his influence 
 of a Homoeousion tradition, but " owed to Athanasius and the 
 Nicene Creed a more perfect interpretation of their unaltered 
 belief." They were disciples of the Origenist School. They did 
 much to secure the prevalence of the Nicene doctrine. The 
 principal chiefs were the three eminent Cappadocian bishops, 
 Basil, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa. But their 
 teaching in reality modified the aspect of the Nicene formulas. 
 The term ' hypostasis,' instead of being a synonym of usia, was used 
 to designate a person or personal subject, in distinction from sub- 
 stance. This use of the term became current in the East. Per- 
 sonal distinctions in the Trinity were emphasized. The relation of 
 the persons in the godhead was compared by the Gregories to the 
 relation of three men to their common humanity. In the case of 
 
 1 See Hahn, p. 124. 
 
 8 For the Seleucian Symbol, see Hahn, p. 127.
 
 144 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa, beneath this representation there was the Platonic 
 or realistic idea of the unity of human nature. It is by an abuse 
 of language, he tells us, that three human persons are called three 
 men, since as respects humanity essentially they are one. 
 Inasmuch as the person l of the Father is one, " from whom the 
 Son is generated and the Holy Spirit proceeds, for this reason, 
 properly speaking, 2 we say that He who is the one ground or 
 cause 3 of the effects 4 i.e., the Son and the Spirit is one God. 5 
 But in interpreting Gregory, it must be kept in mind that there is 
 in his conception a genetic relation among the persons and a 
 mutual 'inhabitation,' 6 so that neither is conceivable, neither is 
 complete, without the others. In this sense they are together the 
 One God. They constitute an inseparable unity. Hence they 
 are not with strict propriety to be called three. They are sepa- 
 rated neither in time, nor place, nor will, nor work. 7 Gregory's 
 illustration is the rainbow. In both the sunlight and in the rain- 
 bow, the light is one. The colors of the bow remain in unity, and 
 although distinguishable, pass over inperceptibly into one an- 
 other. Yet by the later Nicseans the mystery was made to lie in 
 the unity of God rather than in the trinity. And the unity, as we 
 see, was secured by a subordinationism carried further than it was 
 carried by Athanasius. Meletius was recognized as the Bishop of 
 Antioch by the younger Nicseans, but was not acknowledged as 
 such at Rome and in the West. 
 
 New contention arose on the subject of the Holy Ghost. Arius 
 had held that the Holy Spirit is the first created nature produced 
 by the Son. Athanasius and the Alexandrian Synod of 362 had 
 predicated the Homoousion of the Spirit. The Nicene Creed 
 contained on the subject a single indefinite sentence. In 380, 
 Gregory of Nazianzum writes that concerning the rank of the 
 Holy Spirit and His relation to God there is among theologians 
 a great diversity of opinion, some professing not to know what to 
 think on the matter, the Scriptures not having clearly explained 
 
 1 irp6ff(i)Trov. * alnaruv. 
 
 2 Kvplus. 5 "E/c rdv KOLVWV evvoi&v, T. II. p. 85. 
 
 3 atriov. 6 ireptx^/JT/fftJ. 
 
 ~ See Dorner, Person Christi, II. pp. 919, 920, where the passages from 
 Gregory are given. Bishop Bull cites a passage from Petavius (Lib. IV. c. 
 1 6), where he admits that numerical unity may be inferred from 'inhabita- 
 tion.' Bull, Defens. Fid. Nic., Lib. IV. 4. Cf. Waterland, Works (Oxford 
 ed. 1833), Vol. II. p. 211.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY ^ 
 
 this point. 1 Hilary of Poictiers agreed with this last statement, 
 yet said that nothing could be foreign to God's essence which 
 searches the deep things of God. 2 When Macedonius, Bishop of 
 Constantinople, pronounced the Holy Ghost to be a creature 
 subordinate to the Son, his opinion was generally considered 
 heretical, and his followers, the Macedonians, were given the 
 nickname of " Pneumatomachians." Under the auspices of 
 Theodosius the Great, the finishing stroke was given in estab- 
 lishing the predominance of the Nicene Orthodoxy. Prominent 
 bishops who rejected it were deposed. At Constantinople, Gregory 
 of Nazianzum was put in the place of Demophilus. In 381, the 
 Emperor assembled the General Council of Constantinople. It is 
 a significant fact that Meletius was met by him with a cordial 
 greeting and appointed to preside over the Council. It consisted 
 of about one hundred and fifty bishops, all Oriental. This body 
 declared its approval of the Nicene Creed. It issued, also, an 
 exposition of the Trinity, but of its contents we have no definite 
 knowledge. What is called the Creed of Constantinople, however, 
 did not emanate from the Council. 3 The foundation of the Creed 
 so called was a confession composed by Cyril of Jerusalem, prior 
 to his being made bishop, which was in 350. In the existing form 
 of the Creed, it is almost identical with a baptismal symbol 
 recommended by Epiphanius as early as 374. It is probable that 
 Cyril himself had enlarged this symbol for the benefit of his people 
 by introducing the passages from the Nicene Creed which formed 
 a part of it. A like enrichment of baptismal confessions took 
 place in other churches, the object being to shut out errors which 
 there was special reason to guard against, while at the same time 
 their popular character should be preserved. Thus the Nicene 
 anathemas were left out although they are retained in the Creed 
 of Epiphanius. The additions relating to the Holy Ghost were 
 added, the phraseology being scriptural and thus consonant with 
 the popular character of the Jerusalem Confession. 4 The East 
 
 1 Oral. 31, 5. 2 De Trinit. L. XII. c. 55. 
 
 3 As to the origin of the Constantinopolitan Creed, see the thorough discus- 
 sion of Hort, Two Dissertations, etc. (1876), Diss. II. See also the article 
 of Harnack in the Real-Encykl. (Vol. VIII. pp. 212-230). 
 
 4 " In der That is das sog. C. Panum nichts anders als das neu redigirte, 
 mit den wichtigsten nicaenischen Formeln und mit einer regula fidei betreffs 
 des hi. Geistes ausgestattete Taufbekenntniss der jerusalemischen Kirche." 
 Harnack, Real-Encykl. VIII. 222. 
 
 L
 
 1 4 6 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 and the West were not immediately brought into harmony, owing 
 to the modified spirit of the younger Nicaeans. When Meletius of 
 Antioch died, his supporters refused to acknowledge the rival 
 bishop, Paulinus, who was a Nicsean of the stricter cast. But after 
 451, the Council of Constantinople obtained, alike in the West and 
 East, recognition as an (Ecumenical Council. By some means 
 Cyril's Confession, the baptismal symbol of the Church at Jeru- 
 salem, came to be regarded as its product. Just how 
 this came to be can only be conjecturally explained. The 
 Constantinopolitan Creed omits these words of the Nicene sym- 
 bol : " that is, from the substance of the Father." In their place 
 stand the words : "begotten of the Father before all ages." 
 The words " God of God " are also omitted. These are the 
 principal variations from the Nicene text. They did not spring 
 from differences of belief. A striking peculiarity of the Con- 
 stantinopolitan has been stated, namely, the addition of the 
 clauses respecting the Holy Spirit, whose attributes are set forth in 
 words of Scripture. It is declared that the Spirit together with the 
 Father and the Son is to be worshipped and glorified. In Churches 
 of the West, the Creed which acquired the name of Constantino- 
 politan is usually styled the Nicene. In the Anglican Prayer 
 Book, apparently through a mistake of its compilers, the epithet 
 " holy," in one of the four notes of the Church, is omitted. The 
 addition of " filioque " to the Western form of the Creed will soon 
 be referred to. 
 
 In the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds, there stands 
 first the confession of one God, the Father Almighty, the Maker 
 of all things. There is a paraphrase of the language of the Apostle 
 Paul (i Cor. viii. 5) where he defines the Christian faith, in con- 
 trast with the belief of the heathen " in gods many and lords many." 
 While the Eastern theology likewise insisted on the consubstantiality 
 of the Son, there was always recognized the subordination of the 
 second and third persons. In the Deity the Father is the begin- 
 ning ; it is to Him that primal causality belongs. From the outset 
 the West clung to the unity of substance, fastening attention on this 
 cardinal element in the doctrine. It was through Augustine that 
 in the West subordinationism was eliminated from the Trinitarian 
 conception. Functions and acts, like the theophanies in the Old 
 Testament, which had been ascribed to the Son, were attributed
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 147 
 
 by Augustine to the whole Trinity. 1 By him the numerical unity 
 of the persons in respect of substance was unequivocally taught. It 
 was in pursuance of this movement of thought that on the conver- 
 sion of Recared, King of Spain and Gaul, at the third Council of 
 Toledo (589), "filioque" was inserted in the Creed; whereby 
 an immanent procession of the Spirit from the Son, as well as 
 from the Father, was affirmed. 2 In the symbol quicunque, 
 or the so-called Athanasian Creed, which was probably composed 
 in Southern Gaul, not earlier than the closing part of the fifth 
 century, and came into use in the age of Charlemagne, the process, 
 if one may so say, of equalizing the persons is seen at the climax. 
 The attributes of Deity are, one by one, affirmed of the three 
 persons severally, and with each affirmation is connected the 
 proposition that there are not three, but one, " eternal," " omni- 
 present," etc. It is only the epithets " ingenerate," " generated 
 by the Father," and "proceeding," that are connected respectively 
 and exclusively with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. 
 
 1 De Trinitate, L. II. 9-18. He says of the mission of the Son, of the 
 Incarnation, and the birth from the Virgin, that they were wrought by the 
 Trinity. " Una eademque operatione Patris et Filii inseparabiliter esse fac- 
 tam, non utique inde separate Spiritu Sancto." ( 9.) 
 
 a Mansi, IX. 597 sq.; Harduin, III. 467 sq. See Hahn, p. 158 sq.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST 
 TO JOHN OF DAMASCUS 
 
 ORIGEN had brought out explicitly the doctrine of two natures in 
 Christ. He is the divine Logos, He is likewise, as to both body 
 and soul, man. Origen had affirmed with emphasis the unity of 
 His person. He had said that the divine Wisdom or Logos had 
 emptied himself, had submitted to a curtailment of knowledge 
 for example, respecting the time when the advent to judgment 
 would occur. At the same time, however, he had said that the 
 Logos is incapable of increase or diminution, of being humbled or 
 exalted, and that it is humanity alone in Christ that suffers. The 
 transforming power of the Logos in its effect on the human nature, 
 especially on the body of Christ, is carried so far as to lend a 
 docetic tinge to the doctrinal conception. 1 The problem of the 
 mode of union of the two natures still called for a solution. It 
 could not be said to have been clearly or consistently explained by 
 the great Alexandrian teacher. The Arian Controversy gave rise 
 to deeper scrutiny of the subject. The Arian theory was that of 
 a union of the Logos with a human body. To the Logos, therefore, 
 were attributed the sensations of hunger and thirst, the limitation 
 of knowledge, the mental anxiety, which in the Gospels are predi- 
 cated of Christ. When the Catholics ascribed these experiences to 
 the human nature of Jesus, the Arians charged them with holding 
 to a conflict between the divine and human will in Him, to a divis- 
 ion of Christ into two persons. The task was imposed on the 
 defenders of the Nicene theology of meeting this accusation. 
 
 One of the foremost and one of the ablest defenders of the 
 Athanasian doctrine had been Apollinaris, the Younger, Bishop of 
 
 1 Cont. Cels. III. 41. The mortal body and the human soul by their " union 
 and intermixture" (fvoxrei /cat dva/cpdtrei) were changed into God. 
 
 148
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 149 
 
 Laodicea. In the middle of the fourth century he was regarded 
 as one of the pillars of orthodoxy. He was versed in classical 
 learning and he was an acute reasoner. But he struck out a path 
 at variance with the accepted doctrine respecting the person of 
 Christ, and broached a theory which is called the Apollinarian. 1 
 His main contention was that in Christ the divine Logos fills the 
 place of the rational soul in man. To the spirit or rational soul in 
 men should belong of right supreme control over the animal soul 
 and the body, the two other departments of human nature accord- 
 ing to the Platonic trichotomy. But by reason of sin, spirit has 
 lost this control and become enslaved to the lower nature. Hence 
 the need of the incarnation of the Logos. Apollinaris argued that 
 two natures, each with free will, could not subsist together in 
 Christ ; that if there be a rational spirit, then there are two sons of 
 God in Him, one natural and the other adopted. 2 Moreover, the 
 man, the adopted Son, would not be without error and sin ; He 
 would be mutable as the Arians alleged that He was. The 
 Johannine statement that "the Logos became flesh" is to be liter- 
 ally taken. The second man is "from heaven" (i Cor. xv. 47). 
 He is in fashion "as a man" (Phil. ii. 7). If, as Apollinaris 
 argued, Christ is to be conceived of as a man with the self-direct- 
 ing power of reason, then he is only a man inspired of God, 3 he is 
 not truly divine : but this last is a heresy. 
 
 The Apollinarian doctrine met with a general opposition. It is 
 withstood by Athanasius and the Cappadocian theologians, although 
 the treatise against Apollinaris which bears the name of Athanasius 
 is not genuine. Athanasius distinguishes between actions and ex- 
 periences of Christ which belong to him as God from such as per- 
 tain to him as man. The necessity that He should be truly man 
 is inseparable from the idea of redemption, which involves the 
 purification of human nature in its entirety. Yet the phrase " two 
 natures " does not occur in Athanasius, although it is not to be 
 inferred that he took pains to avoid it. He speaks, however, of a 
 physical unifying of the divine and the human. 4 God became man 
 that man might be made God might be divinized.* He does 
 
 1 See Draseke's elaborate discussion, Apollinaris von Laodicea, etc. (1892), in 
 Gebhardt u. Harnack's Texte u. Untersuchungen, etc. The third part of Dra- 
 seke's discussion presents what are left of the dogmatic writings of Apollinaris. 
 
 2 eft fdv (pwet . . . tls 52 flerrfs. 4 ^vwo-is tpvffiK-fi. 
 
 8 tvOfos dvOpwiros. 5 E.g., De Decretis, 14-, Ad. Adelph. 4.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 not hesitate to speak of God as having been crucified, 1 and more 
 than once styles Mary " theotokos " Mother of God. So all-con- 
 trolling, in his conception of the subject, is the divine factor in the 
 person of Christ. The Gregories are explicit in affirming the two 
 natures. Redemption loses its essential element if Christ was not 
 possessed of a rational soul like that of other men. Christ, says 
 Gregory of Nazianzum, is not one and another in the personal 
 sense of these terms, but in the impersonal, neuter sense. 2 The 
 Gregories say in words that the natures remain unaltered. Yet 
 they use language such terms, for example, as 'mixture' and 
 'compound ' 3 which, were they to be interpreted strictly, would 
 contradict that proposition. The human nature is divinized by its 
 union with the Logos. It is "two natures flowing together into 
 one." 4 Gregory of Nazianzum says that in Christ the Divine is to 
 the human as the sun among the stars, which if not obliterated are 
 yet too obscure to be visible. Gregory of Nyssa says that the 
 human is merged in the sea of the imperishable Deity as a drop of 
 vinegar is lost in the ocean. 5 Separate in itself considered, the 
 flesh when " mixed with the Divine " no longer continues in its own 
 limitations and properties. 6 The full consequences of the Incarna- 
 tion, however, do not ensue until the glorification of Christ. Then, 
 according to Gregory of Nyssa, the body of Christ loses entirely its 
 human attributes. Then the human nature of Christ becomes 
 ubiquitous. These theologians expressed the general sense of the 
 Church in their protest against the curtailing of the human 
 attributes of Christ, as was done in the Apollinarian theory of His 
 person. But in the view which they substitute for it, the human 
 nature of Christ is taken up as the mere organ of the Logos, as 
 the passive object of a divine, transfiguring agency. The Apol- 
 linarian doctrine was condemned, without any mention of its 
 author's name, at Alexandria in the Synod of 362. It was con- 
 demned at the Council of Constantinople in 381, as it had been 
 at Rome, under the auspices of its bishop, Damasus, in 377. But 
 there were Apollinarians who continued in a covert way to propa- 
 gate their opinion, and some of their writings by being mingled 
 
 1 Ad. Epict. 10. 
 
 2 &\\o ijv Ko.1 dXAo . . . owe AXXos dt na.1 AXXos. 
 
 8 KpS<m, /*{(?. Geg. Naz. Oral. 38, 13. He adds tear' ova-lav. 
 
 4 Si/o 0t5ers ei's ev <Tvv5pa/j.ov<ra.i. Or at. 37, 2. 
 
 6 Cent. Eunom. V. p. 708. 6 Ibid. V. p. 693.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY I $i 
 
 with the writings of Athanasius and other Catholic Fathers exerted 
 a modifying influence in orthodox polemics. 
 
 The debates occasioned by Apollinaris resolved themselves 
 into a contest between the two schools, the Alexandrian and the 
 Antiochian. The former pursued, and often with less moderation, 
 the way opened by Athanasius and the Cappadocian bishops. On 
 the other hand, although Apollinaris was an Antiochian in his 
 associations, the Antiochian school of divines, of whom Theodore, 
 Theodoret, and Ibas were the principal representatives, moved in 
 a diametrically opposite direction. The Antiochians were critics 
 and exegetes ; they inherited the scholarly spirit of Origen, while 
 the impulse lent by him to the cultivation of dogmatic theology 
 was specially effective at Alexandria. The Antiochians, however, 
 discarded allegory. Their theology was ethical in its character. 
 In their system, as it is expounded by Theodore, the freedom of 
 the will holds a central place. Character presupposes at the foun- 
 dation a free exercise of moral choice, and that which is true of 
 men generally must be true equally of the man Christ Jesus. He 
 came not only to be a deliverer of men from sin, but at the same 
 time to raise up man to a higher plane of development than be- 
 longed to the first Adam, even before the fall. The union of God 
 and man must be of such a character that to the man is left full 
 liberty of action. God has taken up His abode in a perfect man 
 of the family of David. This union begins at the beginning of His 
 prenatal life. It is not, however, a uniting as to essence or sub- 
 stance ; l for God as to His essence is present to all. Nor is it a 
 uniting of God as to His active energy, 2 for his Providence, and 
 thus His forth-going energy, is universal. It is, therefore, a moral 
 fellowship and communion. 3 Yet it is not on a level with the union 
 of God with good men with the prophets and saints. It is such 
 a union with man that he shares in the honor, glory, and dominion 
 which belong to the Logos. Its effects, however, are progressive ; 
 they keep pace with the free, ethical advance of Jesus ; they are 
 not complete until He is raised from the dead and exalted to His 
 glorified life above. 
 
 In the Nestorian Controversy, the difference between the two 
 schools came to a head. Nestorius, who was educated in Antioch, 
 became Bishop of Constantinople in 428. The tendency to pay 
 
 1 KO.T otolav. ' 2 tear' tvtpyeiav. 
 
 3 KO.T' fiidonlav or (caret xdpiv. It is an %j>w<ris crxm/cij, a ffvvd<j>fia.
 
 152 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 honor to the Virgin Mary was on the increase. It was especially 
 manifest among the monks in the neighborhood of the capital. 
 Nestorius protested against the application to her of the term 
 " theotokos," l Mother of God. She should either be called 
 ' mother of the man ' 2 Jesus, or ' mother of Christ.' 3 His objec- 
 tion was to the transference of human attributes to the divine 
 Logos. He emphatically denied that the Logos participated in 
 the sufferings of the human nature of Christ. Cyril of Alexandria, 
 a man of vehement temper and intolerant, but sincere in his opin- 
 ions, was quite ready to take up the cause of the adversaries of 
 Nestorius. Ecclesiastic rivalship in which the two Eastern Sees 
 and Rome in the West were the several parties, was not without 
 an important effect from the beginning of the widespread and 
 lasting controversy. Cyril succeeded in procuring the support of 
 Coelestin L, the Roman bishop. A letter of exhortation from 
 Cyril to Nestorius produced no result 4 Other letters were writ- 
 ten by both leaders. At an Alexandrian Synod in 430, Cyril sent 
 forth twelve anathemas against the Christological errors of Nesto- 
 rius. 3 The response of the latter was twelve counter-anathemas. 
 The position of Nestorius was that there was in Christ a union, 
 but not a union of essence, between God and man. The Divine 
 and the Human entered into a relation of constant co-existence 
 and co-working. The divine Logos took up his abode in the man 
 Jesus. There was a reciprocal connection of the two sets of 
 attributes, a mutual cooperation for the common end, but no 
 communication, no interchange of attributes. Only the smaller 
 fraction of the evangelic affirmations respecting Jesus during His 
 earthly life pertain to Him as at once God and man. Most of 
 them are true of Him either as God exclusively or as man exclu- 
 sively. As to the former class, the predicates of the God-man, 
 they are true solely on the ground of the connection of the two 
 natures. Cyril, on the contrary, asserted a physical (or metaphys- 
 ical) uniting of the two natures. God becomes man. 6 After the 
 Incarnation, there are two natures abstractly considered, but in 
 the concrete reality but one, namely, the one incarnated nature 
 
 1 Mapt'a OforfiKOS. 2 av0pwiroT6i<os. 8 \piffTor6Kos. 
 
 4 Cyril. Alex. Opp. Epist. IV. See Hahn, p. 235. 
 
 5 The anathemas of Cyril and the correspondence are in Mansi, Cone. Coll. 
 Vols. IV. and V., Hahn, p. 238 sq. 
 
 6 iytvero AvOpuiro*, oJ <rwr]<f>0i} avOpdnrtf.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 153 
 
 of the divine Logos. 1 This was thought to be a phrase of Athana- 
 sius, but was in the treatise against Apollinaris, which was incor- 
 rectly ascribed to him. The idea of Cyril is that the flesh, all the 
 human attributes, have become the attributes of the Logos without 
 the loss of His divine nature. The product is a theanthropic 
 person, not merely God, or merely man, but throughout both in 
 one. There is thus in Christ incarnate a communion of attributes. 
 There is one subject, with one nature, which is divine-human. In 
 this literal sense the Logos has assumed humanity. Hence it can 
 be said that ' God is born,' that ' God suffered,' if only it be added, 
 * according to the flesh.' 2 Nestorius argued that such a conception 
 clashes with the distinction between God and man as to essence ; 
 that it annuls the immutability of God by imputing to Him a 
 change of nature, or a mixture with another nature, or a change 
 of place in coming into the flesh. But Cyril persistently asserted 
 that the uniting of the natures is not their fusion ; that ' to have 
 flesh' is not 'to be flesh.' Nestorius sought to repel the infer- 
 ence that by his doctrine the unity of person was broken up, 
 since there is a constant, harmonious co-working of the human 
 nature in subordination to the divine. The human shares in the 
 dignity of the divine in virtue of its connection with it. Cyril 
 alleged that to render divine honors to one who is not ' by nature 
 God ' is man-worship. Each party, that of the Alexandrians and 
 that of the Antiochians, contended that its own theory alone fur- 
 nished a basis for redemption. 
 
 Nestorius had explained his objection to the word 'Theotokos.' 
 It was on the ground of its ambiguity. The anathemas of Cyril 
 called out answers from two eminent Antiochians, Andreas, 
 Bishop of Samosata, and Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus. To 
 appease the strife, Theodosius II. summoned a General Council 
 to meet at Ephesus (431). But Cyril, who was attended by 
 a throng of bishops, a great part of them from Egypt, did not 
 wait for the arrival of the Oriental bishops, but proceeded to 
 organize the Council, and, with Memnon of Ephesus to assist 
 him, pronounced Nestorius, despite the protest of the Emperor's 
 Commissioner, guilty of heresy and deposed. The Orientals, 
 when they arrived, organized separately under John, Bishop 
 of Antioch, and proceeded to depose Cyril and his principal 
 auxiliary, Memnon. Theodosius was incensed at the proceeding 
 
 oO \6yov afvapKufitvyv. 2 xaret trdpica.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of Cyril, but was won over to his cause by the influence of the 
 monks, and of officers of the Court, who were corrupted by 
 bribes. He had confirmed all three acts of deposition, but he 
 restored Cyril and Memnon, while he left Nestorius in his cloister 
 at Antioch. The rupture between the Orientals proper and other 
 provinces, especially Egypt, led to strenuous efforts to patch up a 
 peace. To promote this purpose, Theodosius exerted his author- 
 ity in an arbitrary way. Cyril was steadily gaining ground at 
 the Court and in the Capital. In 433, John of Antioch agreed 
 upon terms of peace. Cyril signed a confession that was drawn 
 up by the Antiochians and contained nothing antagonistic to their 
 opinions. John of Antioch had been a conservative supporter of 
 the anti-Cyrillian theology, although he had expostulated with 
 Nestorius for raising a storm about a word which was capable of 
 an innocent interpretation. Now, however, for the sake of peace, 
 and moved by the threatening attitude of the Emperor, he con- 
 sented to the condemnation of Nestorius and of the doctrinal 
 statements which had been proscribed. Nestorius, a persecuted 
 man, was driven from one place of refuge to another. He died 
 in 440. The theological school at Edessa where the Persian 
 clergy had long been educated under the lead of Rabulas, a 
 deserter from the Nestorian party, was thrown into confusion. 
 As the final result it was broken up (489). The Nestorian 
 dissentients fled into Persia and established there a separate 
 Church, in which Theodore and the other Antiochian leaders, 
 to the condemnation of whose writings they had refused to con- 
 sent, were held in high esteem. 
 
 There was wide dissatisfaction with the concessions made by 
 John in the treaty with Cyril. But in Egypt there was a prevalent 
 discontent on the other side, and vehement opposition to the 
 doctrine of two natures. The Cyrillian partisans were accused by 
 the Orientals of Apollinarianism. At this point there begins 
 another stage in the prolonged warfare of opinion. Dioscurus, 
 a violent man, the successor of Cyril, and bishop from 444 to 451, 
 oppressed the Nestorians and compelled, where he could, the 
 renunciation of their doctrine. But the ranks of the Cyrillians 
 were broken through the promulgation by Eutyches, an old 
 Archimandrite of a cloister close by Constantinople, of an extreme 
 opinion, an opinion that went too far for all but the zealots of his 
 party. He held that after the Incarnation there is only one
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 155 
 
 nature. Christ, he said, is of two natures, but not in two. 
 Moreover, he held that the body of Christ was not of the same 
 nature (consubstantial) with our human bodies. Prosecuted by 
 Eusebius of Dorylaeum, who had been one of his friends, he was 
 condemned and dismissed from his office by a Synod at Con- 
 stantinople (448) over which Flavianus, his bishop, presided. 
 Leo I., the Bishop of Rome, in a long letter to Flavianus, 
 approved of his course, and set forth the doctrine relative to the 
 person of Christ in which there was a distinct assertion of the two 
 natures. 1 Dioscurus caused a Synod to assemble at Ephesus from 
 which, by means of brutal threats and coercion, a decree in favor 
 of Eutyches was extorted. The date of this Robber Synod, a 
 name given to it by Leo, was 449. Theodosius had exerted his 
 power, in the usual despotic style, in behalf of Eutyches ; but the 
 Emperor's death, in 450, left his sister, Pulcheria, with her 
 husband, Marcianus, on the throne both hostile to the fanatical 
 Alexandrian bishop and in sympathy with Leo. An CEcumenical 
 Council assembled at Chalcedon in 451. Dioscurus was deposed 
 for his crimes. Cyril was pronounced orthodox. Theodoret, 
 who had been deposed by the Robber Synod, but who had been 
 supported and declared to be reinstated by Leo, was now formally 
 restored, but was first driven by the clamor raised in the Council 
 to anathematize not only the doctrine of the " two sons," but, 
 also Nestorius and all others who held it. The antipathy to 
 Nestorius could nowhere be appeased except by a repudiation of 
 him by name. The Council first declared its firm adhesion to 
 the Creed ratified at Nicaea and Constantinople, and the expo- 
 sition of it by Cyril at Ephesus. It sanctioned Leo's letter to 
 Flavian, and framed, besides, a creed of its own. The Chalcedon 
 Creed affirmed that the Son is consubstantial 2 with the Father as 
 to His godhead, and consubstantial with us as to His humanity, 
 that He is the Son of Mary, the Mother of God, as to His 
 humanity, that He is one person in two natures, united " incon- 
 fusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably," 3 the property of 
 each nature being preserved in the union, with no parting or 
 dividing into two persons. 4 Notwithstanding the deference paid 
 by the Chalcedon Fathers to Cyril's teaching, Nestorius might 
 
 1 Mansi, V. 1366-1390; Hahn, Biblioth. p. 256 sq. 
 
 * For the creed, see Hahn, p. 84. In Mansi (VII. 108 sq.) the reading
 
 156 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 have signed the Creed, including the title " Theotocos," as it was 
 qualified by the words appended to it. 
 
 Here begin the Monophysite struggles, the name of Monophy- 
 sites being given to the opponents of the Chalcedon Creed and 
 its affirmation of two natures. Disturbances arose at once in 
 Palestine, in Egypt, and even in Antioch, where Monophysitism 
 was espoused by violent champions. Of these and the subsequent 
 conflicts, which are often acrimonious in the extreme, it is possi- 
 ble to give only a bare sketch. There were armed encounters of 
 rival theological factions. Bishops, some of them learned, and 
 godly up to the measure of their light, were driven into exile to 
 perish from hardship or the cruelty of barbarians. The tyranny, 
 the fickle tyranny, of the Byzantine rulers, inflicted harsh penal- 
 ties, now on one side and now on the other. When the Emperor 
 Basil iscus gained the throne and took up the cause of the Mon- 
 ophysites, five hundred bishops signed a document which he 
 issued, rejecting the Chalcedon Confession. At Alexandria, an 
 orthodox bishop was slain in the church. In 482, the Emperor 
 Zeno strove to pacify the contending parties by the Henoticon, 
 which laid emphasis on the points on which they were agreed, 
 approved of Cyril's twelve anathemas, and was silent or ambigu- 
 ous on the Chalcedon Creed. While this measure produced in 
 the Greek Empire a temporary quiet, it was openly opposed at 
 Rome and in the West as a surrender to the Monophysites. The 
 position taken by Rome found sympathy in Constantinople, and 
 the theological contest there was mixed up with the political dis- 
 order. Justin I. was obliged by the military commander, Vitalian 
 (519), to comply with the demands of Rome, to abolish the 
 ffenoticon, and formally to accept the creed of Chalcedon. This 
 measure resulted in the separation of the two parties, and in the 
 course of the sixth century, the Monophysites formed sects in 
 Egypt, Syria, and Armenia, which still exist under the names of 
 the Coptic, ^Ethiopic, Jacobite, and Armenian Churches. All 
 these separatists clung to Cyril's teaching, but disowned Eutyches. 
 The Emperor Justinian set out to bring back the Monophysite 
 separatists. The Monophysites had become divided among them- 
 selves. The Severians (followers of Severus, Bishop of Antioch) 
 adhered to Cyril, and complained of the " two natures " of the 
 
 should be, not tv Svo <t>v<re<riv, but K Svo <f>vffeuv. For the proceedings of the 
 Council before and after it was framed, see Hefele, Vol. II. b. xi.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 157 
 
 Chalcedon Creed ; but they held that the body of Christ prior to 
 His resurrection was corruptible. The " Julianists," in opposition 
 to "the corrupticolae," as they were nicknamed, 'worshippers 
 of the corruptible/ held that from the Incarnation the Saviour's 
 body was insusceptible of decay. The Julianists were the " Aph- 
 thartodocetse." It may be observed here that Hilary of Poictiers, 
 the leading Nicene theologian of the West, had advocated the 
 opinion that it was only by the voluntary consent of Jesus that he 
 suffered physical pain of any sort. There was another movement 
 which looked in the direction of harmony. This was a movement 
 led by Maxentius, whom the Scythian monks followed, and by 
 Leontius of Byzantium, a student of the philosophy of Aristotle, 
 whose aim it was to interpret the Chalcedon Creed in a Cyrillian 
 sense. 1 The question was whether the more moderate Monophy- 
 sites could be conciliated, and Rome be won over to forms of 
 compromise which should leave the Creed, nominally at least, in 
 full authority. Great efforts were made by the Scythian monks 
 to secure a recognition of the phrase " One of the Holy Trinity 
 was crucified." 2 This was a phrase which, tried by the standard 
 of Chalcedon, was capable of an orthodox interpretation. Jus- 
 tinian caused the proposition that " God was crucified for us," 
 to be embodied in a law (533), and to be sanctioned by an 
 (Ecumenical Synod (the 5th) at Constantinople in 553. There, 
 also, was ratified his edict issued 554, "The Three Chapters," 3 
 in which were condemned the writings of Theodore of Mopsues- 
 tia, and certain anti-Cyrillian writings of Theodoret and Ibas, his 
 most eminent followers. 4 In these proceedings, the antagonism 
 of Rome and of the Churches of the West was met by despotic, 
 coercive measures. The resistance of Vigilius, Bishop of Rome, 
 was overcome, and likewise the opposition of his successor, Pe- 
 lagius I. The result was that several important churches in the 
 West broke off communion with Rome, and remained thus sepa- 
 rate until unity was restored by Gregory I. Justinian likewise 
 embraced the opinion of the Theopaschites, the Aphthartodocetae, 
 and in 564 declared it to be the orthodox doctrine. Nothing 
 but his death in 565 prevented the slavish clergy who were 
 
 1 See Loofs, Text. u. Untersuch. von Gebh. u. Harnack, III. i, 2. 
 
 2 $va rrfs ayias rpidSos irtTrovQtva.1. aapKi. 3 rpia Ke<f>d\aia,. 
 4 For the fourteen anathemas of the Council, see Mansi, IX. 367-375 ; 
 
 Hahn, p. 86 sq.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 governed by his decrees from giving their assent to the Caesarian 
 dogma. 
 
 With the death of Justinian, the shield which had been ex- 
 tended over the Monophysites, in great part through the sym- 
 pathy of Theodora, his wife, was withdrawn. For a half century 
 there followed an alternation of favor and persecution in the 
 treatment of them. To reconcile them to the Chalcedon symbol 
 continued to be a part of the imperial policy. In 622, Hera- 
 clius, in his expedition against Persia, tarried in Armenia and 
 Syria, and there was told by certain Monophysite bishops that 
 what was especially repugnant in the Chalcedon definitions was 
 the implication of two wills in Christ. Supported by Sergius, 
 Patriarch of Constantinople, and bent on securing the union of 
 parties, the Emperor declared for the doctrine of one will the 
 Monothelite view. The great obstacle seemed to be removed 
 when Honorius, the Bishop of Rome, expressed himself in accord- 
 ance with it. 1 But opposition arose on the orthodox side, So- 
 phronius, a monk of Constantinople, being active in fomenting it. 
 He acquired increased influence when, in 638, he became Patri- 
 arch of Jerusalem. It was now the time for efforts to quiet the 
 storm which had been excited. In 638, Heraclius issued a docu- 
 ment called the Ecthesis, composed by Sergius, which asserted 
 the unity of the person of Christ, the centre of all activities, for- 
 bade the teaching of either one or two modes of activity, but 
 declared that in Christ there is only one will, morally speaking, 
 one " thelema" The Monophysites were pleased, although 
 nothing beyond a moral unity of will was affirmed. But Theo- 
 dore I., the Roman bishop, was not to be won over. He cordially 
 received Paulus, who had been deposed from the See of Constan- 
 tinople, and at a public disputation at Carthage had been con- 
 verted from Monothelitism by Maximus, who like him had come 
 over to Africa. Constans II., in 648, issued the Typos (Precept), 
 which forbade all controversy on the subject. Martin I., Bishop 
 of Rome, at the first Lateran Synod at Rome, in 649, condemned 
 
 1 This he did in two letters. For his opinion on this question he was 
 denounced as heretical by the Sixth General Council, and anathematized 
 later by Pope Leo II. Down to the eleventh century, every Pope on his 
 election had to ratify the condemnation of Honorius. The question relative 
 to his heterodoxy was warmly debated at the time of the Vatican Council. 
 The points in dispute, with the literature on the subject, are given by Schaff, 
 Church History, IV. 500-506.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 159 
 
 both the EC thesis and the Typos, and their authors. Both he and 
 Maximus were dragged off to Constantinople and perished in 
 exile. Superficial amity ensued between Rome and Constanti- 
 nople. But the son and successor of Constans II. found it neces- 
 sary to assemble an (Ecumenical Council the sixth, or First 
 Trullan, Council at Constantinople (680). As Leo I. had 
 furnished the basis for the Chalcedon definition, so Agatho, now 
 Bishop of Rome, who was determined to stand by the decisions 
 of the Lateran Synod, wrote a letter, the doctrine of which formed 
 the creed of the Council. The will, Agatho said, is a property 
 of the nature, so that as there are two natures, there are two 
 wills ; but the human will determines itself ever comformably to 
 the divine and almighty will. The creed was an addition to the 
 Chalcedon symbol and declared of the two wills just what that 
 symbol had asserted of the two natures. Conformably to the 
 accepted psychology of the time, according to which the will was 
 a component attribute of the nature, the conclusion was a logical 
 one. The Dyothelite opinion was thus converted into a dogma. 
 The Monothelite opinion was still cherished by the Maronites, 
 separatists from the Catholic body. 1 
 
 We have now to consider briefly the doctrine of the person of 
 Christ as it is set forth by the most authoritative of the Greek 
 theologians after this time, John of Damascus. 2 The unity of the 
 two natures it is attempted to secure by relegating to the divine 
 Logos the formative and controlling agency. It is not a human 
 individual that the Logos assumes, nor is it humanity, or human 
 nature, in general. It is rather a potential human individual, a 
 nature not yet developed into a person or hypostasis. The hy- 
 postasis through which this takes place is the personal Logos 
 through whose union with this potential man, in the womb of 
 Mary, the potential man acquires a concrete reality, an individual 
 existence. He has, therefore, no hypostasis of himself but only 
 in and through the Logos. It is denied that he is non-hypostatic ; 3 
 it is affirmed that he is en-hypostatic* Two natures may form a 
 
 1 For the sources and the literature pertaining to Monothelitism, see Mol- 
 ler's art., Monotheliten, Real-Encykl. Vol. X. p. 804. 
 
 2 The Christology of John of Damascus is instructively described by Dor- 
 ner, Person Christi, Vol. II. pp. 258-281, Thomasius, DG. I. pp. 386-392, A, 
 Dorner, Real-Encykl. VII. 29 sq. 
 
 3 dvvir&ffTaTOt. * ti>vir6ffTaTos.
 
 l6o HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 unity, as the body and soul in man. So man, both soul and body, 
 is brought into unity with the Logos ; there being then one 
 hypostasis for both natures. There is a circumincession 1 of the 
 divine and human, an interchange of attributes. There is a com- 
 munication of divine attributes to the human nature so that the 
 latter is deified, 2 and so that we may say that God has suffered in 
 the flesh. But in this interchange the human nature is merely 
 receptive and passive. The Son of God the humanity, the 
 flesh, included is to be worshipped. The will, in accordance 
 with the current psychology, is regarded as a quality of the nature, 
 and it is said that in Christ the human will has become the will of 
 the incarnate God. It is simply the organ of the divine will. 
 While the Damascene makes distinctions which are intended to 
 preserve the reality of the human nature in Christ, the drift of his 
 teaching is in the Monophysite direction. 
 
 On the subject of the Trinity, the Damascene lays emphasis 
 upon the unity of persons. The unity is the real, 3 the trinity the 
 logical. 4 The distinction is in the fatherhood, the sonship, and 
 the procession. There is a circumincession, so that neither is 
 conceivable without the others. The Father is the ground and 
 cause of all. But the three are one in knowing, willing, and 
 acting. 
 
 1 irep(.\<j)pi)ffis. 8 rb KOLV&V Kal ev irpdy par i. 
 
 8 Otuffis TJJS crapnos.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE DOCTRINES NOT DEFINED IN THE CECUMEN1CAL COUNCILS 
 
 BEYOND the group of doctrines which formed the subject of 
 conciliar verdicts and were thus converted into dogmas, we find 
 no close agreement among the Greek Fathers who were reputed 
 orthodox, nor do we observe in any single author a very near 
 approach to consistency with himself. We have in mind the great 
 productive period, the fourth and fifth centuries. Beginning with 
 the work of Christ, we should greatly err if we referred the absorp- 
 tion in the questions relating to the Divinity of Christ and the 
 constitution of His person to a Greek fondness for subtle meta- 
 physical discussion, as its chief source. There was a deep prac- 
 tical motive connected with these inquiries. They borrowed their 
 interest from the underlying conviction that the work of Christ as 
 a Saviour is inseparably involved in them. One striking phenom- 
 enon in the Greek theology is the quite subordinate place allotted 
 to the Atonement, in comparison with the relation of Christ to the 
 deliverance of man from the power and the subjective conse- 
 quences of sin. The same is true of the Latin Fathers, even of 
 Augustine, although not in so great a degree. This peculiarity of 
 the Fathers, especially of the Greek Church, is due to the weak- 
 ness of the feeling of guilt in connection with sin, when compared 
 with the sense of its power, or baleful spiritual effects. It is 
 another ruling idea in the Greek theology that one essential need 
 of the soul is enlightenment, a regaining and increase of our 
 knowledge of God, which sin has obscured. Bearing these things 
 in mind, we are less surprised to find Gregory of Nazianzum put- 
 ting the sufferings of Christ in a list along with matter, the soul, 
 the resurrection, the judgment, retribution, and other subjects, 
 themes on which it is considered that one may philosophize prof- 
 itably, and respecting which there is no danger of going astray. 1 
 
 1 Orat. XXVII. 10 (cai rb Sia/xaprdwi' 
 M l6l
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 The one pervading thought of the Greek Fathers concerning 
 the redemptive work of Christ is that men are thereby brought 
 into unity with God. They do not hesitate to designate this 
 unity as a deification. It is an apotheosis. They dwell on the 
 idea that we "become partakers of the divine nature." 1 To this 
 end the death and resurrection of Jesus were requisite. They 
 were requisite to the full deliverance and perfection of humanity. 
 Connected with this prevalent thought, however, there is still 
 found in leading Fathers the old notion of a ransom paid to Satan 
 for man's release. Nor is there absent the conception of an 
 endurance by Christ of the curse in response to a demand in the 
 divine character and administration. But the great effect to be 
 wrought, the great blessing to be bestowed, is "incorruption." 2 
 
 In Athanasius, the relation of the work of Christ to Satan retires 
 into the background. In his treatise on the Incarnation he sets 
 forth the grounds of the need of the Incarnation and of the death 
 of Jesus. 3 The veracity of God would not have been maintained 
 had the law which threatened death not been carried out. More- 
 over, He would have failed in his purpose in creating man. In 
 this sense, He would have failed in "goodness." 4 It would not 
 have been " becoming " in God to leave his creature to perish. 
 The difficulty was removed by the death of Jesus. Moreover, if 
 men had repented they might have fallen again had not more 
 been done than merely to pardon them. If a king had built a 
 city, and, owing to the negligence of the citizens, it is seized by 
 robbers, he will not forsake it, but will do what is " becoming to 
 him " s to protect and defend it. So the Word of God, the all- 
 good Father, did not leave the race of men to go down to corrup- 
 tion, but He obliterated death, by the offering of His own body, 
 and " set right their negligence by His teaching, setting right all 
 things pertaining to man by His virtue and power." 6 Just as an 
 Emperor by taking up his abode in one house in a city, deters 
 enemies from attacking it, so that it is made safe by his simple 
 presence, so the Son of God has come into our region, and taken 
 up His abode in one of our bodies, with the effect that all enemies, 
 even the " corruption of death," have vanished. 7 These parables 
 
 1 2 Peter i. 4. 2 atpOapala.. 8 De Incarnat. 6-10. 
 
 * ayaffbrris. Yet the " compassion " of God is not wholly left out. See 
 12, 14. The love (fj)i\a.v6pwirla) of Jesus is more often brought in, 
 & efs rt> tdVTov irptirov. 6 10. 7 9
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 163 
 
 are left without a definite interpretation. At a later date in the Arian 
 Controversy, Athanasius handles the same theme in a similar vein. 1 
 It would not have been either fitting or profitable to men for God 
 " to undo the curse " by a bare decree. If He had done so, man 
 might have become worse. Man must remain mortal unless " he 
 is joined to God." Christ offers to death His own body, so that all 
 may be freed from sin and the curse. " Man joined to a thing made 
 would not have been made God, unless the Son were very God. . . . 
 We should not have been delivered from sin and the curse had not 
 the flesh (which the Logos assumed) been by nature human." 
 Through the whole discussion the idea of the necessity of being 
 "joined to God" is uppermost. 
 
 The conception of a ransom paid by Christ to Satan is set forth 
 by Gregory of Nyssa. God would take away from Satan all ground 
 for the complaint of injustice in dealing with Him. He would not, 
 therefore, wrest from the Evil One the captives whom he held in 
 his power through their own self-surrender. Hence the plan to 
 deliver them by purchase. Satan, attracted by a view of the power 
 to work miracles and by other qualities of Christ, was willing to 
 part with his hold on men in exchange for Him. By His being 
 veiled in human form, Satan was deceived ; for he could not have 
 endured the unveiled manifestation of Deity. In this plan the 
 wisdom of God was exerted, as well as His goodness and His power. 
 Gregory of Nazianzum protests against the opinion that Satan, an 
 unrighteous usurper of power, is entitled to a ransom. It is given 
 to God, not because he demanded or needed a price, but because 
 through the Incarnation, man could be purified and made holy. 
 It was a part of the method of salvation. Yet Gregory finds a 
 place for the deceiving of Satan, who, on account of the human 
 form of the Saviour, imagined that his contest was only with an 
 ordinary man. 
 
 As to redemption subjectively considered, the Greek Fathers 
 hold that grace and human agency are cooperative. But this 
 topic is best considered in connection with their views of Anthro- 
 pology. 
 
 After the beginning of the fifth century, Creationism the doc- 
 trine of the creation of souls individually prevailed in the West : 
 but the Greek Fathers were not united in this opinion. The Tra- 
 ducian view was favored by Gregory of Nyssa. Origen's doctrine 
 1 Adv. Ar. Oral. II. 66 sq.
 
 1 64 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of preexistence was more and more proscribed and at length 
 deemed to be heterodox (553). With Origen, immortality was 
 generally thought to be a natural property of the soul. In the 
 analysis of human nature, some of whom Gregory of Nyssa was 
 one adhered to the Platonic trichotomy, while others including 
 Athanasius were dichotomists. By some of the Greek Fathers, 
 the distinction was made between the image and the similitude of 
 God. The image of God denoted man's natural powers of reason 
 and will, and included the dominion given to him over the lower 
 creation. Gregory of Nyssa makes the similitude to consist in the 
 qualities of the Christian produced by the Holy Spirit. A defining 
 characteristic of the Greek Anthropology is the uniformity and 
 emphasis with which the freedom of the will, and its continued 
 liberty after the incoming of sin, is asserted. The Fathers are 
 agreed in tracing the sinfulness of mankind to the voluntary trans- 
 gression of Adam. They agree in teaching that this transgression 
 brought the race of mankind under the dominion of Satan. The 
 discernment of God and of divine things became clouded. Sensual 
 propensities gained an augmented force. Nature and the revealed 
 law were ineffectual for man's recovery. This is achieved only 
 through the incarnate Logos, the source of man's original endowment 
 of reason and spiritual perception. The baneful effect of sin in the 
 individual goes forward gradually, from one degree of depravation 
 to another. This is the declaration of Athanasius. The sum of the 
 consequences of Adam's fall is made to consist in the dominion of 
 Satan, in mortality, and the increased exposure to the seductions 
 of evil. Yet by the Greek Fathers the reign of sin in mankind is 
 depicted in strong colors. This is true, for example, of Athanasius ; 
 and there are passages in Gregory of Nyssa which, were they all 
 that this author says on the subject, might lead us to infer that he 
 held to an inherited sinful depravity, involving guilt. But such was 
 not the fact. When Athanasius says that as man can turn to things 
 good, so he can turn away from the same, 1 and when Methodius 
 says that " sin is an act of personal freedom, without which there 
 is neither sin nor virtue, neither reward nor punishment," they 
 express the common conviction of the Greek theologians. The 
 sharp distinction between nature and will is drawn out by Athana- 
 sius in a passage having direct reference to the generation of the 
 Logos. 2 Chrysostom, commenting on the 51 st Psalm, says that 
 
 i Cont. Gent. 4. a C. Ar. III. 66.
 
 with the first sin a path was opened for the progress of sin over 
 the whole race. Adam and Eve have generated children who are 
 mortal, and subject to the influence of passion and appetite. The 
 reason is obliged to war against these, and wins glory by victory or 
 shame by defeat. In reference to Romans v. 19, Chrysostom says 
 that a man would not deserve punishment, " if it were not from his 
 own self that he became a sinner." When the posterity of Adam 
 are called sinners, it means that they share in Adam's punishment 
 by being condemned to death. If the question is asked, how is 
 this just, the answer is given that death and the calamities akin to 
 it are a benefit to us, for we get from them " numberless grounds " 
 for being good. The present life is a " sort of school," and made 
 such by the discipline of suffering. Cyril of Jerusalem says explic- 
 itly, " we come sinless into this world ; we sin now voluntarily." 1 
 Athanasius goes so far as to say that there have been many saints 
 who have been free from all sin. Jeremiah and John the Baptist 
 are mentioned as examples. Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazian- 
 zum, Basil, and Chrysostom pronounce new-born children free from 
 sin. It may seem difficult to reconcile passages like these just 
 referred to with other utterances found in the same teachers. In 
 passages of a different tenor, however, they have in mind a corrup- 
 tion that does not involve guilt. Nevertheless, it is vain to attempt 
 to reduce the teaching of the Greek Fathers, even the most eminent 
 of them, to entire logical consistency. 
 
 As might be expected, the renewal of the soul is made to be 
 the result of the factors, divine grace and the exertion of man's 
 free-will. As a rule, the exertion of free-will, human efforts in 
 a right direction, precede the divine aid, and render men worthy 
 of it. It is a doctrine of synergism. God and man cooperate. 
 The lack of a distinct and self-consistent separation of that which 
 is natural, and that which is an added supernatural gift, in the 
 soul, leads in some cases to a seeming reduction of the agency 
 of the divine factor in regeneration. This remark applies to 
 Athanasius. 2 In harmony with the foregoing views as to human 
 freedom and responsibility, conditional predestination is the doc- 
 trine inculcated by the Greek Fathers. Election is a pre-ordina- 
 tion of blessings or rewards for such as are foreseen to be, up to 
 a certain measure, worthy of them. As an illustration, we may 
 
 1 Cat. IV. 19; see also 21. 
 
 2 See the remarks of Harnack, DG. II. 146 sq.
 
 t66 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 refer to Chrysostom's interpretation of the ninth chapter of 
 Romans. 1 The choice of Jacob instead of Esau is accounted 
 for by a perception by God, beforehand, of merits in the elect 
 one. The reference to the potter and the clay is not intended 
 to deny merit or freedom of choice, but is a rebuke of presump- 
 tion on the part of those who cannot see all that God sees, of 
 those who " will not allow Him to know who is worthy and who 
 is not so." 
 
 The Greek Fathers have much to say of the necessity and 
 value of faith in the process of salvation. Passages which are 
 truly Evangelical and Pauline are frequently to be met with in 
 their writings. Yet, as a rule, they fail to discern that genetic 
 relation of faith to works which is an essential feature of the 
 Apostle Paul's teaching. Hence we find in them Pauline state- 
 ments mingled with expressions of a different tenor. Good works 
 are coordinated with faith, as a condition of salvation. As this 
 is true of Justin, Irseneus, and Origen, so is it of their successors. 
 For example, Cyril of Jerusalem says that the way of godliness 
 consists of these two things, pious doctrines and virtuous prac- 
 tices, 2 and in another place he says that the ways of finding eternal 
 life are many. Among them, along with faith are enumerated 
 martyrdom and confession in Christ's name, the preference of 
 Christ to kindred or riches, departing from evil works, etc. " For 
 the Lord has opened not one or two only, but many doors, to 
 eternal life." 3 Chrysostom, while he frequently approaches near 
 to the Pauline conception, yet here and there makes good works 
 supplementary to faith rather than its fruit. The separation of 
 faith from works naturally led to another conception of faith which 
 resolved it into the reception of doctrines, the mind's assent to 
 the creed. The transition, moreover, was easy to the idea that 
 almsgiving, fasting, prayers, and the like, were included in good 
 works as a part of the required complement of faith. In general 
 it may be said that while it would be an exaggeration to allege 
 that the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith suffered an 
 eclipse, yet in a very perceptible degree it was obscured. 
 
 What the Latins called * sacraments,' the Greeks called ' mys- 
 teries.' The Latin Versions of the New Testament rendered the 
 term ' mystery ' by ' sacrament.' 4 The doctrine of the Latins in 
 
 1 Homilies, XVI. 8 Ibid. XVIII. 31, 30. 
 
 2 Cat. IV. 2. * Eph. v. 32.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY ^7 
 
 this period on the sacraments was connected with the term not in 
 its classic, but its etymologic sense, in which it designated some- 
 thing holy or consecrated. How far the ideas and rites which 
 gradually associated themselves in the ancient Church, East and 
 West, with the sacraments or mysteries, were moulded or modified 
 by the heathen mysteries and by other cults with which the con- 
 verts to Christianity were conversant, is a subject that would 
 require a searching and elaborate investigation. That the Greek 
 theology in process of time became permeated with beliefs and 
 sentiments that gathered about the Christian "mysteries," is a 
 fact beyond question. In the patristic usage, the word ' mystery ' 
 was applied to whatever was at once mysterious and sacred, and 
 especially to objects or transactions of a symbolical character, 
 where an occult reality was conceived to be hidden beneath their 
 material aspect. Hence the term had no definite limit in its 
 application. Pseudo-Dionysius, in a passage where it is not clear 
 that he is giving an exhaustive list, enumerates six sacraments, 
 viz., baptism, the Lord's Supper, unction meaning, perhaps, 
 confirmation the consecration 1 of priests, the consecration of 
 monks, and the rites of burial. In this period it is Baptism and 
 the Lord's Supper which are accounted the principal sacraments. 
 
 Baptism was regarded as the Sacrament of Regeneration, and is 
 not unfrequently so styled. More specifically it brings the pardon 
 of sins in the past, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. The Cappado- 
 cian Fathers add other blessings. The Greeks adhered to the 
 earlier prevalent view that the soul in baptism is cleansed from 
 sin itself as well as from its guilt. When we inquire into the mode 
 in which the effects of the Sacrament are communicated, we find 
 that it is never considered as exclusively a symbol. The spiritual 
 blessings are held to be bestowed with the application of the 
 baptismal water, either concurrently but independently, or through 
 the action of a power imparted to the water itself. It is not 
 always easy to distinguish which of these views is meant to be 
 expressed. The Gregories appear to teach merely the simulta- 
 neous action of the water and of the spirit, the one being simply 
 the type of the other. But Cyril of Jerusalem goes farther when 
 he exhorts his readers to " regard not the Laver as mere water," 2 
 adding that the water after the invocation acquires a new power of 
 holiness. More explicit and more extreme is Cyril of Alexandria. 
 
 1 Tf\flwffis. 2 \triiv vSup : Cat. III. 3, 4.
 
 !<58 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 "By the Holy Ghost," he says, "the water perceived by the senses 
 is metamorphosed 1 into a certain divine and ineffable power." 2 
 Notwithstanding the use of these strong expressions, the actual 
 conversion of the water into a different substance, as is shown by 
 other passages in the same authors, is not meant. 
 
 In the investigation of the history of the doctrine respecting 
 the Lord's Supper, two points are to be considered, viz., the view 
 of it as an offering, and the view taken of it as a sacrament in the 
 stricter sense. 
 
 In the Church at the outset, the bread and wine brought as 
 gifts for the Agape and for sacramental use, together with the 
 prayers and thanksgivings, constituted the oblation, the centre 
 and soul of which was the pure heart. 3 Thanks were offered for 
 earthly blessings as well as for redemption through Christ. The 
 idea of a repetition in the Eucharist of the atoning sacrifice of 
 Christ, and hence of a propitiatory value attached to the rite, is 
 first broached, although even then in not a very clear way, by 
 Cyprian. It is in keeping with his definite sacerdotal idea of 
 the ministry. Much later, through Gregory I., it takes the form 
 of a distinct doctrine. 
 
 Peculiar difficulties arise when we seek to get at a precise 
 meaning in what the Fathers say relative to the Lord's Supper 
 as a sacrament, the relation of the bread and wine to the body 
 and blood of Christ. Are they speaking literally or in a figure ? 
 Are they defining doctrine, or repeating the phraseology of the 
 liturgy? What is said in homiletical or catechetical writings may 
 not accord with what is said in writings of a' different description. 
 Moreover, ' symbol ' is not used with the intent to exclude a real- 
 ity inseparable from it. The main inquiry is, what is that reality ? 
 Origen may be designated a symbolist, or a spiritualist, for the 
 reason that the reality denoted by the elements is made to be the 
 teaching of Christ. He compares them to the showbread which 
 is exhibited in the temple, which has the character of a propitia- 
 tory commemoration. Eusebius of Caesarea is more definite in 
 propounding this last interpretation of the sacrament. The Alex- 
 andrians generally exhibit in a marked way a like tendency. This 
 is, on the whole, the position of Athanasius, notwithstanding forms 
 
 2 See the comments, with the citations, in F. Nitzsch, DG. p. 389. 
 8 According to Malachi, i. n.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 169 
 
 of expression which, taken by themselves, might lead to an oppo- 
 site conclusion. There is still more doubt respecting the opinion 
 of Basil, who has often been ranked with the " Symbolists." Ori- 
 gen was aware that he was setting forth a more spiritual view than 
 that adopted by Christians generally. After the middle of the 
 fourth century, the tendency towards a more literal interpretation 
 of the words of the Lord in instituting the Supper prevailed. 
 This is apparent, along with inconsistencies of statement, in Cyril 
 of Jerusalem. In Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom, and in John 
 of Damascus, the doctrine is presented of a transformation of the 
 elements in connection with the prayer of consecration. Gregory 
 says of bread that it was potentially the body of Christ, for after 
 it was eaten by him it became assimilated, entering into his body. 
 As such it became imperishable. So the bread in the sacrament 
 is made, upon its consecration, the body of the divine Logos. 
 There is the qualification that it is not the body which was cruci- 
 fied and rose from the dead, but the Eucharistic body. This 
 limitation does not appear in the pulpit teaching of Chrysostom. 
 In one of his homilies it is declared to be the actual body of 
 Christ. " This body," he says, " He hath given us both to hold 
 and to eat." 1 John of Damascus teaches that as Christ once 
 assumed the body which was born of the Virgin, so now in the 
 sacrament He assumes the bread and the wine. The body which 
 He had on earth is now in Heaven, yet for this body and the 
 Eucharistic body there is but one and the same hypostasis or sub- 
 ject. Yet these Fathers, the " Realists," do not teach the later 
 Roman doctrine of transubstantiation. They for example, Cyril 
 of Alexandria and Chrysostom use the same terms to express 
 the change in the baptismal water which they employ respecting 
 the bread and wine of the sacrament. They held to no literal 
 transubstantiation of the water. Gregory of Nyssa and others, 
 holding against the Monophysites that the two natures in Christ 
 are unmixed and unchanged, appeal to the analogy afforded by 
 the union of the Logos with the bread and wine. 
 
 By Gregory of Nyssa, the union of Christ with the elements 
 in the Lord's Supper is presented as a carrying forward, a con- 
 tinuance, so to speak, of the Incarnation. This conception is a 
 vital peculiarity in the doctrine of the Fathers who follow him. 
 As to the effects of the Lord's Supper upon the communicant, 
 
 1 Homily in Ep. I. ad Cor. 2.
 
 170 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 they are variously described. The new life that begins in bap- 
 tism is nourished and sustained. But Gregory of Nyssa, Chrys- 
 ostom and Cyril of Alexandria, among others, attribute to the 
 consecrated bread and wine a mysterious, physical effect, the 
 result of which is the formation of an immortal body like that 
 of the risen and glorified Christ. They compare the body of 
 Christ received in the sacrament to a leaven which enters into 
 our mortal bodies and transforms them. Both body and soul are 
 saved from perishing and endued with immortal life. 
 
 In the East, from the beginning of the fourth century the opinion 
 of Origen that the souls of the good are not detained in Hades 
 until the resurrection prevailed. But their joy was thought to be 
 a foretaste of the perfect bliss of the heavenly state. Hades thus 
 remained only as a place of suffering. The influence of Origen 
 and his school availed to banish chiliasm. So, for a time, his 
 more spiritual idea of the resurrection was accepted in the East ; 
 but with the growth of the opposition to him as a teacher, in the 
 course of the fourth century, his opinion on this subject began to 
 be more and more rejected, and at length came to be considered 
 heretical. The same fate befell his doctrine of universal resto- 
 ration, which was adopted by Gregory of Nyssa, who presents 
 various arguments in support of it ; also, by the Antiochian theo- 
 logians, Diodorus and Theodore of Mopsuestia. It was favored 
 by Gregory of Nazianzum, although not in his public teaching. 
 Chrysostom, commenting on i Cor. xv. 28, remarks that " some " 
 infer from it the universal abolition of sin and iniquity, but he 
 himself expresses here no opinion on the subject. 1 
 
 The controversies pertaining to the orthodoxy of Origen fill a 
 large space in the polemics of this era. 2 In the period immedi- 
 ately following his death his influence in Alexandria continued 
 to be predominant. Methodius, Bishop of Patara, was the first 
 of the noted assailants of his theology. Origen did not lack 
 devoted champions. About 306, Pamphilus and Eusebius of 
 Csesarea published a copious defence of his teaching. Some time 
 after the beginning of the Arian controversy the attack was re- 
 newed upon him by prominent adversaries of Arius. Athanasius, 
 while professing to differ from Origen on important points, vindi- 
 
 1 Horn. XXXIX. ii. 
 
 2 For a lucid narrative of them in detail, see Mr. A. W. W. Dale's art., 
 Diet, of Christ. Biogr.Vol. IV. p. 142 sq.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY I * yl 
 
 cated his orthodoxy on the subject of the Trinity and spoke of 
 him with reverence and admiration. Basil and Gregory of Nazi- 
 anzum shared in these feelings and published the Philocalia, 
 selections from his writings. With them stood Gregory of Nyssa, 
 and Didymus, the teacher of Jerome. Jerome, who had lauded 
 Origen and translated some of his treatises, was won over to the 
 ranks of his denouncers, at the head of whom was Epiphanius. 
 He had been anticipated in his crusade by Pachomius, the founder 
 of Egyptian monasticism. After 394, Jerome joined hands with 
 the enemies of the great Alexandrian Teacher. His course in- 
 volved a rupture of friendship with Rufinus, the disciple and trans- 
 lator of Origen. Passing over intermediate events, we have to 
 notice briefly the last stage in this protracted conflict. After a 
 long interval of comparative quiet, the crusade was renewed under 
 the auspices of Justinian, in whose Epistle to Mennas, the primate 
 of Constantinople, there is an enumeration of Origen's alleged 
 heresies. Whether he was anathematized by name by the Fifth 
 General Council, in 553, is a question which cannot be confidently 
 decided. Hefele judges that the evidence is not sufficient to 
 warrant us in expunging his name from the list of heretics given 
 in the nth Canon. 
 
 The conversion of Constantine, if it brought peace to the Church, 
 was followed by a weakening of that antagonism to heathen rites 
 and customs which had prevailed during the centuries of perse- 
 cution. In the fourth and fifth centuries a multitude of heathen 
 professed Christianity, and brought within its pale habits of thought 
 imbibed from polytheism, and cravings which demanded a surro- 
 gate for the heathen cults which they had given up. These tem- 
 pers of mind, natural to the uneducated mass of converts, must 
 be regarded as the main source of manifold practices which 
 Protestants generally unite in pronouncing superstitious. Thus 
 there arose a degenerate Christianity, a partially debased type 
 of religion, what has been called a Christianity of the " second 
 rank" or grade. All along we meet with a resistance on the 
 part of enlightened teachers to the encroachments of this pagan- 
 ized Christianity. This protest, however, is often mixed with 
 concessions which go far to deprive it of its effect, and more and 
 more gives way to what seems to be an irresistible tide. The 
 Council of Elvira in Spain (306), in its 36th Canon, forbids pictures 
 in churches, lest the objects of worship and adoration should be
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 depicted on their walls. Eusebius of Caesarea declares all por- 
 traitures of Christ to be offensive to the Christian conscience. 
 Epiphanius tore apart the curtain of a church in Palestine which 
 had on it the embroidered picture of a saint. But as time went 
 on, in defiance of earlier restrictions, now become obsolete, the 
 costly churches that were erected were furnished with mural paint- 
 ings. Amulets were prized, and supposed fragments of the true 
 cross were peculiarly precious. Homage was paid to martyrs, 
 supplications were addressed to them, their intercessions were 
 sought. More and more their bones, even their wearing apparel 
 and everything that was associated with their persons when living, 
 shared in this religious reverence. It was not long before saints, 
 persons of distinguished sanctity, were raised nearly or quite to 
 the level of the martyrs. Especially the worship of Mary, whose 
 perpetual virginity came to be generally accepted, although it 
 had not been held by so eminent a teacher as Basil, was carried 
 to a great height, in particular after the beginning of the Nestorian 
 controversy. The office of angels was magnified in a proportional 
 degree. They were recipients of religious honors, as the guar- 
 dians of towns and cities, as well as of nations, the protectors 
 against danger and calamity. The individual had his guardian 
 angel, replacing the genius of the old religion. Thus there arose 
 a Christian Pantheon. When Vigilantius, a Presbyter from the 
 West, came out in opposition to the worship of martyrs and their 
 relics, he was denounced by Jerome. Monasticism, with its holy 
 class, whose function it was to live according to a sublimated ideal 
 of morality, might easily lead Christians generally to content them- 
 selves with a standard in an equal degree too low. On this subject, 
 also, Jerome was equally zealous in combating Vigilantius, and 
 Augustine contended against Jovinian. As concerns the worship 
 accorded to saints and angels, the theologians distinguished 
 whatever confusion might exist in the popular mind between 
 the qualified homage offered to created beings and the worship 
 of God. As to the use of pictures in worship, it was sometimes 
 said that the prohibition of the decalogue had reference to sym- 
 bolical representations of heathen divinities. Their advantage as 
 giving pictorial lessons to the ignorant was also dwelt upon. It 
 deserves to be remembered that in the Sacrament the sole refer- 
 ence of the offering was to God. 
 The influence of the example of the heathen mysteries, of the
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 173 
 
 symbolism that characterized them, and of their supposed effect on 
 the initiated, insensibly affected Christian ideas and spread itself 
 over the Christian cultus. In the rites or worship it was increas- 
 ingly the aim to realize through sensuous representations divine 
 realities, and to gain a foretaste of heavenly good. Hence a 
 sacredness was attached to every feature of the ritual. The entire 
 cultus was enveloped in an atmosphere of mysticism. In the East, 
 in the domain of Greek Christianity, there was thus established a 
 punctilious ritualism like that of the Romans under the heathen 
 system. This all- pervading, sacred symbolism linked itself to the 
 doctrine of the Incarnation, the manifestation of God in visible 
 humanity. The consequence in the Greek world was a petrifac- 
 tion both in doctrine and the ceremonies of worship. Not a 
 syllable in the creed could be changed, not a rite could be 
 touched. 
 
 The mystagogy which had entered into the life of the Church 
 in the East appeared full blown, in the closing part of the fifth 
 century, in the Writings of Pseudo-Dionysius. They are, as 
 regards the conception of God and the conception of religion as 
 the union of the soul to God, permeated with a New Platonic 
 mysticism, which thus gained a long-continued influence, reach- 
 ing to the mediaeval schoolmen. God is transcendent. He is 
 exalted above the positive qualities ascribed to Him in the " cata- 
 phatic" theology and the denials of them in the negatives of the 
 " apophatic." All that is is good ; evil is negative, the absence of 
 the good. Communion with God is not through reflection, not 
 through a process of the intellect, but by illumination and purifica- 
 tion. This is by means of the heavenly hierarchy, consisting, after 
 God, of the three generic ranks of angels, to which correspond 
 the three orders of the hierarchy on earth. The transition from 
 the hierarchy above to the hierarchy below is through the Incarna- 
 tion. The whole ceremonial of the Church is symbolical. It is 
 by this complexity of symbols, as upon ladders, that the soul 
 climbs to a direct union with God. The system of Dionysius had 
 a zealous disciple and advocate in Maximus, the Confessor, who 
 mingled, however, with its mysticism an ethical element in the 
 conception of the freedom of the will. 
 
 The strong hold which heathenism in its Christian guise had 
 gained is shown by the ineffectual struggles of the Iconoclasts in 
 the Greek Empire. The first great leader in the attack on the.
 
 174 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 use of images in worship was the rough soldier, but vigorous 
 ruler, the Emperor Leo the Isaurian (716-741). He was partly 
 stimulated to his onset on what he considered paganism in the 
 Church by the abhorrence of it felt by the Mohammedans. 
 Having put down a revolt in the Cyclades, caused by his repres- 
 sive measures, he commanded all portable images to be taken 
 out of the churches and ordered the frescoes that could not be re- 
 moved to be painted over. The Roman Bishops, Gregory I. and 
 Gregory II., took sides with his opponents. John of Damascus, 
 who, living in a cloister near Jerusalem, was safe under the pro- 
 tection of the Caliph, defended the obnoxious practice, seeking a 
 justification for it in the analogon of the Incarnation. The son of 
 Leo, Constantine Croponymos, pursued the same course as his 
 father. A fierce contest arose everywhere between the Icono- 
 clasts, both clergy and laity, who undertook to carry out the imperial 
 decrees, and the people, especially the monks, who resisted them. 
 It was not until the accession of Irene (780) that the image- 
 worshippers began to acquire the ascendency. Their triumph 
 was secured at the (second) Council of Nicaea in 787, which 
 commanded the restoration of the images to the places from 
 which they had been dislodged. The Council set up a distinction 
 between the religious Veneration 1 which included lights and 
 the burning of incense to be offered to images, and the adora- 
 tion, 2 in the strict sense, which was due to God alone. Once 
 more, for a time, the Iconoclasts got the upper hand under Leo V., 
 the Armenian, who had the army at his back, which ascribed the 
 disasters of the Empire to image-worship ; but in 842 the Icono- 
 dulists celebrated their final victory. In this conflict, which had 
 raged, with intervals of cessation, for upwards of a century, the 
 party of Iconoclasts was actuated by mixed motives, in which 
 civil policy, political subserviency, and religious indifferentism had 
 a large share, while their opponents, however superstitious, waged 
 the contest with deep sincerity. Its issue secured to the heathen 
 elements which had become incorporated in the Christianity of the 
 East an immovable place. 
 
 John of Damascus, the final expositor of the Greek theology in 
 the ancient period, was much influenced by Aristotle, and in the 
 turn of his mind was a scholastic theologian, in the technical sense. 
 On the Trinity and the Person of Christ he follows in the path 
 s ; TI/KI/TIKT; Trpocr/ci/j'qo'is. a \arpel o.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY l ne 
 
 opened by Leontius and Maximus the Confessor. In Anthropol- 
 ogy, he is a dichotomist. He distinguishes between the " image " 
 and the " similitude " of God in man. In Eschatology, he ignores 
 the speculations of Origen, and is orthodox. On the Atonement, 
 he holds that the death of Christ is a sacrifice offered to God and 
 not a price to Satan. The " mysteries," the entire ritual, are made 
 an integral part of the orthodox system. The worship of images 
 is defended on the ground of unwritten tradition.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF AUGUSTINE THE PELAGIAN 
 CONTROVERSY 
 
 AUGUSTINE is the most influential of all the teachers of the 
 Church since the Apostolic age. Preeminent in the West, as 
 Origen was among the theologians of the East, his sway was not 
 like that of Origen, disputed and broken. It was of far longer 
 continuance. This unrivalled influence grew out of the depth and 
 variety of his powers, and the sincerity, energy, and fervor of 
 his religious character. In him the dialectical and mystical ele- 
 ments coalesced. He was at once a philosopher and a saint. At 
 the same time he was a man of letters and an orator. His Con- 
 fessions are an outpouring of his heart in the form of a converse 
 of his soul with God. Yet among devotional expressions full of 
 ardor we find him interweaving distinctions respecting the divine 
 attributes. The subtilty of his genius and his dialectical turn, 
 together with his doctrine respecting faith and knowledge, not to 
 speak now of other parts of his teaching, made him the founder 
 of the mediaeval theology. However it might swerve from his 
 opinions, there was no explicit revolt against them. Through 
 the Middle Ages, his word was counted to be law. His ideas 
 respecting the Church and its institutions were embodied in the 
 Roman Catholic system of hierarchical rule and sacramental 
 grace. His teaching on another side, and the type of his relig- 
 ious experience, were a great source and warrant of the Protestant 
 Reformation. Luther had learned, as he says, more from him 
 than from any other non-biblical author. Calvin quotes him, as 
 he says, " more frequently than any other as the best and most 
 faithful Writer of Antiquity." 1 The variety in the effects thus 
 traceable to Augustine, while it indicates the presence in his 
 
 1 Institut. IV. xiv. 26. 
 176
 
 177 
 
 teaching of unreconciled elements, testifies also to the wealth of 
 its contents. Were there space here to review the course of his 
 mental and religious life, we should dwell on his early training, 
 which included whatever belonged to the liberal education of the 
 time, a training which made him conversant with the Latin poets 
 as well as other Latin authors, although his knowledge of Greek, 
 owing, as he confesses, to his own negligence, was always imper- 
 fect ; to his awakening, after giving way to sensual temptation, to 
 higher thoughts and aspirations, through a passage in the Hor- 
 tensius of Cicero; to his long novitiate in connection with the 
 Manichaeans, from whom he vainly hoped for a solution of the 
 perplexities that distressed his mind, an appeasing of his thirst for 
 knowledge ; the interval of skepticism and despondency that 
 ensued ; the refreshing and stimulating influence of New Plato- 
 nism which impressed on him the reality of spiritual things, and 
 opened his spirit to Christian influences ; his conversion through 
 the influence of the study of the writings of the Apostle Paul 
 and the sermons of Ambrose. He appreciated at once the value 
 and the insufficiency of the " Platonic books." Acquainting himself 
 with them before he entered into the meaning of the Scriptures, 
 he could distinguish between " those who saw whither they were 
 to go, yet saw not the way, a way that leadeth not merely to 
 behold the beatific country, but to dwell in it." l Augustine had 
 studied in his youth the dialectics of Aristotle ; but his philosophy 
 continued to be that of the New Platonists. Two fundamental 
 factors concurred in giving to his interpretation of Christianity its 
 distinctive form. The first was the writings of the Apostle Paul, 
 or the Pauline teaching realized in his own inward experience. 
 The second was the existing ecclesiastical system, the Catholic 
 Church, its authority, its traditions, its sacraments. According 
 to the view of Protestant Christians, the second factor partially 
 neutralized the proper action of the first. Thus there were 
 mingled in his intellectual life the seeds of two discordant 
 systems. 
 
 In Augustine's theology, faith precedes knowledge and is the 
 key to knowledge. The first truth is that of the soul's own exist- 
 ence, which, like Descartes, Augustine holds to be involved in 
 every conscious thought, even in every conscious doubt. Besides 
 our sensations and our knowledge of our sensations, there is reason 
 
 1 Con/. B. VIII. xx. 26. 
 N
 
 178 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 which seeks after knowledge, and judges either correctly or erro- 
 neously. In these activities of reason we postulate a norm of 
 judgment, a truth higher than ourselves, which is unchangeable. 
 This unchangeable truth is a reality ; it is God. To know ourselves 
 as real is to know God as real. In God, or the Wisdom of God, 
 are the rational grounds of all things. Thus in faith, the free 
 acknowledgment of self and of God, all knowledge is founded. 
 That material things exist is only an object of faith. It is only 
 another recognition of the principle of authority when we accept 
 the Scriptures and the traditions of the Church. Here faith as- 
 sumes an ethical and religious character. But thought and inquiry 
 are legitimate, for we are destined for knowledge, and " knowledge 
 is the reward of faith." l The connecting link between God and 
 the World is the Logos, in whom, as the Wisdom of God, are the 
 invisible grounds of all things created. But creation is the free 
 act of God, not the moulding of any previously existing materials. 
 As concerns the attributes of God, they are relative to our appre- 
 hension. " He is good without quality, great without quantity," 
 etc. He is even super-substantial, and it is more proper to speak 
 of His ' essence ' than of His ' substance.' In Him substance and 
 attribute, like the attributes themselves, are indistinguishable. 
 Here our best science is nescience. Respecting the Trinity, 
 Augustine insists on the divine unity. His mode of presenting 
 this doctrine is in contrast with that of Gregory of Nyssa and the 
 later Nicaeans, and is akin to that adopted by Athanasius. The 
 distinction of persons is limited to their relation to one another. 
 There is but one substance or essence, and when we speak of 
 " three persons," it is only because we lack words to express the 
 distinction between the Father and the Son, and between the 
 Holy Ghost and the Father and the Son. " Certainly there are 
 Three . . . Yet when it is asked, what Three, human language 
 labors from great poverty of speech. We say 'three persons,' 
 not that it may be so said, but that we may not keep silence." 2 
 We say of each person that He is omnipotent, " but there are not 
 three omnipotents. 3 The expressions of Augustine evidently were 
 at the basis of the so-called Athanasian Creed. In the concep- 
 tion of the person of Christ, his humanity comes to its rights more 
 nearly than is true of the Eastern champions of orthodoxy. The 
 
 1 Ev.Johann. Tract, 29, 6. Letters, 120. 
 
 2 De Trin. V. c. 9. Ibid. c. 8.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 voluntary humiliation of Christ in becoming incarnate is an aspect 
 of the doctrine on which Augustine delights to dwell. 
 
 When we seek to determine where Augustine placed the seat of 
 authority, we meet with statements not easily reconcilable. He is 
 most deeply impressed with the evidences of divine inspiration in 
 the Scriptures. " To the canonical Scriptures alone I owe agree- 
 ment without any dissent." 1 Yet we find also numerous state- 
 ments of the same general tenor as the following : " I should not 
 believe the Gospel, did not the authority of the Catholic Church 
 move me thereto." 2 Moreover, he professes his faith in many 
 things which are not found in the Scriptures, but only in the 
 traditions accepted by the Church. On questions pertaining to 
 the Canon itself the decisions of the Church are with him de- 
 cisive. At least a partial explanation of this inconsistency is sug- 
 gested when we look at the circumstance of his conversion. When, 
 in listening to the preaching of Ambrose, his heart began to be 
 deeply stirred, he was surprised by the disclosure to his soul of 
 truth in the Scriptures which was far more profound than his 
 superficial interpretations had before discovered to him. It was 
 under the auspices of the Church, from the lips of its authorized 
 and anointed teachers, that he was thus lifted up to a new dis- 
 cernment and appropriation of Biblical teaching. Apart from 
 this special influence, and along with it, the impression made by 
 the Church, spread as it was over the world, and stretching back 
 to the days of the Apostles, with its martyrs and saints, its miracles, 
 its intrepid condemnation of the world, its extending conquests, 
 was such as to excite belief in its claims to authority. In the 
 prosecution of the contest with the Donatists, Augustine was led 
 to develop and define his conception of the Church. The notes 
 of the Church are unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. 
 The Church is the organization which is connected by the 
 Apostolic Sees, among which Rome is preeminent, with the 
 Apostles. Ecclesiastical discipline is a duty, but ideal perfection 
 is not possible here on earth. The tares must be left to grow 
 with the wheat. Not all who are within the fold of the Church 
 are heirs of salvation. On the great disputed questions of the 
 validity of baptism by heretics, and of ordination by traditors, he 
 maintained the affirmative, with the qualification that rites thus 
 performed require, not to be repeated, but to be supplemented 
 
 1 Nat. et Grat. 6l. 3 Cont. Epist. Manich. 5.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 by the public admission of the recipients into the Church Catholic. 
 This position was conformed to the ordinances of the Synod of 
 Aries in 314. The proposition, which had been previously vindi- 
 cated by Optatus of Milevis, that the sacraments are to this extent 
 valid, independently of the personal character of the administrators, 
 was established. Augustine connected his view with the general 
 ground that while love, the essential of salvation, is a grace to be 
 acquired only within the Church, faith and hope, its proper, but 
 not necessary, precursors, are possible without its pale. 
 
 At this point, it is convenient to call attention to Augustine's 
 doctrine concerning the relation of faith to personal salvation. 
 The student of Augustine will subscribe to the remark of Harnack, 
 that "whoever looks away from the formulas to the spirit will 
 find everywhere in the Writings of Augustine a stream of Pauline 
 faith." 1 Yet in his dogmatic expositions, the Pauline conception 
 is modified in such a way that the organic relation of faith to 
 works, or its necessary relation, does not appear. The faith that 
 justifies is faith to which love is united. The solution which he 
 offers of the seeming contradiction of Paul and James is this : 
 their common doctrine is that faith is the first in order, but James 
 is interested to emphasize the point that it does not avail unless 
 it is followed by works. 2 Augustine retains the doctrine of merits, 
 as taught by his predecessors, only he magnifies grace by pro- 
 nouncing all our merits to be God's gifts. 3 Since it is held that 
 baptism effaces guilt for the past, and from the general turn of 
 Augustine's teaching, it would appear, that although his sense 
 of the guilt of sin is keen, it is less intense than his sense of the 
 tyranny of sin and of the corruption entailed by it. 
 
 Augustine reproduces the theory of a relation of the death of 
 Christ to Satan. Satan's dominion, after man's surrender, existed 
 of right ; but by inflicting death on one who was sinless, he justly 
 forfeited that dominion. Augustine, however, does not confine 
 himself to this view of the Atonement. The righteousness of God 
 is the motive of the infliction of punishment. There was a double 
 ground for the Incarnation of Christ, first that by suffering all 
 things in behalf of us He might deliver us from the bonds of sin, 
 and secondly, that He might set us free from its power. 4 " He 
 took on himself, being without guilt, our punishment, that he 
 
 1 DG. III. 71. 2 De Fide et Oper. 14. 8 Con/. IX. 34. 
 
 * De Vera Relig. I. 16. See Baur, DG. I. (2), 38
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY jg! 
 
 might put away our guilt and put an end to our punishment." 1 
 There are passages of like import in Hilary and Ambrose. 2 
 
 The symbolical nature of Sacraments is very frequently set forth 
 by Augustine. Sacraments are said to be " visible words." " In 
 a sacrament, one thing is seen, another is understood." A sacra- 
 ment is " the visible form of an invisible grace." Yet it is far 
 from his conception that the Sacraments are bare symbols. They 
 are the concomitants, and in a sense the vehicles, of the grace 
 which they figure to the senses. The water of baptism shows 
 outwardly " the sacrament of grace " ; the Spirit working inwardly 
 " the benefit of grace." 3 It brings the forgiveness of sin ; it weak- 
 ens its power within us. The literal interpretation of John vi. 33 
 is repudiated. The passage means that we are to participate in 
 the sufferings of our Lord, and remember meetly and to our profit 
 His death for us. 4 We are not to confound signs with the thing 
 signified. 5 The body of Christ which was on earth is now in 
 heaven. 6 Yet those who are in " the unity of Christ's body " in 
 the Church Catholic " are truly said to eat the body and drink 
 the blood of Christ." 7 " He that dwelleth not in Christ, and in 
 whom Christ dwelleth not, neither eateth his flesh nor drinketh 
 his blood. 8 But the Sacrament is a sacrifice, the life and soul 
 of which is the spiritual self-devotion of its recipients to God ; 
 nevertheless a sacrifice bringing benefit to the departed. 
 
 An essential element in Augustine's theodicy is the doctrine 
 that as God's plan is universal, His purpose and His will are com- 
 pletely carried out. The goal that is aimed at in the creation is 
 attained. The Being who has not left " even the entrails of the 
 smallest and most insignificant animal, or the feather of a bird, or 
 the little flower of a plant, or the leaf of a tree, without a harmony, 
 and, as it were, a mutual peace among all its parts, that God 
 can never be believed to have left the kingdoms of men, their 
 dominations and servitudes, outside of the laws of his Provi- 
 dence." Evil exists, but evil, even moral evil, is a negation ; 
 it is the absence, or the privation, of good. It is therefore not 
 
 1 C. Faust. Manich. XIV. i. In Sermo 137, he apostrophizes Christ 
 "sustinens poenam, ut et culpam solvas et poenam." 
 
 2 See Thomasius, DG. I. 409, 410. 6 Ep. 205, I. 
 
 8 Ep. 98, 2. t De Civ. Dei, XXI. 25. 
 
 * De Christ. Doctr. III. 16. 8 In Johann. Tract. 26, iS. 
 
 5 Ibid. 9. 9 De Civ. Dei, V. II.
 
 !g2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 an object of creation. God is not its author. Moreover, God's 
 will is never defeated. The will of the creature when it opposes 
 the will of the Creator, He uses to carry out His will. He turns 
 evil into good. He accomplishes some of his purposes through 
 the evil desires of wicked men. When evil exists, God permits 
 it and wills to permit it. 1 Augustine does not shrink from the 
 paradoxical saying, " it is good that evil exists." In the Civitas 
 Dei, the attempt is made to vindicate God's character in the 
 ordering of the course of history. The author was led to write 
 it by complaints uttered against Christianity by the heathen after 
 the capture of Rome by the Goths. There are two communities 
 whose origin is traced back six thousand years to the beginnings 
 of the race. One is the city of God, the other is the city of the 
 world. . . . The former begins with Abel ; the latter with Cain, 
 of whom it is significantly said that he " built a city." The one 
 is composed of the people of God, led forward from age to age, 
 through the old dispensation, and under the new, and destined to 
 attain to everlasting blessedness. The other is composed of the 
 wicked, consisting both of the flagrantly bad, but, also, of the 
 virtuous according to a human estimate, such as patriots, heroes 
 and sages, who are nevertheless without love to God. The end of 
 the members of the civitas mundi is eternal misery. During the 
 three ages of mankind, the period antecedent to Israel, the Old 
 Testament period, and the Christian which are also subdivided 
 so as to made six in all useful inventions, arts, and sciences 
 arise, kingdoms and empires are built up, all subserving a 
 divine plan, and productive of much good. But secular society, 
 the institutions of human government, are in their origin tainted 
 with evil. Their necessity and their use are conditioned on the 
 introduction and spread of sin. Under this pre-supposition, hu- 
 man government, the government of the Roman Empire, has a 
 rightful existence, and is ordained of God. But the Church is 
 the civitas Dei, which the State is bound to protect and uphold, 
 even to the extent of exercising coercion against heretics and 
 assailants of its legitimate authority. The end of the world is a 
 final conflagration which is followed by a new world, the abode of 
 the righteous, the heirs of salvation. 
 
 Augustine adopts a literal view of the mode of the resurrection, 
 and meets objections by fanciful hypotheses relative to the com- 
 
 1 Enchiridion, c. 101.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 183 
 
 position and the stature of the bodies of the redeemed. He holds 
 fast to the prevalent doctrine of everlasting punishment, which he 
 tells us that " very many " disbelieve. 1 It may be that the pains of 
 the condemned are at certain intervals mitigated. It may be that 
 " some believers " pass through a " kind of purgatorial fire " after 
 death. " It is a matter that may be inquired into or left doubt- 
 ful." 2 But Augustine distinctly avers that the sacraments and alms 
 of the faithful on earth are of service to that middle class who are 
 neither too good to need such a benefit, nor too bad to have it 
 granted to them. It accrues to none save those who on earth 
 have earned such merit that such services can help them. 3 
 
 In expounding the opinions of Augustine on Sin and Grace, 
 the most distinctive part of his theology, we are brought to the 
 Pelagian Controversy, in which his opinions in their mature form 
 were set forth and defended. Pelagius, a British monk, came to 
 Rome about the beginning of the fifth century. The ablest sup- 
 porters of his teaching were Ccelestius, who had been a Roman 
 lawyer, but became a monk, and later, Julian, Bishop of Eclanum, 
 a man of striking ability and an acute polemic. The external 
 events of the controversy, which involved a crisis of importance 
 parallel with that produced by the Arian Controversy in the East, 
 will be touched upon hereafter. There were really two systems at 
 war with one another. Their main points can be here best exhib- 
 ited by placing them in contrast, without reference to the chrono- 
 logical course of the discussion. 
 
 Pelagius was a monk, strict if not austere in his morality. Augus- 
 tine himself testifies to the high esteem in which he was held for 
 the purity of his life. 4 He had passed through no arduous inward 
 struggle with propensities to evil, approached the subjects of de- 
 bate from an ethical point of view. Human responsibility and 
 its necessary conditions were the matter uppermost in his thoughts. 
 Before the contest began, he had found fault with Augustine's 
 sentence in the Confessions : " Give what Thou commandest, and 
 command what Thou wilt." His habits of mind, in connection 
 with his personal experience, naturally led him to extreme views 
 concerning obedience as a constitutive element in religion and 
 human power as commensurate with obligation. A rationalistic 
 
 1 Enchirid. 112. 2 Ibid. c. 66. 8 Ibid. no. 
 
 4 Ep. 1 86, ad Paul. De Pecc. Merit. III. I, 3. See Wiggers, Augustinism 
 and Pelagianism, p. 42 sq.
 
 1 84 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 tendency in the interpretation of the Gospel, a certain " moralism," 
 were the natural accompaniments of this tendency. Augustine, on 
 the other hand, was most deeply impressed with the fact of man's 
 dependence. With him, human sin and human need were the 
 realities apart from which the salvation through the Gospel had no 
 meaning, or was emptied of its essential character. His point of 
 view was predominantly religious. In the first place, the world 
 itself, instead of being launched into being and left to a self-devel- 
 opment, is forever dependent on God's co-working energy. In 
 the second place, man is not himself the author of goodness ; he 
 has no goodness save in communion with God, and this is impossi- 
 ble impossible for unfallen man or for any creature without 
 God's indwelling, inspiring grace. 1 Pelagius's opinion of unfallen 
 man was the very opposite. He is qualified for right or for wrong 
 action through a complete, inherent capacity. 2 In the third place, 
 while Pelagius considered the freedom of the will to be the power 
 of alternate choice, an inalienable power of contrary choice, 
 with Augustine freedom in the true sense is the soul's actual superi- 
 ority to the lower propensities, subjection to which is servitude. 
 Freedom thus coalesces with necessity, a necessity, however, which 
 is not constraint. 3 In the case of God and of perfected saints, it is 
 a blessed necessity. Augustine cannot be said to be strictly a 
 determinist in his theory of the will ; for, in the first place, he held 
 to a power of contrary choice in civil or worldly concerns, and 
 secondly, he held to the existence, as a temporary possession, of the 
 same power in Adam, in the sphere of morals and religion. It was 
 in him a part of the apparatus of personal responsibility, 4 but was 
 destined to merge on one side or the other, in a state of the will, 
 permanent, and if evil, by his own act irrevocable. But practically, 
 after the moral decision was made, determinism comes into play. 
 
 According to Augustine, Adam, through the grace given him, 
 was able to remain upright, in communion with God. By his 
 own act, the reverse of which was possible to him, he brought on 
 
 1 " His free-will would not have sufficed for his continuance in righteous- 
 ness, unless God had assisted it by imparting a portion of his unchangeable 
 goodness." Enchirid. 106. 
 
 2 See, e.g., Ep. ad Demetr. c. 2, 3, 13, 14, and, in Augustin. De Graf. Christ. 
 4, De Nat. et Graf. 47. See, also, Julian (in August. Op. Imp. VI. 9, 1. 91). 
 
 3 See, e.g., C. Duas Epp. Pel. I. 18. 
 
 4 " Man in Paradise was able of his own will, simply by abandoning right- 
 eousness, to destroy himself." Enchirid. 106.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY i$$ 
 
 himself, justly, physical death, moral guilt, and an enslavement of 
 the will to sin. These consequences, likewise justly, appear in his 
 descendants from their birth. 1 
 
 Augustine's theory rests on the idea that human nature as a 
 whole was deposited in the first man. This nature, as it came 
 from the hands of God, was pure. The long battle which he had 
 fought with Manichaean philosophy, both in his own soul and after 
 his conversion, made him sedulous to avoid their peculiar tenet. 
 But human nature, existing in its totality in Adam, was corrupted 
 in the first act of transgression, and as such is transmitted to his 
 descendants. The instrument of this transmission is the sexual 
 appetite. This appetite is itself the fruit of the first sin, as well 
 as the means whereby the sinful nature is communicated from 
 father to son. The race was embodied in its first representative, 
 and, when the race is unfolded or developed, the qualities which 
 it acquired in his act, which was both generic and individual, 
 appear as the personal possession of each individual at birth. 
 As a personal act, the first sin was not our act but the act of 
 another ; yet it was truly the common act of mankind in their 
 collective or undistributed form of existence. For the con- 
 sequences of this act all are therefore responsible ; and as soon 
 as they exist as individuals, they exhibit in themselves the same 
 corruption of nature, the same inordinate appetites (con- 
 cupiscence), and slavery of the will to sin, which resulted to 
 Adam. " This theory would easily blend with Augustine's specu- 
 lative form of thought, as he had appropriated to himself the 
 Platonico-Aristotelian Realism in the doctrine of general con- 
 ceptions, and conceived of general conceptions as the original 
 types of the kind realized in individual things." 2 It may be 
 remarked here that Realism either in the extreme Platonic form 
 or in the more moderate Aristotelian type, prevailed from 
 Augustine down through the Middle Ages, being embraced by the 
 orthodox schoolmen, and ruling both the great schools during the 
 productive, golden era of scholastic theology. That the realistic 
 mode of thought extensively influenced Protestant theology at the 
 Reformation and afterwards, admits of no question. But since it 
 is far from being true that all Augustinians have been avowed, 
 much less, self-consistent, Realists, it is better when we speak of 
 them as a class, to say that they are swayed by a realistic mode 
 
 1 See, e.g., De Correct, ef Grat. 10. 2 Neander, Ch. History, II. 609.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of thought than that they are the advocates of an explicit Realism. 
 It should be added that Realism, as far as it affected Augustine, 
 was rather a prop than a source of his doctrine. The fact of 
 innate sin was so deeply lodged in his convictions that he was not 
 averse to any plausible support or defense of it that lay within his 
 reach. 
 
 In relation to the doctrine of a generic sin in Adam, we observe 
 that after he became established in this opinion, and through all of 
 his numerous treatises relating to the Pelagian Controversy, there 
 is a great uniformity in his expressions. The same set of proposi- 
 tions and arguments appears and reappears. In that great sin of 
 the first man our nature was deteriorated, and not only became 
 sinful, but generates sinners. 1 We were all in Adam and sinned 
 when he sinned. In his interpretation of Romans v. 12, he first 
 sets aside the supposition that the in quo of the Vulgate 
 refers to "sin" or to "death," and infers that it must refer to 
 Adam himself. " Nothing remains," he says, " but to conclude 
 that in the first man all are understood to have sinned, because 
 all were in him when he sinned ; whereby sin is brought in 
 with birth and not removed save by the new birth." He then 
 quotes approvingly the sentence ascribed to Hilary, the Roman 
 deacon : " it is manifest that in Adam all sinned, so to speak, 
 en masse." 2 By that sin we became a corrupt mass massa 
 perditionis? 
 
 So important was this hypothesis in his view, that his defence 
 of the doctrine of Original Sin turned upon it. Without it, he 
 knew of no refuge against the sharp and merciless logic of his 
 adversaries. Pelagius himself was a man of no mean ability ; but 
 Augustine found in Julian his peer in dialectic skill, which he 
 owed partly to his Aristotelian training. Julian was a sharp and 
 vigorous, as well as a fearless antagonist. He seized on the vul- 
 nerable points in Augustine's theory, and pursued him with ques- 
 tions and objections, which the latter was quite unable to parry 
 except by his Realistic hypothesis. This is strikingly shown in 
 the Opus Imperfectum or Rejoinder to the Second Response of 
 Julian. The Pelagian makes his appeal to the sense of justice 
 
 1 De Nupt. et Concup. II. xxxiv. 
 
 2 Cent, efuas Epp. Pelag. IV. 7, cf. Op. Imp. II. Ixiii., D( Pec. Mer. et 
 Remis. III. vii. 
 
 8 De Pecc. Orig. 31, De Corrept. et Grat. J.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY ^7 
 
 which God has implanted in every human breast, and which utters 
 a firm and indignant protest against the doctrine that we are 
 blamed, condemned, and punished for what we could not have 
 prevented. He lays hold of passages in favor of the voluntari- 
 ness of sin, which Augustine had written, whilst he was bent on 
 controverting the Manichseans. To all this Augustine could only 
 reply that sin began in an act of the human will the will of 
 Adam ; that in him was the very nature with which we are born ; 
 that we thus participated in that act, and justly partake of the 
 corruption that ensued upon it. He constantly falls back, first on 
 the authority of Paul, in the fifth of Romans, and hardly less often 
 on the authority of Ambrose, whose assertion of our community 
 of being with Adam and agency in his transgression, had the 
 greatest weight with his admiring and reverential pupil. 
 
 But how vital the hypothesis of sinning in Adam was in Augus- 
 tine's theology is perhaps most manifest in the way in which he 
 treats the litigated question of the origin of souls. We may say 
 here that a great mistake is made by those who imagine that 
 Creationists that is, those who believe that each soul is sepa- 
 rately created cannot be Realists. Whether they can be con- 
 sistent and logical Realists may, to be sure, be doubted. At the 
 present day traducianism the theory that souls result from pro- 
 creation is accepted by theologians who believe, with Augustine, 
 that we literally sinned in Adam. But this is very far from being 
 the uniform fact in the past. Even Anselm, like the Schoolmen 
 generally, was a Creationist. He, with a host of theologians before 
 and after him, held firmly to our real, responsible participation in 
 Adam's fall and to the corruption of our nature in that act, and 
 yet refused to count himself among the traducians. We must take 
 history as it is and not seek to read into it our reasonings and 
 inferences. If we do not find philosophers self-consistent, we 
 must let them remain self-inconsistent, instead of altering their 
 systems to suit our ideas of logical harmony. 
 
 In respect to the question of the origin of souls, the letter of 
 Augustine to Jerome is a most interesting document, and one the 
 importance of which has seldom been duly recognized. 1 He had 
 previously expressed himself as doubtful on the question, though 
 obviously leaning towards the traducian side. 2 But the fear of 
 materialistic notions, enhanced as it was by the opposition of the 
 
 l Efistol. Classis, 111. clxvi. 2 DC Gen. ad loc, L. x,
 
 1 88 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Church to the refined materialism of Tertullian, deterred Augus 
 tine then, as always, from espousing the traducian theory. This 
 fear, it may be here observed, together with the feeling that this 
 theory gives too much agency to second causes in the production 
 of the soul, operated in subsequent times to dissuade theologians 
 from giving sanction to the same hypothesis. The letter to Jerome 
 is a candid and memorable expression of the difficulties in which 
 Augustine found himself involved on the subject to which it relates. 
 To Jerome he resorts for light. He begins by saying that he 
 has prayed and still prays God to grant that his application may 
 be successful. The question of the origin of souls is one of deep 
 concern to him. Of the soul's immortality he has no doubt, 
 though it be not immortal as if it were a part of God, and in the 
 same mode in which He is immortal. Of the immateriality of the 
 soul, he is equally certain ; and his arguments to show the absurd- 
 ity of supposing the soul to occupy space are convincingly stated. 
 He is certain, moreover, that the soul is fallen into sin by no 
 necessity, whether imposed by its own nature or by God. Yet 
 the soul is sinful and without baptism will perish. How can this 
 be? He entreats Jerome to solve the problem. "Where did 
 the soul contract the guilt by which it is brought into condemna- 
 tion?" In his book De Libero Arbitrio, he had made mention 
 of four opinions in regard to the origin of souls, first, that souls 
 are propagated, the soul of Adam alone having been created ; 
 secondly, that for every individual a new soul is created ; thirdly, 
 that the soul preexists in each case, and is sent by God into the 
 body at birth; fourthly, that the soul preexists, but comes into 
 the body of its own will. A fifth supposition that the soul is a 
 part of Deity, he had not had occasion to consider. But he had 
 gained no satisfactory answer to the problem. Beset by inquirers, 
 he had been unable to solve their queries. Neither by prayer, 
 reading, reflection, or reasoning, had he been able to find his way 
 out of his perplexity. 1 
 
 " Teach me, therefore, I beg you, what I should teach, what I 
 should hold ; and tell me, if it be true that souls are made now 
 and separately with each separate birth, where in little children 
 they sin, that they should need in the sacrament of Christ the 
 remission of sin " ; " or if they do not sin, with what justice they 
 
 1 Epist. III. LXV. c. iv. 9. " Et ea neque orando, neque legendo, neaue 
 cogitando et ratiocinando invenire potuimus."
 
 are so bound by another's sin, when they are inserted in the 
 mortal, propagated members, that damnation follows them, unless 
 it is prevented by the Church (through baptism) ; since it is not 
 in their power to cause the grace of baptism to be brought to 
 them. So many thousands of souls, then, which depart from their 
 bodies without having received Christian baptism, with what 
 justice are they condemned, in case they are newly created, with 
 no preceding sin, but, on the contrary, by the will of the 
 Creator, each of these souls was given to each new-born child, 
 for animating whom He created and gave it, by the will of the 
 Creator, who knew that each of them, through no fault of his own, 
 would go out of the body without Christian baptism ? Since, then, 
 we can neither say of God that He compels souls to become sin- 
 ful, or punishes the innocent, and since likewise it is not right to 
 assert that those who depart from the body without the sacrament, 
 even little children, escape from damnation ; / beseech you to say 
 how this opinion is defended which assumes that souls come into 
 being, not all from that one soul of the first man, but for every 
 man a separate soul, like that one for Adam ? " 
 
 Other objections to creationism Augustine feels competent 
 easily to meet ; but when it comes to the penalties inflicted on 
 little children, he begs Jerome to believe that he is in a strait and 
 knows not what to think or to say. 1 He confesses that what he 
 had written in his book on Free-Will of the imaginary benefits of 
 suffering, even to infants, will not suffice to explain even the suffer- 
 ings of the unbaptized in this life. " I require, therefore, the 
 ground of this condemnation of little children, because, in case 
 souls are separately created, I do not see that any of them sin at 
 that age, nor do I believe that any one is condemned by God, whom 
 He sees to have no stn" He repeats again and again this pressing 
 inquiry. " Something perfectly strong and invincible is required, 
 which will not force us to believe that God condemns any soul 
 without any fault." He fervently desires from Jerome the means 
 of escaping from this great perplexity ; he would prefer to em- 
 brace the Creationist theory ; but on this theory, he sees no possi- 
 ble mode in which native, inherent depravity and the destruction 
 of the unbaptized can be held, consistently with the justice of 
 God. 
 
 1 " Magnis, mihi crede, coarctor angustiis, nee quid respondeam prorsus 
 invenio."
 
 190 
 
 Such was the theology of Augustine. If there is no real partici- 
 pation in Adam's transgression on our part, he can see no- justice 
 in making us partakers of its penalty, or in attributing to us a 
 sinful nature from birth. 
 
 " Persona corrumpit naturam ; natura corrumpit personam." 
 So the doctrine was summarily stated. In Adam human nature, 
 by his act, was vitiated. That corrupted nature is transmitted, 
 through physical generation, to his descendants. They acted in 
 him in another and are, therefore, truly counted sinners, 
 being sinfully corrupt from the beginning of individual life. Con- 
 cupiscence, the principle of sin, includes the baser proclivities of 
 human nature, but it is the sexual passion which Augustine most 
 frequently has in mind in connection with the term. The sexual 
 instinct, he holds, was, in Paradise, void of lust and unattended by 
 shame. 
 
 In the system of Pelagius men were made mortal. 1 They did 
 not become such by Adam's sin. As far as they are sinners it is 
 by doing as Adam did. All good or evil is something " done by 
 us, for we are capable of either." 2 There is at our birth nothing 
 within us but what God placed there. 3 The supposition of sin in 
 infants before the exercise of reason, prior to the " election " of 
 evil, is monstrous. Pelagius makes room in his theory for the 
 increase and spread of sin among mankind, which renders it more 
 difficult to do right ; but the liberty of election is never subverted. 4 
 
 Augustine's idea of character was qualitative. Everything de- 
 pends on the single, underlying principle. If this be the love of 
 God, man is righteous. If the love of God is absent, his virtues 
 are at best splendida vitia. The idea of the unity or simplicity of 
 character has no place in the system of Pelagius. His conception 
 of character is atomistic. In keeping with this difference, while 
 
 1 We have the extant writings of Pelagius himself: the Expositiones in 
 Epist. Paul, Epist. ad Demetr., and the Libell. Fidei et Innocent, (both in- 
 cluded among Jerome's works, the latter in Hahn, ad ed. p. 213 sq.). Other 
 writings of Pelagius remain only fragments, in Augustine and other opponents. 
 We have fragments of Coelestius in quotations in Augustine. For fragments 
 of his Confession of Faith, see Hahn, p. 218. Copious extracts from Julian 
 are in Augustine {Opus Imperfect, etc., and elsewhere), and in Marius Mer- 
 cator. Julian's Confession of Faith is in Hahn, p. 219 sq. 
 
 2 Pelagius, De lib. arbitr. (in Augustin., De Pecc. Orig. 14). 
 8 See Aug. De Pecc. Orig. 13. 
 
 4 Ep. ad Demetr. c. 8: " Longa consuetude vitiorum," etc.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 191 
 
 Augustine believed in the universality of sin (with the possible 
 exception of the Virgin Mary), Pelagius held that some for 
 example, Abel, John the Baptist had lived without sin. 
 
 In reply to Augustine's argument from the practise of infant 
 baptism, the Pelagians brought forward a distinction between 
 "life eternal," to which the unbaptized may attain, and the 
 " kingdom of heaven," a state of higher blessedness, which is open 
 only to the baptized. Baptized persons, said Augustine, are not 
 free from original sin. It is only the guilt that is washed away in 
 baptism ; the concupiscence, although weakened, is entailed and 
 remains. 
 
 Respecting the condition of the human will since the fall, 
 Augustine affirms that the will is not eradicated ; it continues in 
 full activity. 1 Yet there is a bondage of the will, with no power 
 of self-deliverance. "We are not liberated from righteousness 
 save by the choice of the will ; we are not liberated from sin 
 save by the grace of the Redeemer." 
 
 To Pelagius the grace of God consisted in the revelations made 
 of His will and of the trurth, first as sin began to increase, in the 
 Law, and then through the life and teaching of Christ. 2 To these 
 gifts of grace are added the discipline of trials and the like. 
 Grace facilitates the right action of the will, but this action under 
 the Gospel is from man himself, accepting and obeying when he 
 has full power to refuse and disobey. Liberty continues, which 
 Julian concisely defines as the possibility in the will of either admit- 
 ting or avoiding sin, it being exempt from a constraining necessity. 
 Whatever aids of grace are specially bestowed on Christians are 
 procured by their own merits. According to Augustine, all ex- 
 ternal provisions designed to move the heart are ineffectual as a 
 means of conversion, apart from the Grace of the Spirit operating 
 within the soul. By this inward power from above, the will. 
 in the case of all true believers, is not only enabled to believe, but 
 is effectually moved to believe. There is bestowed not only, as 
 the Pelagians taught, the esse and the posse, but also the velle, 
 the right choice, the new heart. 
 
 From the sinfulness and impotency of all men, Augustine 
 deduced the doctrine of unconditional predestination. They who 
 believe in the Gospel with a saving faith are not merely elected to 
 be the recipients of the heavenly reward ; they are elected to be 
 
 1 C. duas Epp. Pelag. II. 9. 2 See in Augustine, De Graf. Christ.
 
 192 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the recipients of faith. 1 Faith itself is the gift of God. All others 
 are left in their sins left to perish. They are not predestinated 
 to sin, but rather to the punishment which sin deserves, from 
 which they are not saved by electing grace. The number of the 
 elect is fixed. 2 It is predetermined in the plan of God. But not 
 all believers are of the elect. Perseverance in the new, holy life 
 is the gift of God, and is bestowed on that portion of believers to 
 whom God in His inscrutable wisdom chooses to grant it. 
 
 The doctrines which are sketched above were not the opinions 
 of Augustine in the earlier period subsequent to his conversion. 
 It was the period in which he controverted the Manichaeans. At 
 that time he held, not to absolute, but to conditional, predestination, 
 and to a reserved power in the will, notwithstanding our need of 
 divine succor. Man, he held, can exercise faith by his own power, 
 and thereby obtain the gift of converting grace. In 394, when he 
 wrote his commentary on the Romans, he contrasted an election 
 on the ground of works with election conditioned on faith, and 
 ascribed to the elect hidden merits occultissima merita that 
 is, certain dispositions of heart which are the ground and reason 
 of their being elected. Further reflection on his own spiritual 
 experience and later study of the Scriptures convinced him that 
 election is unconditional, that the contrast in the Epistle to the 
 Romans is not between an election on the ground of works and an 
 election on the ground of faith, but between a work springing 
 wholly from God, and man's doings of whatever sort. The election 
 of a man is not a judgment in his favor, in comparison with other 
 men, but an act of sovereign grace. In the Apostle's assertion 
 (i Tim. ii. 1-4) : " Who will have all men to be saved, and to come 
 unto the knowledge of the truth," Augustine makes " all men " 
 denote " every sort of men." That is, the gift of salvation is not 
 restricted to any one nation or class. But we cannot believe that 
 " the omnipotent God has willed anything to be done which was 
 not done." 3 
 
 A study of Augustine's Writings reveals to us two discordant 
 veins of thought. There are two currents and they flow in oppo- 
 site directions. On the one hand, there is the common Catholic 
 
 1 De Praedest. Sanctorum, 37, c. 18. 
 
 2 De Corrept. et Grat. 39, c. 13. 
 8 Enchirid. 103.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 193 
 
 ecclesiasticism, in which he lived and moved, and which as a 
 rule shapes his doctrinal statements. On the other hand, there 
 is the great idea of the church spiritual and invisible, composed 
 of the saints elect. This church is included within the ecclesias- 
 tical body. The latter is a corpus permixtum. Election does 
 not cleave to the sacraments. They have no saving efficacy for 
 the non-elect. Augustine wrote no full and elaborate system. 
 When his mind is turned to that spiritual body to which alone 
 future blessedness belongs, we find him no longer insisting on 
 the indispensableness of baptism and of the other sacraments. 
 There were men who were not Israelites, who yet belonged to 
 " the spiritual Jerusalem." That " holy and wonderful man Job " 
 was undeniably one of these. This instance of Job is given us 
 in Scripture that we might infer the existence of a larger, spiritual 
 Israel, embracing men of other nations. 1 The Cumaean Sybil is 
 referred to by Augustine as another like example. 2 More general, 
 and, as we may say, more generous, are statements in a letter to 
 Deogratias. 3 " From the beginning of the human race," it is said, 
 "whosoever believed in Him" that is in Christ, who prefigured 
 in different ways the manifestation of Himself in the flesh " and 
 in any way knew him, and lived in a pious and just manner accord- 
 ing to his precepts, was undoubtedly saved by him, in whatever 
 time and place he may have lived." Attention to much that 
 Augustine says relative to the hierarchy and ordination discovers 
 the same bent as that here illustrated. The Enchiridion, which 
 is the only summary view of theology that he composed, connects 
 the development of doctrine with the three Christian virtues, 
 Faith, Hope, and Love. 4 
 
 1 De Civ. Dei, XVIII. 47. 2 Ibid. 23. Let. CII. 12. 
 
 * The antithesis in Augustine between the " vulgar-Katholisch " line of 
 thought and teaching and the spiritual, non-ecclesiastical, as well as other 
 antitheses in Augustine's teaching, are lucidly and thoroughly described by 
 H. Reuter, in his Augustinische Studien (1887). See especially the excellent 
 summaries, pp. 100-105, 150-152, 355-358. See, also, Harnack's very able 
 exposition of Augustine (DG. Vol. III.).
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PELAGIANISM AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE EAST ON THE CON- 
 TROVERTED TOPICS SEMI-PELAGIANISM GREGORY I. 
 
 IN 411, Pelagius and Coelestius went over to Africa, where 
 Pelagius met Augustine. Pelagius soon betook himself to the 
 East. In 412, the Presbyter Paulinus, from Milan, charged 
 Coelestius with heresy, before a synod at Carthage, imput- 
 ing to him six heretical propositions. 1 Coelestius was excluded 
 from the fellowship of the Church, and repaired to the East. 
 There Jerome, with no clear understanding of the points of the 
 controversy, and swayed by his hostility to Rufinus, who was a 
 friend of Pelagius, entered with heat into the warfare against his 
 doctrines. In 415, Orosius, a young Spanish presbyter who was 
 on a visit to Jerome, made an accusation against Pelagius before 
 an assembly of Jerusalem presbyters under their bishop John, 
 who, on hearing the explanation of the accused, declined to 
 pronounce against him. As Pelagius was of the Latin Church, 
 he said, it belonged to the Roman bishop to take cognizance of 
 the matter. In the same year, at a Synod at Diospolis in Pales- 
 tine, presided over by Eulogius, Bishop of Caesarea, Pelagius was 
 again charged with heresy by the Western bishops, but was ac- 
 quitted, owing, Augustine alleges, to a lack of candor in his dis- 
 avowals. 2 The Synods of Carthage and Mileve and Augustine 
 personally, in 416, made a successful effort to procure a condem- 
 nation of Pelagius and Coelestius, from Innocent I. But his 
 successor, Zosimus, on receiving a confession of faith which 
 Pelagius had sent to Innocent, and certain declarations from 
 Coelestius, publicly testified to the orthodoxy of both. The 
 African bishops, assembled at Carthage, at the end of 417 or 
 
 1 Mercator, Comm. II. p. 133. See Munscher, DG. I. 374, N. I. 
 
 2 For accounts of this Synod, see Mansi, IV. pp. 315 sq. See Hefele, 
 History of Councils, H. B. VIII. 118. 
 
 194
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 
 
 195 
 
 the beginning of 418, declared their adherence to the decision 
 of Innocent. At a general council of the North African bishops 
 in 418, eight or nine Canons were passed, asserting the Augus- 
 tinian, and rejecting the Pelagian, opinions. 1 The Emperor 
 Honorius was induced to issue a threatening Rescript against 
 the adherents of the new heresy. There were other imperial 
 edicts promulgated later of the same character. Zosimus, after a 
 second and then a general African Council at Carthage, although 
 he had previously begun to waver, changed his position. At a 
 Roman Synod, Pelagius and Ccelestius were condemned, and a 
 circular epistle tractoria was issued by Zosimus, sanctioning in 
 full the action of the North African Church. All bishops in the 
 West were required to assent to the letter of Zosimus on pain of 
 deposition. Eighteen bishops, of whom Julian of Eclanam was 
 the most eminent, refused compliance. Many of them took 
 refuge in the East. Julian was received by Theodore of Mop- 
 suestia, who did not agree with all his opinions, but rejected the 
 doctrine of innate sin. Their connection with Nestorius and 
 his followers brought upon some of the Pelagians a share of their 
 unpopularity. Marius Mercator, a layman from the West, made 
 great exertions to convince the Emperor Theodosius II. of the 
 heterodoxy of the Pelagians. As a result of these complications, 
 the Council of Ephesus in 431, which condemned Nestorius, 
 condemned also Ccelestius and his adherents, but without 
 specifying their errors. It is obvious in all these transactions 
 that the real convictions of the Eastern Church were midway 
 between Augustine and Pelagius, and that the East, especially 
 the Antiochian theologians, apart from influences from without 
 and from accidental causes, were disposed to tolerate the obnox- 
 ious leaders. These leaders always affirmed that their opinions 
 contained no dogmas, had received no authoritative condemna- 
 tion from the Church, but related to questions where debate and 
 difference of judgment were permissible. 
 
 The support which Augustine received in the West, as concerns 
 the doctrines of absolute inability, irresistible grace, and uncondi- 
 tional predestination, was far from being unanimous. The Gen- 
 eral Council of Carthage had gone no farther than to declare that 
 it was the fall of Adam that brought in death, that infants are to 
 be baptized for the remission of sin derived from Adam, that 
 
 1 Mansi, III. 810-823. See Hefele (as above), 119.
 
 196 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 grace operates within the soul, giving the requisite aid to avoid 
 sin, that sinless perfection is unattainable in this life. In 426 or 
 427, it was reported to Augustine that the monks in the cloister 
 of Adrumetum in North Africa were in some cases driven to 
 despair, in other cases moved to careless self-indulgence, by his 
 teaching as to man's helplessness and as to irresistible grace. He 
 addressed to them two Writings to correct these evils. 1 Even 
 Jerome, the champion of the Augustinian cause, did not give up 
 his belief in a remaining freedom in the will, nor did he really 
 adopt the tenets of absolute election and irresistible grace. It 
 is a remarkable fact in Doctrinal History that it was by way of 
 indirect opposition to these opinions of Augustine that Vincent 
 of Lerins wrote his (first) Commonitory (434), in which he set 
 forth the criteria of catholic doctrine. These are declared to be 
 antiquity, universality. This is equivalent to saying that that only 
 is of the faith, is catholic or orthodox doctrine, which is accepted 
 always, everywhere, and by all semper, ubique et ab omnibus. 
 Among the mild and moderate dissenters from Augustine's doc- 
 trine of predestination was Hilary, Bishop of Aries, who had 
 lived in the cloister at Lerins. But the most conspicuous of these 
 dissenters was John Cassianus. He had been educated in the 
 East, and was the founder and guide of the Cloister at Marseilles. 
 His name is associated with the type of theology designated by 
 the Schoolmen "Semi-Pelagian," but which, it has been said, might 
 as well be termed " Semi- Augustinian." He held to a proclivity 
 of the heart to sin, and to the need of an inward operation of 
 grace, man being of himself insufficient. But he did not consider 
 this inborn propensity to evil to be in the proper sense guilty, he 
 asserted a remaining power and a cooperative agency of the 
 human will in conversion, and, therefore, a conditional predes- 
 tination. Made acquainted with these movements by Prosper of 
 Aquitania and another Hilary, a layman, Augustine wrote two 
 treatises in defence of his views. 2 These friends wrote on the 
 same side, and continued the controversy after Augustine's death. 
 Prosper set forth Augustine's opinion on predestination with a 
 studious moderation. In the same spirit was written an anony- 
 mous work on the Calling of the Gentiles, 3 in which a distinction 
 
 1 De Grat. et lib. Arbitr. and De Corrept. et Grat. 
 ' 2 De Predest. Sanctorum and De Dono Per sever antia. 
 * De Vocat. Gentilium.
 
 ANCIENT THEOLOGY 197 
 
 Was made between general and special grace, the last alone 
 being effectual. Another anonymous work entitled Predestinatus, 
 in which the doctrine was presented in the baldest form, was, 
 perhaps, composed by a Semi-Pelagian as a caricature and 
 weapon of assault. In the last half of the fifth century, Faustus, 
 Bishop of Rhegium, was an able advocate of the Semi-Pelagian 
 doctrine. One of his opponents, a presbyter, Lucidus by name, 
 an extreme defender of predestination, retracted his opinion at a 
 Council at Aries in 475. The treatise 1 written by Faustus com- 
 bated alike Pelagius, who was characterized as " pestiferous " and 
 the " error " of the advocates of predestination. 
 
 Through a peculiar conjunction of circumstances, in the sixth 
 century, the Semi-Pelagian Controversy broke out afresh. In 
 Sardinia and Corsica there were certain banished North African 
 bishops, among them Fulgentius of Numidia. In 519, Possessor, 
 an African bishop, in a contest with the Scythian monks respecting 
 their theopaschite formula, referred to Faustus as an authority on 
 his side of the question. The monks sought for a verdict against 
 the orthodoxy of his work, and not obtaining satisfaction from 
 Hormisdas, Bishop of Rome (514-553), they turned to the exiled 
 bishops. Fulgentius was thus led to compose a series of books 
 in defence of Augustinian predestination. Others appeared on 
 the same side in South Gaul, including Csesarius, Bishop of Aries, 
 although the Synod of Valence in 529 did not antagonize the 
 Semi-Pelagian opinion. On the occasion of the consecration of 
 a church in 529 at Orange, in the province of Aries, a Synod com- 
 posed of fourteen bishops, including Csesarius, accepted a collec- 
 tion of statements quoted from Augustine and Prosper, and adopted 
 an additional creed. The Council asserted the necessity of pre- 
 venient grace, and the necessity of grace at every stage of the 
 soul's renewal, and affirmed that unmerited grace precedes merito- 
 rious works, that all good, including love to God, is God's gift, 
 that even unfallen man is in need of grace. But not only is pre- 
 destination to sin denied, but there is no affirmation of uncondi- 
 tional election or irresistible grace. Moreover, free-will is said 
 to be "weakened" in Adam, and restored through the grace 
 of baptism. The creed is anti-Pelagian, but the tenets of Semi- 
 Pelagianism are only in part explicitly condemned. It was sanc- 
 tioned by the Roman Bishop, Boniface II. 
 
 1 De Grat. Dei et human. Mentis lib. arbitr.
 
 In Gregory I., a great leader and administrator, but having no 
 eminence as a theological thinker, the patristic period in the 
 West is brought to a close. In him Augustinian beliefs were 
 intermingled with Semi-Pelagian ideas. Insisting on the doctrine 
 of prevenient grace, he drops the idea of a grace that is irresist- 
 ible and a freedom that is totally lost. Sin is forgiven in baptism, 
 but salvation is a personal achievement through penitence and 
 meritorious works, with grace within as an auxiliary. If perdition 
 is the penalty of mortal sins, of mortal offences for which satis- 
 faction through penances here has not been rendered, sins of a 
 lower grade may be atoned for and the soul purified in the fires 
 of purgatory. So the conjecture of Augustine is raised to the rank 
 of definite, positive teaching. The Lord's Supper is regarded as 
 a literal sacrifice, of avail not only for the benefit of the living, 
 but also for sufferers in purgatory. If the Church is not identified 
 with the community of saints, it is through the Church, its ordi- 
 nances and its sacraments, that these are provided with the means 
 of salvation. A main ground of hope is the intercession of per- 
 fected saints and angels. In sympathy with Augustine, the Word 
 of God and the Spirit attending the dispensation of the Word are 
 prized. At the same time, those ceremonies and other prac- 
 tices which the Church had taken up in its passage through heathen 
 society which made up the Christianity of " the second grade," 
 the common Catholicism which was accepted by Augustine, but 
 which, however inconsistently, his deeper, spiritual thoughts broke 
 through at so many points all these were cherished in the sys- 
 tem of Gregory, and this combination of tenets was handed down 
 to the next following centuries.
 
 PART II 
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 PERIOD III 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGY IN 
 THE MIDDLE AGES AND ITS REDUCTION TO A SYSTE- 
 MATIC FORM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FROM GREGORY I TO CHARLEMAGNE THE WORK OF MEDLEVAL 
 THEOLOGY THEOLOGY IN THE EASTERN CHURCH THEOLOGY 
 AND EDUCATION IN THE WEST JOHN SCOTUS 
 
 As far as the West is concerned, Gregory the First is the 
 connecting link between the ancient and the mediaeval period. 
 In him the patristic age comes to an end. The Church now 
 enters in earnest upon the work of converting and training the 
 nations of Germanic origin. They were taught its doctrines, and 
 its institutions were planted among them. In general it was no 
 longer a question what these doctrines are. They were transmitted 
 as an inheritance from the Church of the Fathers to the succeed- 
 ing ages. It was a sacred tradition, attested by ecclesiastical 
 authority, the validity of which it was impious to doubt. Its 
 living guardians were the Roman hierarchy. Should doubts arise 
 as to its import, it was their function, and more and more, as time 
 went on, the recognized prerogative of the Popes, to define it. 
 But of this tradition there existed no full or exact, no lucid and 
 consistent exposition. It was comprised to a great extent in the 
 
 199
 
 2QO HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 writings of Augustine and of the Fathers generally. Moreover 
 and this is a point not to be overlooked it was embodied, in 
 no small part, only by implication in those liturgical practices and 
 other customs of the Church which had grown up in the course 
 of centuries. Thus there was a field open, albeit with prescribed 
 limits, for theological inquiry and discussion. This was the under- 
 taking of the mediaeval theologians to give precision and har- 
 mony to the accepted beliefs, written and unwritten, and to defend 
 them. It would prove to be impossible to confine religious thought 
 strictly within the barriers set, but such was the design. It was 
 not a voyage for the discovery of new lands. Theology was like 
 an estate which is left to an heir with the liberty to run fences 
 across it and to connect its parts by roads and bridges, but not 
 to widen or contract its boundaries, to drain a marsh, or to fell 
 a single tree. 
 
 In the East, a petrified creed and ritual and the despotism of 
 secular rulers chilled intellectual activity. The Eastern Empire 
 appeared to be strong for a while, under Justinian, but it was 
 strong only in appearance. The fairest parts of Italy were soon 
 wrested from it by the Lombards, and there was left to the Byzan- 
 tine rulers only a nominal sovereignity, limited to the coast. In 
 the sixth and beginning of the seventh century, the Persians rav- 
 aged the Asiatic provinces and carried their arms almost to the 
 gates of Constantinople. A few years after the victories of Hera- 
 clius the Mohammedans began the career of conquest which tore 
 from the Empire the provinces that embraced the three patri- 
 archates of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. Elsewhere the 
 Slavonic tribes, which were to the Eastern Empire what the Teu- 
 tonic invaders were in the West, were pushing their incursions 
 and founding their settlements. The Empire was like a tree 
 centuries old, its branches broken off and its vigor departed, yet 
 still standing with a tenacity of life that yields, inch by inch, to 
 the process of decay. The Church clung to the minutiae of the 
 cultus. The Second Trullan Council (692) prescribed the manner 
 in which a layman should hold his hands in receiving the com- 
 munion. The Second Nicene Council (787) ordained that no 
 Church should be consecrated unless it were provided with relics. 
 The Second Trullan Council asserted the authority of the first six 
 oecumenical councils, at the same time that it condemned the 
 Roman Bishop, Honorius ; it specified the authoritative sources
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 2OI 
 
 with regard to Church discipline, and laid down the law relative 
 to the marriage of the clergy, presbyters and deacons, if they 
 are married before ordination, being permitted to continue in 
 the married state. The same Council reaffirmed the Canon of 
 Chalcedon on the rank of the Bishop of Constantinople, and 
 declared against the use of pictures of the Lamb, enjoining the 
 use of pictures of Christ himself instead of these typical represen- 
 tations. Pope Sergius I. forbade the publication of the decrees 
 of the Council in the West. The spirit of piety in the East was 
 chiefly kept alive in the monasteries. From these the bishops 
 were generally taken. All through the Middle Ages there were 
 scholarship and learning in the Eastern Church, but after John 
 of Damascus their fruits appeared in antiquarian researches, not 
 in original production. After the controversy respecting images, 
 which was disastrous in its influence, intellectual life was chiefly 
 manifest in the contests with the Western Church, which from 
 time to time broke out afresh. They were aggravated by the 
 growing pretensions and extending power of the Popes. After 
 the coronation of Charlemagne, they were still further promoted 
 by political jealousy. The displacement of Ignatius from the 
 patriarchate of Constantinople (857) and the elevation of Photius 
 in his place brought on a conflict with Pope Nicholas I., in the 
 course of which Photius issued an encyclical letter (866) in which 
 he declared the Latin Church to be heretical on account of its 
 rule of celibacy, its interpolation of the creeds, and various ritual 
 practices. In 863 Nicholas had excommunicated him. In 867, 
 a synod at Constantinople excommunicated the Pope. After 
 various turns of fortune in the combat between Photius and his 
 enemies, and a temporary restoring of amity with Rome, Nicholas 
 (in 882) renewed the ban against him and it was not again re- 
 called. In the middle of the eleventh century, the rupture 
 between the Churches of the East and the West was completed. 
 In a heated controversy between Michael Caerularius, Patriarch 
 of Constantinople, and Pope Leo IX., there were mutual allega- 
 tions of heresy. The Latins, in addition to the customary accu- 
 sations, were censured for using unleavened bread in the sacrament 
 and for eating things strangled. The Patriarch broke off all 
 intercourse with the Papal legates at Constantinople, and on July 
 1 6th, 1054, the legates laid on the altar of St. Sophia the Pope's 
 bull, excommunicating him and charging him with all sorts of
 
 2Q2 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 heresies. Repeated efforts at reunion, which were kept up after 
 the time of the Latin rule in Constantinople, proved abortive. 
 The same result befell the negotiations at the Council at Florence 
 (1439). The agreement there, couched in terms not free from 
 ambiguity, led to no practical effect and was formally and solemnly 
 revoked at a synod in Constantinople in 1472. 
 
 In the eighth and ninth centuries, a number of the Emperors 
 of the Macedonian dynasty lent a cordial encouragement to 
 studies in classical as well as ecclesiastical literature. Leo VI. 
 (886-912) was himself an author. The most conspicuous writer 
 in this period was Photius. His Myriobiblion 1 is made up of 
 excerpts, with summaries, abridgments and occasional critical 
 estimates, from two hundred and seventy-nine authors, heathen 
 and Christian. Not less than eighty of them are otherwise not 
 known to us. This is the principal work of Photius, although his 
 polemical and other writings are not without value. 
 
 Dualism was revived and propagated in the sect of the Pauli- 
 cians, who arose about the middle of the seventh century. They 
 were called Manichaeans by the church writers,, but their creed 
 was more allied to the principles of Marcion. In Mananalis, 2 
 near Samosata, where there was probably a Marcionite society, 
 one Constantine, a member of it, blended teachings of St. Paul, 
 in which he was deeply interested, with his own previous tenets, 
 and became the leader of the new sect. The Paulicians held that 
 the Demiurge, the Evil Being, is the lord of the present world, 
 that Christ is sent from the Heavenly Father to deliver man from 
 the body and the world of sense. The Sacraments were dis- 
 carded. The Paulicians were ascetic, but did not abjure marriage. 
 It is not certain that they received any Gospels except Luke or 
 any Epistles except those of St. Paul, 3 together with an Epistle to 
 the Laodiceans, which they professed to have. Although victims 
 of severe persecution, they still became numerous, and continued 
 long to make proselytes. The Paulicians divided into different 
 branches, each having peculiar opinions of its own. Their influ- 
 ence in the formation of European sects may have been exag- 
 gerated. 4 In the eleventh century, in Thrace there was a numerous 
 
 2 The correctness of this designation of place is doubted by Ter. Mkrttschian, 
 Die Paulikianer etc. (1893), p. 124. 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 108. * Ibid. p. 127
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 203 
 
 sect called the Euchites, who were enthusiasts like the ancient 
 monastic sect of that name, but also Dualists. Akin to them in 
 their opinions were the Bogomiles, a name signifying " Friends 
 of God." At the beginning of the twelfth century, their leader, 
 Basilius, a physician, was burned to death, in the Hippodrome, 
 at Constantinople. 
 
 The conversion of the Franks to orthodox Christianity, their 
 ascendency over the other Arian peoples, and the spread of their 
 dominion, their alliance with the Papacy, the organization of 
 Empire in the West under Charlemagne, and the check put upon 
 anarchy and illiteracy which was of great moment, even though 
 it was partial and was followed by the influence of reactionary 
 forces these are facts of capital importance in European 
 history. 
 
 In the early portion of the Middle Ages, in the absence of orig- 
 inal authorship, compilations were made from the Fathers. For 
 a time there was more theological life in Spain than elsewhere. 
 The Sentences of Isidore of Seville (who died in 636) were 
 composed mostly of extracts from Augustine and Gregory the 
 Great. This work retained its popularity in the mediaeval period. 
 In the eighth century there was more culture in England than in 
 any other country except Italy. Theodore of Tarsus, the first 
 Archbishop of Canterbury (668-690), in connection with the 
 Abbot Hadrian, established schools in which Greek was taught. 
 From the cloister of Jarrow went forth the venerable Bede, who 
 wrote en all the subjects then studied. He was famous for his 
 learning throughout the West. Bede composed an Ecclesiastical 
 History of the English. In 782, Alcuin, an Englishman, who had 
 been educated at York, became the head of the domestic school 
 of Charlemagne which followed his migratory court. Alcuin was 
 well read in the classical poets, was an effective promoter of learn- 
 ing, and an influential writer. Great credit belongs to him for 
 his agency in founding the cathedral and cloister schools. In 
 them was imparted the learning of the age, which was all com- 
 prised in the seven sciences, the trivium and quadrivium. The 
 spirit of the Prankish theologians was comparatively free and 
 enlightened. They opposed the use of pictures save for purposes 
 of decoration and instruction. Agobard, Bishop of Lyons (who 
 died in 841), was prominent in the defence of this position. He 
 also contended against a rigid theory of verbal inspiration. Among
 
 204 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 his writings is a polemical book against Judaism. Judaism and 
 Mohammedanism were objects of attack in this period, they being 
 the two forms of false doctrine outside of the Church. Under 
 Charles the Bald, Rabanus Maurus, Paschasius Radbert, Ratramnus 
 and Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, were conspicuous theolo- 
 gians. To these is to be added the name of John Scotus called 
 " Erigena," which means probably " born in the Isle of Saints," 
 a frequent designation of Ireland, which was also often called 
 Major Scotia. The system of Scotus was unique in its character. 
 It is an episode in the theological records of his time, where his 
 very existence almost seems an anachronism. 
 
 Shortly before the middle of the ninth century, Scotus took up 
 his abode at the court of Charles the Bald. The New Platonism 
 in Augustine's writings had its influence upon him, and still more 
 the works of Maximus the confessor, and those of Pseudo- 
 Dionysius, which he translated from the Greek. He repro- 
 duced in a free way speculations which were Pantheistic in their 
 essential character. So peculiar were they that, although he 
 incurred suspicion and some opposition, their real import was 
 not discerned until long after his death. Like Pseudo-Dionysius, 
 he drew a line between popular and scientific theology. True 
 Philosophy vera philosophia and true Theology vera theo- 
 logia are identical. Faith, which rests on authority, belongs 
 to the earlier stage of the intellectual life. Reason discerns 
 things in their necessary grounds and relations. The universe is 
 the unfolding of the absolute God. Respecting Him all our 
 affirmations are the language of appearance. 1 They are unavoid- 
 able, yet are accommodated to human weakness. Even love is 
 to be predicated of God in only a symbolical way. All existence 
 is only a theophany. God reaches self-consciousness in man. In 
 his principal work on the Division of Nature, His scheme of 
 the Universe is set forth. The Absolute is made to run through 
 a cycle. Archetypal ideas are embodied in visible existences, 
 and there follows a reversion to the original essence. In truth, 
 conceptions are the things themselves " ipscc res." Material 
 things have only a semblance of reality. In the character of 
 his mind, as well as the drift of his system, Scotus anticipates 
 modern thinkers whose creed is an ideal Pantheism. 
 
 1 The nature of God is " superessentialis." See, e.g., De Div. Nat. L. I. 
 76. (Migne, p. 522.)
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 FROM CHARLEMAGNE TO THE BEGINNINGS OF SCHOLASTICISM THE 
 ADOPTION CONTROVERSY GOTTSCHALK'S DOCTRINE OF PREDESTI- 
 NATION RADBERT'S DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER THE 
 
 PENITENTIAL SYSTEM THE TENTH CENTURY CONTROVERSY OF 
 BERENGARIUS AND LANFRANC ON THE LORD'S SUPPER 
 
 THE revived theological activity and culture in the age of 
 Charlemagne were manifest in several theological controversies. 
 The first was the Adoption Controversy. About the year 780, 
 Elipandus, Bishop of Toledo, in Spain, was attacked for teaching 
 that, as man, Christ was the adopted Son of God. 1 He was 
 defended by Felix, Bishop of Urgellis. The language of the 
 Adoptionists did not depart essentially from that of Augustine. 
 The same thing was said even in the Mozarabic Liturgy. The 
 Cyrillian interpretation of the Chalcedon creed, which had been 
 set forth under Justinian by the Fifth General Council, although 
 the decision of the Sixth General Council on the Monothelite 
 question was of an opposite tenor, was prevalent in the Spanish 
 Kingdom in consequence of its union with Rome. Leading 
 Prankish theologians, of whom Alcuin was the most conspicuous, 
 combated Adoptionism, which they identified with Nestorian 
 doctrine. 2 It was condemned in three Frankish synods, the first 
 at Regensburg in 792, the second at Frankfort in 794, and the 
 third at Aix in 799. 
 
 The doctrine of the procession of the Spirit from the Father 
 and the Son was defended by Alcuin and others, and as early as 
 the beginning of the eleventh century was included in the form of 
 
 1 " Jesum Christum adoptivum humanitate et nequaquam adoptivum divin- 
 itate" Symbol of Elipandus, in Epist. ad Elipand. (Migne, 96, p. 917.) 
 
 2 " Sicut Nestoriana impietas in duas Christi personas dividit," etc. Alcuin. 
 adv. Felic. I. n. (Migne, 101, p. 136.) 
 
 205
 
 20 6 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTHINE 
 
 the Nicene Symbol in use at Rome. Still more was the Western 
 Church distinguished by its use of the Apostles' Creed and the 
 Athanasian Creed, both of which were unknown in the East. 
 
 A second controversy related to a central point of Augustinism. 
 In opposition to Semi- Pelagian opinions, Gottschalk, a pious and 
 learned monk of Orbais, in the province of Rheims, propounded 
 the Augustinian doctrine. His principal adversaries were Raba- 
 nus Maurus and Archbishop Hincmar. Gottschalk's doctrine, as 
 defined by himself, did not go beyond that of Augustine ; for, 
 while he taught a double predestination, 1 the predestination of 
 the wicked was not to sin, as he was erroneously charged with 
 holding, but to punishment. 2 Augustine had designated the 
 wicked as reprobi. The opponents of Gottschalk founded the 
 election of the saved on the divine prescience of their right use of 
 the gifts of grace, although in the Second Council of Chiersy, in 
 853, they affirmed inconsistently that " in the first man we lost our 
 freedom of will." It is evident that for the sake of maintaining the 
 efficacy of the sacraments they preferred to modify in a Semi- 
 Pelagian way the Augustinian doctrine of unconditional election, 
 without appreciating, perhaps, the extent of their deviation from it. 
 It is evident, also, that the inference of Gottschalk that Christ died 
 only for the elect, was specially repugnant to their views. They 
 affirmed in the " Four Chapters " adopted at Chiersy, that " Christ 
 died for all men " and that God desires all men, without exception 
 to be saved. 3 They referred in support of this opinion to i Tim. 
 ii. 4, a passage to which Augustine himself attached a different and 
 restricted meaning. At the first Synod of Chiersy in 849, Gottschalk 
 was condemned and, after being cruelly scourged, was imprisoned 
 for life in a cloister. Among those who took ground against him was 
 John Scotus, whose arguments, however, rested on the Pantheistic 
 ideas at the root of his theology. The very term '/^destination,' 
 Scotus said, was a part of the language of appearance, having in 
 
 1 " gemina predestinatio." 
 
 2 Of reprobate man, his language in his first confession composed in prison, 
 is: "propter prsescita certissime ipsorum propria futura mala merita praedes- 
 tinasse pariter per justissimum judicium suum in mortem merito sempiternam." 
 (Migne, 121, p. 347.) 
 
 3 " Deus omnes homines sine exceptione vult salvos fieri." (Mansi, XIV. 
 p. 921.") The sentence ends: "licet non omnes salventur." As Christ 
 assumed the nature of every man, there is no man for whom He did not 
 die. (Ibid. IV.)
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 2O7 
 
 its literal sense no reality. 1 Against Hincmar there arose many 
 defenders of the Augustinian teaching, including Prudentius of 
 Troyes, Ratramnus, monk at Corbie, Servatus Lupus, Abbot at 
 Ferrieres, and Remigius of Lyons. Political causes had their 
 influence in bringing to pass a union of bishops in a compromise 
 at the two synods of Savonieres (in 859) and Toucy (in 860).* 
 To hold fast the efficacy of the sacrament of Baptism was the 
 intent of all. Practically the victory was on the side of Hincmar, 
 for the Semi-Pelagian principle had a prevailing acceptance, 
 despite the consentaneous profession of loyalty to the teaching 
 of Augustine. 
 
 A discussion respecting the Lord's Supper began in 844, when 
 Paschasius Radbert propounded the bald doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation. He taught that the bread and the wine, as far as 
 color and taste are concerned, remain. If they did not, there 
 would be no room for faith. But within they are changed, as 
 to their substance, into the body and blood of Christ, even 
 the same body in which He suffered and was crucified. 3 Dissent 
 from the views of Radbert was expressed by Rabanus Maurus 
 and by Ratramnus. The latter wrote on the subject in reply to 
 the question of Charles the Bald whether the body and blood 
 of the Lord are actually received or not, in the mouth of believ- 
 ing communicants. The answer of Ratramnus is not in all 
 respects lucid. He distinctly denies that the body and blood 
 which are in the sacrament after the consecration are identical 
 with the slain and risen Jesus. 4 Rather is the body that is 
 received the memorial of that body. It is the spiritual body 
 and spiritual blood which exists under the veil of the material 
 bread and the material wine. 5 The Spirit of Christ, the power 
 of the divine Word or Logos "is the invisible bread." The 
 leading idea appears, therefore, to be that of Augustine ; and 
 
 1 Neither prescience nor predestination can be predicated of God, " cui 
 nihil futurum, quia nihil expectat, nihil prseteritum, quia nihil ei transeat." 
 De Div. Pradest. (Migne, 122, p. 392.) 
 
 2 Mansi, XV. 563 sq. 
 
 3 De Corp. et Sanguin. Domini, 7. 2. " Substantia panis et vini in Christi 
 carnem et sanguinem efficaciter interius commutatur." 8. 2. (Migne, 120, 
 p. 1287.) 
 
 4 Ibid. c. 71. (Migne, 121, p. 156.) 
 
 5 " quoniam sub velamento corporei panis et vini soiritualiter corpus et 
 sanguis Cbristi existunt." c. 16, p. 134.
 
 2o8 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the divine element in the Sacrament is compared to that which 
 is imparted to the baptismal water. Yet Ratramnus uses language 
 drawn from the liturgy, which, taken by itself, would imply a more 
 radical objective transformation, and what precisely is received 
 by the non-believer in taking the Sacrament is not satisfactorily 
 defined. Thenceforward, more and more the impression made 
 by the constant repetition of the mass, the central act of worship, 
 established in the minds of the people the belief in the literal, 
 objective miracle. This was confirmed by alleged miracles of 
 the host transformed into a lamb an argument which Radbert 
 brought forward. Hence the Sacrament was regarded as the 
 renewal of the sacrifice on the cross. A doctrinal basis was 
 furnished for masses when no communicants were present, and 
 for masses, said in private, for the benefit of departed souls. 
 
 The course of Christian teaching cannot be understood without 
 attention to the elaborate penitential system which grew up, and 
 advanced from one stage to another, in the Western Church. A 
 network of law came by degrees to be stretched, not only over the 
 conduct, but, also, over the inward thoughts and purposes of the 
 people, all of whom, from the youngest to the oldest and from 
 the highest to the lowest, were subject to ecclesiastical rule and 
 supervision. A code of penalties, first for outward transgression, 
 then for sins of the heart as well, was administered by the priest- 
 hood, with the cooperation, when it was needed, of secular author- 
 ity. In the Sends in the Prankish Church, the visitations of the 
 Bishops, private confession came to be associated with the public 
 acknowledgment of grave offences. That personal dealing with 
 the conscience and allotting of penances which were customary 
 in the monasteries spread beyond their walls and into dealings 
 with the laity. Disciplinary penalties were appointed for the sins 
 reckoned as mortal. The origin of rules in detail for the penal 
 treatment of penitents was attributed to the Irish Cloisters and 
 to Theodore, the Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury. Among the 
 Teutonic nations respect was necessarily had to their ingrained 
 feelings and legal customs. Penances had to be modified. The 
 Germanic peoples were accustomed to the payment of money as 
 a composition for even the gravest crimes. Certain exceptional 
 cases were, therefore, recognized, in which the usual penance 
 could be commuted to a pecuniary fine. Out of this simple 
 beginning grew the system of indulgences. Substitutionary en-
 
 2O9 
 
 durance of penance had likewise its familiar analogies in German 
 law, although it likewise had support in the vicarious offices as- 
 signed of old to the Saints. If the penitential system which grew 
 up among the new nations under the tutelage of the Church was 
 adapted to impress the conscience with the guilt of sin, it was at 
 the same time fitted to foster as a dominant feeling the desire to 
 be set free from its penalties. Side by side with the government 
 of the state was a spiritual government, weighing the merits and 
 demerits of all, and as the agent of the Almighty, meting out pun- 
 ishments or dispensations of grace. The very word "penitence" 
 (pcenitentia) was translated by a word (Busse) which meant a 
 compensation or a fine. The equivalent for "to repent" (poe- 
 nitere) in the penitential rules was "to fast" (jejunare}. 
 
 The tenth century was the dark age in mediaeval history. The 
 early portion of the eleventh century was of a piece with it. To- 
 gether they made up a period of barbarism. The light that had 
 been kindled under the auspices of Charlemagne was well-nigh 
 extinguished. This was owing to a combination of causes: to 
 the breaking-up of the Carolingian Empire, and the tumults and 
 anarchy that ensued, and the utter demoralization of the papacy 
 through the conflicts of unbridled Italian factions, the disappear- 
 ance of the Latin from the speech of the people and the interval 
 that elapsed prior to the reduction of the new Romanic tongues to 
 unity, and the utter decay of the schools where alone Latin could 
 be learned. In the eleventh century, the skies gradually became 
 more propitious. The Hildebrandian movement of reform, as it 
 grew in strength, by restoring order and discipline in the Church, 
 aided the cause of learning. Intercourse with the Greek Empire, 
 where learning was still cherished, was reopened. Intercourse 
 sprang up with the Arabians in Spain, among whom the sciences 
 were cultivated. The Arabs, having been initiated in the knowl- 
 edge of Greek learning by Christians in Syria, established in the 
 East celebrated schools, especially at Bagdad and Damascus. In 
 Spain, in 980, they founded a college at Cordova. The favorite 
 studies were mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. A lively 
 interest grew up in the Spanish Arabian schools in the study of 
 Aristotle and in philosophical inquiries to which it led. In the 
 middle of the tenth century, Gerbert, who became Archbishop of 
 Rheims and then Pope (Sylvester II.), is said to have brought back 
 from Seville and Cordova scientific acquisitions which excited
 
 2io HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 astonishment. By him the school at Rheims had a new spirit 
 infused into it, and made its influence widely felt in other similar 
 schools. The school at Chartres became quite famous through 
 the exertions of Bishop Fulbert (who died in 1028). A zeal for 
 the study of jurisprudence was awakened in the cities of Lom- 
 bardy. One sign of the revival of intellectual activity was the 
 renewal of the controversies with the Greek Church. In the first 
 half of the eleventh century the schools of Rheims and Chartres 
 stood in the front rank. Later in the century, the school at Tours 
 and the school in the cloister of Bee in Normandy rose to great 
 celebrity. Bee had for its prior Lanfranc, an Italian of noble 
 birth, who had turned from legal studies to theology and eventually 
 became Archbishop of Canterbury. At the head of the school of 
 Tours was Berengarius, a man of uncommon parts. He had been 
 a pupil of Fulbert of Chartres. In 1050, in a controversy on the 
 Lord's Supper, these theologians employed the Aristotelian dia- 
 lectic. This circumstance serves as a landmark for the beginning 
 of the scholastic era. 
 
 Berengarius in a letter to Lanfranc opposed the doctrine of a 
 literal change of the elements into the body and blood of Christ. 
 This view, together with the idea of such a change of substance as 
 does not affect the qualities or accidents he combated with logical 
 weapons. The opinion which he constantly maintained, except 
 when he was coerced into a denial of it, was that the change in the 
 elements is dynamic, and of such a character that Christ is actually 
 received only by the believer. He went even farther than Ratramnus 
 in the direction of a spiritual conception of the Sacrament. Lan- 
 franc contended for the doctrine of Radbert. In 1050, Berengarius 
 was condemned, unheard, by Pope Leo IX., and, also, by a Synod 
 at Vercelli. In 1059, at Rome, he was driven to retract his opinion, 
 and to subscribe to statements drawn up by Cardinal Humbert, 
 that the body and blood of Christ, after the consecration, are in 
 the hands of the priest, and are eaten with the teeth of the faithful. 1 
 But he afterwards reasserted his real opinion, and Gregory VII., by 
 whom he had been shielded and who regarded him at least with 
 personal favor, could not stand in the way of his condemnation 
 once more at a Synod at Rome at Easter in 1079. Lanfranc 
 had gone beyond Radbert in distinctly affirming that the real flesh 
 and blood of Christ are received, although without beneficial effect, 
 1 In Lanfranc, De Corp. et Sanguine Dom. (Migne, 150, p. 411.)
 
 MEDLEVAL THEOLOGY 211 
 
 by unbelievers and the unworthy. Others, especially Guitmund 
 von Aversa, modified the traditional view by teaching that the 
 entire Christ, and not merely a part of Him, is in every portion of 
 the bread and wine. 1 Anselm added that the whole Christ, God 
 and man, is received when the bread is received and likewise when 
 the wine is received. 2 The first known use of the word " transub- 
 stantiate " was by Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours (who died in 
 "34)- 
 
 1 It is like the manna which fell from heaven : " Tola hostia est corpus 
 Christi, ut nihilominus unaquseque particula separata sit totum corpus Christi." 
 Guitmund, De Corp. et Sanguin. Christ. (Migne, 149, p. 1434.) 
 
 2 Yet " non tamen bis sed semel Christum accipiinus." Anselm, Epp. L. 
 IV. 107. (Migne, 159, p. 255.) Cf. Loofs, Leitfaden, p. 270.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS OF SCHOLASTICISM THE SCHOLASTIC MAXIM 
 PHILOSOPHY : NOMINALISM AND REALISM SCHOLASTICISM AND 
 THE UNIVERSITIES THE METHOD OF SCHOLASTICISM 
 
 SCHOLASTICISM was an application of reason to theology, not in 
 order to revise the creed or to explore for new truth, but to system- 
 atize and prove the existing traditional beliefs. It differed thus, 
 in having a larger aim, from theology in the pre- scholastic period. 
 In the patristic age, the authority of tradition and of the Church 
 was recognized. But the area of dogma was more contracted. 
 There was a larger margin for original inquiry. If in the Middle 
 Ages there were no teachers to equal in breadth and in their contri- 
 butions to the stock of religious thought Origen and Augustine, 
 yet within their restricted bounds no abler men have ever culti- 
 vated theology than Anselm, Aquinas and some other mediaeval 
 doctors. 
 
 The Schoolmen followed Augustine in their maxim that faith is 
 to seek for knowledge : "fides quczrit intellectum" There is an 
 innate and laudable desire of the understanding to justify to itself 
 what the heart immediately appropriates through its own experi- 
 ence and on the ground of authority. The fundamental maxim 
 was received generally, even by the boldest thinkers, such as Abe- 
 lard, who distinguished faith from science, and recognized the dif- 
 ferences of natural capacity in relation to science. The Schoolmen, 
 great as were their achievements in their own chosen path, were 
 impeded by their habit of including in the domain of faith the 
 whole field of the Church's teaching. Then there was always the 
 question how far reason could possibly advance in its task of show- 
 ing the rationality of the whole sum of religious beliefs. In striv- 
 ing to reach the goal, there was a temptation to cast aside doctrines 
 which could not be directly verified at the bar of reason, to get rid
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 213 
 
 of irreducible material by a rationalizing process. As far as a fail- 
 ure had to be confessed, either skepticism would be likely to ensue, 
 or a refuge be sought in the arms of authority and under the veil 
 of mystery. In either case, Scholasticism would undermine itself. 
 This proved to be the ultimate fact. All along we notice two 
 rival tendencies, two classes of theologians, the one disposed to 
 magnify the ability and exalt the function of the intellect and to 
 make less of the indispensableness of authority ; the other to curb 
 reason and to insist on intuition and feeling rather than logic and 
 on the voice of the Church as the basis of certitude. The theory, 
 as expressed by Anselm, was that philosophy is the handmaid 
 (ancilld) of theology. But the servant will sometimes gain an 
 ascendency over the mistress, or the mistress dominate the ser- 
 vant to such an extent as to repress all freedom of action. 
 
 As regards philosophical doctrine, the empire in the Scholastic 
 period was divided between Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle came 
 to be enthroned in the seat of authority, but Plato, through the 
 writings of Augustine and the works of Pseudo-Dionysius, had a 
 larger share than is commonly supposed in shaping theological 
 thought. Aristotle was first known through the translations oi 
 Boethius ; later through Latin versions of Arabian translations, and 
 finally through his original writings brought from the East. For 
 a long time the influence of the Stagyrite was formal, through his 
 logic. Afterwards it affected the matter of theology and ethics. 
 The Schoolmen of the thirteenth century had to combat a subtle 
 form of Pantheism, springing ultimately from New Platonism, a 
 type of opinion of which Amalric of Bena and David of Dinanto, 
 teachers at Paris, were representatives. But Pantheism in a more 
 captivating shape was involved in the writings of Arabic philoso- 
 phers, of whom the ablest was Averroes, who died in 1198. A 
 skeptical spirit infected certain Jewish authors in Spain who 
 emulated their Arabic neighbors in the study of Aristotle and in 
 rationalistic speculations. Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) was 
 the most famous of these writers. 
 
 The great philosophical problem of the Middle Ages was that 
 of Nominalism and Realism. It is an exaggeration, however, 
 when Cousin says of the Schoolmen that, apart from theology, 
 their "philosophy is all embraced" in this dispute. Some of the 
 leading Schoolmen paid but little attention to this question. The 
 incentive to the discussion came from a passage in Boethius's
 
 214 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Latin translation of a passage in Porphyry's " Introduction " to 
 Aristotle, where the question is stated without being solved. Under 
 each of the two theories, there were various shades of opinion ; 
 according to John of Salisbury not less than thirteen. 1 The two 
 main forms were the Platonic tenet of the existence of universals, 
 or concepts, prior to the concrete things in which they are embod- 
 ied, or ante rem. That is, the genus is real and is identical in all 
 the individuals comprising it. Such was the contention of William 
 of Champeaux. The other main form of Realism was the Aristote- 
 lian tenet of existence in re, which made the genus inherent in the 
 individuals, but not existing prior to them or independently of 
 them and not numerically the same in them. Nominalism 
 was the Stoic doctrine that universals are abstractions of the 
 understanding, with no objective reality, being merely common 
 names attached to individuals having like qualities. The inter- 
 mediate doctrine of Conceptualism was the creed of some, of 
 whom Abelard was one. There were questions of vital moment 
 closely connected with this controversy, such as the objective 
 reality of human thought and knowledge, the relative claims of 
 Empiricism and Idealism. It had an important bearing on the- 
 ological doctrines, such as the doctrine of original sin, the doctrine 
 of the Trinity. 
 
 The spread of the Scholastic theology was greatly promoted 
 by the inculcation of it in the universities. About the beginning 
 of the twelfth century, persons began to teach dialectics and 
 theology in the vicinity of the cloister schools in Paris, who 
 gradually formed a connection with one another and with the 
 teachers of the liberal arts. The diversifying and expansion 
 of the curriculum of the schools went on, and in the course of 
 the century, the university grew up to its full proportions, and 
 was the precursor of the other educational establishments of the 
 same character in England and on the Continent. Oxford stood 
 next in rank to Paris. To the universities where the new theology 
 was taught there streamed students, inspired with ardent curiosity, 
 from all the countries of Europe. Their number has been 
 sometimes exaggerated, but it was no doubt very large. 
 
 The most eminent of the Schoolmen belonged to one or the 
 other of the two mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the 
 Franciscans, each of whom, not without strenuous resistance, 
 1 See Prantl, Gesch. d. Logik, II. u,
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 215 
 
 which was kept up, or renewed, from time to time, secured a 
 chair in the University of Paris. There, and at the other seats 
 of mediaeval learning, the lectures of renowned representatives of 
 these orders were attended by throngs of eager pupils. 
 
 The instrument of exposition, the weapon of assault and defence, 
 was the syllogism. The ordinary method of discussion, which is 
 exemplified in the principal Scholastic treatises, was to state 
 general subjects, which are resolved into subordinate topics, and 
 the ramification is carried forward until it is considered complete. 
 Under each head, questions are proposed, each question being 
 pluralized by analysis, and its branches severally handled. First, 
 the grounds negative of the thesis are set down in order, including 
 passages from Augustine, Aristotle, and other authors. Then 
 follow the grounds in the affirmative, and, in the last place, 
 the writer sums up, answering the objections and reconciling 
 seeming contradictions. This decision or opinion was termed 
 by the editors of Aquinas the "Conclusion." "There is no 
 conception," says Baur, " so subtle, no problem so difficult, that 
 the Schoolmen would not have ventured to take it up, with con- 
 fidence in the omnipotence of dialectics." Everything which had 
 any connection with dogma is brought in and scrutinized, and 
 with most fondness those aspects of doctrine which are of the 
 most interest to the speculative thinker, the being, nature, 
 attributes of God, the relations between the persons of the Holy 
 Trinity, the relation of God to the World, of the finite to the 
 infinite, of freedom to contingency, and so forth. The whole 
 ethical material is likewise worked in. It is the great drawback 
 to the value of these wonderful feats of intellectual acumen that it 
 is abstractions and logical relations that are dealt with, so that 
 Christianity appears to lose, so to speak, its flesh and blood, and 
 to be resolved into a lifeless structure of metaphysics.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SUBDIVISIONS OF THE SCHOLASTIC ERA THE FIRST SECTION : 
 ANSELM; ABELARD; BERNARD; THE SCHOOL OF ST. VICTOR 
 THE BOOKS OF SENTENCES PETER LOMBARD 
 
 THE Scholastic era by a natural division falls into three sections. 
 The first is the introductory period of the rise of Scholasticism, 
 and may be said to terminate with Alexander of Hales, the first 
 of the Schoolmen to work out a complete system or " Sum of 
 Theology," making use not only of the Logic, but also of the 
 other works the Physics, Metaphysics, and Ethics of Aris- 
 totle. The second section, which covers pretty nearly the thir- 
 teenth century, was the flourishing period of Scholasticism, in 
 which appeared almost all of its most famous representatives, who 
 were generally of one or the other of the great mendicant orders. 
 In it Nominalism, which had prevailed after Anselm, was super- 
 seded by Realism. The closing section, ending at the Reforma- 
 tion, witnessed the revival and renewed sway of Nominalism, and 
 is marked by the decadence of Scholasticism, by its own slow 
 suicide and by the appearance of movements in the direction of 
 theological as well as ecclesiastical reform. 
 
 In the first section, the principal names are Anselm, Abelard, 
 and Bernard. If Scholasticism was introduced by Lanfranc and 
 Berengarius, Anselm, more than any other, is entitled to be called 
 its father. In him the two elements, the devout and mystical on 
 the one hand, and the scientific and speculative on the other, are 
 evenly balanced. He is steadfast in adhering to his maxim, 
 " Credo ut intelligam." l " I desire," he says, " to understand 
 Thy truth which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek 
 to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may under- 
 stand. For even this I believe, that if I did not believe, I should 
 
 1 Proslogium. (Migne, 158, p. 227.) 
 216
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 217 
 
 not understand." Anselm addressed himself to the discussion 
 of the profoundest questions of theology. Roscellin, a canon at 
 Compiegne, was an advocate of Nominalism. The issue of the 
 application of his doctrine to the Trinity was Tritheism ; the three 
 divine persons being held to be one generically and in name only. 
 He was confuted by Anselm and recanted at the Council of 
 Soissons in 1092. The principal productions of Anselm are his 
 a priori argument for the being of God in his Monologium and in 
 the Proslogium, and an epoch-making treatise on the Atonement, 
 the Cur Deus Homo. Anselm 's attempted demonstration of 
 theism in the Monologium is not materially different from the 
 reasoning of Augustine. All specific predicates, even existence, 
 presuppose an absolute being in whom all excellent qualities in 
 their generic, absolute perfection are embraced. In the Pros- 
 logium, the argument was reduced to a simpler form. We 
 necessarily conceive of something a greater than which cannot be 
 thought, 1 i.e., God. Thus even the fool who says that there 
 is no God has the idea of God. But the existence of the idea 
 carries in it the existence of the reality ; otherwise, a greater 
 than the greatest conceivable could be thought. A God in in- 
 tellectu is less than a God who is likewise in re? To the 
 objection of the monk Gaunilo who replied in behalf of the 
 fool that by parallel reasoning, if we conceive of a lost island, 
 the most beautiful that can be conceived, we must infer that it 
 exists, Anselm answers that his reasoning applies only to that 
 which is necessarily conceived, or the absolute, and not to arbitrary 
 notions. As was said of Augustine's argument, the argument of 
 Anselm rests on the presupposition of Realism. 
 
 In his treatise On Original Sin, which forms a kind of sequel to 
 the Cur Deus Homo, Anselm says, in agreement with the Augus- 
 tinian doctrine, that when Adam and Eve sinned, " The whole, 
 which they were, was debilitated and corrupted " : not only the 
 body, but through the body, the soul ; and " because the whole 
 human nature was in them, and outside of them there was nothing 
 of it, the whole was weakened and corrupted. There remained, 
 therefore, in that nature the debt of complete justice " that is, 
 the obligation to be perfectly righteous " which it received, and 
 
 1 " Aliquid quo majus nihil cogitari potest." c. 2. (Migne, 158, p. 227.) 
 
 2 " Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse et in re : quod maj us 
 est," c. 2. (Migne, Ibid. p. 228.)
 
 2 i8 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the obligation to make satisfaction, because it forsook this justice, 
 together with the very corruption which sin induced. Hence, as 
 in case it had not sinned, it would be propagated just as it was 
 made by God; so, after sin, it would be propagated just as it 
 made itself by sinning." Thus it follows " that this nature is born 
 in infants with the obligation upon it to satisfy for the first sin, 
 which it always could have avoided, and with the obligation upon 
 it to have original righteousness, which it always was able to pre- 
 serve. Nor does impotence excuse it " that is, this nature 
 " even in infants, since in them it does not render what it owes, 
 and inasmuch as it made itself what it is, by forsaking righteous- 
 ness in the first parents, in whom it was as a whole in quibus 
 tota erat and it is always bound to have power which it received 
 to the end that it might continually preserve its righteousness." l 
 
 That sin pertains exclusively to the rational will is a proposition 
 which Anselm clearly defines and maintains ; and on this branch 
 of the subject he gives to the Augustinian theology a precision 
 which it had not previously attained. Augustine holds that native 
 concupiscence, or the disorder and inordinate excitableness of 
 the lower appetites, is sinful ; but he also holds it to be voluntary, 
 in the large sense of the term. In the regenerate, the guilt 
 (reatus} of concupiscence is pardoned ; but the principle is not 
 extirpated. It does not bring new guilt, however, upon the soul, 
 unless its impulses are complied with, or consented to, by the will. 
 To these opinions the strict Augustinians in the Catholic Church 
 have adhered ; but, laying hold of that distinction between con- 
 cupiscence and the voluntary consent to it, which Augustine 
 assumes in respect to the baptized, the Semi- Pelagians, as they 
 have been generally styled by their opponents, have affirmed that 
 native concupiscence is not itself sinful, but only becomes such 
 by the will's compliance with it. At the first view, it would seem 
 as if Anselm adopted this theory, and so far deviated from Augus- 
 tine. Anselm declares that as sin belongs to the will, and to the 
 will alone, no individual is a sinner until he is possessed of a will, 
 and with it inwardly consents to the evil desire. " The appetites 
 themselves," he says, " are neither just nor unjust in themselves 
 
 1 De Concept. Virg. et Orig. Pec. c. ii. (Migne, 158, p. 435.) Hence 
 Anselm held to the universal damnation of unbaptized infants : Peccatum orig- 
 inale belongs equally to them all. The inference is that " omnes qui in illo 
 solo moriuntur, sequaliter damnari." c. 27,
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 219 
 
 considered. They do not make a man just or unjust, simply be- 
 cause he feels them within him ; but just or unjust, only as he 
 consents to them with the will, when he ought not." The animals 
 have these appetites, but are rendered neither holy nor unholy 
 on account of them. " Wherefore there is no injustice (or un- 
 righteousness) in their essence, but in the rational will following 
 them." 1 This certainly sounds like an altered theology. But 
 we find that Anselm holds fully to the propagation of sin through 
 seminal or spermatic corruption, after the manner of Augustine. 
 He asserts, as we have seen, the existence of a properly sinful 
 nature which is transmitted from generation to generation. His 
 real theory would appear to be, that a wrongly determined will, 
 or a will already determined to evil, is a part of our inheritance. 
 But he sticks to his sharply defined proposition that sin is predi- 
 cable of the will alone ; and hence he denies that spermatic corrup- 
 tion is sinful. Sin is not in semine, but simply the necessity that 
 there shall be sin when the individual comes to exist and to be 
 possessed of a rational soul. 2 This whole theory turns upon the 
 distinction of nature and person. The descendants of Adam were 
 not in him as individuals ; yet what he did as a person he did 
 not do sine natura ; and this nature is ours as well as his. 3 Thus, 
 no man is condemned except for his own sin. " Therefore when 
 the infant is condemned for original sin, he is condemned not for 
 the sin of Adam, but for his own. For if he had not sin of his 
 own, he would not be condemned." This sin originated in Adam, 
 " but this ground which lay in Adam why infants are born sinners, 
 is not in other parents, since in them human nature has not the 
 power that righteous children should be propagated from it." 4 
 This matter was decided, and irreversibly so far as more immedi- 
 ate parents are concerned, in Adam. It is Anselm's opinion, 
 we may add, that original sin in infants is less guilty than if they 
 had personally committed the first sin, as Adam did. The quan- 
 tity of guilt in them is less. In this he does not differ from Au- 
 gustine, who thought that the perdition of infants would be milder 
 and easier to bear than that of adult sinners. 
 
 In the Cur Deus Homo, Anselm makes the need of an Atone- 
 ment for sin the ground of the Incarnation. As obedience is the 
 honor which man owes to God, disobedience both takes from 
 
 1 De Concept, Virg. ei Orig. Pec. c. iv. (Migne, Ibid. pp. 437, 438.) 
 
 2 c. 7. * c. 23. 4 c, 26,
 
 220 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 God what belongs to Him and dishonors Him. 1 The sinner owes 
 not merely a restoration of what was taken, but also satisfaction 
 on account of this "contumely." Punishment would be satis- 
 faction. " God would be acting unjustly if he let the sinner go 
 unpunished." 2 Punishment both takes in turn from the trans- 
 gressor what was his, and proves that he and his are subject to 
 God. The disobedient one himself cannot render adequate satis- 
 faction. He cannot do this by means of contrition, or by any 
 other or all forms of obedience ; for obedience he owes for the 
 present. It does not make good the past. If he possessed the 
 whole world it would not, if offered to God, counterbalance a 
 single sin ; for even to gain the whole world one ought not to 
 commit the least sin. Yet it must be man, he being the trans- 
 gressor, who makes satisfaction. Here is the paradox : man 
 must, man cannot? Hence the necessity for the Deus Homo, the 
 God-man. Obedience, it is true, is a debt which Christ owes 
 for Himself, but to the giving of His life, since He is sinless, He is 
 not bound. Being almighty, He can deliver Himself; being guilt- 
 less, He has a right to. Now His life outweighs the evil of all sin ; 
 for one would choose rather to commit all other sins than to do 
 Him the slightest injury. 4 As to the sin of putting Him to death, 
 it is not excluded from the possibility of pardon, for it was a sin 
 of ignorance (Luke xxiii. 34). But how can Christ's gift of His 
 life to God conduce to our advantage ? It is necessary that He 
 who makes such a gift to God should be rewarded. But all things 
 that are the Father's are already His, and He owes no debt that 
 might be remitted. He must have a reward, but cannot. The 
 escape from the dilemma is the giving of the reward to those for 
 whose salvation He became man, to his kindred who are so bur- 
 dened with debt. " Nothing more rational, more sweet, more 
 desirable could the world hear." Certain fanciful speculations 
 are added, such as the need of making up the number of fallen 
 
 1 " Honorem debitum, qui Deo non reddit, aufert Deo, quod suum est, et 
 Deum exhonorat; et hoc est peccare." (Migne, 158, p. 376.) 
 
 2 " Si non decet Deum aliquid injuste aut inordinate facere, non pertinet ad 
 ejus libertatem aut benignitatem aut voluntatem, peccantem, qui non solvit 
 Deo quod abstulit, impunitum dimittere." Ibid. p. 378. 
 
 3 " quam (satisfactionem) nee potest facere nisi Deus, nee debet nisi homo : 
 necesse est, ut earn faciat Deus Homo." II. 6. (Migne, p. 404.) 
 
 4 " vita ista plus est amabilis, quam sint peccata odibilia." II. 14. 
 (Migne, p. 415.)
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 221 
 
 angels, an idea drawn from Augustine, and the reasons for the 
 Son instead of the Father becoming the man. 
 
 Anselm's view is that a debt is due to God, that amends must 
 be made for the dishonor to Him. This satisfaction is not said 
 to be the vicarious endurance of the penalty of sin. No stress 
 is laid on the sufferings of Christ. It is not His passive obedience 
 that satisfies. 1 Nor is it the active obedience of Christ, simply 
 considered. It is the supererogatory gift of His life. It was an 
 act of obedience, but a supererogatory act of obedience. Therein 
 lies its merit, its moral value, its capacity to procure forgiveness 
 for the ill-deserving. 
 
 The question has been debated whether Anselm's theory was 
 framed on the conceptions of Roman or of German law. It 
 unquestionably involves those ideas of merit which were in the 
 Church anterior to the influence of the Teutonic codes and cus- 
 toms, and bears the traces of the Roman jural system. The 
 influence of the associations of German law, however, is percep- 
 tible. It appears in the prominence of the ideas of personal 
 dishonor and reparation. 2 
 
 Peter Abelard was first established as a teacher in Paris in 
 1115, which was six years after the death of Anselm. In Abe- 
 lard the balance was lost between the devotional and the logical 
 elements. In him the inquisitive spirit and the dialectic passion 
 had the decided ascendency. As an expert dialectician, he sur- 
 passed all his contemporaries. Wherever he lectured and what- 
 ever he wrote, a ferment was sure to arise. His bold and restless 
 intellect was ever broaching new problems or suggesting new 
 solutions of old questions. It is doubtless true, as Ritter ob- 
 serves, that a certain rashness, rather than free-thinking, was 
 characteristic of him ; for he did not renounce the fundamental 
 Scholastic principle of the precedence of faith. Yet he pushed 
 his innovations as far as was compatible with the principle of 
 authority. The intellect, he taught, can only develop the contents 
 
 1 Anselm is rightly interpreted in this particular by Thomasius, DGM. 3. 
 I. p. 136 n.; Neander, Ch. Hist. II. 103; Baur, Gesch. d. Versohnungslehre, 
 pp. 183, 184; Philippi, DGM. 4. 2. p. 87. 
 
 2 The Germanic source of the Anselmic theory is maintained by Cremer, 
 Stud. u. Kritik. 1880, p. 759, with whom coincides Ritschl, Rechtfertigungs- 
 lehre, I. 2, p. 40 n. See, also, Thomasius, DG. II. 123. On the other side, 
 see the criticism of Loofs, DG. p. 273 n., and Harnack, DG. III. 342, n. 2. 
 Cremer's Reply is in Stud. u. Kritik. (1893) pp. 316 sqq.
 
 222 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of faith. But faith without a knowledge of its grounds lacks 
 stability ; it is easily shaken. Moreover, Abelard has a sublime, 
 if it were not a presumptuous, confidence in the capacity of 
 reason to probe to the foundations of religious truth, to compre- 
 hend the Gospel from centre to circumference. Face-to-face 
 knowledge, direct, empirical knowledge (cognoscere) is the re- 
 ward to be expected in the future life, but rational understanding 
 (intelligere) is possible here. Concerning the Trinity, for exam- 
 ple, we can discern why it is to be believed, and why the three 
 persons stand to each other in the relation in which they do, and 
 in no other. No wonder that his Introduction, which presented 
 these ideas without the least attempt at disguise, kindled an im- 
 mense excitement. In his Yes and No Sic et Non he brought 
 forward clashing opinions of the Fathers on one hundred and 
 fifty-eight points of theology. His object he declares to be 
 to stimulate inquiry, for " by inquiring we arrive at the truth." 
 He will cultivate the acuteness of his readers. 1 He can have 
 no other design in this procedure than to bring in more free- 
 dom in doctrinal discussion by showing that to rest upon au- 
 thority alone, as was the fashion, is to lean upon a broken reed. 
 Naturally he was disposed to minimize the distance between un- 
 inspired philosophy and Christianity. Since the precepts of the 
 Gospel are an improved republication (reformatio) of the laws of 
 Nature, and since the Christian estimate of conduct is accord- 
 ing to the intention of the mind, there is no dissonance between 
 heathen philosophy and Christianity, " save perhaps in those things 
 which pertain to the mysteries of the incarnation or the resurrec- 
 tion." Respecting the inspiration of the Bible, Abelard says that 
 the prophets were not always under the influence of the Spirit and 
 sometimes uttered errors. Peter and Paul could differ in regard 
 to the observance of the law, and one could correct the other. 
 But if Apostles and prophets could err, how much more the 
 Fathers ! 2 On the subject of Original Sin, Abelard sees not how to 
 avoid the difficulties of the orthodox doctrine how infants can 
 be guilty or deserve perdition. He is inclined to interpret Rom. 
 v. 1 2 as meaning that the sin of Adam is the cause of eternal con- 
 demnation to his descendants, in the sense in which we say that 
 " a tyrant lives on in his children." 
 
 1 " ad maximum inquirendse veritatis exercitium provocent et acutiores ex 
 inquisitione reddant." Prolog. (Migne, 178, p. 1349.) 
 
 2 Prolog, to Sic et Non. Ibid. p. 1341.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 223 
 
 Abelard may be considered the founder of what it is becoming 
 customary to call the moral view of reconciliation to God through 
 Christ. The traditional view of the relation of the death of Christ 
 to Satan he rejects. Satan has no just claims no more than 
 one who has seduced a slave to run away from his rightful master 
 and keeps possession of him. 1 He scouts the idea that God should 
 be placated by the slaying of His innocent Son. 2 The work of 
 Christ, including His sufferings and death, is a manifestation of 
 divine love to the unworthy which is adapted to kindle gratitude 
 in their minds and to win them back to obedience to God. It is 
 this aspect or interpretation of the office of Christ by which Abe- 
 lard is deeply impressed. He connects with it, however, another 
 view which is the nearest approach that he makes to the concep- 
 tion of an objective atonement. The love of Christ has in it 
 merit. And this love, with its meritorious quality in the sight of 
 God, is the basis of effectual intercession on his part in behalf of 
 sinful men. 3 It can hardly be said that this representation is de- 
 veloped in such a way as to involve the idea of a change effected 
 in the relation of an offended God to mankind. 
 
 So far as particular doctrines are concerned, Abelard gave 
 offence principally by his utterances on the Trinity. God as the 
 absolutely perfect combines in Himself absolute Might, Wisdom, 
 Love, and these constitute his threefold personality. Another 
 illustration was that of a seal, the material answering to the Father, 
 the figure carved in it to the Son, the seal impressing its stamp 
 (sigillum) to the Spirit. On the ground of sayings of this character, 
 he was charged with Modalism. In 1121 he was compelled as 
 he asserts, without discussion at a council at Soissons to cast 
 his writing on the Trinity into the fire, and was confined for a 
 while in a cloister. 4 In 1141, at the Council of Sens, which was 
 guided by Bernard, his teachings were condemned. 5 The verdict 
 was sanctioned by Innocent II., who adjudged him to perpetual 
 confinement in a cloister. Falling sick on the way to Rome, he 
 was received by Peter, Abbot of Cluny, and died in 1142. 
 
 1 " convinci videtur quod Diabolus in hominem quern seduxit nullum jus 
 seducendo acquisierit." Ep. ad Rom. L. II. (Migne, 178, p. 834, D.) 
 
 2 " Quam vero crudele et iniquum videtur ut sanguinem innocentis in pre- 
 tium," etc. " nedum Deus tarn acceptam filii sui mortem habuerit, ut per 
 ipsam universo reconciliatus sit mundo." (Migne, Ibid. p. 833.) 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 865. 4 Mansi, XXI. 265-266 sq. 5 Mansi, Ibid. 559-560 sq.
 
 224 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 There is nothing to subtract from the foregoing remarks. But 
 in justice to Abelard something more should be said. 1 His criti- 
 cal turn was not a veil for a secret unbelief. He can be quoted 
 even against the over-estimate of the powers of the human mind, 
 whether by the dialectician or by the mystic. On various topics 
 he pursued ways which Augustine had really, but less definitely, 
 opened. In withstanding the Platonic realism, he resisted a popu- 
 lar current, and his own opinion, which was nearer to that of Aris- 
 totle, enabled him to emphasize the transcendence, as well as the 
 immanence of God, and to avoid giving way to a Pantheistic ten- 
 dency easily allied to the Platonic extreme. He brought ethics 
 within the domain of theology, and was a champion of the ethical 
 interest. Striking characteristics of Abelard's teaching were 
 taken up by the orthodox Schoolmen of the following century, 
 although drawn by them from Aristotle rather than from him. 
 The odium of which Abelard was the later object was partly owing to 
 the atmosphere of the period, which later was materially modified. 
 Thib is indicated by the fact that others, notably Peter Lombard, 
 were likewise subject temporarily to a like sort of censorship and 
 attack, which passed by with the lapse of time. 
 
 The great antagonist of Abelard was Bernard of Clairvaux. 
 The two men, as to mental peculiarities and character, are in the 
 strongest contrast to one another. If we look for the secret of the 
 overpowering eloquence of Bernard and of his unequalled influence 
 as an ecclesiastical leader, as a promoter of the crusades, a guide 
 and monitor of Popes, we shall find it in the depth and ardor of 
 his piety. And that type of piety of which he was so impressive 
 an example was productive of effects, in the realm of theological 
 thought, which in him and in those after him are historically in a high 
 degree important. His fervor of sensibility appears in yearnings 
 heavenward, in aspirations for communion with the Christ who is 
 no longer enshrined in the flesh feelings which have a precedent 
 in the devotional outpourings of Augustine. But there are peculi- 
 arities in Bernard's piety. In his allegorizing of the Canticles, his 
 highest aspiration, the goal of his hope, is to kiss the heavenly 
 bridegroom upon the lips. His expressions descriptive of his love 
 to the Lord are borrowed from the language of nuptial affection. 
 From this source similes are directly drawn. But what is specially 
 
 1 See Deutsch's Monograph upon Abelard, and Harnack's spirited apology, 
 DG. III. 326 sq.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 225 
 
 to be observed is Bernard's intense interest in the self-abasement 
 and suffering of the incarnate Jesus, and his absorbing contempla- 
 tion of the Saviour in this character. From this point of view, he 
 occasionally utters thoughts truly evangelical in their tenor, one of 
 which brought comfort to Luther when he was chafing under the 
 fetters of legalism. Here and there he inculcates the truth of a 
 free and gratuitous pardon to the believer. Yet severe, ascetic 
 self-chastisement is essential in his conception of the religious life. 
 He remains a monk in theory and in practice. 
 
 Pervaded with reverence and awe for divine things, Bernard 
 was deeply aggrieved by Abelard's essays to explain them as if 
 they were every-day matters. He complains that through Abelard's 
 influence all minds were unsettled ; that it had come to pass in 
 France that the Trinity was almost a theme of disputation for boys 
 in the street, and that the sacred and mysterious truths of religion 
 were turned into a mere gymnastic for the understanding. He 
 points out three conceivable ways of grasping divine truth. 1 The 
 first is by the intellect, which apprehends them in their rationality ; 
 but this is not possible in the present life. , The second is opinion, 
 which is something void of certainty. The third is faith, which is an 
 embracing by the heart and will, anticipatory of rational insight. 2 
 There are possible ecstasies of feeling raptus when the soul 
 is illuminated and catches a glimpse of heavenly things, beyond 
 any perceptions open to the intellect. Bernard was not a foe to 
 learning and science, but his power was exerted in the direction 
 of laying a curb upon reason and exalting piety as the door to 
 knowledge. On the subject of the Atonement, Bernard earnestly 
 opposes the theory of Abelard respecting the bearing of the work 
 of Christ upon the sway of Satan. The right of Satan over man- 
 kind, he contends, is not based on any obligation to him, but the 
 bondage to Satan, however iniquitously it was secured, is right- 
 eously permitted as a just retribution for sin. 3 He is the execu- 
 tioner of the divine justice. This brings out a principle latent 
 in the old conception relative to deliverance from Satanic control. 
 
 1 De Consideration, V. 3. (Migne, 182, p. 790.) 
 
 2 " Fides est voluntaria quaedam et certa prselibatio necdum propalatae 
 veritatis." " Nil autem malumus scire quam quse fide jam scimus. " Ibid. 3. 
 (Migne, 182, p. 791.) 
 
 3 "jus, etsi non jure acquisitum, sed nequiter usurpatum; juste tamen per- 
 missum." Ep. CXC. sen Tract, ad Inn. II. (i 140) c. 5. (Migne, 182, p. 1065.) 
 
 Q
 
 226 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Christ made this deliverance to harmonize with the justice of God, 
 who has ordained the servitude under the Evil One as a penalty 
 for man's transgression. 
 
 Akin to Abelard in spirit was Gilbert, Bishop of Poictiers 
 Gilbert Porretanus (who died in 1154). From the point of view 
 of a moderate Realism of the Aristotelian type, he distinguished 
 " God " from " Deity " or the Divine Essence. The latter is the 
 universal, as humanity is related to individual men. 1 Father, Son, 
 and Spirit are one, but we may not say that God is Father, and 
 Son, and Spirit. We cannot say that the Deity became flesh. At 
 the great Council of Rheims in 1148, Bernard's accusation of 
 heresy was brought forward ; but Gilbert, aided by his powerful 
 friends and by the jealousy occasioned by the overshadowing in- 
 fluence of his accuser, went away unharmed. Pope Eugene III. 
 declared against the opinion which he had held. 
 
 In the school of St. Victor near Paris were eminent theologians 
 who struck a middle path between the intellectual daring of Abe- 
 lard and an extreme conservatism. To this moderate school be- 
 longed William of Champeaux, a friend and in some sense a guide 
 of St. Bernard, Hugo of St. Victor, the ablest representative of the 
 school, and Richard of St. Victor, of the particulars of whose life 
 not much is known. The merit of faith, Hugo teaches, lies in 
 the circumstance that our conviction is determined by the affec- 
 tions when no adequate knowledge is yet present. By faith we 
 make ourselves worthy of knowledge, as perfect knowledge is the 
 ultimate reward of faith in the life above. On the Atonement, 
 Hugo teaches that through the sufferings and death of Christ an 
 adequate satisfaction is offered to God for man's sin. 2 Thereby, 
 and on account of the bringing to Him of a perfect obedience, 
 God is reconciled and His displeasure removed. There is an 
 objective Atonement, comprising in it a quasi penal element. 
 This view is opposed to that of Abelard and contains an element 
 not expressed in Anselm's theory. 
 
 The effect of the conservative reaction illustrated in the treat- 
 ment of Abelard and Gilbert was to inspire the Schoolmen of the 
 
 1 " Quod divina natura quae Divinitas dicitur, Deus non sit, sed forma qua 
 Deus est, quemadmodum humanitas homo non est, sed forma qua est homo." 
 " Sunt tres aeternae." Mansi, XXI. Col. 711. 
 
 2 " Christus . . . debitum hominis patri solvit, et moriendo reatum hominis 
 expiavit." DC Sacram. I. 8, c. 4. (Migne, 176, p. 309.)
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 227 
 
 time with greater caution. A via media between the two ten- 
 dencies, the dialectic and the churchly, was adopted by the 
 authors of the books of Sentences. Propositions were sustained 
 by extracts from the Fathers. There were two principal writers of 
 this class. One was Robert Pulleyn, an Englishman, who died in 
 1150. By far the most celebrated of these authors was Peter 
 Lombard, who was born at Novara in Italy, taught theology at 
 Paris, became bishop there in 1159, and died in 1164. He set 
 forth the doctrines of the Church in a systematic form, explained 
 them, and argued for them, but everywhere supported his opin- 
 ions by citations from the Fathers, especially from Augustine. He 
 was a pupil of Abelard and was obviously much affected by his 
 teachings. He lays much stress on the deliverance from sin 
 through the love that is awakened in the human heart by the 
 manifestation of God's love in the mission and death of Christ. 1 
 But he connects with this representation the doctrine of man's 
 release from the hands of Satan, regarded as an executioner. 
 Here he agrees with Bernard. " By his death, one most real 
 sacrifice, whatever of faults there were for enduring the punish- 
 ment of which Satan held us in his power, Christ extinguished." 
 He "merited for us." His consummate humility atoned for 
 Adam's pride. 2 He even says that Christ took on himself the 
 punishment of sin, a distinct step in advance of Anselm. 3 But 
 the Lombard protests earnestly against the notion that God was an 
 enemy and did not begin to love us until we were reconciled by the 
 blood of Christ. Rather is it true that He loved us before the 
 world was, and this love was the motive of the atonement. Peter 
 Lombard did not escape suspicion and accusation. Among his 
 adverse critics were Walter of St. Victor, and Joachim of Floris, a 
 mystic. It was said that some of his statements respecting the 
 Trinity were unsound. Joachim attributed to him the idea of a 
 quaternity in the divine being, on the ground of the statement that 
 the Father as personal principle in the divine being generates the 
 Son. The divine essence, it was said, is thus made a fourth. But 
 the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, decided for the Lombard. The 
 Father is declared to be the active principle in the generation of 
 
 1 Sent. L. III. Dist. XIX. I. (Migne, 192, p. 795.) 
 
 2 Dist. XVIII. 5. (Migne, 192, p. 794.) 
 
 8 " Non sufficeret ilia pcena, qua pcenitentes ligat ecclesia, nisi poena Christi 
 cooperetur, qui pro nobis solvit" Ibid. XIX. 4. (Migne, 192, p. 797.)
 
 228 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the Son, not separable from the essence, but communicating it 
 to the Son. Respecting the Incarnation, the Lombard taught that 
 the divine person which had been simple and existing in one 
 nature, became the person of a man by assuming human nature, 
 thus becoming one divine person in two natures. 1 Thus adop- 
 tionism was avoided. 
 
 Adverse criticism ceased as time went on, and the book of 
 Sentences became the current text-book in theology, on which 
 numberless lectures were delivered and commentaries written. 
 The dialecticians were too strong for the mystics to cast them into 
 discredit. The most noted of the critics of Scholasticism on the 
 ground of its logical fanaticism and neglect of ancient learning 
 was John of Salisbury, a Humanist in his studies and tastes. In 
 his closing years he was Bishop of Chartres. He died in 1180. 
 
 i L. III. 6. 6.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SECOND SECTION OF THE SCHOLASTIC ERA ST. FRANCIS AND 
 THE FRANCISCAN PIETY MYSTICISM AQUINAS AND SCOTUS 
 
 THE transition to the second division of the Scholastic period 
 was made by Alexander of Hales who was trained in the clois- 
 ter of Hales in Gloucestershire, studied at Oxford and Paris, and 
 in 1222 became the first Franciscan teacher of theology at Paris. 
 By this "irrefragable doctor," as he was styled, the writings of 
 Aristotle, as well as those of his Arabic commentators, were freely 
 used. The approval by the Pope of this teacher's own commen- 
 taries on Aristotle left theologians free from the restraint relative 
 to the use of the philosopher's writings, which had been imposed 
 by Gregory IX. in 1215. The reverence for him grew. It came 
 to pass that he was not only cited in lectures and treatises in con- 
 nection with the Fathers of the Church, but that he was considered 
 to have exhausted the powers of human reason in the ascertain- 
 ment of ethical and religious truth, as well as in physics and psy- 
 chology. Yet the influence of Aristotle in shaping Christian 
 doctrine was mainly in the directions in which the Church of 
 itself had adopted kindred opinions or points of view. Much im- 
 portance, even as regards the history of theology, belongs to that 
 great religious movement of the thirteenth century, which is con- 
 nected in a preeminent degree with the work and example of 
 St. Francis of Assisi and with both the mendicant orders. It 
 was from the Franciscans that Dominic borrowed, and he enjoined 
 upon the order that he founded the rule of poverty. The type of 
 piety which sprung up under the auspices of the Saint of Assisi 
 had its precursor in St. Bernard, but was further developed in a 
 like direction, and exerted a vastly increased power and influence. 
 The idea that filled the mind of St. Francis was that of the repro- 
 duction of the " life and the poverty of Jesus." The contem- 
 
 229
 
 230 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 plation of Jesus, especially in his self-renunciation and sufferings, 
 was ever a fountain of joy and entered largely into the Franciscan 
 ideal of the religious life. But with this spirit, which is termed 
 the " mystical " side, there was united an inextinguishable ardor 
 in doing good, in which preaching and the care of souls formed 
 an essential part. In all this activity, the privilege of hearing 
 confessions and other prerogatives granted to the mendicant friars 
 by the Popes, great as was the hostility thus engendered among 
 the bishops and local priests, were an invaluable aid. There is 
 not space here to enter into details on these topics, but two 
 characteristics of the great Franciscan revival require to be dis- 
 tinctly mentioned. The first is that in its origin and continuance 
 the laity were largely concerned, although, from the first, obedience 
 to the hierarchy, to the Pope especially, was a cardinal rule, and, 
 as time went on, the lay element more and more gave place to 
 priestly membership and control. The second point is the fact 
 that there was opened, on a large scale, personal religious effort 
 for the conversion and the religious guidance and comfort of 
 individuals. The love of Christ was a glowing, absorbing passion. 
 To dwell on His humility, His self-denial, His death on the cross, 
 was the main source of comfort and inspiration. It is remarkable 
 that while the Scholastic doctrine respecting Christ, as a whole, 
 leaned towards a monophysite view, or a view in which His human 
 nature was eclipsed by His divinity, there should prevail to such 
 an extent a loving contemplation of His human traits and ex- 
 periences. 
 
 If we give the name of Mysticism to the self-surrender, amount- 
 ing at times to the self-extinguishment, of the soul, in the glow of 
 emotion, and to a rapturous insight sought through this channel, 
 it is in the declining period of Scholasticism that Mysticism as- 
 sumes a peculiar prominence. But in its essential character it is 
 a marked phenomenon in the preceding age. Mysticism and 
 Scholasticism were not antagonists. Among the theological 
 leaders, the great mystics were Scholastics, and the most eminent 
 Schoolmen, who are not classified with the Mystics, exemplified 
 Mysticism in their own experience and found a place for it in their 
 teaching. But in certain of the Schoolmen, Mysticism is elabo- 
 rately explained and wrought into an articulated system. Such are 
 the " Victorines," Hugo and Richard. Such is Bonaventura 
 John of Fidanza " doctor seraphicus " a pupil of Alexander of
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 231 
 
 Hales, his successor at Paris, and in 1256 made General of the 
 Franciscan order. He put the highest value upon spiritual illu- 
 mination. He preferred the Platonic teaching to that of Aristotle. 
 Yet he was Scholastic in his method. In the mystical system the 
 approach to direct communion with God, the goal of human as- 
 piration, is partly intellectual, but also, keeping pace with it, ethical 
 and practical. Above the empirical apprehension, above the 
 rational understanding, of the world, is the ascent of the soul, if 
 purified and enlightened by divine grace, to the enraptured per- 
 ception, the ecstatic enjoyment, of the realities of faith. On this 
 height, above the plane of sense-perception and of logic, there are 
 discerned the allegorical import of nature and the allegorical sense 
 of Scripture. 
 
 No theologian of German birth in the Middle Ages stands 
 higher in merit than Albert the Great, styled from the extent 
 of his acquisitions, which embraced an acquaintance with natural 
 science, " doctor universalis." Distinguished for his expositions 
 of Aristotle, he was affected also by Platonic and New Platonic 
 doctrine, and by the mystical speculations of the Areopagite. 
 General ideas, he held, are in the mind of God, but are realized in 
 individual things. A versatile and prolific writer, he still left unfin- 
 ished his Summa and his Commentary on the Lombard. But Albert 
 is in a measure overshadowed by the commanding distinction of 
 his renowned pupil, Thomas Aquinas, who, like his master, was a 
 Dominican, and the great light of that order. With his personal 
 friend Bonaventura, he maintained the claim of the mendicant 
 orders to chairs in the University of Paris. In Thomas there 
 reappears that just balance between the philosophical tendency and 
 the religious which was so marked in Anselm. In Thomas, won- 
 derful acumen blends with clearness. He is the most profound 
 and luminous of the Scholastic writers. He was, like Albert, an 
 Aristotelian Realist. In general, more than any other, he labored 
 to harmonize the principles of Aristotle with the teachings of the 
 Church, of whose authority, including the supreme authority of 
 the Popes, he was a devoted champion. His Summa Theologies 
 covers the field of Ethics as well as of Theology. It was not com- 
 pleted by its author, but stopped in the midst of the discussion of the 
 doctrine of Penance. It is carried to the end, however, by means 
 of extracts from his other writings. The generic subject is God, 
 and the work is cast into three principal parts, each breaking into
 
 232 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 divisions and subdivisions. The first part treats of God, including 
 the nature of God, the Trinity, the relation of God to the World. 
 The second treats of Man, or the " Motion of the Creature towards 
 God," where are discussed Sin and Law, the Virtues, natural and 
 Christian or theological, and the contemplative or blessed life, 
 which is the end and aim of man's being, to be realized in the 
 world above. The third part deals with the Person and Work of 
 Christ, the Sacraments, and with Eschatology. Christ is to us the 
 way of returning to God. Thus with God theology begins and 
 ends. The trend of Aquinas is decidedly Augustinian. In his 
 apologetic Work, Christianity is defended against heathen, Moham- 
 medans, and skeptics, the first part being upon the truths of nat- 
 ural religion and the fourth or concluding book upon the truths of 
 revelation. 
 
 Associated with the name of Aquinas is that of the Scholastic 
 teacher who, as to the type of his theology, was at variance with 
 him, John Duns Scotus. He belongs to a generation later, was a 
 member of the Franciscan order, and died in 1308. Scotus was 
 appropriately named "doctor mirabilis." So far did he push the 
 process of hair-splitting analysis that he was driven to invent many 
 new terms. His style, compared with that of his Scholastic prede- 
 cessors, is marked by its barbarous latinity. A sincere Christian 
 believer, and standing in his own day within the lines of admis- 
 sible orthodoxy, he yet lacks the religious depth of Aquinas. In 
 philosophy, he did not stop with Aristotle, but was more Platonic 
 in his Realism. In his theology, he was Semi-Pelagian. The 
 effect of the teaching of Scotus was to begin the work of under- 
 mining the Scholasticism of which he was so famous a leader. 
 This effect was produced, partly by his critical treatment of the 
 arguments drawn from reason for the propositions of the creed. 
 Very little space was conceded to possible demonstration. Many 
 arguments which had been deemed sufficient to foreclose all 
 objections were reduced to a higher or lower degree of probabil- 
 ity. Then essential parts of the divine administration and of the 
 procedure of God in redemption were represented as inexplicable, 
 or as sufficiently explained by the reference of them to God's will. 
 In these ways the sphere of authority was enlarged, and the ver- 
 dict of the Church left as the sole verification of important 
 doctrines. So far as this ground was taken, the vocation of 
 Scholasticism was gone.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 233 
 
 Aquinas and Scotus were the founders of the two great conflict- 
 ing schools. The dissent of Scotus related to numerous points. 
 A radical difference, which affected the entire complexion of the 
 rival systems, was their diversity on the subject of Grace and 
 Free-will. 
 
 It is in the third section of the Scholastic Period that the dis- 
 integrating work of Scotus, which tended to divorce philosophy 
 from theology, and to bring discredit upon the whole undertaking 
 of the Schoolmen, was carried out. Durandus de St. Pourcain, a 
 Dominican, at first a Thomist, broke away from his adhesion to 
 the school of Aquinas, and maintained that we have no clear knowl- 
 edge save of individual things. He subjected the dominant Real- 
 ism to a hostile criticism. Durandus died as Bishop of Meaux in 
 1334. But it was chiefly William of Occam, a pupil of Scotus, 
 who regained for Nominalism its long lost standing. He was for 
 a time a teacher at Paris. He was a champion of the Franciscan 
 order in its contests against the Popes in behalf of the rule of 
 poverty. He stood by Louis of Bavaria in his resistance to the 
 political interference of the Avignonese Pontiffs. All our knowledge, 
 Occam asserted, is of phenomena. Individuals, things in the con- 
 crete, alone exist. Common names, like algebraic signs, are to 
 designate them. Demonstrations in religion are out of the ques- 
 tion. Logic when applied to the truths of Christianity lands us in 
 contradictions. These truths are revealed directly by God either 
 in the Bible or to the Church. Occam's assaults upon papal infal- 
 libility and the power of the Pope over Kings and in temporal 
 affairs, his assertion that even a general council might err, even 
 that faith might depart save from the souls of a few devout women, 
 are interesting parts of his teaching. What concerns us just now 
 is his thesis that even transubstantiation is logically indefensible, 
 and is to be accepted as a revelation made to the Church. In the 
 latter part of the fifteentn century, Gabriel Biel, teacher of theol- 
 ogy at Tubingen, who has been sometimes styled the last of the 
 Schoolmen, was prominent as an expounder of Nominalism and a 
 disciple of Occam. He died in 1495. After Occam appeared, 
 there were three, instead of two, contending schools, the Thomists, 
 the Scotists, and the Occamists. Nominalism was in the ascendant.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES : NATURAL THEOLOGY AND CHRISTIAN 
 EVIDENCES THE TRINITY AND THE INCARNATION DIVINE AND 
 HUMAN AGENCY ORIGINAL SIN 
 
 IN presenting the opinions of the Schoolmen on specific doctrines, 
 chief attention will be given to the topics in connection with which 
 their teaching was something more than the bare reproduction of 
 patristic theology. Such topics are the Church and the Sacra- 
 ments, respecting which it was sought to interpret and justify the 
 existing practices ; the doctrine of sin and of the operation of 
 grace, where there were important deviations from the Augustinian 
 teaching, and the Atonement, a subject on which discussion 
 was not fettered by any established dogma. Special attention 
 will naturally be given to the antithesis of the Thomist and the 
 Scotist opinions. 
 
 Aquinas endeavors to indicate the necessity of revelation against 
 the objection that if man were not furnished with all the powers 
 requisite for attaining the end of his being, he would be behind 
 all other creatures, who in this respect are sufficient of themselves. 
 The answer is that for the very reason that man has a higher end, 
 a loftier destiny, which is nothing less than a participation in the 
 divine glory, he needs supernatural light and aid. Thomas dis- 
 tinguishes two classes of truths from one another. 1 There are the 
 truths above reason, for example, the Trinity. There are truths 
 accessible to reason, for example, the truth that there is a God. 
 But even truths of the second order need to be confirmed by the 
 testimony of revelation, since practically the knowledge of God 
 is attainable by only a few, through long effort, and not without 
 an admixture of error. That there should be truths which are 
 the object of faith is advantageous, as attracting the mind towards 
 1 Summa Cathol. Fidei c. Gentiles, P. I. qu. i, art. I. 
 234
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 23 |> 
 
 a higher realm of knowledge, 1 kindling aspirations after a more 
 exalted state, and fostering humility. As related to the truths of 
 faith, we are capable of discerning analogies veras similitudi- 
 nes which, although without demonstrative force, and not suffi- 
 cient to convince adversaries, are yet a mental exercise and solace 
 for the faithful, and show that these truths do not clash with 
 reason. In their defences of Christianity, the Schoolmen were 
 necessarily cut off from the use of arguments which involve his- 
 torical and critical learning. It is not until the close of the 
 Scholastic period and the rise of Humanism that, through the 
 work of Marsilius Ficinus, the Florentine Platonist, the historical 
 evidence of Christianity is presented with any fulness of knowl- 
 edge. 2 The Schoolmen drew a line of demarcation between natu- 
 ral and revealed religion. Their apologies were often cogent, if 
 they were not erudite, and had the merit of accuracy in definitions. 
 Aquinas explains a miracle to be an event beyond the order of 
 nature, not of any particular department of nature, but of nature 
 in its totality. 3 It is an event, therefore, which God alone can 
 accomplish. As regards the divine origin of the Scriptures, Scotus 
 was the first to treat this topic elaborately. He presents eight 
 considerations, nearly all of which are internal proofs. 
 
 Aquinas, in his doctrine concerning God, describes Him as 
 endowed with thought and will. With Aristotle he says of Him 
 that He is actus purus, i.e., energy fully realized, instead of being 
 potential. God sets before Himself an end. This must necessarily 
 have reference to Himself, must be Himself. In pursuance of 
 this end the world was made. The world as being thus related 
 to God is an object of His love. But connected with these views 
 is the conception of God which is derived from the Areopagite 
 as a being of whom nothing positive can be predicated. 4 
 
 As to particular proofs of the divine existence, Aquinas re- 
 marks of the Anselmic argument that it assumes, what an Athe- 
 ist will not concede, that the term 'God' denotes the highest 
 
 1 " Oportuit mentem evocari in aliquid altius quam ratio nostra in prsesenti 
 possit pertingere." 
 
 2 De Relig. Christ, et Fidei Pietate (1475). 
 
 3 Summa Theol. P. I. qu. 1 10, art. 4 " sed non sufficit ad rationem mi- 
 raculi si aliquid fiat praeter ordinem naturae alicujus particularis . . . aliquid 
 dicitur esse miraculum, quod fit praeter ordinem totius naturae creatse, hoc 
 autem non potest facere nisi Deus," etc. 
 
 4 Ibid. P. III. qu. I, art. 2; cf. P. I. qu. 46, art. I.
 
 236 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 conceivable, and, if it does, that what exists in name exists 
 objectively. 1 In agreement with Richard of St. Victor, he collects 
 five modes of proof, viz., from a first principle of motion (Aris- 
 totle being here followed), from the necessity of a first efficient 
 cause, from the presupposition of an existence which is per se 
 necessary, from the supposition of the perfect as implied in the 
 scale of things imperfect, from design in nature. 2 The first three 
 suggestions form the cosmological proof. But Aquinas holds that 
 prior to all reasoning, a knowledge of God is inherent " in a con- 
 fused way " in all men. 
 
 Scotus sets aside the ontological argument for the being of 
 God. The argument from effect to cause he does not reject. 
 But as a ground of theistic belief he calls in the aid of Revela- 
 tion. 3 Emphasizing the attribute of freedom in man, he likewise 
 makes will the predominant element in the conception of God. 
 But this autonomy is made so absolute that no reason is required 
 for the actions of God beyond or behind His bare will. While, 
 therefore, the personality of God is asserted in a more stringent 
 way then by Aquinas, a foundation is laid by Scotus for a series 
 of very questionable propositions in Christian doctrine. 
 
 Can man know God as He is in Himself, or, as the Schoolmen 
 express it, has he "a quidditative " cognition of God ? Thomas 
 replies in the negative; all our knowledge is relative. Scotus 
 answers in the affirmative. Finally a middle ground was reached 
 by contending parties, the position, namely, that some of the 
 essential attributes can be known as they are, and others cannot. 
 
 The Scholastic discussions respecting the significance of the sev- 
 eral divine attributes are examples of subtle and often not unprofit- 
 able discrimination. Omnipotence, says Aquinas, is the power to 
 do whatever does not involve a contradiction. But of this last it is 
 more true to say that it cannot be done than that God cannot do 
 it. In relation to God's omnipresence, the Thomist doctrine was 
 that God is in all things, not as a part of their essence, nor yet as 
 an accident or attribute, but as an agent is present to that on 
 which it acts. " Everything must be conjoined to that on which 
 it immediately acts." In opposition to this " virtual " presence 
 of God, which had been taught before by Alexander of Hales, the 
 
 1 Summa Theol. P. I. qu. 2, art. I. 2 Ibid. qu. 2, art. 3. 
 
 3 For a full exposition of Scotus's view, see A. Dorner's art. , Real-Encykl. , 
 Vol. III. p. 739 sq.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 237 
 
 Scotists asserted an " ideal " presence. Dependent existences are 
 conditioned only by their presence, or the presence of the ideal 
 exemplars of which they partake, in the divine mind. 
 
 There was a vast outlay of ingenuity among the Schoolmen in 
 the exposition of the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarna- 
 tion. The conceptions of Aquinas were as clear and exact as the 
 nature of the questions permits, and in the main they ruled 
 opinion. Respecting persons in God, it is taught that the 
 activity in which they originate is immanent. They are related to 
 knowing and willing in the divine being. In the generation of 
 the Son and the procession of the Spirit, the divine knowledge 
 and the divine love find an immanent realization. We can say 
 that there are three wise, three eternal, etc., when we speak of 
 divine persons ; but, using the terms as substantives, we must say, 
 One Wise, One Eternal, etc. 1 We must avoid opposite errors and 
 steer between them. To shun the Arian error, we must avoid the 
 terms ' diversity ' and ' difference ' and use the word ' distinc- 
 tion.' To preserve the simplicity of the divine nature, we must 
 avoid the terms ' separation ' and ' division,' as if the whole were 
 divided into parts. To avoid the loss of equality, the term ' dis- 
 parity' must be shunned. To preserve similitude, 'alien' and 
 'discrepant' must be avoided. To escape Sabellianism, 'singu- 
 larity' must be avoided, and the word 'single' (unicus), lest the 
 number of persons be destroyed. The same is to be said of the 
 term ' solitary,' in order that the society (consortium) of persons 
 may not be done away with. 2 
 
 In treating of the Incarnation, Aquinas insisted that the human 
 nature of Christ is individual, not the nature of mankind generally. 
 Yet it was no human person, it was personal only as belonging to 
 a more exalted person, and as having the capacity and destination 
 to be personal. 3 
 
 In contrast with the Pantheistic ideas of John Scotus, creation 
 was considered by the Schoolmen to be an act of the divine will. 
 The narrative in Genesis was commonly taken in both a literal 
 and allegorical sense. The spiritual expositions, says Aquinas, 
 must be framed on the basis of the literal meaning, which is first 
 to be accepted. 
 
 1 Aquinas, Sum. Theol. P. I. qu. 36, art. 4. 
 
 2 Ibid, P. I. qu. 31, art. 2. 
 
 3 Ibid. P. III. qu. 2, art. 2. See Schwane, DG. d. mittleren Zcit. p. 269.
 
 238 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 In keeping with the whole tendency of his system, Aquinas 
 regarded the preservation of the world as a continuous act of 
 creation, an opinion which Scotus and his followers rejected. The 
 end of creation was said by Aquinas to be the communication of 
 God's own perfection, " which is His goodness." l " God acts not 
 for His own advantage, but solely by reason of His own goodness." 
 The radical difference between the Thomist and Scotist schools 
 appears in respect to the question of the divine agency in its 
 relation to the activity of the human will, or divine Providence as 
 concerned with the choices of man. Aquinas, like his preceptor, 
 Albert, held to determinism. There are second causes, but God 
 is the prime mover, acting upon them, and, in the case of the will, 
 so to speak, within them. The will is not necessitated when it is 
 moved by God to act in a particular direction, since there is no 
 external constraint. That which is produced is the inward incli- 
 nation itself. " God in moving the will does not coerce it, since 
 He gives to it its own inclination. To be moved by the will is to 
 be moved by one's self, that is, by an internal principle ; but that 
 intrinsic principle may be from another extrinsic principle ; and 
 thus to be moved of one's self is not inconsistent with being moved 
 by another." 2 In this way, " God is the cause of all the acts of 
 agents," whatever may be their nature. Yet Thomas denies that 
 God is the author of moral evil. He follows Augustine in main- 
 taining that moral evil is purely negative, the absence in man 
 of what should be. Being negative, it cannot be the object of 
 a creative act. As to his theodicy, Aquinas maintains that the 
 defect of one thing may redound to the good of another. Hence 
 a defect in one particular part or place is permitted to be. 
 "There were not the life of the lion, if there were not the slaying 
 of animals " on which he feeds, " nor would there be the patience 
 of martyrs, if it were not for the persecution of tyrants." 3 It is 
 
 1 " (Deus) intendit solum communicare suam perfectionem, quse est ejus 
 bonitas." Acting from no sense of need, He is " maxima liberalis." Sum. Theol. 
 P. I. qu. 44, art. 4. 
 
 2 " Deus movendo voluntatem non cogit ipsam, quia dat et ejus propriam in- 
 clinationem. Moveri voluntate est moveri ex se, id est, a principio intrin- 
 seco, sed illud principium intrinsecum potest esse ab alio principio extrinseco," 
 etc. Ibid. P. I. qu. 105, art. 4. 
 
 8 It belongs to the Providence of God to permit " quosdam defectus esse in 
 aliquibus particularibus rebus, ne impediatur bonum universi perfectum. Si 
 enim omnia mala impedirentur, multa bona deessent universe. Non enim esset
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 239 
 
 desirable that there should be beings, " the order of the universe 
 requires that there should be some beings, who can depart from 
 goodness and sometimes do thus depart." In instituting the order 
 of the universe, which is good, God " by consequence, and, as it 
 were, by accident," causes that which is corrupt in it. 1 Sin is thus 
 made to be the necessary means of the greatest good. Respect- 
 ing divine precepts which forbid moral evil, the distinction had 
 been previously made between the secret or decretive, and the 
 revealed or preceptive will of God. " Those things," says Peter 
 Lombard, " which God has commended or prohibited to all, He 
 has willed to be done or avoided by some but not by all." 2 The 
 distinction was adopted by Alexander of Hales and is thus set 
 forth by Aquinas : " God can be said metaphorically to will that 
 which He does not will in the proper sense. The exertion of His 
 agency is always in accord with the will in the sense of His good 
 pleasure," i.e., the decretive will, "but this is not the case with 
 regard to his precepts or counsels." 3 That this world is the best 
 possible, the best within the power of God to produce, was taught 
 by Anselm and Abelard. But Aquinas (and with him Durandus) 
 held that while no beneficial change within the system is conceiv- 
 able, since the effect of such a change would be to break up the 
 perfection of the parts in their natural relation, like the stretching 
 of a single chord of a harp, yet there might have been, had God 
 so willed, without any disaster, an enlargement of the system by 
 additions. From the determinism of Aquinas, Scotus dissented, 
 and hence, also, from not a few of the inferences drawn from it. 
 
 The Schoolmen were Creationists. Aquinas distinguished be- 
 tween the sensitive or animal soul which man has in common with 
 the brutes, and the intellective soul. The former is propagated 
 physically, the latter is immediately created. 4 Aquinas argues for 
 the immortality of the soul from its simple and indivisible nature 
 and from its power of cognizing realities independent of time and 
 space. 5 Scotus denied the validity of the proofs of immortality 
 
 vita leonis," etc. Ibid. P. I. qu. 22, art. 2. See Baur's exposition, Die Christl. 
 Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, etc. Vol. II. p. 736. 
 
 1 Ibid. P. I. qu. 48, art. 2. 2 Sent. I. Dist. 45 F. 
 
 3 " Operatic semper est eadem cum voluntate beneplaciti, non autem prae- 
 ceptum vel consilium." Sum. Theol. P. I. qu. 19, art. II, 12. 
 
 4 " impossibile est quod virtus quae est in semine sit productiva intellectivi 
 principii." Ibid. P. I. qu. 118, art. 2. 
 
 s " Sensus non cognoscit esse nisi sub hie et nunc; sed intellectus apprehen-
 
 240 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 which were drawn from reason. The question whether the soul is 
 naturally immortal was long debated, and was at last decided in 
 the affirmative by the Council of the Lateran, under Pope Leo. X., 
 
 in 1513- 
 
 The distinction in man between the image and the similitude of 
 God was thus denned by Peter Lombard : " the image consists in 
 the cognition of truth; the similitude in the love of virtue." 1 
 With some differences of statement, the Schoolmen adhered 
 essentially to this distinction. They followed Augustine in ascrib- 
 ing to man the pura naturalia, the natural powers of reason and 
 will, and the supernatural gift, the gift, superadded of God's 
 grace, spiritual excellence or righteousness. On the one hand, 
 man was adapted through the physical and mental powers which 
 were inseparable from his nature to this mundane existence. On 
 the other hand, he received a further endowment whereby he was 
 brought into communion with God. But when and on what 
 terms was the superadded righteousness communicated? In 
 answering this question the two schools parted company. Ac- 
 cording to Aquinas it was a gift outright, bestowed on man simul- 
 taneously with his creation. 2 According to Scotus, time elapsed 
 during which he was in a state of nature. 3 Moreover, there was 
 a movement of will, a concurrence, a receptive act on the part of 
 man. Peter Lombard had likened the acquisition of the super- 
 natural gift to the marriage of the soul to God, there being a prior 
 consent on the part of Adam. From this difference, important 
 corollaries followed. 
 
 Through the fall of Adam it was the common doctrine that the 
 gratia gratum faciens original righteousness was forfeited and 
 lost. Man was left in the state of nature in statu purorum 
 naturalium. But as to the extent of the effect wrought, the 
 Thomist and the Scotist were again divided. Aquinas taught 
 that there is introduced a disorder in the powers of the soul ; 
 wounds are inflicted. 4 There is ignorance of God, aversion to the 
 true good, a great weakening of the powers of moral resistance, 
 
 dit esse absolute et secundum omne tempus. " Hence the natural desire " esse 
 semper." But this desire " non potest esse inane." Ibid. P. I. qu. 76, art. 6. 
 
 1 Sent. Lib. II. Dist. 16 D. 
 
 2 Ibid. P. I. qu. 95, art. I. 3 Ibid. II. distinct. 39. 
 
 4 " Hsec autem originalis justitia subtracta est per peccatum primi parentis 
 . . . et ipsa destitutio vulneratio naturae dicitur." Sum. TkeoI.Y.II. i, qu. 85, 
 art. 3.
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 241 
 
 a vehement propensity for sensuous gratification. Prior to the 
 fall, so Aquinas taught, man had a natural power to fulfil the 
 divine law, not, however, from the motive of love to God, for 
 which the gift of supernatural grace was required. After the fall, 
 even that power vanished. The principle of sin was designated 
 by the Schoolmen as "concupiscence," which included inordinate 
 desires in general, the sexual passion being the prominent element. 
 By the fall, Aquinas held, man lost his freedom and was reduced 
 to a state of helplessness as regards spiritual excellence. The 
 transmission of sin was explained by the unity of the race and 
 the possession of a common nature which is transmitted from 
 the parent of the race. Scotus contended that by the loss of 
 original righteousness, the natural powers of man are not directly 
 affected, but become inordinate for want of the check derived 
 from divine grace. Concupiscence as a native desire is not 
 sinful. It brings guilt only through the consent of the will which 
 by the fall is not wholly deprived of freedom. 
 
 Of course the problem of the responsible connection of the race 
 with Adam and of the method of the transmission of sin from him 
 to his posterity is discussed by Aquinas. We have already seen 
 how it was handled by Anselm. Before reviewing the solution of 
 Aquinas, a few words may be said on the way in which it was dealt 
 with by the "Master of Sentences," the author of that text-book of 
 theology in the Middle Ages which held its place for centuries in 
 the European universities. Peter Lombard presents the doctrine 
 of Augustine in its essential parts, with abundant citations from his 
 writings. Sin did not spread in the world, he affirms, by imitation 
 of a bad example, but by propagation, and appears in every one at 
 birth. 1 Original sin is not mere liability to punishment for the 
 first sin, but involves sin and guilt. That first sin not only ruined 
 Adam, but the whole race likewise ; since from him we derive at 
 once condemnation and sin. That original sin in us is concupis- 
 cence. Our nature was vitiated in Adam ; " since all were that 
 one man ; that is, were in him materialiter" We were in him 
 materialiter, casualiter, or seminally. The body is wholly de- 
 rived from him. It is the doctrine of the Lombard that each 
 soul is created by itself, but is corrupted by contact with the 
 material part which is vitiated in Adam. 2 He gives this explicit 
 
 i Sent. II., Lib. II. Dist. XXX. (Ed. Cologne, 1576.) 
 * 2 ibid. Lib. II. Dist. XXXI, XXXII. 
 
 R
 
 242 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 answer to the problem which Augustine declines to solve. The 
 law of propagation, says Peter Lombard, is not suspended in con- 
 sequence of the entrance of sin into the world ; and the corruption 
 of the soul in each case is an inevitable result of its conjunction 
 with the body. Augustine, in the Encheiridion t had admitted that 
 the sins of more immediate parents, as far back as the third or 
 fourth generation, may be imputed to the child, but had not posi- 
 tively sanctioned this view. The Lombard argues that he could 
 not have entertained it without inconsistency, since it would be 
 incompatible with his doctrine that the sin and punishment of 
 infants are comparatively light. 1 He does not deny the position 
 of Anselm that sin belongs to the will ; 2 yet he is careful to say 
 that the soul on uniting with the body becomes ipso facto corrupt ; 
 since if an act of self-determination be supposed to intervene, it 
 would be actual, and not original, sin. On the whole, his repre- 
 sentations accord with what we have explained to be the idea of 
 Anselm. 
 
 We turn now to the discussion of the subject by Aquinas. This 
 most acute and profound writer manifests caution in handling so 
 difficult a theme ; but his conclusions, as might be expected, coin- 
 cide with the dogma of Augustine. Aquinas says that "although 
 the soul is not transmitted, since the virtus seminis cannot cause 
 a rational soul," yet by this means " human nature is transmitted 
 from parent to offspring, and with it, at the same time, the infec- 
 tion of nature." 3 Hence the new-born child is made partaker of 
 the sin of the first parent, since from him he received his nature 
 through the agency of the generative function. No man is pun- 
 ished except for his own sin. We are punished for the sins of 
 near ancestors only so far as we follow them in their transgres- 
 sions. 4 The main point in the explication of original sin is the 
 nature of our union with Adam. This Aquinas sets forth by an 
 analogy. The will, by an imperative volition, bids a limb, or 
 member of the body, commit a sin. Now an act of homicide is 
 not imputed to the hand considered as distinct from the body, but 
 is imputed to it as far as it belongs to the man as part of him, and 
 is moved by the first principle of the motion in him, that is, the 
 will. Being thus related, the hand, were it possessed of a nature 
 capable of sin, would be guilty. So all who are born of Adam are 
 
 1 Sent. Lib. II. Dist. XXXIII. 8 Sum. Theol. P. II. qu. 8l, art. I. 
 
 8 Ibid. Dist. XLII. * Ibid. II. qu. 81, art. 2.
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 243 
 
 to be considered as one man. They are as the many members of 
 one body. 
 
 "Thus the disorder (inordinatio} which is in that man who 
 sprang from Adam, is not voluntary by the act of his own will, but 
 by the will of the first parent, who moves ' motione generationisj 
 all who derive their origin from him, just as the soul's will moves 
 all the limbs to an act ; whence the sin which is derived from the 
 first parent to his posterity, is called original : in the same way 
 that the sin which is derived from the soul to the members of the 
 body is called actual ; and as the actual sin which is committed 
 by a bodily member is the sin of that member, only so far as that 
 member pertains to the man himself est aliquid ipsius hominis 
 so original sin belongs to an individual, only so far as he receives 
 his nature from the first parent." 1 It may be remarked that 
 that among others, Cajetan, the renowned commentator of Aquinas, 
 in the sixteenth century undertakes to explain and defend the 
 analogy. The descendant of Adam belongs to Adam, as a hand 
 to the body ; and from Adam, through natural generation, he at 
 once receives his nature and becomes a partaker of sin. 
 
 The realistic character of Aquinas's doctrine appears strongly 
 in the argument by which he attempts to prove that no sins but 
 the first sin of the first man are imputed to us. 2 He sharply dis- 
 tinguishes between nature and person. Those things which 
 directly pertain to an individual, like personal acts, are not trans- 
 mitted by natural generation. The grammarian does not thus 
 communicate to his offspring the science of grammar. Accidental 
 properties of the individual may, indeed, in some cases, descend 
 from father to son, as, for example, swiftness of body. But quali- 
 ties which are purely personal are not propagated. As the per- 
 son has his own native properties and the qualities given by grace, 
 so the nature has both. Original righteousness was a gracious gift 
 to the nature at the outset, and was lost in Adam in the first sin. 
 " Just as original righteousness would have been transmitted to his 
 posterity at the same time with the nature, so also is the opposite 
 disorder (inordinatio} . But other actual sins of the first parent, 
 or of other later parents, do not corrupt the nature, as concerns its 
 qualities {quantum ad id quod naturce est), but only as concerns 
 the qualities of the person." 
 
 Original righteousness was principally and primarily in the sub- 
 1 Sum. Theol. II. qu. 81, art. I. 8 Ibid. art. 2.
 
 244 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 jection of the will to God. From the alienation of the will from 
 God, disorder has arisen in all the other powers of the soul. Hence 
 the deprivation of original righteousness, through which the will 
 was subject to God, is the first or formal element in original sin, 
 while concupiscence or " inordinatio " is the second, or material 
 element. Thus original sin affects the will, in the first instance. 
 Its first effect is the wrong bent of the will. Aquinas's analysis of 
 native, inherent depravity is substantially accordant with that of 
 Anselm. 
 
 The doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary was denied 
 by Anselm, and when a festival in her honor was established at 
 Lyons (1140) by those who espoused this opinion, it was com- 
 bated by Bernard of Clairvaux, who nevertheless held to her per- 
 fect ante-natal sanctification. It was even rejected by Bonaventura, 1 
 as well as by Aquinas ; but it was pronounced a probable truth by 
 Scotus. 2 It became more and more a tenet of the Franciscans, a 
 tenet against which the Dominicans protested. But despite this 
 difference, there was a prevailing impulse to glorify the Virgin as 
 a mediator with her son, and fitted to be such through her spot- 
 less innocence procured through grace by the retrospective effect 
 of the Redeemer's work. A kind of worship was accorded to her 
 even by Thomas, intermediate between strictly divine honors which 
 were due to God alone and the type of homage offered to the 
 saints. 
 
 1 "Teneamus secundum quod communis opinio tenet, Virginis sanctifica- 
 tionem fuisse post originalis peccati contractual." Lib. III. Dist. 3, art. I. 
 a Summa, P. III. qu. 27, art. 2.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES : THE ATONEMENT CONVERSION AND SANC- 
 TIFICATION JUSTIFICATION THE CHURCH AND THE PAPACY 
 
 AQUINAS retains the fundamental idea of Anselm's theory of the 
 Atonement, the idea of a full, objective satisfaction for sin. Yet 
 such is his conception of God as an absolute being that he denies 
 the strict necessity of the death of Christ as a means of redemption. 
 He even says that God is at full liberty to pardon sins outright, as a 
 man may forgive the injuries done to himself. This is a point in 
 which Aquinas departs from Anselm's view. Yet Aquinas holds to 
 a certain necessity in this case, since the mode of redemption 
 chosen of God is the best and the most adapted to the end in 
 view. 1 The Creator cannot satisfy for sins, on account of God's 
 infinite majesty, the infinite good even God of which sin 
 deprives man, and by reason of the possible repetition of Adam's 
 sin in an endless series of individuals. 2 The sufferings and death 
 of Christ are manifestations of the greatness of God's love which 
 are suited to awaken a reciprocal love in men, and to furnish to 
 them an example of holy obedience. Besides, Satan who de- 
 ceived man is by man overcome, and is displaced from a domin- 
 ion over men to which he had no right, yet under which God had 
 righteously left them. Christ in His humanity has voluntarily en- 
 dured every variety of suffering, including the pain which springs 
 from sympathy with sinful men. All this He has endured of His 
 own free will, in a spirit of obedience to. God. By this means, 
 satisfaction is made for sin. He satisfies who renders to an 
 offended party that which he loves more than he hates the offence. 
 God ever loves us for the nature which He has created, yet He 
 ever hates us as far as we are sinners. By reason of the exceed- 
 
 1 Sum. Theol. P. III. qu. 46, art. 2. 
 
 2 Ibid. P. III. qu. 46, art. 3. Ibid. art. 4. 
 
 245
 
 246 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 ing love of Christ, the extent and manifoldness of His sufferings, 
 the value of His life, Christ has in this way made satisfaction for 
 the sins of men not excepting the sins of those who put him to 
 death. In this satisfaction is included His universal obedience, 
 his fulfilment of the ceremonial law, He being the offering therein 
 typified, and of the moral law, to which he was obedient unto 
 death. He has rendered an equivalent for the dishonor which 
 God has suffered. It is a complete compensation. Thereby He 
 is placated as regards all the offences of those who are joined to 
 Christ. How is the atoning work of Christ available for the sal- 
 vation of men ? It is through his merit which redounds to their 
 benefit. Just as he who arrogates to himself more than belongs to 
 him justly suffers a forfeiture of things to which he has a right, so 
 he who relinquishes freely in a righteous spirit that which he 
 justly possesses, is entitled to a reward. The explanation of the 
 transfer of merit is in the conception of the mystical union of 
 Christ with His members. 1 When two persons become one through 
 love, the one can satisfy for the other. It is just as if the hand 
 were to atone by a meritorious act for a sin which had been com- 
 mitted by the foot. Christ is the head, mankind are the mem- 
 bers ; His followers actually, the whole race potentially. A full 
 satisfaction for sin and guilt has been rendered by the social body, 
 taken as a whole, through its head. Yet Aquinas does not adhere 
 with strict consistency to the conception of the Atonement as ob- 
 jective. One condition of our obtaining forgiveness of sins is love 
 on our part, excited in us by the love of Christ. For sins after 
 baptism we, like Christ, must endure pain and punishment. The 
 Passion of Christ is said to be the cause of remission of sins in 
 three ways, first as calling out love in us, secondly, by the mode of 
 redemption, the whole Church being, in connection with its head, 
 reckoned as one person, and third, as the flesh in which He en- 
 dured suffering is an efficient instrument whereby " His passions 
 and actions operate through a divine power for the expulsion of 
 sin." In one point, and that a very important one, Aquinas is in 
 full accord with Anselm. The satisfaction of Christ is pronounced 
 to be not only a sufficient, but a " superabundant " satisfaction for 
 the sins of the world. 
 
 1 " Caput et membra sunt quasi una persona mystica, et ideo satisfactio 
 Christi ad omnes fideles pertinet "... Sum. Theol. P. III. qu. 48, art. 2. 
 He is united to the race. Ibid. art. 3; cf. Schwane, DG. d. mittl. Zeit, p. 323.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 247 
 
 The theory of the Atonement advocated by Scotus is founded 
 on a radical difference in his philosophy from that of Anselm and 
 Aquinas. It is true that Aquinas says that it would be possible 
 for God to forgive without an Atonement, but this is said merely 
 in deference to the New Platonic idea of the Absolute which 
 enters into his conception of God. His exposition of the Atone- 
 ment carries this concession no farther. Scotus denies the fun- 
 damental principles of Anselm. The fundamental principle of 
 Scotus is the absoluteness of the divine will. The cause and 
 ground of all merit is " the divine acceptance," the divine will to 
 affix this or that estimate to whatever is done or suffered. There 
 is no objective criterion of value inhering in the thing itself. A 
 thing is good because God loves it. It is the reverse of the prop- 
 osition that He loves it because it is good. Had God pleased, 
 man might have been redeemed by acts of love done by Adam or 
 by an angel. 1 Scotus maintains that the merits of Christ are 
 finite, for He does not merit as God, but as man. Hence, 
 weighed by their intrinsic value they cannot be accounted infi- 
 nite, or as standing in the room of that which is infinite. But in 
 the circumstances and the dignity of Him who merits, there is an 
 extrinsic reason for accepting his merit as infinite, for counting it 
 as being what it really is not. 2 The merit of Christ thus derives 
 the value attached to it from the divine acceptance. It is a merit 
 of " congruity " and not of " condignity." That is to say, there is 
 that in it which is suitable for a sort or amount of recompense to 
 which its real desert bears no actual proportion. If it were a 
 merit of condignity it would carry in it a title to the complete bene- 
 fit awarded to it. Scotus says that it were possible for an angel or 
 a mere man, begotten without sin, to redeem mankind, but God 
 has chosen this way as a means of exciting love in us. He decides 
 to consider the merits of Christ a full atonement, to accept them for 
 more than their inherent value, independently of this acceptance. 
 
 Thenceforward, we have in the course of Christian theology two 
 general views of the Atonement. The first, which is often called 
 the Anselmic, and not infrequently the judicial, theory, makes the 
 atoning work of Christ the absolute, objective equivalent of the 
 punishment deserved by sin, and something required of divine 
 justice in the administration of the world. It embodied itself in 
 
 1 Oxon. L. 3, Dist. 20, qu. I, schol. 3; cf. Schwane, DG. etc., p. 330. 
 
 2 Ibid. L. 3, Dist. 19, qu. unica; cf. Schwane, p. 330.
 
 248 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the formula that Christ endured the penalty. The second or the 
 Scotist view rejects this proposition, and brings in the divine will 
 to supply a deficiency, to eke out that substitution which of itself 
 falls short of being an equivalent. If we look at the principal, 
 although not the exclusive, thought of Scotus in his attempt to 
 solve the problem, we find in him the moral view, which makes the 
 value of the sufferings and death of Christ to be the direct impres- 
 sion, which they are adapted to make, of the forbearance and 
 compassionate love of God. 
 
 On the subject of the divine agency in the conversion and sanc- 
 tification of the soul, the Schoolmen distinguish between preve- 
 nient and cooperative grace. It is this distinction, in connection 
 with the adoption by Aquinas of the terms descriptive of human 
 merit which were enshrined in the current orthodoxy, that raises 
 the question whether he holds fast to the Augustinian view. The 
 " prevenient " grace of God is said to act upon the will, enabling 
 and moving it to turn to God. This effect being produced, there 
 follows the " subsequent" or cooperative grace, whereby the divine 
 work in the soul is carried forward and the soul is qualified to 
 perform good works. The question is whether a real agency is 
 attributed to the will in the reception of the prevenient grace 
 of the prima gratia and in conjunction with the continued 
 influences of grace after this initiative. As to the first point, 
 grace being at the outset the sole efficient, no merit belongs to its 
 recipient. But in respect to what follows upon the first effect of 
 grace, the position of Aquinas is not quite so clear. We cannot 
 attribute to him the opinion that the will is a coefficient merely on 
 account of the statement that the bondage of the will is not the 
 destruction of the will ; for herein he is in accord with Augustine. 
 Aquinas says that " infused virtue is produced in us without our- 
 selves acting, but not without ourselves consenting" But this 
 language is possible to a believer in philosophical determinism. 
 Aquinas does not affirm the existence of a power of contrary 
 choice in the recipient of saving grace, even if he does not explic- 
 itly deny it. If we are governed in our interpretation by his 
 exposition of his deterministic creed respecting the will, we must 
 pronounce him a strict Augustinian. 1 But it is a fair question 
 
 1 Even Augustine, as we have seen, was not a determinist as concerns the 
 unfallen will. See supra, p. 184.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 240 
 
 whether he always consistently adhered to it. Merit is ascribed to 
 man. So far forth as his new life springs from his own will, it is 
 a merit of congruity alone, since the blessing or reward that is 
 bestowed is so vastly disproportioned to his action. But so far as 
 it springs from the agency of the Spirit of God, it is a merit of con- 
 dignity. Perseverance does not fall under the head of merit, 
 since it is a gift outright to whomsoever it is granted. Alexander 
 of Hales deviated from Augustinianism in attributing to men good 
 works antecedent to the infusion of grace. Bonaventura was of 
 the same mind. The Semi-Pelagian opinion was definitely set 
 forth by Duns Scotus. Man in the use of his natural powers, which 
 original sin has left unimpaired, can produce within himself such 
 dispositions of heart as to prepare himself to receive and to merit, 
 by the merit of congruity, the divine grace. This grace he re- 
 ceives, but can resist, and he can fall from grace. The powers of 
 the human will, apart from grace, were described by Occam as 
 sufficient for man's self-renewal, so far as reason enables us to 
 judge. It is only revelation that convinces us of the contrary. 
 
 Justification is an act of God imparting righteousness, and being 
 a divine act it is momentary. The analysis of the elements of 
 Justification which is presented by Aquinas gives the successive 
 steps, not according to the order of time, but in the order of 
 nature. 1 There is, first, the infusion of grace in the soul ; second, 
 the motion of the will towards God; third, the inward turning 
 away from sin; and, fourth, forgiveness. Thus right feelings, 
 incipient love, are the condition precedent of the bestowal of par- 
 don. The Schoolmen teach that it is faith that justifies. The 
 best of them present profound and spiritual ideas respecting faith, 
 yet its saving quality is defined by them to consist in the love that 
 enters into it. It is " Faith formed by love." The credence given 
 to the doctrines of the Church, when the animating principle of 
 love is included in it this is that which brings salvation. Hence 
 faith is set forth by Aquinas as a virtue, and in the order of Chris- 
 tian virtues stands first. In truth, a subtle legalism pervades the 
 Scholastic theory concerning what is required in the Gospel as 
 the condition of forgiveness. This characteristic is manifest in 
 the use that was made of the distinction between implicit and 
 explicit faith. Explicit faith is clearly conscious of its object, 
 namely, the articles of the creed. Implicit faith, as described by 
 
 Sum, TheoL P. II. i. qu. 113, art, I.
 
 250 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Aquinas, is the preparation of the mind "to believe what divine 
 Scripture contains." By him bounds are set to implicit or un- 
 developed faith, but by later Schoolmen, and still more in the 
 practical apprehension of the people, implicit faith was resolved 
 into a readiness to receive whatever the Church, the authoritative 
 teacher, might inculcate. Thus, very easily, and very commonly, 
 an unthinking docility was allowed to be substituted for enlight- 
 ened Christian perceptions of truth. The spirit of legalism is 
 manifest in the place given in the system of doctrine to the dis- 
 tinction between the "precepts" of the Gospel and the "counsels," 
 in the observance of which, Aquinas teaches, eternal life is attained 
 better and with greater facility. 1 From the old doctrine of works 
 of supererogation, works surpassing the limit of imperative require- 
 ments, there was developed by Alexander of Hales the idea of a 
 "treasury" of merits derived from them, and of a basis thus laid 
 for the doctrine of indulgences. 
 
 Under the Scholastic conception of Justification and of the 
 nature of faith, no foundation for assurance, for a sure and estab- 
 lished confidence in one's Christian standing, could exist. Ac- 
 cording to Aquinas, the only means open for attaining an assured 
 hope are certain signs or indications which, however, afford no 
 certainty, and an immediate revelation from God which is some- 
 times given to individuals as a special privilege. 
 
 The virtues are classified by Aquinas on the principle that man 
 is capable of a twofold blessedness. There is a blessedness which 
 is correlated to human nature in itself considered, and a blessed- 
 ness which surpasses this limit. The one is attainable by natural 
 principles ; the other only by divine power. The last is a certain 
 participation of the divine nature. Thus we have the natural 
 virtues, wisdom, justice, fortitude, temperance ; and the theological 
 virtues, faith, hope, and charity. 
 
 The nominalistic theology as it was set forth by Scotus and 
 Occam was within the recognized pale of orthodoxy. There 
 flowed from it important results in the domain of practical religion. 
 An Augustinian reaction, of which Bradwardine, a contemporary 
 of Occam, was a representative, was of little avail to stem the tide. 
 In connection with the nominalistic theology, and as a part of it, 
 there were propagated such views on the Sacraments as fomented 
 the prevailing tendency to make the means of salvation to be the 
 
 . Theol. P. II. i. qu. 108, art. 4.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 251 
 
 performance of meritorious works, coupled with a faith of which 
 the essence was an unquestioning submission to the Church as 
 the vehicle of revelation, and reliance on the Sacraments as the 
 channels of grace. 
 
 The influence of the idea of the Church as the community of 
 the faithful, of the elect children of God, an idea which retained 
 a degree of power in the thoughts of Augustine, continually waned. 
 More and more the Church came to be identified with the visible, 
 hierarchical organization. Patristic authority, running back to 
 Cyprian, and even farther, could be appealed to in support of 
 this principle at the root of the mediaeval conception ; but in the 
 carrying out of this principle there was a wide gulf between the 
 earlier and the later period. The exaltation of the hierarchy, 
 the absolute dependence of the laity upon the priesthood, existed 
 to an extent unknown in the patristic age. The privileges still 
 left to the laity in the concerns of the soul are so scanty as to be 
 the exception that proves the rule. Significant of the state of 
 thought that had long existed is the language of Philip the Fair in 
 his indignant answer to the haughty rebuke of Boniface VIII. : 
 " Holy Mother Church, the Spouse of Christ, is composed not 
 only of clergymen, but also of laymen." 
 
 The conversion of the Church into an ecclesiastical monarchy, 
 with almost absolute power in the Regent at Rome, was not the 
 work of theologians. Nor was its success in building up a world- 
 wide monarchy, to which nations and kings should be subject, 
 owing, as a main cause, to their craft or their ambition. The 
 Schoolmen came forward with formulas and arguments in behalf 
 of the result of an ecclesiastical development which had grown 
 out of tendencies long rife in the Church, and out of the condi- 
 tions of European society. The attempt to trace the growth of 
 hierarchical prerogatives and of the papacy would take us into the 
 field of jurisprudence. The subject belongs more to a record of 
 the rise and progress of canon law than to the history of doctrine. 
 In the alterations and accretions which that system experienced 
 from time to time, forgeries, of which the Pseudo-Isidorian decre- 
 tals were far from being the exclusive example a fraud which 
 nobody, at that time, was competent to detect and expose were 
 an auxiliary cause. But the structure, as a whole, arose from cir- 
 cumstances involved in the relation of the Church to the semi-
 
 252 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 civilized nations, and from the judaistic elements mingled in its 
 faith and its ceremonies. The compilation of Gratian in the 
 middle of the twelfth century was succeeded by the rapid growth 
 of a system of canon law. Enlarged collections, each outdoing 
 its precursor in exalting priestly and papal authority, appeared in 
 the next following centuries. Under such Popes as Alexander 
 III. and Innocent III., new decrees of councils and ordinances of 
 Popes carried the pretensions of the papal see to the highest point 
 short of an apotheosis of the sovereign pontiffs. The process 
 went on through the reign of Boniface VIII. 
 
 1. The old theory of the equality of bishops as regards the 
 essential basis of their office was given up. The Pope was not 
 only Vicar of St. Peter and universal bishop, but became the 
 Vicar of Christ, or of God, and under Christ, the fountain of 
 Episcopal authority, which from him is distributed among His 
 fellow-bishops. They are all His vicars. Their relation to the 
 Pope was compared by Aquinas to that of a Proconsul to an Em- 
 peror. The Pope having this station, supreme legislative power 
 was more and more attributed to him, and along with it a co- 
 extensive judicial authority. To him was ascribed the exclusive 
 right to depose bishops as well as to confirm their appointment, 
 to summon general councils, and to ratify, or to veto, their doings, 
 to dispose of benefices and to tax the churches, to grant absolu- 
 tion in all cases which he chose to reserve to himself, and to 
 decree canonization. 
 
 2. The personal infallibility of the Pope respecting Christian 
 doctrine remained a subject on which there were opposite opin- 
 ions. Yet papal infallibility is approved by Aquinas on the ground 
 of the prayer of Christ for Peter that his faith might not fail (Luke 
 xxii. 32). But much stress is laid on a priori reasoning, and on the 
 injunction, 'Feed my sheep ' (John xxi. 16, I7). 1 The Thomist 
 opinion on this point was espoused generally by the Dominicans. 
 
 3. The claims of the Popes to a superior authority in relation 
 to kings and princes were explained and asserted by Aquinas. 
 The doctrine was that the two swords, emblems of temporal and 
 spiritual authority, were given to Peter, but that the wielding of 
 the temporal sword is delegated to the Civil Power, which, how- 
 ever, is answerable for the use of it to the successors of the Apostle. 
 To the Church was given the power to bind and to loose, and 
 
 * Sententt. iv. distinct. 24, qu. 3, art. 2, ad. I.
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 253 
 
 this stretches over princes as well as subjects. The sentence in 
 the bull of Boniface VIII. (1302), the Unam sane tarn, which 
 declares that every human being is subject to the Roman pontiff, 
 occurs in Aquinas. If the priesthood, according to the current 
 doctrine and practice, were raised far above the laity, the Popes 
 were exalted to a corresponding height above all other holders of 
 the priestly office.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SCHOLASTIC DOCTRINES : THE SACRAMENTS 
 
 THE channels through which the grace of Christ is conveyed by 
 the clergy are the Sacraments. The general theory on this sub- 
 ject was framed upon the basis of Augustine's definition that a 
 sacrament is "the visible sign of an invisible grace." To this 
 conception there were added, by Hugo of St. Victor, and Peter 
 Lombard, the additional elements that the Sacrament is instituted 
 by Christ, is the visible image of the grace which it denotes, and 
 confers this very grace on the recipient. Aquinas gives a sys- 
 tematic form to the statements of the earlier Schoolmen. There is 
 a sanctifying efficacy in the Sacraments. The cause of the sancti- 
 fication flowing thence is Christ, all grace being ultimately due to 
 His sacrifice ; holiness and virtue are its form, its immediate 
 product ; eternal life is its end. " In the new covenant, through 
 the form they have their sanctifying power, while in the matter 
 they have their sign." 1 Since grace is invisible, the sign the 
 significatio of the Sacrament is by means of things visible. 
 It must be divinely instituted since it is God who is the 
 Sanctifier. 
 
 The need of Sacraments is founded by Aquinas on that pecul- 
 iarity of our nature by which we are led up to spiritual and intelli- 
 gible things by means of things corporeal and sensible, on the 
 effect of sin in rendering us more subject to things material, and 
 on the fact that our activity here has to do with corporeal exist- 
 ences. Aquinas conceded that had man remained in a state of 
 innocence the Sacraments would not have been necessary. 
 
 The number of the Sacraments remained quite unsettled until 
 
 the middle of the eleventh century. Abelard and Hugo of St. 
 
 Victor had made five to be the number. Peter Lombard em- 
 
 1 Schwane, DG. d. mittl. Zeit, p. 589. 
 
 254
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 255 
 
 braced seven in his list, orders and extreme unction being added 
 to the five. This number of seven was accepted by the leading 
 Schoolmen of the thirteenth century, but was not sanctioned by 
 an ecclesiastical decision until the Council of Florence in I439- 1 
 It comprises Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, 
 Extreme Unction, Orders, and Marriage. Baptism and the 
 Eucharist were usually pronounced the principal Sacraments. 
 The highest rank in the catalogue is assigned by Aquinas to 
 the Eucharist. He undertakes to point out the necessity of the 
 seven Sacraments, and their connection with one another. 2 In 
 Baptism is the birth to spiritual life ; advance to mature strength 
 is through Confirmation ; the nourishing of this inward life is 
 through the Eucharist. Were man sound in body and soul, free 
 from sin and evil, these three Sacraments would suffice. But for 
 the cure of his maladies, he needs Penance and Extreme Unction. 
 Moreover, a spiritual consecration in reference to this life is 
 requisite, which, as regards clerical duty, is imparted by ordina- 
 tion, and, as regards the preservation of offspring, by marriage. 
 Of the Sacraments there are three which are not to be repeated. 
 These are Baptism, Confirmation, and Orders. They stamp upon 
 the soul a certain " indelible character," but the precise nature of 
 this effect of grace it was found to be not easy to make clear. 
 Such an effect is said by Duns Scotus not to be ascribed to them 
 in Scripture, nor by the Fathers, but to be established on the 
 authority of the Roman Church. Durandus calls in question the 
 fact of such an internal character being imprinted. But the doc- 
 trine of Aquinas prevailed. 
 
 The transcendant importance of the Sacraments in the Scho- 
 lastic system is realized when we are told by Aquinas that it is by 
 them, through the hierarchy who administer them, that we are made 
 the recipients of that grace which renders us participants of the 
 divine nature. At the root of his philosophy in its bearing on the 
 subject is the idea of the mystical unity of the Church in one body, 
 having Christ for its head. In some way it is not explained ex- 
 actly how through the Sacraments the benefits of the passion of 
 Christ are applied to men. 3 The effect of the Sacrament is ex 
 
 1 For details as to the question of the number, see Schwane, p. 584 sq. 
 
 2 P. III. qu. 65, art. i. See, also, P. III. 62, 5, where Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper are said to be " potissima sacramenta." 
 
 3 The varieties of opinion are clearly set forth by Schwane, p. 592 sq.
 
 256 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 opere operate} That is to say, it is not dependent on the personal 
 character of the officiating priest. All that is requisite on his part 
 is the intention the intention to carry out the purpose of Christ 
 and the Church as regards the Sacrament which he administers. 
 What is required of the recipient in order to get the benefit implied 
 in the Sacrament is a question of vital moment. The Sacrament 
 was held to be not dependent for its efficacious power upon the 
 exercise of faith on his part. This is a distinction between the 
 Sacraments of the Old Covenant and the New. Aquinas reiterates 
 the statement of Augustine that where there is no faith the bless- 
 ing veiled in the Sacrament is not received. But the subjective 
 qualification was gradually reduced to a minimum. It was made 
 to consist, provided one is not in the state of mortal sin, merely 
 in the mental posture of non-resistance to the operation of the 
 Sacramental act, although its effect might be enhanced by a pious 
 disposition. So far was the theory of a quasi magical operation 
 of the Sacrament extended. Among the later Schoolmen, from 
 Scotus onward, in connection with the Sacraments of Penance and 
 Extreme Unction, a certain low measure of subjective qualification, 
 to which there was attributed a merit of congruity, was made the 
 sole prerequisite for the attainment of the full benefit. 
 
 1 . The form of Baptism is the use of the words used in the 
 institution of the rite. 2 Its effect is sanctification and forgiveness, 
 that is, Justification, which is received by the infant as well as by 
 the adult. The general opinion was that concupiscence as a prin- 
 ciple is not destroyed but weakened so that it does not longer reign 
 without our consent. 3 In this opinion Aquinas substantially concurs 
 with Peter Lombard. The sense in which " regeneration " was 
 predicated of the subject of Baptism was not clearly explained. 
 There are no exceptions to the necessity of Baptism, save in the 
 case of martyrs and where the intention to receive the rite exists, 
 but is prevented from being fulfilled without fault on the part of 
 the subject. The faith of sponsors is in lieu of the faith of children. 
 
 2. Confirmation in the Latin Church could be imparted only 
 by the Bishops, since it was held that they alone may anoint with 
 holy-oil, and chrism being the matter of the Sacrament. It confers 
 
 1 Aquinas, Sentent. iv. distinct, iii. qu. 64, art. 8. 
 
 2 The questions relative to the form are most fully considered by Alexander 
 of Hales. See Schwane, p. 606. 
 
 8 Sum. Theol. P. II. i. qu. 8l, art. 3.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 257 
 
 strength for growth in the divine life. Witnesses are necessary by 
 whom, as Aquinas teaches, the candidate, being, " as it were, 
 heretofore, weak and a child," is sustained. A spiritual relation- 
 ship is established between them and the candidate as between 
 the baptized person and the sponsors which precludes inter- 
 marriage. 
 
 3. The Eucharist was not, like Baptism, held to be indispensa- 
 ble to salvation. It sufficed to have the desire and the intention 
 to receive it, but the fulfilment of the purpose must not be wil- 
 fully neglected. In the twelfth century, the custom of admitting 
 children to the communion was abolished, the primary motive 
 being the increased veneration for the elements, and the danger 
 of dropping the bread and wine in the distribution of them. The 
 same motive led, at the outset, to the withholding of the cup from 
 the laity. Alexander of Hales is the first to speak of this custom 
 as common in the Church. Albert the Great was opposed to it. 
 It was advocated by Bonaventura and Aquinas. By the latter the 
 doctrine of concomitance was brought forward, the doctrine 
 that in virtue of a natural accompaniment, the blood of Christ is 
 in the consecrated bread. 1 It is enough that the priest alone re- 
 ceives the cup. This view was taken up by both of the great 
 orders, and prevailed. It added a new dignity to the priesthood. 
 
 The term ' transubstantiation ' first received an authoritative 
 sanction at the fourth Lateran Council, under Innocent III., in 
 1215. In the act of transubstantiation, it was the doctrine that 
 the whole Christ is in every part of the elements. There was an 
 abundance of subtle speculation in the effort to show that while 
 these occupy space, their parts, through the exercise of divine 
 power, do not. The miracle was asserted by Aquinas to be, not 
 an annihilation of the substance of the elements, but a conversion 
 of it into the substance of the Lord. 2 The doctrine of Peter Lom- 
 bard was accepted, that through an exercise of omnipotence, the 
 accidents the attributes of the elements are kept in being 
 when their substance is gone from them. 3 But Scotus held that 
 the substance of the elements is annihilated. By Occam there was 
 brought forward a doctrine of impanation or consubstantiality, 
 which had a resemblance to the later Lutheran conception. After 
 the eleventh century, an earlier Greek custom of elevating the 
 
 1 Sum. Theol, P. III. qu. 76, art. 2. 2 Ibid. III. qu. 75, art. 3. 
 
 8 Ibid. qu. 77, art. I. 
 s
 
 2 5 8 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 host, originally a merely symbolical act, spread among the Latins. 
 Attended by the ringing of a bell, it came to be the sign to the 
 people of the simultaneous occurrence of the miracle, and the 
 signal for them to fall on their knees. A festival of the adoration 
 of the host, which was introduced in 1259, was ordained for the 
 whole Church by Urban IV., in 1264. After debate it was decided, 
 in accordance with the teaching of Aquinas, that the transubstan- 
 tiated elements continue to be such, even if a mouse may chance 
 to eat of the converted bread. The doctrine was inherited from 
 the former period that the mass is a real offering, renewing and 
 repeating the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and giving peculiar 
 efficacy to the prayers for the living and for the dead which were 
 offered up in connection with it. The efficacy in averting evils 
 and procuring blessings that was supposed to inhere in masses, 
 led to a common practice of private masses, the priest alone being 
 present. At the same time, as it was only venial sins that obtained 
 pardon through this Sacrament, the reception of it came to have 
 a diminished importance in the eyes of the generality of people. 
 This prompted Innocent III., in 1215, to ordain that every layman 
 should confess and partake of the communion at least once in the 
 year. Penance the Sacrament of Confession and Absolution 
 from the benefits attainable through it, assumed in the popular 
 mind the highest importance. But among the Mystics, in the 
 cloisters, frequent communion was prized as the means of spiritual 
 union with the Lord. 
 
 4. In respect to Penance there took place in the Middle Ages the 
 most important changes in doctrine and practice. As early as the 
 eighth and ninth centuries, absolution began to be pronounced in 
 anticipation of the satisfaction or temporal penalties to follow upon 
 repentance and confession. For a long period the form of absolu- 
 tion was deprecatory. It was a prayer for the forgiveness of the 
 penitent. The three elements in the Sacrament were the contri- 
 tion of the heart, the confession of the mouth, and satisfaction by 
 the offender satisfactio opens. But as late as the twelfth cen- 
 tury, confession to a priest was not generally considered indispen- 
 sable to the obtaining of forgiveness, and if a priest was not at 
 hand confession might be made to a layman. In the thirteenth 
 century the doctrine assumed the definite form that while mortal 
 sins committed after baptism incur the penalty of eternal death, 
 by repentance and confession this is commuted into temporal pen-
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 259 
 
 alties, or satisfaction, to be adjudged by the priest. These penal- 
 ties are both vindicative and medicinal. The priest pronounces 
 absolution in the character of a judge administering the divine 
 law. This is the power of the keys. Thereafter the priest speaks 
 in the first person : ".Ego absolve te" To confess at least once a 
 year was made a law by Innocent III. 1 If there are no mortal 
 sins to confess, Aquinas holds that there must be a confession of 
 venial sins, an opinion from which Scotus dissented. With the 
 crusades there was introduced the practice of granting plenary 
 indulgences. As a basis for the doctrine of indulgences, or the 
 remission of temporal penalties imposed in connection with abso- 
 lution, Alexander of Hales and Albert the Great brought forward 
 the doctrine of the treasury of supererogatory merits, amassed by 
 Christ and the Saints, merits which may be set to the account 
 of the needy, to discharge the debt of satisfaction due from them. 
 Aquinas endeavors to show the reasonableness of this idea on the 
 ground of the mystical union, binding the Church together and to 
 its head. It is committed to the Pope, and to those to whom he 
 may delegate his prerogative, to dispense these merits by which 
 temporal penalties are cancelled. 2 
 
 This power of the Church through the Pope extends " in- 
 directly," says Aquinas to Purgatory. This was one of the 
 five abodes in the invisible world. These are: i. Hell, a place 
 of eternal suffering, the abode of those who die in mortal sin, 
 without absolution. The Schoolmen unite in affirming torment by 
 eternal fire. 2. The limbus of infants dying unbaptized limbus 
 signifying literally a border, as, for instance, the bank of a river. 
 In this abode the inmates are cut off from the vision of God, 
 but, it was generally held, are not subject to positive inflic- 
 tions of pain. 3. The limbus patrum the abode of the Old 
 Testament Saints, now, since the advent of Christ, turned into 
 a place of rest. 4. Purgatory, for souls not under condemna- 
 tion for mortal sin, yet doomed to temporal, terminable punish- 
 ments. These served the double purpose of an atonement and 
 of a means of purification. 5. Heaven, the abode of the souls 
 
 1 Lateran Council IV. c. 21. 
 
 2 This power of the Pope is exercised, as far as release from Purgatory is 
 concerned, not per modum judicii, but per modum suffragii, i.e., through 
 supplication to God. It is connected with the Pope's infallibility by Albert 
 and Aquinas. See Schwane, pp. 674, 548, 543.
 
 2 60 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 which at death need no purification and of souls cleansed in 
 the fires of Purgatory. Dante, as to his theology, was a disciple 
 of Thomas Aquinas, and his description of these several regions 
 is in the spirit of the orthodox doctrine. 
 
 The extension of the benefit of indulgences into the domain of 
 Purgatory for the sake of abridging the duration of its pains was 
 one of the baleful innovations in connection with the Sacrament 
 of Penance. Another modification, equally, if not more mis- 
 chievous in its practical effects, was the reduction of the " con- 
 trition," the first condition for the obtaining of absolution, to 
 a lower form of repentance. This doctrine was introduced by 
 Alexander of Hales 1 and Bonaventura, who taught that "attri- 
 tion," the " servile fear " of one who deplores sin from the dread 
 of hell, is a sufficient preparation to receive the Sacrament, which 
 operates to make good the deficiency. This doctrine does not 
 gain a place in the teaching of Aquinas, but it is prominent in the 
 theology of Scotus, who goes so far as to ascribe to this attrition 
 a merit of congruity. It is a disposition of heart whereby the 
 sinner merits the grace of the Sacrament, by which the work thus 
 begun attains to completion. 
 
 5. After the ninth century, the ancient custom of anointing 
 the sick which rested on James v. 14 (and Mark vi. 13) was 
 lifted to the rank of a Sacrament. Thomas Aquinas, differing 
 from the Schoolmen before him, taught that it was instituted, not 
 by the Apostles, but by Christ himself. 2 Scotus adopted this 
 opinion, which was sanctioned by the Council of Trent. The 
 spiritual effect came to be regarded as the chief benefit. The 
 physical advantage was secondary. It was to be applied, not to 
 the sick generally as of old, but only to those whose lives were in 
 peril. Its matter, as Aquinas explains, is the " oil blessed by the 
 bishop." It was to be put upon the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the 
 lips, the hands, the feet, the thighs. The minister of the Sacra- 
 ment is the priest, the effect is the " healing of the mind " and, it 
 might be, of the body also. It is only venial sins that are remitted 
 in this Sacrament. The remainders of sin are cleansed away. The 
 soul is strengthened for the struggle of death. There is a marked 
 indefiniteness in the descriptions of Extreme Unction, and of 
 its relation to the two great Sacraments of the Eucharist and 
 
 1 Sum. Theol. P. III. qu. 60, art. 3. See Schwane, p. 666. 
 8 Suppl. qu. 29, art. 3.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 2 6l 
 
 Penance. If the patient partially recovers, Unction may be re- 
 peated, provided there is a relapse and renewal of danger. 
 
 6. The number of orders, according to Aquinas, is seven. 
 Since the thirteenth century, all orders except bishops, priests, 
 and deacons have been termed " minor orders." Ordination 
 communicates to the priesthood sacerdotal authority and the 
 grace for the exercise of it. The priest is thus empowered 
 and qualified to dispense the Sacraments. It leaves an indeli- 
 ble character, and therefore is not to be repeated. What the 
 matter of this Sacrament is, it was not found easy to determine. 
 Aquinas confesses that while the efficacy of the other Sacra- 
 ments resides in the matter, here it rests in the person of the 
 administrator and from him passes to the person to be 
 ordained. The outward acts are the blessing, the laying-on of 
 hands, and the anointing. The minister of ordination is the 
 bishop. The question whether ordination by heretical bishops is 
 valid or not, was answered in the negative by Peter Lombard. 
 Aquinas teaches that the Sacrament in such a case is not ineffica- 
 cious, but fails to confer grace on account of the sin of receiving 
 ordination against the prohibition of the Church. As to the 
 relation of priests to bishops, it was the view of Aquinas, which 
 became prevalent, that they are of the same order, and differ only 
 in office. But the attempt was made to vindicate for bishops a 
 right of jurisdiction, a superiority of office, through the appoint- 
 ment of Christ. Scotus favored the view that the consecration 
 of bishops is a special Sacrament. 1 
 
 7. Marriage was pronounced a Sacrament. Yet it was a Sacra- 
 ment of which the priest was deprived, and the unmarried state 
 was regarded as higher than the married. To point out the 
 sacramental virtue of such a rite was attended with no small diffi- 
 culty. Aquinas taught that it received the character of a Sacra- 
 ment from Christ, since it became the symbol of His relation to 
 the Church (Eph. v. 32), and by Aquinas its indissoluble character 
 was reaffirmed. He taught that the form of the Sacrament is 
 the consent of the persons entering into the marriage relation. 
 The contracting parties are the ministers of the Sacrament ; yet 
 Aquinas makes the benediction of the priest to be "something 
 sacramental," although not the Sacrament itself. 2 By many, fol- 
 
 1 For the passages, see Schwane, pp. 679, 680. 
 
 2 Aquinas, Suppl. qu. 42, art. i, qu. 45, art. i, 2. Schwane, p. 688.
 
 2 62 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 lowing Augustine, a benefit of the Sacrament since the fall is the 
 check imparted to carnal appetite. 1 The common view was that 
 there is likewise imparted a positive gift of grace, having refer- 
 ence to the procreation and training of children, and the mutual 
 fellowship of man and wife. 
 
 The great Schoolmen, and foremost among them, Thomas Aqui- 
 nas, undertook the herculean task of harmonizing the existing opin- 
 ions and practices of the Church with the teaching of Augustine. 
 They virtually attempted and here Aquinas is the principal figure 
 to take up Aristotle into the company of the Apostles, and to 
 establish a concord in the circle thus constituted. The task was 
 an impossible one. As to the problems just stated, certainly as 
 to the first of them, Aquinas was the nearest to success, for he 
 kept nearer to the teaching of the prince of the Latin Fathers. 
 Augustine inconsistently admitted " merits " into his system, calling 
 them, however, gifts of God. The determinism of Aquinas, his 
 doctrine of the sole efficiency of prevenient grace and of the grace 
 which confers perseverance, are Augustinian elements. But an 
 ambiguity, to say the least, cleaved to the theory of cooperative 
 grace, and to the description of the kinds and degrees of merit 
 which pertain to the several types and stages of regenerated char- 
 acter. By Scotus, the Augustinian point of view was really super- 
 seded by the Semi- Pelagian. The system took on an ethical 
 character. But the nominalistic philosophy and the acknowledged 
 impossibility of explaining rationally the articles of faith compelled 
 theology to fall back on the will of God as the ground, and mirac- 
 ulous revelation as the only verification, of the realities of re- 
 demption as interpreted by the Church. This tendency culminated 
 in Occam, by whom, concerning the gravity of the first sin which 
 seemed to be less than it was revealed to be concerning the 
 Eucharist, and so concerning other articles of faith, what seemed 
 to be rational views were set in contrast with the authoritative 
 teaching of the Church, a teaching, nevertheless, which Occam 
 sincerely accepted. So far as practical religion is concerned, it 
 cannot be questioned that the widespread influence of the nomi- 
 nalistic theology, with its lower conception of the need of grace 
 and its exaggeration of the efficacy of the Sacrament of Penance, 
 had a demoralizing effect upon the popular mind. 
 
 1 Suppl. qu. 42, art. 2.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE CATHARISTS THE WALDENSIANS THE MYSTICS WESEL ; WES- 
 
 SEL ; SAVONAROLA THE DOCTRINES OF WYCLIF HUSS THE 
 RENAISSANCE AND ITS INFLUENCE ERASMUS 
 
 A VALUABLE book by Ullman bears the title, " Reformers before 
 the Reformation," a title which, as Ritschl has pointed out, is 
 somewhat misleading. It is true, not of all, but of most of the 
 movements and persons described in this work, that they did not 
 overstep the pale of Catholic doctrine, or break away from admis- 
 sible and sanctioned types of Catholic piety. The Catharists in 
 the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of whom the Albigenses were 
 a branch, revolted against the hierarchy and mingled in their 
 opinions a dualism which was caught up from Eastern sects whose 
 influence spread into the West. They were in general loosely 
 and incorrectly styled Manichaeans. The Catharists have no place, 
 except as a striking phenomenon, in the history of doctrine. Even 
 the Waldensians, in their attachment to the Scriptures and in 
 their interest in engaging the laity in the work of preaching, were 
 chargeable with no heresy. 1 They accepted the Sacraments of the 
 Church. In their ideal of poverty they were far from standing 
 alone. In this particular and in their evangelistic labors they 
 anticipated the Franciscans. The Waldensians sought for the 
 recognition of the Church and the Pope. It is true, however, 
 that they discarded the doctrine of Purgatory and of Indulgences. 
 And the Waldenses of Lombardy, when the persecution of them 
 set in, went farther, rejecting the worship of images, of saints, and 
 of Mary. But in respect to the method of salvation, the Wal- 
 
 1 For the true history of the early Waldenses, see the works of Dieckhoff 
 and Herzog, Miiller, Die Waldenseru. ihre einzel. Gruppen biszum Anfangdes 
 \ifjahrhunderts (1886), and Comba, Hist. d. Vaudois d' Ital. (1887), and his art. 
 Waldenser (Real-Encykl. XVI. 610 sq. See, also, Harnack, DG. III. 366 sq.). 
 
 263
 
 264 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 denses, generally speaking, did not forsake the accredited theology 
 in any essential particulars. They had no perceptible influence 
 in giving rise to the Protestant movement. The Gallican leaders 
 who were so conspicuous in the Reforming Councils of the fifteenth 
 century, contended for the supreme authority of the collective 
 Episcopate, and this was affirmed at Constance. A General 
 Council they held, as far as it represents the universal Church, 
 is infallible. But they were outdone by none in their zeal for 
 Church authority, they were unshaken in their faith in a media- 
 torial priesthood, and they clung to the Catholic dogmatic system. 
 The Mystics of the fourteenth century and their disciples, 
 especially the German school of Mystics, did pave the way for 
 the Reformation by inculcating, by precept and example, the 
 inwardness of true religion, and by making the value of the 
 doctrines to consist in their relation to practical piety. Among 
 the most eminent of the later Mystics are Master Eckart, Henry 
 Suso, John Tauler, Ruysbroek, Thomas a Kernpis, and the anony- 
 mous author of the little work which Luther prized so highly, 
 The German Theology. It is a mistake to think that the 
 Mystics intended to depart, or that any of them in a marked 
 degree did depart, from Catholic teaching or from approved types 
 of Catholic piety. Most of them were Dominicans, imbued with 
 deep respect for the writings of Thomas Aquinas, and developing 
 their theological statements from portions of his teaching. Some 
 of them, it is true, especially Master Eckart, propounded specu- 
 lations on the being of God and His relation to the soul, which, 
 literally taken, are Pantheistic, and called out censure. But in 
 this procedure they were pressing with emphasis a conception 
 of God, the basis of which was in Augustine and Aquinas, and in 
 the Areopagite. Eckart in his deep, practical convictions was a 
 theist. The Mystics did not undervalue an active life of duty, 
 a life of faithful labor in one's vocation. Along with it they 
 placed the contemplative life, the blissful communion with God, 
 as the supreme object of aspiration. The path to this experience 
 was through purification, inward illumination, and union to God. 
 By these means the veil is withdrawn from the eyes and one be- 
 comes a new creature. As Suso explains the steps of this experi- 
 ence, one must emancipate himself from love to created things 
 and from the hope of peace through them. In accomplishing 
 this, the Sacraments the Lord's Supper and Penance are an
 
 MEDIAEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 265 
 
 essential aid, and, with these, absorbing reflection upon the love 
 of God to sinners. Then follows the partaking of Christ by 
 the sympathetic contemplation of His sufferings. Their atoning 
 efficacy by which we are delivered from wrath is recognized, 
 but the stress is laid on the love therein manifested, and on the 
 Lord's example of purity and patience. The cross is to be taken 
 up and self-seeking eradicated. Lastly, there is "the birth of 
 God " in the soul, and the entering of the divine being into the 
 inmost depths of the spirit. The soul comes into an ineffable 
 union with Him. The language of Suso is Pantheistic, but this 
 is not its real intent. God and man are still held to be essen- 
 tially distinct. The mystical piety had in Germany numerous 
 circles of votaries. It did not carry with it a departure from 
 the Catholic idea of grace and of faith. Yet not by faith, but 
 by love and adoring self-renunciation, comes salvation. Regen- 
 eration, not justification, was the engrossing idea. 
 
 There were individuals who are often counted as forerunners 
 of Luther, and who gave utterance to evangelical thoughts, but 
 who, nevertheless, did not, at least consistently, teach a doctrine 
 wholly at variance with Catholic precedents. Such are Wesel 
 and Wessel, who attacked abuses connected with indulgences. 
 But the same thing was done by many, and the blows of these 
 teachers were not aimed at the root of the tree. When they 
 dwelt on the Church as a spiritual body, they could quote in 
 behalf of their fundamental idea Augustine and Aquinas ; yet 
 they used expressions which broke through the restrictions of 
 Scholastic theology and the claims of the rulers of the Church 
 to a divinely given jurisdiction. Savonarola was a preacher of 
 righteousness and an assailant of ecclesiastical corruption. His 
 tract, written in prison, on the fifty-first Psalm, spoke of justifi- 
 cation in a strain that called forth an encomium from Luther. 
 Yet the Florentine Reformer was a Thomist in his theology. 
 
 It was Wyclif who carried his warfare, which began in opposition 
 to offensive practices in the Church, to the length of an explicit 
 antagonism to important articles in its creed. In this course, he 
 was followed, but with slower steps, by his more conservative 
 disciple, John Huss. Wyclif was a Realist and an Augustinian, 
 and followed Bradwardine in the advocacy of determinism. In 
 the earlier portion of his career, or prior to 1366, it is true that 
 he strongly asserted the normal authority of Scripture, and de-
 
 2 66 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 fined the Church as consisting of the body of the elect ; but for 
 these statements he could cite Augustine, and he did not pro- 
 pound negative inferences destructive of the deference paid to 
 tradition and to the hierarchy. Even after he fairly engaged in 
 the struggle in behalf of the rights of the civil power, and against 
 hierarchical domination, he had no quarrel with the Franciscan 
 type of piety, and spoke approvingly of St. Francis and his order. 
 He declared excommunication, even when pronounced by the 
 Pope, not to be necessarily valid or harmful. After 1377, and 
 during the Papal Schism, he sharpened his weapons and advanced 
 in his opinions so far as to express doubts as to the doctrine of 
 transubstantiation. After his theses on this subject were con- 
 demned at Oxford, his dissent from Roman tenets became more 
 definite and extended. He affirmed that the Roman Church 
 might err in doctrine. He distinctly rejected transubstantiation, 
 and presented a view of the Eucharist not dissimilar from that of 
 Augustine. In his last and principal work, the Trialogus, his re- 
 formatory views pertaining both to doctrines and rites are fully 
 exhibited in their mature form. 1 Papal decrees are asserted to 
 have no validity except so far as they rest on Scripture. He 
 opposes transubstantiation, ascribing the acceptance of it to the 
 substitution of faith in Papal decisions for faith in the Scriptures. 
 He asserts that meddling with civil affairs should be interdicted 
 to the clergy. It is doubtful whether there is a Scriptural founda- 
 tion for Confirmation. There is no necessity for auricular con- 
 fession, and no Scriptural authority for Extreme Unction, or for 
 Unction in connection with baptism and confirmation. There is 
 no ground for the multiplied ranks of the clergy, popes, cardi- 
 nals, patriarchs, monks, canons, etc. The doctrine of indulgences 
 and of supererogatory merits is discarded. Begging, as practised 
 by the mendicant monks, is not a Christian virtue. Included 
 in the rites and practices which are condemned by Wyclif are 
 Church music, Church asylums for criminals, canonization, pil- 
 grimages, celibacy of the clergy, etc. In the light of such state- 
 ments, one might be led to consider him not only a Protestant, 
 but even a Protestant of the Puritan type. Nevertheless, his 
 conception of faith and of its part in the process of Justification 
 was essentially Catholic, and the same is the fact respecting his 
 radical view of the office and operation of the Sacraments. Huss 
 1 For copious extracts, see Gieseler, Kirchengesch. III. iv. i. 8 n. 21.
 
 MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY 
 
 267 
 
 was strongly influenced by the teachings of Wyclif, but he was not 
 led to renounce the doctrine of transubstantiation, while he insisted 
 that the cup should be given to the laity. The later Bohemian 
 brethren were moved by the intervening conflicts to depart more 
 widely from the traditional creed, and were prepared to receive 
 with sympathy the doctrine of Luther. 
 
 The development of the new languages and the rise of a 
 national literature in the European countries were early signs 
 of a weakening of the control of medievalism. Many of the 
 writings which appeared in Italy, France, Germany, and England 
 in the vernacular tongues, chastised the vices of the clergy and 
 the corruptions of the Church. But in such writings as the 
 Vision of Piers Ploughman by Langland, the poems of Chaucer, 
 the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, there was no 
 thought of a crusade against the principle of sacerdotal authority 
 or the spiritual supremacy of the Popes. 
 
 From the Revival of Learning from that new culture and 
 intellectual tone which are designated as Humanism there went 
 forth a . mighty influence which was felt within the sphere of 
 theological doctrine. The centre of this movement was Italy. 
 Dante had found the voice of Virgil hoarse from long disuse, but 
 the Roman authors, and after them the Greek writers, were more 
 and more read with delight. Petrarch inspired his countrymen 
 with a passion for the classic productions of antiquity. The 
 monasteries of the West were ransacked for manuscripts of the 
 ancient poets, philosophers, and orators. Scholars came from 
 the East to Florence and other cities. Before and after the fall 
 of Constantinople, in 1453, the treasures of Greek learning were 
 conveyed to the West. The new art of printing lent its aid to 
 the diffusion of copies of the ancient authors, together with 
 dictionaries and grammars, versions and commentaries. From 
 Italy the new light spread abroad in the countries north of the 
 Alps. 
 
 Scholasticism lost its vital power through the reign of Nominal- 
 ism, but its fall was hastened by the newly awakened literary 
 taste, and the disdain engendered for the comparative illiteracy, 
 the wiredrawn subtlety, and endless wrangling of the Scholastic 
 teachers. The ascendency of the clergy was diminished in pro- 
 portion as they ceased to be exclusively the educated class,
 
 268 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 or, at least, the sole almoners of learning, and as knowledge and 
 cultivation were diffused among the laity. The effect of Human- 
 ism was to produce in some cases skepticism and indifference in 
 matters of religion, and, in other cases, an earnest search for its 
 fundamental truths. But the writings of the Fathers were com- 
 pared with their Scholastic interpreters and with the creed of the 
 Church. Better than all, the Scriptures of the Old and New 
 Testament were studied in the original languages. In the acad- 
 emies of Italy, a skeptical spirit mingled to a hurtful extent with a 
 blind adulation of antiquity. The Council of the Lateran (1512- 
 1517) felt itself called upon to affirm the immortality and individ- 
 uality of the soul. A service was rendered to the cause of truth 
 by the exposure of historical mistakes and of forgeries, as in the 
 case of the Donation of Constantine, which Laurentius Valla 
 proved to be a fiction. In Germany, the new learning was culti- 
 vated in a religious spirit. Earnest inquirers examined the Fathers 
 and the Scriptures with critical zeal, but without any taint of 
 irreverence. Of these Reuchlin, an untiring but devout scholar, 
 the leader of the foes of obscurantism, was a typical example. In 
 England, Colet, whose expository lectures on the Epistles of St. 
 Paul were listened to by an eager throng of hearers, and Thomas 
 More, were advocates of the new learning. With Colet and More 
 there was associated for a time the prince of the Humanists, 
 Erasmus. The Praise of Folly was written at More's house. 
 It can be said truly of Erasmus that his great purpose through 
 life was to deliver the minds of men from superstition and dog- 
 matism, and to bring in a reign of culture and liberality, of a 
 simpler and purer Christianity. Besides the blows which he 
 struck at what he considered " the Pharisaic Kingdom " by his 
 humorous and satirical writings, he rendered a great service of a 
 positive nature by his edition of the Greek Testament, with a 
 Latin translation, by his editions and translations of the Fathers, 
 by his Commentaries and his treatise on preaching. In his 
 writings we see everywhere the evidences of the arrival of the 
 modern, as distinguished from the mediaeval, age. He has been 
 called " the precursor and introducer of the modern spirit." But 
 not even Erasmus was disposed to reject any of the articles of the 
 creed as defined by the authority of the Church or to disown that 
 authority. More lived to be the champion and martyr of the 
 traditional faith.
 
 
 PART III 
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 PERIOD IV 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY THE 
 AGE OF POLEMICS THE CRYSTALLIZING OF PARTIES 
 AND CREEDS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF LUTHER 
 
 NONE who are acquainted with the history of Luther need to be 
 told that he did not start upon his career as a Reformer, either from 
 the point of view of a theological critic, or as an assailant of the 
 authority of the Church or of the Pope. His simple motive was 
 to put an end to certain practical abuses which, as he deeply felt, 
 were working dire mischief both to religion and morality. The 
 development of new theological opinions in his mind was closely 
 connected with the progress of his religious experience. It kept 
 pace with his gradual deliverance from the thraldom of fear and 
 the attainment of freedom and peace, through the clear perception 
 of the distinction between law and Gospel. In the cloister he had 
 been a student of Augustine, and of Occam, D'Ailly, and other nomi- 
 nalistic Schoolmen. He was affected by Mystics, who partook of 
 the spirit of St. Bernard, and by such writings as the sermons of 
 Tauler, and that devout little treatise, which he edited in 1516, the 
 " German Theology." But his strong, ethical feeling, his vivid 
 sense of personality in God and man, and of personal responsi- 
 
 269
 
 270 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 bility, kept him from embracing Mysticism in its peculiar char- 
 acter as a system of devotion. It is possible to trace the progress 
 of Luther's mind, step by step, from the year 1513, until he 
 reached a distinct perception and firm grasp of the doctrine that 
 salvation, from beginning to end, is an absolutely free gift of God's 
 grace. 1 The vestiges of a notion of merit, which was inherited 
 from Augustine and the Schoolmen, ceased at length to mingle in 
 his enunciation of this profound conviction. As early as 1516, he 
 propounds the statement that faith is Gwcjustitia interior inward 
 righteousness ; that yet it is the gift of God, and the source, not 
 the consequence, of good works. 2 But utterances like these were 
 simply a reflex of his religious life ; they were not set forth in the 
 way of opposition to the reigning orthodoxy. In 1517, in the 
 95 Theses, he affirmed that the Pope can remit no penalties which 
 he has not the power to impose ; 3 that he has no more power 
 in relation to purgatory than any other bishop, or even any other 
 curate has within his own precinct ; 4 that true contrition seeks and 
 loves punishment ; 5 that the true treasure of the Church is the 
 Holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God. 6 " At that time, so 
 far was he from any thought of breaking with the Church or rebel- 
 ling against Rome, that he describes himself as having been then 
 a monk and a mad Papist." 7 Inconsistent expressions respect- 
 ing the Pope and his authority, signs of a vacillation of feeling on 
 this topic, which continued for a considerable period, indicate not 
 insincerity, but simply that he was feeling his way on a dimly 
 lighted path. He tells us that he was of the number, of whom 
 Augustine said that he was one, who advance gradually, by writing 
 and teaching. 8 The Disputation at Leipsic, in July, 1519, was 
 the occasion of calling out from him the avowal of a conviction to 
 which he had now arrived, that the Church could exist without a 
 Pope a fact, he said, of which the Greek Church furnished an 
 example and that not even a General Council is infallible. It 
 was during the last half of the year 1520, that there were issued 
 from his pen three publications of great historic significance, both 
 
 1 A catena of illustrative passages is given by Loofs, DG. p. 346 sq. 
 
 2 Weimar, ed. I. 118, 25-30; Loofs, p. 351. 
 
 8 Theses, 5, 20. 5 Ibid. 40. 
 
 * Ibid. 25. 6 Ibid. 62. 
 
 7 Prof. Oper. (1545). In a letter to Leo X. (May 30, 1518) he calls the 
 Pope's will the " voice of Christ." De Wette, Brief e, etc., I. 122. 
 
 8 Praf. Oper. (1545).
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 271 
 
 from the effect produced by them and as exhibiting his now 
 ripened beliefs. In his Address to the German Noblesse, he 
 struck a blow at the root of the entire hierarchical system by de- 
 claring that the priest is not distinguished from the layman, save 
 that the priest exercises, at the bidding of the Church as its repre- 
 sentative, a ministerial office. All disciples are priests. If an 
 exigency should exist where consecration by bishops could not be 
 obtained, it might be dispensed with. The choice of the brethren 
 would be sufficient. 
 
 In the " Babylonian Captivity of the Church," he takes up the 
 subject of the sacraments. There is a threefold bondage, he de- 
 clares, under which Christians have been placed. First, there is 
 the withholding of the cup in the sacrament. Secondly, there is 
 the theory of transubstantiation, against which he argues, although 
 he says that any one who will may accept it. He preaches the 
 doctrine that the bread and wine are not changed as to their sub- 
 stance, but that in and with them the body and blood of Christ are 
 imparted and received. Thirdly, there is the false doctrine that 
 the sacrament is an opus operatum is effective for good inde- 
 pendently of faith and that it is a sacrifice. Without faith, sac- 
 raments are declared to be useless. As to infants, the faith is that 
 of those who bring them to baptism. Afterwards Luther taught 
 that there might be a nascent faith imparted in baptism to infants 
 themselves. 1 Private confession is profitable, but it may be made 
 to a lay brother. All baptized persons are, in reality, priests. The 
 ordained priest may even remit his office and become a layman. 
 However sacred and exalted may be the works of priests and of 
 the religious orders, " they differ not at all in the sight of God 
 from the works of a husbandman laboring in his field or a woman 
 attending to her household affairs." " Of the sacrament of orders, 
 the Church of Christ knows nothing; it was invented by the 
 Church of the Pope." 
 
 In the little treatise on " Christian Liberty," Luther rises above 
 the level of polemics into a more serene atmosphere. He pre- 
 sents a glowing picture of the freedom which belongs to the soul 
 united by a living faith to God and Christ. Precepts " show us 
 what we ought to do, but do not give us the power to do it." 
 Taught that he is impotent, a man finds in himself no means of 
 sa.Vation and justification. Then come the promises of God, words 
 1 The subject is discussed at length in his Larger Catechism.
 
 2/2 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of holiness, truth, righteousness, and peace. The soul cleaves to 
 them with a firm faith, is penetrated by them, absorbed by them. 
 It receives from Christ all that are His grace, life, salvation. 
 Such a man will not be careless or lead a bad life, but will feel no 
 need of works as a ground of justification. " It is not from works 
 that we are set free by the faith of Christ, but from the belief in 
 works, that is, from foolishly presuming to seek justification through 
 works." " Repentance comes from the law of God, but faith and 
 grace from the promises of God." 
 
 In 1521, Melanchthon published the Loci Communes, the first 
 of the Protestant works in systematic theology. He was at this 
 time but twenty- four years of age, having been born in 1497. 
 Luther was born in 1483 and was, therefore, about fourteen years 
 older. Melanchthon was a remarkable instance of precocity in 
 youth, the promise of which was nobly fulfilled in maturer years. 
 His Commentary on the Romans was issued in 1522, so that he 
 was the pioneer among Protestants in exegesis as well as in dog- 
 matics. Of his modifications of opinion we shall speak later. 
 Erasmus was pleased with the first movements of the Saxon Re- 
 formers, but more and more stood aloof from them as the com- 
 bat thickened, and it became evident that it would lead to a 
 rupture in the Church. He dreaded the effect of the controversy 
 on the cause of learning. He shrunk from participating in a doc- 
 trinal conflict, all the more when his sympathy with neither party 
 was undivided. His preference was to maintain a position of 
 neutrality, at least of silence ; but he was too prominent a person 
 for this to be possible. Urged in many quarters to come out on 
 the side of the Church, he at length ventured to take the field in 
 an assault upon Luther's teaching, at a point where it seemed 
 especially vulnerable and where an opponent might count upon 
 extensive support. 1 In 1524, he published his book De Servo 
 Arbitrio, in which he defended the Semi-Pelagian doctrine. Lu- 
 ther, moved by the purpose to magnify grace and to destroy 
 every possible basis of merit, had asserted the Augustinian doc- 
 trine of the Will, carrying it beyond the limit set by Augustine 
 himself. In his reply to Erasmus, he reiterated with vehemence 
 his propositions relative to human impotence and the absolute 
 control of God within the sphere of man's voluntary action. 
 
 1 Details respecting the relations of Luther and Erasmus, with illustrative 
 extracts, are given in my History of the Reformation, p. 127 sq.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 273 
 
 Far more serious than the debate with Erasmus was the great 
 Sacramentarian controversy with the Zwinglians, which began 
 about the same time. The Conference at Marburg in 1529 failed 
 to establish fellowship between the contending parties. At the 
 Diet in 1530, the Augsburg Confession, the authoritative exposition 
 of the Lutheran theology, and the most influential of all the Prot- 
 estant creeds, was presented by Melanchthon, its author, after it 
 had previously been approved by Luther. The copious Apology 
 for the Confession was likewise written by Melanchthon. In 
 1537, the Smalcald Articles were signed by the members of the 
 League of Smalcald. They were composed by Luther, to be laid 
 before a General Council which was expected to be held under 
 the auspices of Pope Paul III. The small and the larger Cate- 
 chisms of Luther, owing to their extensive use, may be counted 
 among the authoritative symbols of Lutheranism. 
 
 From the religious experience of Luther there emerged two 
 principles, which were not only the denning characteristics of his 
 theology, but were likewise the essential principles of Protestantism 
 everywhere. At present we confine our attention to Luther's teach- 
 ing and to the Lutheran system. The first, the " material," princi- 
 ple, is justification by faith alone. The second is the normative 
 authority of the Bible. 
 
 How shall a sinful man, conscious of his sins and self-condemned, 
 acquire that standing before God who abhors sin, that conscious- 
 ness of his love and favor, which belongs of right to one who has 
 been perfectly obedient to the Divine law? The answer is, by 
 nothing that he can do, by no merit of his own, but by faith alone, 
 on account of Christ. And what is justifying faith? It is, in the 
 words of Luther, " a certain sure confidence of heart and firm as- 
 sent by which Christ is apprehended, so that Christ is the object 
 of faith, nay, not the object, but, so to speak, in faith itself Christ 
 is present." 1 The believer is " cemented " to Christ, so that the 
 two are made, as it were, one person, inseparably united, so that 
 the believer can say, ' I am Christ, that is, the righteousness, vic- 
 tory, life, etc., are mine ' ; and in turn Christ can say, ' I am that 
 sinner, because he cleaves to me and I to him, for we are joined 
 by faith as members of His body, of His flesh, and His bones ' 
 (Eph. v. 30). 2 This close fellowship with Christ is part and par- 
 
 1 Ad. Gal. ii. 16 {Works, Erlangen ed. I. 191), 
 
 2 Gal. ii. 20 ( Works, I. 246). 
 
 T
 
 274 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 eel of justifying faith. The believer " is not thereby justified fully 
 and actually, but in hope. He has begun to be justified and 
 healed," so that what is left of sin, " by reason of Christ," is not 
 imputed to him. 1 There is remission of sins, reconciliation to 
 God ; but the foundation of the entire blessing is the atoning 
 work of Christ. It is the "apprehensive " quality of faith, not any 
 love, not any moral excellence of any sort, that is involved in it, 
 that gives to faith its justifying quality. 2 Melanchthon, in the 
 Apology, says : " We teach that rewards have been offered and 
 promised to the works of believers. We teach that good works 
 are meritorious, not for the remission of sins, for grace or justifi- 
 cation (for these we obtain only by faith), but for other rewards," 
 according to i Cor. iii. 8. "There will be different rewards, 
 according to different labors." 3 
 
 The Reformers and this remark applies to Calvin as well as 
 to Luther and his associates make personal Assurance a part of 
 saving faith. It is included in the definition of faith in the 
 Augsburg Confession (Art. IV.), and in the Apology. The same 
 is true of several other Lutheran Confessions of an early date. 
 The happy release which the Reformers personally gained from 
 the bondage of fear, imposed by the mediaeval doctrine of 
 merit, naturally led to exaggeration on this topic. " The knowl- 
 edge of the faith," says the Apology, " brings sure and firm con- 
 solation to pious minds." 4 In various ways for example, in 
 dealing with Christians afflicted with distrust the early Re- 
 formers did not adhere consistently to the position thus taken. 
 It was long, however, before it was explicitly abandoned. 5 
 
 Such is the nature of faith that good works, such as the law 
 requires, are its necessary fruit. The law is powerless either to 
 give peace of conscience, or to engender righteous conduct. But 
 
 1 Ad. Gal. ii. 1 7 sq. 
 
 2 " If faith receive the remission of sins on account of love, the remission of 
 sins will always be uncertain because we never love as much as we ought." 
 Apol. p. 107. (The pages refer to Miiller's Symbolische Bitcher. I have 
 frequently used, with slight revision, Jacobs's The Symbol. Books of the Evan- 
 gel. Luth. Ch., Vol. I. Philadelphia, 1882.) 
 
 8 Apol. p. 121. 4 Ibid. 117. 
 
 6 The Confession of the Westminster Assembly denies that Assurance is 
 "of the essence of saving faith." As to the creeds as related to this subject, 
 see Cunningham's The Rtformtn a,n<i the Theology of the Reformation^ Essay 
 III. pp. 124, 125.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 275 
 
 faith is efficacious for this last effect, as well as for the first. It is 
 so, not through any legal spur, but because right conduct is as the 
 free and natural product of a penitent soul, pardoned and brought 
 nigh to God, through Christ, and laying hold of the promises of 
 mercy in the Gospel. " Believers," says Luther, " are a new 
 creature, a new tree. Therefore all those modes of speech, which 
 are customary in the law, belong not here, as : 'a believer should 
 [or is bound to] do good works.' As it is not proper to say : 
 ' the sun should shine,' but it does this of itself, unbidden ; for it 
 is made for this ; so a good tree of itself brings forth good 
 fruits ; three and seven are ten already, they are not first bound 
 to be ten. To say of a sun that it ought to shine, of a believer 
 that he must do good, is ridiculous." * 
 
 No unprejudiced student, whose mind is not of too prosaic a 
 cast to be capable of interpreting a writer so full of force and 
 imagination, a writer whose natural ardor breaks out in hyperbole, 
 and whose vehemence and humor are alike irrepressible, will think 
 of charging Luther with a lax sense of moral obligation or a weak 
 apprehension of the guilt of sin. His writings, not to speak of 
 his own religious experience, abound in contradictions to such a 
 reproach. An exhortation like " pecca fortiter " " sin on bravely ' ' 
 is addressed to Melanchthon, one of the most conscientious of 
 men, to overcome his distrust in the amplitude of God's forgiving 
 mercy. It is an extravagant mode of setting forth the Pauline 
 declaration that where sin abounds, grace much more abounds. 2 
 When the Saxon Reformers, Luther especially, use language that 
 might seem to undervalue " the law," they are speaking of law as 
 the ground of justification. The Apostle Paul had to guard him- 
 self against a censorious criticism not unlike that to which they 
 have been subject. 
 
 Justification then, according to Luther and his followers, was 
 forensic. Its prime element is the remission of sins. The prop- 
 osition was that faith is imputed for righteousness, on account of 
 the union of the believer with the Righteous One. The same 
 theory, later especially, was expressed in the statement that the 
 
 1 Luther's Works (Halle ed.), xxii. 717. 
 
 2 Dean Church is more just to Luther than are many of the same school as 
 himself. See his remarks on the misinterpretation of the " pecca fortiter," as 
 if it were " a provocation to sin or an excuse for it." The Oxford Movement, 
 p. 307, note.
 
 276 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer. That is to 
 say, he is dealt with as if the righteousness of the Saviour were 
 literally his own achievement. The distinct separation of the 
 active obedience of Christ from his passive obedience, or endurance 
 of suffering, and the doctrine of the imputation of both, belongs 
 to the later form of Lutheran theology. 
 
 When Luther refers to the Atonement, he often dwells on the 
 conquest by Christ of sin and death and Satan. But he uses 
 the strongest language in describing the vicarious endurance by 
 Christ of the curse denounced against sinners in the law. " Christ 
 took all our sins upon him, and for them died upon the cross : 
 therefore it behoved that he should become a transgressor, and, 
 as Isaiah the prophet saith, ' be reckoned and accounted among 
 transgressors and trespassers.' " "Christ is innocent as concern- 
 ing his own person, and therefore he ought not to have been 
 hanged on a tree. . . . But Christ sustained the person of a sinner 
 and a thief, not of me, but of all sinners and thieves." 1 The 
 divinity of Christ is evident from the work which he accom- 
 plished ; for to overcome sin and death, the curse and divine wrath 
 itself, he " must needs be truly and naturally God." 
 
 It is not in the Commentary on the Galatians alone that Luther 
 fervently insists on the truth of Christ's unification of Himself with 
 us, and of the unification of ourselves with Him through faith. In 
 all his writings which pertain to the subject, the same thought is 
 prominent. 2 The soul of the Reformer entered deeply into the 
 crushing feeling of guilt, as distinguished from that of misery or 
 finite weakness. In this feeling, we first appreciate our unworthi- 
 ness, but at the same time understand the value of our personality 
 in the eyes of God. The longing for expiation or atonement in- 
 volves the first pure ethical impulse. Conscious of our helpless- 
 ness, our inability to make an atonement ourselves, we are met by 
 the joyful tidings of a Mediator, sent from God, and of a right- 
 eousness in Him, which corresponds to the divine righteousness. 
 This righteousness, although, in the first instance, it is His, may 
 also become ours through faith ; faith being the personal assent 
 and affirmation which we give to that Love on His part which 
 takes our place, to its righteousness, holiness, and power. This 
 
 iGal. iii. 13. 
 
 2 Luther's ideas on this theme are clearly presented by Dorner, Person. 
 Christi, II. 513 sq.
 
 substitution on His part carries in it so high a respect for us as 
 individuals, for our personality, that it does not aim to do away 
 with it, or to absorb it. The aim is, rather, to present it as right- 
 eous before God in a substitution which shall act upon it, recog- 
 nizing it all the time as a separate personality, while the individual, 
 on his side, gives himself up to Christ in faith, to be moulded by 
 His plastic influence into the divine image, to be transformed into 
 a child of God a child in whom, reconciled and made holy, the 
 righteousness of God attains to a personal manifestation. By faith 
 we are drawn into the spiritual death of penitence, through the 
 consciousness of being condemned in Him, but not without at the 
 same time becoming aware of the divine will to save us save our 
 personal being itself as reconciled in Christ. Luther states that 
 before the Evangelical doctrine was brought out, preachers aimed 
 to depict to their hearers the sufferings of Christ for the purpose 
 of exciting their pity, and to make them weep. This, he says, is 
 wrong. We make the right use of Christ's sufferings, when we are 
 led, by seeing Christ so sorrowful on our account, to sorrow for 
 ourselves, for the sins that made Him mourn and suffer. We are 
 to mourn over ourselves, and not over Him. His contrition in 
 our behalf should make us contrite. Christ is to Luther the Child 
 of God, who offers Himself to our faith that we may be clothed 
 upon with divine sonship. God gives to us His Son, and tells us 
 that He is well pleased with all that Christ says and does for us. 
 " Thinkest thou not that if a human heart truly felt that good- 
 pleasure which God has in Christ when He thus serves us, it would 
 for very joy burst into a hundred thousand pieces? For then it 
 would see into the abyss of the fatherly heart, yea into the fath- 
 omless and eternal goodness and love of God, which He feels 
 towards us, and has felt from eternity?" 1 "God's good-pleasure 
 and His whole heart thou seest in Christ, in all His words and 
 works ; " and in turn Christ is in God's heart, and an object of 
 His good-pleasure. Since Christ is thine and mine, we, too, are 
 in the same good-pleasure of God, and as deep in His heart as 
 Christ Himself. " We must first be in Christ, with all our nature, 
 sin, death, and weakness, and know that we are freed therefrom, 
 and redeemed, and pronounced blessed by this Christ. We must 
 swing above ourselves and beyond ourselves over upon Him, yea 
 be utterly incorporated in Him, and be His own." Then sin, and 
 1 Festpostill, -von der Taufe Christi.
 
 278 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 fear, and death are gone : " I know of no death or hell. For I 
 know that as Christ is in the Father, I am, also, in Christ." " In 
 fine, by the word we become incorporated in Christ, so that all 
 that He has is ours, and we can take Him on, as our own body. 
 He in turn must take on Himself all that which befalls us, so that 
 neither the world, the devil, nor any calamity can hurt or over- 
 come us." "One must teach of faith correctly even thus 
 that by it you become bound and united with Christ, so that out 
 of Him and you there arises, as it were, one person, which does 
 not suffer the two to be parted or sundered from one another, but 
 where you evermore hang on Christ, and can say with joy and com- 
 fort ' I am Christ ; not personally ; but Christ's righteousness, 
 victory, life, and everything which He has, is my own ; ' and so 
 that Christ can say ' I am this poor sinner, that is all his sin 
 and death are my sins and my death, since he hangs on me by 
 faith, I on him,' therefore, St. Paul says, ' we are members of 
 Christ's body, of His flesh and His bones.' Wherefore when you 
 in this affair separate your person and that of Christ from one 
 another, you are under the law and live not in Christ." Christ has 
 taken on our flesh, which is full of sin, and has felt all woe and calam- 
 ity, has demeaned Himself not otherwise before God, His Father, 
 than if He had Himself done all the sin which we have done, 
 and "as if He had deserved all that which we have deserved." 1 
 
 The doctrine of Luther is that the uncreated Son of God has 
 entered into human nature, has become man, has thus closely 
 united Himself to us, has, in the fulness of His love and sympathy, 
 taken upon His heart the whole burden of man as a sinner, has 
 taken us up into His heart, making our case absolutely His own, 
 has bewailed our sins before God, and died as if He had been 
 Himself a sinner ; that the end of all is to fashion us like Himself, 
 into the image of God as His children ; that in all this love to us 
 and service in our behalf, the Father is well pleased, and receives 
 us in Christ, provided we accept Him, cordially recognize the 
 meaning of His grief, and giving up, as it were, our isolated indi- 
 viduality, surrender ourselves to Him to be moulded into the like- 
 ness of His Sonship. All things that belong to God are His, and 
 all things that are His are ours. What Christ becomes and does 
 for us, as our representative, is eventually reproduced through Him 
 within us. 
 
 1 Festpostill in der Fruhchristmess.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 279 
 
 As early as 1525. the second, or formal principle, that of the 
 exclusive authority of the Scriptures, was definitely associated with 
 the first, with the doctrine of Justification. It was implied in all 
 the denials by Luther of the authority of the Pope, taken in con- 
 nection with his avowal at the Leipsic Disputation that Councils 
 might err, with the same declaration at the Diet of Worms, in the 
 presence of the representatives of the German Empire, and with 
 numerous expressions elsewhere of the same general tenor. Re- 
 specting the Canon, the Protestants, instructed by Jerome and 
 Origen, universally denied the right of the Old Testament apocry- 
 pha to rank with normative Scriptures. The principle of " the 
 analogy of faith " was introduced ; that is, the principle that the 
 central doctrines which are perspicuously set forth in the Bible, 
 are to govern the interpretation of passages which are more or less 
 obscure. 
 
 At first view it seems difficult to harmonize critical statements 
 of Luther relative to canonical books and to the inspiration of 
 Biblical writers, with the principle that the Bible is the rule of 
 faith. 1 No one could speak with more reverence for Holy Writ 
 than Luther often speaks. Yet many of the statements of the 
 kind just referred to are found in the Preface of his translation of 
 the New Testament, put there for all the world to read. He 
 ascribes to the several books different degrees of doctrinal value 
 and of insight into the essence of the Gospel. " St. John's Gos- 
 pel," he says, "and his first Epistle, St. Paul's Epistles, especially 
 those to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and St. Peter's First 
 Epistle, these are the books which show to thee Christ, and 
 teach everything that it is necessary and blessed for thee to know, 
 even if you were never to see or hear any other book or doctrine. 
 Therefore St. James's Epistle is a perfect straw-epistle compared 
 with them, for it has in it nothing of an evangelic kind." It must 
 be observed that he did not question the genuineness of this to 
 his mind (comparatively) valueless epistle. The prophets, he 
 says, studied Moses, and the later prophets the earlier, and have 
 written their thoughts down which were given by the Holy Ghost. 
 But "if sometimes there mingled in hay, straw, wood, and not 
 
 1 Vorrede auf das N. T. (1524). Like criticisms, but less severe, are in 
 the Leipsic Theses (1519) and in the Babylonian Captivity (1520). He had an 
 unfavorable opinion, varying somewhat from time to time, on Jude, Hebrews, 
 and the Apocalypse.
 
 2 8o HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 solely silver, gold, and precious stones, nevertheless, the founda- 
 tion abides while the fire consumes the rest. " 1 That the con- 
 tents rather than the author of the book is the point of chief im- 
 portance is implied in what he says of Genesis : "What matter if 
 Moses did not write it?" Luther ascribes an error to Stephen 
 in Acts vii. 2 (compare Gen. xii. 1-4). How are observations 
 of which the foregoing are prominent examples, compatible with 
 the recognition of an objective seat of authority? Luther's re- 
 ligious history furnishes the clew to the answer. It was the truth 
 of Christ as the Saviour from condemnation under law, the truth 
 of salvation by grace alone, which came home to him with such 
 power as to be its own attestation. Those Scriptures in which the 
 truth, considered to be the substance of the Gospel, had the central 
 place, furnished the criterion for gauging the relative value and 
 the degree of inspiration to be attributed to the other sacred 
 writings. The doctrine of Justification by Faith served as a stan- 
 dard for a species of criticism which otherwise might seem to be 
 purely subjective, if not arbitrary. 
 
 " The ' Word of God ' is a phrase which signifies to Luther the 
 Gospel of God's grace, whether it be proclaimed orally or in 
 Scripture. This Gospel is to be believed because it is God's 
 Word, and because it verifies itself within the soul. Yet the 
 identity of the Holy Scriptures with the Word of God is gener- 
 ally assumed by Luther, and is occasionally expressed in explicit 
 language. 
 
 The Word and the Sacraments were affirmed to be the means 
 of grace. Through these and in connection with them, the 
 agency of the Spirit is exerted. Carlstadt and the enthusiasts with 
 him whose disturbances at Wittenberg moved Luther against the 
 remonstrance of the Elector to leave his asylum in the Wartburg, 
 sought to magnify the influence of the Spirit by making it inde- 
 pendent of the Word. On the ground of the alleged instigation 
 of the Spirit, they disparaged knowledge and study, besides hurry- 
 ing forward to introduce sweeping changes in the rites of worship. 
 Against this species of subjectivism, Luther resolutely and success- 
 fully contended. The Apology for the Augsburg Confession, like 
 the " Babylonian Captivity," associated Absolution as a sacrament, 
 along with Baptism and the Lord's Supper. But in the Smalcald 
 Articles, Absolution is not reckoned among the sacraments, and it 
 
 1 Tischreden.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 2 8l 
 
 ceased to be so regarded by the Lutherans. Of the sacraments 
 in general the Augsburg Confession teaches that they " were or- 
 dained not only as marks of profession amongst men, but still 
 more as signs and testimonies of the will of God towards us, set 
 forth for the purpose of exciting faith in such as use them 
 Wherefore sacraments are to be used so that there may be joined 
 faith that believes the promises, which through the sacraments 
 are exhibited and shown." 1 It is the word and promise of God 
 which gives to the ceremony the character of a sacrament. The 
 effect of Baptism is briefly set forth in the Large Catechism of 
 Luther. " Every Christian has enough in Baptism to learn and to 
 practise all his life. For he has always enough to do to believe 
 firmly what Baptism promises and brings, viz., victory over death 
 and the devil, forgiveness of sin, the grace of God, the entire 
 Christ and the Holy Ghost with his gifts." 2 Denying that any 
 change is wrought in the water and that any magical operation 
 belongs to this or to any other sacrament, Luther and his followers 
 still insisted on the great importance of baptism. " What God 
 does and works in us, He proposes to work through such external 
 institutions." 3 In the Augsburg Confession, Baptism is affirmed 
 to be essential to salvation. As to the Lord's Supper, while the 
 nature of the bread and wine remains unaltered, yet the body and 
 blood are so inseparable from them, that, to quote Luther in the 
 Smalcald Articles, 4 at the same time that " the sophistical subtlety 
 concerning transubstantiation " is discarded, " the bread and wine 
 in the Supper are the true body and blood of Christ, and are 
 given and received not only by the godly, but also by wicked 
 Christians." 
 
 Inseparable from this idea of the Real Presence of Christ in such 
 a sense that all partakers of the sacrament receive His body and 
 blood, is the doctrine of the Saxon Reformers respecting the per- 
 son of Christ. It is the doctrine of the interchange of the human 
 and divine attributes of the Saviour. Through this communica- 
 tion of qualities, divine attributes are imparted to the human 
 nature, whereby there follows the omnipresence of Christ as a 
 man. 
 
 The Church is not the hierarchy, not the organized institution, 
 but is really and primarily " the communion of saints." Luther 
 
 1 Art. XIII. a Larger Catechism, p. 489. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 471, 491. 4 Art. VI.
 
 interprets this phrase in the Apostles' Creed as synonymous with 
 the " holy Catholic Church." It is the society of true believers, 
 and as such it is invisible. Otherwise, it would not be, as the 
 creed declares it to be, an object of faith. Yet, as Melanchthon 
 avers in the Loci, it is not a Platonic state. It is not a dream of 
 Utopia ; but exists in a concrete form, and has definite marks of 
 its reality. It is " the congregation of saints in which the Gospel 
 is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered." l It is 
 not necessary that " traditions, rites, or ceremonies " of human 
 institution " should be alike everywhere." There is another clause 
 in the article which was not so consistently carried out practically : 
 " Unto the unity of the Church, it is sufficient to agree concerning 
 the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the sacra- 
 ments." Melanchthon argues earnestly against the theory that 
 virtuous heathen, men who had no knowledge of Christ, can be 
 considered to have been members of the Church or in a salvable 
 condition. 2 The clergy are neither infallible interpreters of Script- 
 ures, nor mediators between the congregation and God ; for through 
 Christ the way of access is opened for all. The clergy are minis- 
 ters of the flock, commissioned to offer no sacrifice, as if the sacri- 
 fice of Christ required a supplement ; and the power of the keys, 
 embracing the power to exclude the unworthy from ecclesiastical 
 fellowship, was given to the congregation as a body. 3 To this body 
 belongs the right to choose and to induct into office its ministers. 
 These ministers are on a footing of equality. All distinctions of 
 rank among them are of human origin. Christ is the head of the 
 Church ; the headship of the Pope is in violation of the Gospel. 
 
 In their conception of original sin, of its guilt and power, the 
 Lutheran Reformers went beyond the teaching of the most con- 
 servative of the Schoolmen. It was the native sinfulness of men 
 on which they chiefly dwelt. Nothing is said of the imputation 
 of Adam's sin, in the Augsburg Confession or in the Apology. 
 Melanchthon says that by reason of our native corruption, conse- 
 quent on the fall of Adam, we are born guilty (or exposed to pun- 
 ishment), and 'children of wrath'; that is, condemned of God. 
 
 1 Augsb. Confession, VII. 
 
 2 Loci (ed. Erlangen, 1828), p. 287. " Intuedamur ccetum vocatorum, qui 
 est ecclesia visibilis, nee alibi electos ullos esse somniemus, nisi in hoc ipso." 
 P. 283. 
 
 8 Smalcald Articles, VII.
 
 " If any one chooses to add that men are guilty, also, for the fall of 
 Adam, I do not stand in the way." l But, he goes on to say, the 
 prophets and apostles, with whom Augustine, Hugo, Bonaventura, 
 are in agreement, teach that original sin is not imputation alone, 
 but our depraved nature. The foundation of our guilt {reatus 
 " fundamentum hujus relationis " is " ipsum vitium nobiscum 
 nascens." 2 It is propagated corruption that is referred to when 
 the Apostle (Rom. v. 12) says, for that all have sinned " quia 
 omnes peccaverunt." We will guard against the idea that men are 
 condemned for Adam's sin alone. 2 In the Lutheran Creed, con- 
 cupiscence is asserted to be not only a seeking for the pleasure of 
 the body, but also carnal wisdom and righteousness, hatred of God's 
 judgment, flight from God, anger towards Him, confidence "in 
 present things," that is, in earthly good. So the Apology 
 teaches. 3 In the later Form of Concord, we read that original sin 
 "is so deep a corruption of human nature that nothing healthy 
 or incorrupt in a man's body or soul, in inner or outward powers," 
 is left. 4 The consequences of inborn sin are positive as well as 
 negative. The effect is a total inability of will as far as all actions 
 holy or pleasing to God are concerned. 
 
 The boldness of Luther, his defiance of ecclesiastical decrees 
 against him, his vehement and often contemptuous denunciation 
 of many traditional opinions, might give the impression that he 
 was a radical in the general character of his theology. So far 
 from this being true, his movement is rather to be styled the con- 
 servative branch of the Reformation. In the retention of rites 
 and customs he did not require an explicit authorization from 
 Scripture. Enough that they were not forbidden, and are ex- 
 pedient and useful. His aversion to breaking loose from the 
 essentials of Latin Christianity in matters of doctrine is equally 
 manifest. The Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed are adopted 
 in the Augsburg Confession, in the Apology, and in the Smalcald 
 Articles. Luther's respect for the teaching of the Church, not- 
 withstanding his protest against corruptions, was so impassioned, 
 that unreconciled utterances concerning doctrine are left in his 
 writings, instances of disharmony between the old point of 
 view and the new. 5 On matters of doctrine, he declares, the 
 
 1 "non impedio." Loci (ed. Hase), p. 86. 
 
 2 Loci (ed. Hase), p. 92. 8 Apology, 78. 4 Form, Cone. p. 494. 
 6 On this topic see the citations in Loofs, DG. p. 370 sq.
 
 284 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 view of the whole world for a thousand years is not to be regarded. 
 Yet, when arguing for his views of the Real Presence, he says 
 that "the testimony of the entire holy Christian Church, even 
 without any other proof, should be sufficient, ... for it is peril- 
 ous and terrible to hear or believe anything against the united 
 testimony, faith, and doctrine of the entire holy Christian Church 
 ... for now over fifteen hundred years." This, he says, would 
 be to nullify the promise of Christ, to be with His Church. We 
 have already spoken of the use of the phrase 'Word of God,' 
 now as denoting the central truth of the Gospel, and now as 
 covering the entire Scriptures. Luther's doctrine of absolute 
 predestination, even sin being attributed to the causative agency 
 of God, was not wholly the fruit of a zeal to shut out everything 
 that might be perverted into a Pelagian philosophy. It was partly 
 an acceptance of the Scotist and Nominalistic notion of God's 
 will and sovereignty as the ultimate basis of whatever he com- 
 mands or decrees.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF ZWINGLI THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY 
 
 PARTIES IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH TO THE FORM OF CONCORD 
 (1580) 
 
 ZWINGLI was born on the ist of January, 1484, and thus was only 
 seven weeks younger than Luther, who was born on the xoth of 
 the preceding November. The two Protestant leaders were quite 
 unlike in temperament, cast of mind, and culture. Luther was a 
 Humanist. The only two books which he carried into the cloister 
 were Vergil and Plautus. He was a champion of the new learn- 
 ing, to foster which was one motive in the founding of the Univer- 
 sity of Wittenberg. But with him the interest of literature sank out 
 of sight in comparison with the cause of religion and the claims of 
 theology. With Zwingli, the influence of Humanism went deeper 
 and modified the texture of his theological system. He had met 
 Erasmus and exchanged letters with him. His doctrine of the 
 Sacrament was first suggested to him by Erasmus, although its 
 source was in the teaching of John Wesel. On fundamental points, 
 Zwingli differed from Erasmus, for he was of too robust a nature 
 to be a servile adherent. He renounced the teachings of Rome 
 gradually, as the result of the study of the Bible and of reflection, 
 without passing through any such spiritual struggles any such 
 distress from a sense of condemnation as Luther experienced. 
 It cost him no spiritual conflict to throw off the yoke of ecclesi- 
 astical authority, which had rested somewhat lightly upon him. 
 Hence, while holding clearly and firmly to the doctrine of Justifi- 
 cation by grace without merit, it did not assume all that over- 
 shadowing importance which it had in the eyes of Luther. The 
 starting-point in Zwingli's construction of theology is predestina- 
 tion or the divine purposes. Even this doctrine was quite as 
 much a theoretic postulate as a practical, urgent truth. Quite 
 
 285
 
 2 86 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 different was the conception of it in Calvin. As Zwingli did not 
 share in the Saxon Reformer's inbred reverence for the past, and 
 was not affected, as Luther was, by the mingling of imagination 
 in his temper of feeling, he felt no reluctance to cast aside rites 
 and customs not enjoined, even if they were not forbidden, in 
 Scripture, nor did he hesitate to reject any interpretation that, in 
 his opinion, could not stand the cool scrutiny of the understand- 
 ing. There was a curious blending in his spirit of the tone of the 
 Renaissance and that of the Protestant Reform. There is another 
 respect in which there was a marked contrast between Luther and 
 Zwingli. Luther was a man of the people, conversant with their 
 wants and ways, and, although hostile to revolutionary movements 
 and measures, was not wanting in sympathy with all classes. But 
 Zwingli was a social reformer, as well as a religious leader. He 
 felt that an ethical renovation was called for, and that the recovery 
 of the State from debasement was necessarily involved in securing 
 the proper effect of the Gospel upon individuals. Joining as a 
 chaplain those who took up arms in a righteous cause, he fell in 
 battle. 
 
 In 1518, Zwingli preached at Einsiedeln against the traffic in 
 indulgences. This brought on no breach with the authorities 
 of the Church. He continued to receive a pension from the 
 Pope until 1520. In 1519, he entered upon his labors at Zurich. 
 He was fully resolved to follow the Scriptures fearlessly. His 
 sermons were expositions of the books of the New Testament. 
 In 1522, a discourse in which it was asserted that there was no 
 biblical ground for prohibiting the eating of meat in Lent brought 
 him into conflict with the Bishop of Constance. In the same 
 year he was married secretly, his marriage not being publicly 
 made known for two years. After the sermon relating to Lent, 
 the question was whether the municipal government of Zurich 
 the burgomaster and the two councils would sustain him in his 
 rejection of the ceremonies ordained by the Church. There 
 followed, under order of the government, three public Disputations, 
 in which Zwingli defended his own position and assailed that 
 of his opponents. In preparation for the first, he drew up 
 (in 1523) sixty-seven Articles of belief. In these he makes fore- 
 most the assertion of the sufficiency of the Saviour's atoning 
 death, and his place as the " one, eternal, and supreme priest " 
 (14), the declaration that the mass is not a sacrifice, but a com-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 287 
 
 memoration of the always valid sacrifice of Christ, and, as it were, 
 "a seal of our redemption" (18), that no other mediator is 
 necessary (20), that a Christian is bound to keep no rules 
 relating to meats and drinks which Christ has not established (24), 
 that the same is true of ordinances respecting times and places 
 (25), that Christians are to call no one "Father" on earth, all 
 of them being brethren (27), that marriage ought not to be 
 forbidden to the clergy (29), that confession to one's priest or 
 one's neighbor should be only to obtain advice, not for the 
 remission of sins (52, 53), that the imposing of penance is a 
 human tradition and is of no value (53), that the Scriptures know 
 nothing of a purgatory (57), and that, although prayers that grace 
 may be given to the departed are not excluded, no limit of time 
 is to be set up for the offering of them and no gain to be sought 
 through them (60). The second of the three Disputations was 
 chiefly on the Mass, and at the conclusion of the third the 
 magistrates decided against its continuance in the churches. 
 The complete abolition of the Roman worship soon followed. 
 All relics and pictures and crucifixes were removed from the 
 churches, pictures from the walls were effaced, altars and candles 
 taken away, and the bones of the saints buried. Zwingli delighted 
 in music, but the organs were finally excluded from the places 
 of worship. In 1525, the crucifixes, the chalices, and other vessels 
 and ornaments of gold and silver were melted or otherwise dis- 
 posed of, and the robes of the clergy sold or given away. This 
 crusade against all that was thought to be idolatry or to savor 
 of it was a defining characteristic of the Swiss as distinguished 
 from the German Reformation. In 1529, Zwingli published his 
 first theological work, the " Commentary on True and False Relig- 
 ion." A creed, the " Ratio Fidei" was presented by him at the 
 Diet of Augsburg in 1530. Another confession from his pen, 
 written shortly before his death, and addressed to Francis I., King 
 of France, was published in 1536, by Bullinger, his successor at 
 Zurich. 
 
 Zwingli taught, as did the Lutherans, that the Bible is the rule 
 of faith. He accepted as canonical all the books, except the 
 Apocalypse. Of this he said at the Disputation at Berne in 1529, 
 "it is not a biblical book." There was no serious difference with 
 Luther on the doctrine of Predestination. Zwingli extends the effi- 
 cient decrees and the agency of Providence over the first sin as well
 
 2 88 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 as over all others,, and sets forth this opinion in the baldest terms. 1 
 He differs from the Saxon Reformers in holding that the elect are 
 not confined to the number of the baptized, or even to those to 
 whom Christ is preached. All children of Christian parents, who 
 die in infancy, are saved, and we are not to despair of the salvation 
 of the infant children of the heathen. Moreover, all true and 
 virtuous men, all the good and faithful, will be found in heaven. 
 He includes among them Socrates, Aristides, Numa, the Catos, 
 the Scipios, and the mythical heroes, Theseus and Hercules. 2 
 On the subject of original sin, we find in Zwingli a like latitude of 
 opinion. Original sin in the descendants of Adam does not in- 
 volve guilt. It is a disorder simply : " Morbus est et conditio." 
 We are in the situation of the servants or children of one taken 
 captive in war. In these two articles, the drift of Zwingli's thought 
 and the influence of the tone of the Renaissance are apparent. But 
 the great point of diversity from Luther was in relation to the Eu- 
 charist. In 1524, Carlstadt, a leader of the Radicals and Enthu- 
 siasts at Wittenberg, proposed the absurd interpretation that on 
 uttering the words " this is my body," Jesus by a gesture pointed 
 to His own body. From this time Luther assumed an attitude of 
 hostility to every figurative view of the words of the institution, 
 and maintained the literal exposition. Zwingli set forth his opinion 
 in 1525, and in 1526 the polemical dicussion between the Ger- 
 man and the Swiss Reformer had its beginning. The doctrine of 
 Luther, the suggestion of which came from nominalistic sources, 
 was that the human body of Christ is inseparably joined with the 
 elements in the Supper. The union is not an " impanation," or 
 inclusion of one of the substances with the other, or the mixture of 
 the two, the result of which would be something different from 
 both. It is not a union that is continued after the administration 
 of the sacrament. But the union, which is mysterious in its nature, 
 is such that believers and disbelievers alike, who receive the bread 
 and wine, receive simultaneously the body and blood. The entire 
 Christ is received by each communicant. Luther occasionally 
 described in crass terms the real manducation of the body of 
 Christ, but such an idea of a " capernaitic " manducation is con- 
 trary to his more sober representation, and is repudiated by the 
 earlier and later representatives of Lutheranism. The contention 
 
 1 De Providentia Dei, p. 113; cf. Schaff, Ch. Hist. VII. p. 92 sq. 
 
 2 Exposit. Chr. Fid. XII. (in Niemeyer's Coll. Confess., etc., p. 61).
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 289 
 
 of Zwingli was that in the Supper Christ is present in " the con- 
 templation of faith." The Eucharist is a memorial, with the fur- 
 ther idea that it is a pledge, as a ring is a pledge, of the grace 
 of Christ. The chief thought in connection with the Supper is 
 that of a memorial. The elements are merely symbols. 
 
 The standing objection of Zwingli and the Zwinglians to the 
 teaching of Luther on this subject was that the human body of 
 Christ, since the Ascension, is in heaven and not on earth. The 
 answer of Luther was the assertion of the communication of the 
 attributes of one nature to another, and the consequent ubiquity 
 of the human nature. Christ is at the right hand of God, which 
 means that He is everywhere. Wherever Christ is, there His 
 humanity is present. He brought forward the scholastic distinc- 
 tion of the threefold mode of presence, the local or circum- 
 scriptive, a presence in one place and not elsewhere, the defini- 
 tive, and the repletive. The last is equivalent to ubiquity. The 
 second means that one is present whenever he wills to be. The 
 union of the two explains the presence of Christ in the Lord's 
 Supper. It might seem strange that Luther should habitually 
 stigmatize the Sacramentarians, as the Zwinglians were called, as 
 visionaries and enthusiasts, " Schwarmer," since from his point of 
 view they would be styled, one would think, frigid rationalizers. 
 But, apart from the consideration that Carlstadt was a coryphaeus 
 of a class more properly styled enthusiasts, Luther's hostility to 
 the Sacramentarians was rooted in the feeling that they were 
 assailants of the objective reality of the means of grace. They 
 were introducing a species of subjectivism in the apprehension of 
 the Christian religion. He resisted everything that seemed to 
 him to threaten the objective nature, whether of the Word or of 
 the sacraments. 1 Just as the truth in the Word enters into the ear of 
 the hearers, good or bad, so is Christ in the sacramental elements, 
 whatever the belief or feelings of the recipient, and the recipi- 
 ent partakes of Christ. 
 
 There is not room here for a detailed record of the series of 
 efforts made to bring the two parties into an agreement, or at 
 least into a relation of mutual toleration and fellowship. The 
 most memorable of these attempts was through the Conference of 
 Marburg in 1529. It was unsuccessful. On fourteen Articles they 
 were agreed, but on the question whether " the real body and 
 1 See my History of the Reformation, p. 150.
 
 290 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 blood of Christ are present in the bread and wine," they differed, 
 and they could only promise " to cherish Christian charity for one 
 another, so far as the conscience of each will permit," and to pray 
 for the enlightenment of the Spirit. 1 Luther declined to extend 
 the hand of fellowship to Zwingli, although at parting the contest- 
 ants on both sides shook hands as a token of friendship. At the 
 Diet of Augsburg in 1530, Zwingli inserted in his Ratio Fidei a 
 clear exposition of his idea of the sacraments as testimonies or 
 signs of divine grace, and classifies with the " Papists," as far as 
 this subject is concerned, " those who look back to the fleshpots 
 of Egypt." 2 Zwingli was no rival of Luther in the use of vituper- 
 ative language. Luther's vocabulary of abusive nicknames and 
 epithets was copious. But the Swiss leader had at times an 
 exasperating manner, and his utterances were sometimes in keep- 
 ing with it. Luther had not the temper of a peacemaker, as 
 Melanchthon had in an eminent degree. But it is not to Luther's 
 discredit that he had no relish for the ambiguities of compromise ; 
 and Zwingli was not the man to veil his opinions or to keep 
 silence under assaults upon what he considered the truth. Both 
 men were true to their convictions. Zwingli died in 1531. 
 "The Wittenberg Concord" was the result of an undertaking to 
 reconcile the discordant groups of ministers and churches. The 
 most prominent intermediary was Martin Bucer, preacher in 
 Strassburg, who was a Zwinglian, but after the Marburg Conference, 
 in which he took part, he regarded with less disfavor the Lutheran 
 opinion. He was not inexpert in composing formulas as little 
 offensive as possible to either party. The four imperial cities of 
 Southern Germany had presented at Augsburg a confession much 
 more moderate in its terms than the creed of Zwingli. Later, in 
 1532, they had consented to the Augsburg Confession. After a 
 conference in Cassel, in 1535, between Melanchthon and Bucer, 
 there met in the following year at Wittenberg a company of dis- 
 tinguished theologians of upper Germany. Luther and his asso- 
 ciates agreed with them in the adoption of a statement on the 
 points in dispute, in which the Lutheran opinion on the sacrament 
 was apparently adopted, while Bucer's distinction between the 
 "unworthy" and " disbelievers," which Luther allowed to stand 
 in the document, helped the representatives of the cities to 
 
 1 See Schaff s narrative, Ch. Hist. VII. p. 646. 
 
 2 See Niemeyer, Coll. Con/, p. 26 sq.
 
 29 i 
 
 escape from a real and full assent to his doctrine. The " Con- 
 cord " was accepted by their constituents in upper Germany, but 
 was unacceptable to the Swiss. 
 
 There were two subjects on which the opinions of Melanchthon 
 came to differ from those of Luther. This dissent was gradual 
 in its origin. One of these points of difference had respect to 
 human agency as related to divine agency in conversion. The 
 other was the so much litigated question of the Real Presence of 
 Christ in the Lord's Supper. For a long time Melanchthon was 
 fully agreed with the doctrine of Luther. He was always averse 
 to the Zwinglian theory. As long as Luther's view was the only 
 alternative Protestant explanation, he received it ; but at length, 
 when a middle theory was brought forward, which retained that 
 which he practically valued in the sacrament, he altered his 
 opinion. His own reflections, the influence of Bucer, and further 
 study of the Fathers, to which he was led by a writing of the 
 learned Zwinglian, CEcolampadius, moved him to give up the 
 idea of an oral manducation of the body and blood, and a re- 
 ception of them by such as are without a living faith. When 
 the middle view concerning the sacrament was developed by 
 Calvin, and brought forward by him in a guarded way, Melanch- 
 thon was confirmed in his altered conviction. Intercourse, espe- 
 cially by correspondence, with Calvin was not without a marked 
 effect. Calvin, while he rejected the doctrine of the ubiquity of 
 the body of Christ and its objective presence in and under the 
 elements, still held that Christ is received spiritually by the believ- 
 ing partaker of them, and that, through the Holy Spirit, even the 
 body of Christ communicates a power to the believing recipient. 
 A central idea in Calvin's doctrine is that of a real communion 
 with Christ which the sacrament, received in faith, operates to 
 increase. At the same time, there is received, in connection with 
 the elements, through the power of the Spirit, the mysterious 
 source of a spiritual body to appear at the resurrection. Melanch- 
 thon's old belief was shaken as early as the Wittenberg Concord 
 of 1536. The change is indicated in the amendment of the 
 tenth Article of the Augsburg Confession, in the edition of it 
 which he published in 1540. Melanchthon believed that the 
 points of difference between the Lutheran and the intermediate 
 theory were not essential, and that the controversy was both need- 
 less and mischievous in the extreme. This is expressed by him
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 freely in his confidential letters to friends. 1 Yet he so deprecated 
 contention, that he could not be moved by the urgency of Calvin 
 to break silence and avow his real judgment in the matter. That 
 he approached near to Calvin on this subject is manifest from his 
 correspondence. When it is remembered how Luther abhorred 
 everything that subtracted an iota from his definitions of the Real 
 Presence, and how in his later years his health was broken and 
 his increased intolerance of dissent was aggravated by partisan 
 supporters of a temper even more unsparing than his own, 
 when all this is borne in mind, in connection with the reserve of 
 Melanchthon, and his withdrawal within himself, out of natural 
 timidity and dread of an uproar, it is not strange that for a long 
 period their relations were strained, and the open cordiality of 
 their personal intercourse damped. Rather is it strange that 
 Luther refrained from all attacks upon Melanchthon, and that 
 the mutual love of the two men, once so closely united, was never 
 uprooted. 
 
 The Calvinists made prominent the points of agreement between 
 the Lutheran doctrine and their own. Their opinion spread in the 
 southwest of Germany, in the Palatinate, and in other places, in- 
 cluding Wittenberg, among the pupils of Melanchthon. At length 
 the Lutherans were awakened to a clearer perception of the differ- 
 ence between the two opinions, and were roused to withstand the 
 progress of Calvinism. Joachim Westphal, a preacher in Hamburg, 
 took the field, to whom Calvin replied. The Elector Palatine, 
 Frederic III., adopted Melanchthon's advice to stop at the words 
 of the Apostle Paul on the Sacrament in i Cor. x. 16. In 1560, 
 he established the Reformed Church in his land. In 1562, the 
 Heidelberg Catechism by his direction was framed by two profess- 
 ors at Heidelberg, Ursinus and Olevianus. In 1560, in the midst 
 of these scenes of strife, Melanchthon died, not unwilling to be 
 delivered from the " fury of theologians," and to go to the light 
 where he could comprehend the mysteries which he had not been 
 able to understand on earth. 
 
 In his battle with Erasmus, Luther affirmed in almost reckless 
 language the impotence of the human will. God's agency was 
 
 1 See Schaff, Ch. Hist. VII. 664 sq., VI. 656; Fisher, Hist, of the Reforma- 
 tion, p. 160; Hase, Libri Symbol, p. xvi. See, also, Galle's Charakteristik 
 Mclanchthons, etc., especially the Zweiter Abschnitt., and Thomasius, DG. 
 543 sq.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 asserted to be the universal cause. His will was declared to be 
 subject to no law, but to be the foundation of right. Predestina- 
 tion was declared to be unconditional and to include as its objects 
 the lost as well as the saved. " By this thunderbolt," he said, 
 " free-will is laid low and thoroughly crushed." Melanchthon, in 
 this point, as in others, was in accord with him. But from about 
 the time of the controversy of Luther with Erasmus, Melanchthon 
 began to part with this opinion. He began to look at these mat- 
 ters more from the ethical point of view, and was concerned to 
 find room for human freedom and a basis for human responsibility. 
 In the Augsburg Confession (VII.) man's will was said to have 
 " some liberty to work a civil righteousness, and to choose such 
 things as reason can reach to." In successive editions of the Augs- 
 burg Confession, the Apology, and the Loci, we can trace the steps 
 which he took to the clear propounding of synergism, or the 
 doctrine that in conversion the human will takes a part, although 
 it be a minor part, along with the Word and God's Spirit. In the 
 adoption of these new views he was not molested by Luther. 
 Luther had, however inconsistently, affirmed with all emphasis that 
 God from eternity desires the salvation of all men, and that if they 
 are not saved it is because they spurn his earnest offer. That salva- 
 tion is by divine grace, without merit, is the one truth which was 
 near to Luther's heart. The extravagant propositions which reach 
 the limit of fatalism were taken up from another quarter than his 
 own religious thoughts and experience, and used to batter down 
 the doctrine of merit. Hence, although to the last the book on the 
 Servitude of the Will was one of the few writings of his compositions 
 to which he attached much value, it was not on account of the ex- 
 treme theory of the will which was advocated in it, but on account 
 of the doctrine of grace of which it served as a weapon of defence. 
 The ethical feeling of Melanchthon and the fear of antinomian 
 perversions of the doctrine of gratuitous justification, led him to 
 set forth views respecting the obligations of the law, which excited 
 distrust and opposition. In the edition of the Loci in 1535, he 
 affirms " the necessity of good works for eternal life," adding, how- 
 ever, that they necessarily follow reconciliation. He says, more- 
 over, that " good works merit material and spiritual rewards." Such 
 statements he always explained as not affecting the truth of the 
 remission of sins or the condition of faith in divine mercy through 
 Christ,
 
 294 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 The death of Luther released Melanchthon from the almost ser- 
 vile anxiety under which he had long suffered. It made him the 
 head of the Wittenberg Faculty and the principal theological 
 leader among Lutheran Protestants. But, at the same time, it 
 took away the aegis which Luther had really stretched over him, 
 and left to his adversaries a better prospect in their antagonism 
 to him and his teachings. More than this, it took away the re- 
 straint which Luther's presence had exerted upon the tendency in 
 Melanchthon's own mind to go farther than was meet in the 
 direction of concessions to the Roman Catholics and of measures 
 of pacification. He was a Humanist, and as such a lover of 
 learning, who deserved the title of " The Preceptor of Germany." 
 By nature he hated extremes, hated angry disputes on verbal 
 distinctions, prized unity and peace. He was not personally 
 estranged from Erasmus on account of Luther's heated contest 
 with him. He had the courage to qualify his subscription to the 
 Smalcald Articles by adding, in the face of Luther's statements 
 in this creed, that if the Pope would allow the Gospel, he would, 
 for the sake of peace, concede to him jure humano superiority over 
 bishops, of which he was actually possessed. Such were the traits 
 of Melanchthon, that, in the circumstances of the times after the 
 death of Luther, in connection with the theological parties into 
 which the Lutherans divided, he must inevitably become the 
 occasion of division and a target of assault. A condensed notice 
 of these controversies is here in place. 
 
 1. There were controversies bearing on the relation of morals 
 to religion. In 1527, John Agricola came forward with the denial 
 that the preaching of the law should precede the preaching of the 
 Gospel. Luther stood by Melanchthon ; and ten years later, when 
 Agricola contended that repentance as well as faith must proceed 
 from the influence of the Gospel alone, Luther vigorously opposed 
 him. In 1552, George Major avowed that good works are neces- 
 sary to salvation, not meaning that they are meritorious, or intend- 
 ing to deny that in faith they originate. Nicholas von Amsdorf 
 met Major with the offensive assertion that not only are good 
 works not necessary to salvation, but in relation to that end are 
 positively harmful. The design was utterly to reject the idea that 
 the law has any relation to believers. It was a fanatical proclama- 
 tion of the all-sufficiency of faith. 
 
 2. In order to fill out what he considered to be a defect in
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 2Q5 
 
 Melanchthon's limiting of the office of justifying faith to the for- 
 giveness of sin, and to relieve the doctrine of merely forensic 
 justification of its barrenness, Andrew Osiander in 1552 brought 
 forward the doctrine of the actual appropriation by the believer of 
 the righteousness of Christ, who is received in faith and really 
 imparts His own essential, divine righteousness to the soul. Luther 
 had regarded faith as the reception of the entire Christ as the 
 living Saviour and the source of inward life. Osiander considered 
 himself to be an expounder of Luther's ideas. He held to the 
 expiatory work of Christ, as the ground of forgiveness, but the 
 stress was laid on the mystical union with Christ, and the actual 
 partaking of His divine quality of righteousness. But Osiander 
 was resisted not only by Melanchthon, on the ground that he made 
 forgiveness of small account, but also by Matthias Flacius and 
 other strenuous Lutherans. After Osiander's death the controversy 
 was long continued. 
 
 The adiaphoristic, Majoristic and Osiandrian controversies were 
 closely related to the preceding differences. They were connected 
 with the Leipsic Interim. After the defeat of the Protestants 
 Melanchthon and theologians in sympathy with him, in 1548, lent 
 their countenance and help to Maurice of Saxony in the framing 
 of the Interim for the ordering of religious affairs within his 
 domain. The concessions to Roman Catholicism, both in respect 
 to doctrinal statements and as to ceremonies, went altogether 
 beyond a reasonable sacrifice for the sake of peace and union. 
 This Melanchthon himself afterwards frankly admitted. In this 
 dark and troublous period, the strenuous Lutherans, such as 
 Flacius and Amsdorf, in their antagonism to the Interim, did not 
 spare Melanchthon, who was held responsible for its obnoxious 
 provisions. They constituted the " Gnesio-Lutherans," as they 
 were styled, persistent adversaries of Melanchthon's opinions. 
 The adiaphoristic controversy was waged on the question whether 
 the Roman Catholic ceremonies formerly interdicted, but rec- 
 ognized, on grounds of expediency, in the Interim were or were 
 not unlawful, or if not in themselves wrong, were not made so 
 under the circumstances. This debate, violent on the part of the 
 more rigid Lutherans, ended upon the overthrow of Charles V. by 
 Maurice and the Peace of Augsburg (1555), when the question 
 ceased to be practical. 
 
 The Philippists, as the followers of Melanchthon were called by
 
 296 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 their opponents, were, until 1574, dominant at Wittenberg and 
 Leipsic. The rigid Lutherans had their stronghold first at Mag- 
 deburg, and then at Jena. In 1555, the synergistic controversy 
 entered upon a new stadium by a publication of Pfeffinger of 
 Jena, which was followed, after an interval of several years, by 
 publications on the other side by Amsdorf and Flacius. The most 
 prominent champion of the Philippists was Strigel, Professor at 
 Jena. He maintained that will in the natural man is weakened and 
 crippled so that it is incapable of originating anything spiritually 
 good, but when moved upon by the Holy Spirit, it can cooperate 
 in the work of conversion. This ascription of a concurrent power 
 to the will met with great opposition. But the position of the 
 champion of the strict Lutherans, Flacius, that the will is spiritually 
 dead, and has no capacity except perpetually to resist the influ- 
 ences of grace, were also repugnant to the more moderate class of 
 Strigel's opponents. A middle class then arose, of which Chem- 
 nitz and Andreas were members, who strove to mediate between 
 the two extremes. The difference centred in the idea of conver- 
 sion, the initial step in the Christian life. The moderate party 
 attributed the concurrence and consent of the creaturely will, 
 not to the use of an inherent power, but rather to the will when 
 healed or invigorated by a prior influence of the Holy Spirit. 
 Flavius stirred up a general dissent when he advanced the doc- 
 trine that original sin has affected the very substance of the soul, 
 a proposition presupposed in his theory of the will as being dead 
 so far as holy preferences are concerned. In order to bring to 
 an end the contests that prevailed, the Form of Concord, after 
 years of labor upon it, was completed in 1580. The theologians 
 of the school of Melanchthon, Chemnitz, and others, refrained 
 from insisting on statements which they would have preferred to 
 make. The result of all the conferences and negotiations was 
 the creed in two parts, the briefer Epitome, and the larger Solid 
 Repetition and Declaration. The Form of Concord condemns 
 the Flavian notion about Original Sin. It asserts (Art. II.) in 
 the strongest possible language the helplessness of the human 
 will. Man's acceptance of the Gospel is exclusively the effect of 
 grace. Yet, in the eleventh Article, it is declared that " God is 
 not willing that any should perish," that His offers of grace are to 
 all men, that Christ " is anxious that all men should come unto 
 Him and permit Him to help them," that the reason why any sin-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 297 
 
 ners are lost is that they wilfully despise God's grace, " close their 
 ears and harden their hearts," so that the Holy Ghost cannot do 
 His work upon them and within them. It is the denial that grace 
 is irresistible. Some of the ablest Lutheran divines grant that a 
 path of reconciliation between these two Articles is difficult to be 
 found.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF CALVIN 
 
 CALVIN in his intellectual qualities differed widely from Zwingli, 
 but he gave to the Swiss or Reformed theology its mature form, 
 and completed a work which his forerunner had commenced. 
 Nevertheless, he had little sympathy with the personal traits 
 of Zwingli, and Dorner is right in saying that there was, all 
 things considered, more affinity between him and Luther and 
 the Lutheran exposition of the Gospel, than there was with 
 Zwingli and with the Zwinglian theology taken as a whole. 
 The religious experience of Calvin corresponded essentially to that 
 of Luther. Distress of conscience and a sense of helplessness 
 were followed by peace of mind, through trust in the wholly un- 
 deserved grace of the Gospel. 1 The first edition of his Institutes 
 of the Christian Religion was printed in Latin at Basle in 1536. 
 The work grew in compass in the successive editions, without 
 any modification of its doctrines. From its form, as issued in 
 1559, the later editions have been printed. It is rather a fervid 
 discourse than a dry, scholastic disquisition. In its four books it 
 follows the order of the Apostles' Creed, as did Luther in the 
 doctrinal part of his Catechisms. The continuity of teaching in 
 the Church was thus implied. Calvin's genius as a commentator 
 fully equals his capacity as a dogmatic teacher. To get a full view 
 of his thoughts it is necessary to consult his observations on 
 special passages of Scripture, as well as his treatises ; for in the 
 former we meet with distinctions and qualifications which in the 
 latter are not always found. 
 
 In respect to the relation of the formal principle, the authority 
 of the Bible, to the material principle, Justification by faith, Calvin 
 
 1 One of the most interesting statements of Calvin respecting himself is in 
 his Letter to Sadolet. 
 
 298
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 299 
 
 stands between Luther and Zwingli. He makes the former more 
 dependent on the latter for its origin than Zwingli ; yet he makes 
 the formal principle more controlling in the construction of doctrine 
 than Luther. For example, he holds that the constitution of the 
 Church is to a greater extent determined by the Scriptures. But 
 when it comes to the evidences of the divine origin of the Bible, 
 he rejects the opinion that the first place belongs to external proofs, 
 and spurns the idea that for our conviction on this subject we 
 depend upon the authority of the Church. Our conviction on this 
 point is based on the " testimony of the Holy Spirit," the testi- 
 mony within us of the same Spirit that inspired the sacred writers. 
 The Bible by its power and elevation speaks directly to the soul, 
 but speaks with convincing effect only to the soul which has been 
 drawn to accept Christ with a living faith. On the subject of the 
 canon and of inspiration, Calvin does not (save in discarding the 
 apocrypha) deviate from traditional opinion as Luther does. Yet 
 it accords with his manliness as an interpreter that he resorts to 
 no petty devices to escape a difficulty ; for example, to dispose of 
 minor discrepancies. The " different phrases," ' coat and cloak ' 
 in Matt. v. 40, and 'cloak and coat' in Luke vi. 29, "do not 
 alter the sense." Comparing the variation of Heb. xi. 21 from 
 Gen. xlvii. 31, he remarks that in this matter "the apostles 
 have not been so very scrupulous ; in substance (in re ipsa) there 
 is little difference." How 'Jeremiah' got into Matt, xxvii. 9, 
 instead of ' Zachariah,' he does not know, nor will he worry him- 
 self about it. 1 Like Luther, he has no fancy for allegorical inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 There is a full agreement with Luther in Calvin's description of 
 the nature and function of faith. It brings the believer into union 
 with Christ so that Christ imparts to him all that is His. We are 
 saved by the imputation of His righteousness, not on the ground of 
 anything, not even faith, in ourselves. And faith includes in it 
 Assurance the certitudo salutis. Still Calvin allows for the im- 
 perfection of faith, for the struggle with remaining sin, and the 
 consequent occasional or partial chilling of the believer's confidence. 
 Justification, the remission of sins, is distinct from Sanctification, 
 but they are never disjoined. 
 
 Although Calvin is not less sweeping in his assertions of divine 
 predestination and control than Luther, certainly than Luther in his 
 1 " nee anxie laboro,"
 
 300 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 earlier statements, he differs from the Saxon leader, and is in 
 accord with Zwingli, in placing in the forefront of his system God 
 and His universal control. Calvin and Calvinism emphasize not 
 only the freedom, the unmerited character, of grace, but equally 
 the sovereignty of God in the bestowal of it. The idea is that 
 apart from this sovereignty in the selection of the subjects of it, 
 grace would not be grace. This doctrine of God's sovereignty, and 
 the use made of it, is one thing that differentiates Calvinism from 
 Lutheranism, and increasingly the more in the Lutheran system 
 election retreats into the background. The second point of differ- 
 ence relates to the Lord's Supper, a topic which has already 
 been explained. 
 
 The peculiarity of Calvin's doctrine of predestination is that it 
 includes in it the decree of reprobation. This the Lutheran con- 
 fessions exclude. According to Calvin, 1 God has determined by an 
 eternal decree " what He would have to become of every individual 
 of mankind." Eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal 
 damnation for others. " Every one is created for one or the other 
 of these ends." God has once for all determined " whom He 
 would admit to salvation and whom He would condemn to destruc- 
 tion." 2 Prescience does not explain the hardening of heart, which 
 includes an intervention of God, beyond mere foreknowledge. It 
 takes place, first, by the withdrawal of God's -Spirit, and secondly 
 by the employment of Satan, the minister of His wrath, to influence 
 their mind and their efforts. 3 To inquire into the reasons of the 
 divine will is idle ; for there is nothing " greater or higher than the 
 will of God." It is "the cause of everything that exists." 4 
 
 Notwithstanding these assertions, it is not altogether clear 
 whether Calvin was a supralapsarian or an infralapsarian. These 
 terms, it should be remarked, did not come into vogue until a later 
 day. The distinction pertains to the relation of predestination to 
 the fall of man to the first sin. This was held by extreme Cal- 
 vinists to be the object of an efficient decree, while the more mod- 
 erate Calvinists made the decree relate to the fall, and to be only 
 permissive. The supralapsarians, when they worked out their phi- 
 losophy, made the final cause or end of the divine administration to 
 be the manifestation of God's attributes, of His justice in punish- 
 ing, and of His mercy in saving. To accomplish this end creation is 
 
 1 Inst. III. xxi. 5. 8 Ibid. II. iv. 3. 
 
 2 Ibid. III. xxi. 7. * Ibid. III. xxiii. 2.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 301 
 
 decreed, the fall after it, the election of part of mankind as objects of 
 mercy, of another part as objects of punitive righteousness. This 
 is the order of the divine purposes. This philosophy is crowned 
 by the assumption that the procedure of the divine government 
 needs no other defence than the bare fact of the divine decree, the 
 will of God being the foundation, as well as the evidence or cri- 
 terion, of righteousness. The infralapsarians, on the contrary, 
 made election to be from those fallen by their own act into sin 
 and condemnation, an act of theirs in no degree necessitated by 
 causes referable to God's power. 
 
 If we had nothing to guide us but the Institutes, we should say 
 without hesitation that Calvin was a supralapsarian. He asserts 
 that the foreknowledge of God is dependent upon His decrees ; 
 that God not only foresaw " the fall of the first man and in him the 
 ruin of his posterity, but arranged all by the determination of His 
 own will." * It is absurd to think, he says, that God did not choose 
 what should be the condition of the principal of His creatures. 
 The first man fell because God judged that it was expedient that 
 he should fall. Why not, he argues, object to the decree that his 
 posterity should be included in perdition by his fall ? Yet such 
 is the fact. Of the composite purpose, including the sin of Adam 
 and the ruin of his posterity, he says : " It is a terrible decree, 
 I acknowledge." 2 There is more in the Institutes of the same pur- 
 port. But elsewhere in the Agreement by the Genoese Pastors, 
 he speaks more guardedly, and does not overstep the position of 
 Augustine, from whom he quotes with approbation. He asserts 
 merely a permissive decree a volitive permission in the case 
 of the first sin. Moreover, Calvin explicitly asserts that for every 
 decree of the Almighty, however mysterious it might be to us, 
 there is a good and sufficient reason ; 3 that is to say, he founds will 
 upon right, not right upon will. It is probable that we have 
 here his opinion, literally stated, while in the passage quoted 
 above, which appears to imply that God's will is the fountain, as 
 well as the evidence of right, we have an over-statement, due to 
 the fervor of his polemic. 
 
 Calvin's language on the decree relating to sin is intimately 
 connected with his conviction that sin exists and is evil, yet 
 
 1 Inst. III. xxiii. 7. To say that God determined to treat Adam as he 
 might deserve is a " frigidum commentum." 
 
 2 Ibid, III. xxiii. 7. 8 Opera (Amst. ed.), Vol. VIII. p. 638.
 
 302 
 
 because it exists under God's government it must be good that it 
 should exist. 1 It would not be permitted to be were it not desir- 
 able that it should be. Hence the existence of evil, whenever 
 and wherever it exists, is in accord with the divine will. It is 
 in accord with a mysterious, inevitable appointment of God's will, 
 notwithstanding His declared commandment against it. God does 
 not permit sin to be nolens, but volens. In this particular, Calvin 
 reproduces the doctrine of Augustine and Aquinas, that the system 
 as a whole is better with evil in it than without evil in it. As to 
 the two wills in God, the decretive and preceptive, the former is 
 always said by Calvin to be involved in deep mystery. On this 
 subject nothing, he declares, is " better for us than a learned igno- 
 rance." 2 In explaining the offers of the Gospel, he, like Augustin- 
 ians before him, makes them refer to nations, and to signify that the 
 elect are not confined to any one of them. When he comes to the 
 lament of Jesus over Jerusalem (Matt, xxiii. 3 7) , to the expression of 
 the Saviour's will to gather to Himself the people who had willed not 
 to come to Him, he faces the difficulty, and affirms that the duality 
 of the divine will is merely relative to our understanding, or is an- 
 thropopathic. Somehow "between the velle of God and their 
 [the people's] nolle there is an emphatic opposition." 
 
 As was the case with the other Reformers, Calvin was not actu- 
 ated in his zeal for the doctrine of predestination by speculative 
 reasons. He was impelled by its supposed necessity if the 
 truth of salvation by grace alone is to be upheld. A second rea- 
 son for clinging to it was the dependence upon it of the security 
 and comfort of believers. For Calvin differed from the Lutherans 
 as well as from Augustine, in holding that all true believers are of 
 the number of the elect, since all are preserved from falling. 
 
 In Calvin, as in the Lutheran Reformers, in treating of original 
 sin, the imputation of Adam's sin is left in the background. It is 
 the innate sin, derived by inheritance from Adam, which is the 
 primary source of our condemnation. The Augustinian unity of 
 the race, and the consequent responsibility of the race for the 
 first transgression, as far as it was generic, is the underlying con- 
 ception. Two propositions are constantly asserted by Calvin. 
 One is that we are not condemned or punished for Adam's sin, 
 apart from our own inborn depravity, which we derive from him. 
 
 1 Consens. Genev. (Niemeyer, p. 230). 
 a Opera (Amst. ed.), Vol. III. p. 641.
 
 303 
 
 The sin for which we are condemned is our own sin, namely, the 
 corruption of nature within us at birth, and were it not for this we 
 should not be condemned. The other proposition is that our 
 nature was vitiated in Adam, and in that condition we received it. 
 On commenting on Rom. v. 1 2, he says : 
 
 "Observe the order here, for Paul says that sin preceded; that from it 
 death followed. For there are some who contend that we are so ruined by 
 the sin of Adam, as if we perished by no iniquity (culpa) of our <nvn, in the 
 sense that he only as it were sinned for us. But the Apostle expressly affirms 
 that sin is propagated to all who suffer its punishment. And he urges this 
 especially when he assigns the reason shortly after, why all the posterity of 
 Adam are subject to the dominion of death. The reason is, he says, that all 
 have sinned. That sinning of which he speaks is, being corrupted and 
 vitiated. For that natural depravity which we bring from our mother's womb, 
 although it does not at once bring forth its fruits, yet it is sin before the Lord 
 and deserves the penalty." 
 
 To the same effect are his remarks on Eph. ii. 3, where he 
 says : " Sin is inherent in us, because God does not condemn the 
 innocent." " God is not angry with innocent men, but with sin." 
 In the chapter on original sin in the Institutes, we read : 
 
 " These two things are to be distinctly observed ; first, that being thus vitiated 
 and perverse in all the parts of our nature, we are, on account of this corrup- 
 tion, deservedly held as condemned and convicted before God, to whom 
 nothing is acceptable but justice, innocence, and purity; for this is not liability 
 to punishment for another's crime ; for when it is said that by this sin of 
 Adam we become exposed to the judgment of God, it is not to be understood 
 as if, being ourselves innocent and undeserving of punishment, we had to bear 
 the sin (culpam) of another; but because by his transgression we all incur 
 a curse, he is said to have involved us in guilt (obstrinxisse') . Nevertheless, 
 not only has punishment passed from him upon us, but pollution instilled from 
 him is inherent in us, to which punishment is justly due. Wherefore Augus- 
 tine, although he often calls it another's sin (that he may the more clearly 
 show that it is derived to us by propagation), at the same time asserts it to 
 belong to each individual. . . . And so also infants themselves, as they bring 
 their condemnation with them from their mother's womb, are exposed to 
 punishment, not for another's sin but for their own. For though they have 
 not yet produced the fruits of their iniquity, they have still the seed inclosed 
 in them; even their whole nature is as it were a seed of sin, and cannot 
 be otherwise than odious and abominable to God. Whence it follows that 
 it is properly accounted sin in the eye of God, because there could not be guilt 
 (reatus~) -without fault {culpa). The other thing to be remarked is that this 
 depravity never ceases in us, but is perpetually producing new fruits, etc." x
 
 304 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 It is clear that, in Calvin's view, the first thing imputed to us as 
 the ground of punishment is our own sinful nature. 
 
 Calvin makes the same distinction as the Lutherans made be- 
 tween the visible and the invisible Church. 1 The one comprises 
 all the elect. The other includes the multitude of professed be- 
 lievers, who receive the two sacraments, the word of the Lord, and 
 the ministry who are appointed of Christ to preach it. He did 
 not deny that the Christian societies acknowledging the Pope are 
 " churches of Christ." His warfare, he asserted in his letter to 
 Sadolet, was with the Pontiff and his pseudo-bishops, by whom 
 the truth was perverted and the kingdom of Christ brought almost 
 to destruction. If the Pope could prove his succession from 
 Peter, obedience would not be due to him unless he maintairs his 
 fidelity to Christ. His contest was like that of the prophets and 
 apostles with the churches of their time. He indignantly denies 
 that he has withdrawn from the Church. 2 The prelates of the day 
 cannot prove their vocation by any laws, human or divine. The 
 characteristics of a well-ordered church are the preaching of 
 sound doctrine and the pious administration of the sacraments. 
 The servants of God have never been obstructed by the empty title 
 of ' Church,' when it was used to uphold the reign of impiety. His 
 devotion to the true merits of the Church he affirms in the most 
 solemn manner. 3 Schism, in the proper meaning of the term, he 
 utterly condemns. In arguing against the Anabaptists he insists 
 upon the criminality of separating from the Church even when 
 corruption and sin are prevalent among its members. There 
 is no excuse for deserting the Church where the word of God 
 is preached and the sacraments administered. 4 In his protest 
 against these schismatics we might imagine ourselves to be 
 hearing the voice of an enemy of Protestantism in every form. 
 But Calvin's deference to authority considered by him legitimate 
 was profound. The same is true of his attachment to unity, and 
 abhorrence of unlawful mutiny. 6 His reverence for the Church 
 had led him to hesitate about becoming a Protestant. He con- 
 
 1 Inst. IV. i. 10. 
 
 2 Works (Amst. ed.), Vol. VIII. See Schaff, Ch. Hist. VII. pp. 404, 405. 
 8 On the Necessity of Reforming the Church (1545) : full citations in Schaff, 
 
 Vol. VII. 452 sq. 
 4 Inst. IV. i. 19. 
 6 Ibid, I. iv. 10; cf. IV. i. IO.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 30S 
 
 vinced himself that to renounce the prelacy was not to renounce 
 the Church. " A departure from the Church would be a renuncia- 
 tion of God and of Christ." The original officers in the Church 
 were partly permanent and partly not. The officers ordained to 
 be permanent are the pastors and elders. They are not to be 
 chosen by the congregation. In the polity established at Geneva 
 Calvin did not fully realize his theory on the subject. In this 
 particular he was like Luther. 
 
 Upon the general idea and intent of the sacraments, Calvin 
 thought as did the Lutheran Reformers. 1 A sacrament is an out- 
 ward sign which is at the same time a seal or confirmation of the 
 promises of grace and also a testimony before all, the Creator and 
 His creatures, of our piety towards Him. There is no sacrament 
 without an antecedent promise to which it is subjoined. The 
 word that is, the teaching of the Gospel as to its significance 
 is a part of the sacrament. Augustine is right in calling a sacra- 
 ment a " visible word," it being a mirror of the grace contained in 
 the promises. It is for the increase of faith ; yet it confers no 
 benefit on a wicked person. And its validity is not contingent 
 on the intention of the administrator. Its office is precisely like 
 that of the truth of the Gospel. 2 It announces, shows, ratifies the 
 things given of God. To give it efficacy the Spirit must attend it. 
 It has no efficacy ex opere operate. 
 
 Baptism is a token of purification. 3 It is like a legal instrument 
 attesting the forgiveness of the believer. It is not for the past 
 alone, but for the future ; for the believer is ever to remember it 
 as the pledge of his pardon and as designed to reassure him of it. 
 It reminds us perpetually of our new life in Christ and of the 
 sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit. It testifies that being united 
 to Him we shall be partakers of all His benefits. 
 
 In the Institutes Calvin makes an elaborate argument in behalf 
 of Infant Baptism. He will not say that infants have the same 
 faith, or knowledge of faith, that adult believers have. The 
 principal warrant for baptizing them is the covenant, the promise 
 of God to the offspring of believers to believers and their seed. 
 The blessing of little children by Christ is another basis for it. 
 Those who brought little children to Him had the spirit of disci- 
 ples. As to the need of infants of the blessings denoted by the 
 rite, "they bring their own condemnation into the world with 
 
 1 Inst. IV. xiv. I, 2. 2 Ibid. IV. xiv. 17. 3 Ibid. IV. xv. 15. 
 
 X
 
 306 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 them," their whole nature being, " as it were, a seed of sin," and 
 therefore " abominable to God." l The first benefit possible to De 
 imparted to infants is their ingrafting into the Church. The next 
 benefit which they are capable of receiving, which is figured in 
 the sacrament, is their regeneration. The precise nature of this 
 benefit he does not profess to be able to explain. Neither in 
 their case, nor in the case of adults, is there any virtue in the 
 water itself. Whatever is done, is done by the Spirit. Where, by 
 reason of age, there is not yet any capacity of learning, God has His 
 different degrees of regenerating those whom He has adopted. 2 
 Yet nowhere in this prolonged discussion does Calvin say that all 
 those baptized children of Christian parents who die in infancy are 
 saved. " If any of those who are objects of divine election " depart 
 'from life, after baptism, and before they attain to years of dis- 
 cretion, " the Lord renovates them by the power of His Spirit, 
 incomprehensible to us, in such a manner as He alone foresees to 
 be necessary." 3 Farther than this he does not go. 4 Respect- 
 ing infants who cannot repent and believe, as to the advantage of 
 baptism in the case of such of them as are not of the elect, 
 Calvin encountered a difficulty similar to that which Augustine 
 failed to solve in dealing with the relation of the sacraments to 
 predestination. 
 
 Calvin's opinion concerning the Lord's Supper has been already 
 stated. Prior to his establishment in Geneva, his aim had been, in 
 writing on the sacrament, to cultivate peace with the Lutherans 
 by emphasizing the points of agreement with them. Hence at 
 the outset the Zwinglians were somewhat suspicious of him. 
 Zwingli, however, in his latter days, had made room in his theory 
 for a presence of Christ in connection with the Supper, and had 
 made more of the Supper as a pledge of Christ's love. Bullinger 
 and his associates did the same. Consequently the Consensus 
 Tigurinus, in 1549, was formed as a symbol of union. But in 
 proportion as Calvin brought forward his points of agreement 
 with Zwingli, he lost the measure of sympathy with which the 
 Lutherans had regarded him. In the Institutes, he asserts that 
 
 1 Inst. IV. xv. 10. 2 Ibid. IV. xvi. 31. 8 Ibid. IV. xvi. 21. 
 
 4 Occasionally he appears to embrace all. Inst. IV. xv. 20, xvi. 9, 31. 
 The sum of his doctrine is that between baptism and circumcision, there is " a 
 complete agreement in the internal mystery, the promises, the use, and the 
 efficacy." IV. xvi- 16.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 307 
 
 the only difference with the Lutherans on the subject of the 
 presence of Christ in the sacrament relates to the manner of His 
 presence. 1 " They suppose Christ not to be present, unless He 
 descends to us ; as though we cannot equally enjoy His presence, 
 if He elevates us to himself. The only question between us, there- 
 fore, respects the manner of this presence." " I doubt not that He 
 [Christ] truly presents them [the body and blood] and I receive 
 them." l By the " energy of His Spirit " He accomplishes that 
 which He promises. 2 Yet it is evident that our being lifted up to 
 Christ is figuratively meant, since of the difficulty from the dis- 
 tance of Christ, Calvin says that he cuts the knot in this way, 
 that Christ, although he does not change His place, by His power 
 descends to us. 3 Faith is confirmed, and the seed of an immor- 
 tal body, like that of Christ, is received by the believing com- 
 municant. 
 
 Calvin's expositions of the doctrine of the Trinity are characterized 
 by great sobriety and clearness. He is no stickler for terms, pro- 
 vided the central elements of the doctrine are retained. He was 
 even, much to his chagrin, accused of Arianism by one Caroli. 4 
 He will not contend, he says, for mere words. 5 He would be 
 glad if such terms as 'Trinity' and 'persons' were buried out of 
 sight, if only it were agreed that the Father, Son, and Spirit are 
 one God, and yet are distinguished by some peculiar property. 
 Since the original cause principium et origo is in the Father, 
 when the Father, Son, and Spirit are mentioned together, the 
 name ' God ' is specially appropriate to the Father. 6 Thus the 
 order of the persons is preserved, while nothing is subtracted from 
 
 1 Inst. IV. xvii. 31. 2 Ibid. IV. xvii. 10. 
 
 8 Secunda Defensio (against Westphal), C. R. 37, 72. That this elevation 
 to Christ is figuratively meant is made clear. See Kahnis, Lehre v. hcilig 
 Abendm., S. 140, with the comment of Jul. Muller, Wissenschaftl. Abhandl., 
 p. 432. See also, Loofs, DG.,^. 435. The connection between the body of 
 Christ and the believing communicant is always said by Calvin to be effected 
 by the Holy Spirit. But it is a real connection and reception. 
 
 4 For the circumstances, see Henry, Das Leben Calvins, vol. I., p. 178 sq., 
 Schaff, Ch. Hist., vol. VII. p. 632. Calvin said of the Athanasian symbol that 
 no legitimate church legitima ecclesia would ever have approved of it. 
 The subject is one on which "we ought to philosophize with great sobriety 
 and moderation." * For the essential orthodox doctrine as against Arians and 
 Sabellians he was strenuous. 
 
 5 Inst. I. xiii. 5. 6 Ibid. I. xiii. 20. 
 
 * Ibid. I. xiii. 21.
 
 308 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the deity of the Son and the Spirit. He is only concerned to 
 steer clear of Arianism on the one hand, and Sabellianism on the 
 other. 
 
 It is accordant with Calvin's general mode of thought that while 
 the Incarnation is set forth as having for its prime end the re- 
 demption of man, yet this is not said to be the exclusive ground 
 of its necessity. He expressly says that if man had remained up- 
 right, yet he is so far below the Creator that he could not, without 
 a mediator, have attained to union with Him. 1 He strenuously 
 insists on the full reality of the human nature of Christ, as not 
 affected by its union with the divine. 
 
 In one paragraph of the Institutes, Calvin says that the merit of 
 Christ by which we are saved depends merely on the good pleasure 
 of God, which appointed this method of salvation for us. 2 This is 
 interpreted by Thomasius as implying that the work of Christ was 
 not necessary, and as thus suggesting the same Scotist idea that the 
 will of God is the foundation of merit. 3 It is admitted, however, 
 that such a view is not carried out by Calvin. But the real sense 
 of the passage is simply that the mission of the Saviour springs 
 from the grace of God, and from no constraint to which He was 
 subject to provide a way of salvation. Calvin is earnest in ascribing 
 the gift of a Saviour to the love of God, although " in a certain in- 
 effable manner, at the same time that He loved us He was never- 
 theless angry with us until He was reconciled in Christ." 4 God 
 Himself " removes every obstacle in the way of His love towards 
 us." The obstacle lay in God's justice and righteous condemnation 
 of sin. Christ has " satisfied for our sins ; He has sustained the 
 punishment due to us ; He has appeased God by His obedience." 5 
 Christ has so united himself to us that what is ours becomes His, 
 and vice versa. Like Luther, his mind dwells on this union. He 
 expresses it in the phrase : " Our sins were transferred to Him 
 by imputation." The main thing in the atoning work of Christ is 
 His death. But " there is no exclusion of the work of His obedience 
 which He performed in this life." " Indeed, His voluntary sub- 
 mission is the principal circumstance even in His death." The 
 sacrifice must be freely offered. By " the whole course of His 
 
 1 Inst. II. xii. I; cf. Dorner, Person Christi, II. 719, and Baur, DG. 
 III. 179. 
 
 2 Inst. II. xviii. I. * Inst. II. xvi. 2. 
 8 DG. Vol. II. p. 641. 6 Ibid. 3.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 309 
 
 obedience " He has achieved our salvation. The distinction 
 between an active and a passive obedience is not expressed. 
 
 Calvin denies the descent of Christ to the under-world (Hades). 
 The only meaning that can be accepted in such a statement, he 
 affirms, is that on the cross Christ, when He felt himself forsaken 
 of God, experienced in His own soul the pains of the lost. Yet He 
 was free from guilt, and God had no feeling towards Him but love.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 RISE AND PROGRESS OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY IN ENGLAND 
 
 THE Church of England, from the time of the framing of its 
 formularies under Edward VI., was justly considered to belong to 
 the " Reformed " division of the Protestant churches. On the 
 great subject of contention, the Lord's Supper, it expressly rejected 
 the Lutheran opinion, and preferred an opinion accordant with 
 that of Calvin. It was the influence of Luther's writings on young 
 men in the universities that began the work of doctrinal reforma- 
 tion. As far as the Protestant faith was espoused, it was first in 
 the Lutheran form. When Cranmer gave up transubstantiation, 
 he exchanged this opinion for that of the Saxon Reformers, and 
 condemned the doctrine of Zwingli. For defending the Roman 
 doctrine of the sacraments against Luther, Henry VIII. had re- 
 ceived from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith. His 
 divorce and his renunciation of the Pope's authority were a long 
 step towards a recognition of the exclusive authority of the Script- 
 ures. In 1536, the ten Articles, which were adopted by convo- 
 cation and sanctioned by the king, made the Bible and the three 
 ancient creeds the authoritative standard of teaching. The Ar- 
 ticle on Justification rejects human merit, but connects with this 
 denial an assertion of the necessity of works to follow Justifica- 
 tion. It is an attempt to unite Lutheran and Roman Catholic 
 tenets. As to the Real Presence, it is affirmed in language which 
 a Lutheran could have accepted. There is a Purgatory, but the 
 Pope cannot deliver souls from it. There are cautions against 
 the abuses connected with confession, invocation of saints, and 
 the use of images in worship. In the discussion which pre- 
 ceded this compromise, Cranmer was on the progressive side. 
 The Protestant parts of the Articles were largely drawn from the 
 Apology for the Augsburg Confession and other writings of Me-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 3II 
 
 lanchthon. 1 Among other features, the limitation of the number 
 of sacraments to three Penance being the third excited much 
 disaffection, especially in the North, where the Roman side had 
 great strength. This creed fell into disuse on the publication, in 
 1537, of the "Bishops' Book," as it was popularly called, The 
 Institution of a Christian Man. This, too, was the fruit of a 
 compromise. It was framed by a commission sitting at Lambeth. 
 It was decidedly more Lutheran than the ten Articles. It was to 
 a large extent an expansion of Luther's catechisms, but Cranmer's 
 contributions in it were in his best vein. The sacraments were 
 said to be seven, but a sharp distinction was drawn between the 
 three and the remaining four. The sympathy between the Eng- 
 lish and the German Reformers was manifested in various ways, 
 and was only restrained by the force of the king's will. The 
 power of the Smalcald League had its influence in moving Henry 
 to seek the friendship of the German princes. In 1535, envoys 
 were sent by him to Germany to negotiate with them, with a view 
 to a religious agreement and a political alliance. These proceed- 
 ings were frustrated, partly, it is thought, by the agency of 
 Gardiner. The reactionary movement of Henry and the execu- 
 tion of Anne Boleyn, in 1536, broke them off for a time alto- 
 gether. In 1538, these negotiations were resumed. Henry had 
 a liking for Melanchthon, and was quite desirous that he should 
 come to England. A Lutheran embassy, which Melanchthon was 
 not able to join, came to London to confer with a committee of 
 bishops and doctors, which was appointed by the king. As to 
 propositions respecting doctrine, they arrived at an agreement; 
 but Henry steadily refused to permit the cup to be given to the 
 laity, to give up propitiatory masses, or to allow the clergy to 
 marry. Among papers belonging to Cranmer, there was found 
 by Dr. Jenkyn a manuscript containing in Latin thirteen Articles, 
 on the unity of God, original sin, and other doctrinal topics. It 
 is judged to be the statement of the Articles drawn up at the 
 Conference to serve as a basis of union with the Germans. They 
 are derived in the main from the Augsburg Confession. While 
 they have this connection with the past, they appear to be the 
 groundwork of the Anglican Articles at present in use. 2 In 1539, 
 
 1 See Jacobs, The Lutheran Movement in England during the Reigns of 
 Henry VIII. and Edward VI. (i89o),c. VI. 
 
 2 See Hardwick, History of the Articles, p. 74.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the negotiations with the Germans were continued. They refused 
 to send theologians, but an embassy of civilians came to London. 
 The effort proved abortive. Gardiner and the hierarchical party 
 were now in the ascendant. The six Articles were enacted " for 
 abolishing diversity of opinions in religion." Whoever denied 
 transubstantiation was to be burned at the stake. The needless- 
 ness of communion in both kinds, the celibacy of the clergy, the 
 necessity of private masses and of auricular confession, were 
 decreed. The penalty of an attack on either of these last articles 
 was death as a felon, without benefit of clergy. Expressions of 
 dissent from them were to be punished according to their form 
 and degree, by imprisonment, confiscation of goods, and death. 
 Cranmer bowed to the storm. There was in his character a 
 remarkable mixture of compliance with behests which it was im- 
 possible for him to withstand, with an unyielding persistence in 
 the pursuit of the end which he had at heart, reform in doc- 
 trine as well as in things external. Further endeavors of Henry 
 to frame an alliance with the Germans failed from their resolute 
 refusal to take a step without his acceptance of the Augsburg 
 Confession. One more doctrinal publication was issued under 
 the auspices of Henry VIII. It was a revision of The Institu- 
 tion of a Christian Man and was issued in 1543 under the title, 
 " Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian." Annota- 
 tions by Cranmer and a few by the king himself were embodied 
 in it. 1 It was approved by Convocation. 
 
 With the accession of Edward VI. in 1547, Cranmer and the 
 doctrinal Protestants were left free to carry out their ideas. Up 
 to this time Cranmer had continued to his adhesion to the 
 Lutheran doctrine. In 1538, he tried to induce Lambert, who 
 held the Zwinglian opinion, to renounce it. Lambert refused and 
 was burned at the stake. In 1548, Cranmer published a catechism. 
 It was little more than a translation of a Lutheran catechism which 
 had been rendered into Latin at Nuremberg by Justus Jonas, the 
 intimate friend of Luther. 2 This was the period of the Smalcaldic 
 war and of the Interim in Germany. The hands of Cranmer and 
 Ridley were strengthened by theologians from the Continent. 
 Peter Martyr and Ochino were made professors at Oxford in 1547, 
 and Bucer and Fagius were called to Cambridge in 1549. At a 
 
 1 See Hardwick, p. 65. 
 
 2 See Fisher, Hist, of the Reformation, p. 341.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 313 
 
 Disputation held in London, in 1548, Cranmer declared himself a 
 believer in the Reformed doctrine of the sacrament and argued 
 against the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's body. 
 In this change, he says himself, Ridley's influence had great 
 weight with him. His words are : " Dr. Ridley did confer with me, 
 and by sundry persuasions and authorities of doctors, drew me 
 quite from my opinion." l We can fix the date of this conversion. 
 On August ist, Traheran writes to Bullinger that Cranmer is on the 
 Lutheran side ? 2 The same thing is said in letters from others to 
 Bullinger as late as October 29th. 3 On September 28th, Traheran 
 reports that Cranmer has come over to the opposite opinion. 4 On 
 December 3151, it is said that he had "most openly, firmly, and 
 learnedly " maintained Bullinger's doctrine. In Cranmer's treatise 
 on the sacrament and in his rejoinder to the reply of Gardiner, he 
 advocates distinctly and emphatically the opinion of which Calvin 
 and Bucer were the expositors. 5 The forty-two Articles of Religion 
 were adopted in 1552. In Article XXVIII. (on the Lord's Sup- 
 per) there is a denial of the doctrine of " the reall and bodilie 
 presence, as thei terme it, of Christe's flesh and bloude, in the 
 sacramente of the Lorde's Supper." In the Elizabethan revision of 
 the Articles, by which they are reduced in number to thirty-nine, 
 the paragraph thus expressly condemning the Lutheran doctrine (in- 
 cluding the ubiquitarian opinion) is left out, but the Calvinistic 
 opinion is still explicitly stated. The twenty-ninth of the thirty- 
 nine Articles, " of the wicked which eat not the body of Christ in 
 the use of the Lord's Supper," was confirmed by the Church in 
 convocation (and by the Act of Uniformity in 1662), but is not 
 in the list authorized by the i3th of Elizabeth, where the Articles 
 are only thirty-eight in number. This most Protestant of all the 
 Articles "was confirmed by the Parliament of Charles II., but 
 not by the Act which first imposed the Articles, and which had 
 for its object the admission of Presbyterian orders" that is, to 
 
 1 Jenkyn's Cranmer (Examination), IV. 97. 
 
 2 Original Letters relative to the English Reformation, I. 232. 
 
 3 Ibid. II. 381, 643. 
 
 4 Ibid. 322, 323. See also Hooper's statement, Ibid. I. 73. Traheran 
 attributes Cranmer's change of belief to the influence of John a Lasco, who 
 had been himself a Lutheran. 
 
 5 Cranmer says of the doctrine of Bucer (with which he agreed) respecting 
 the Real Presence : " Bucer dissenteth in nothing from CEcolampadius and 
 Zwinglius." Treatises on the Lord's Supper (Cox's ed.), p. 225.
 
 314 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 meet the case of ministers ordained abroad. 1 In the first Prayer 
 Book of Edward VI., in the Communion Service are the words 
 "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was given for thee,. 
 preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life." In the second 
 Prayer Book of Edward, this clause disappears and substituted 
 for it are the words : " Take and eat this in remembrance that 
 Christ died for thee, and feed on them in thy heart with faith and 
 thanksgiving." The Swiss influence is here apparent. In the 
 Prayer Book of Elizabeth, the two clauses are brought together 
 and are still so connected. 2 
 
 There has been much discussion of the question whether Article 
 XVII. (" Of Predestination and Election ") is or is not " Calvinis- 
 tic." If the meaning of the question is whether, according to the 
 Article, predestination is unconditional or is conditioned on fore- 
 knowledge, in the later (Arminian) sense, the answer must be that 
 it is unconditional. It is a decree by " the counsel of God secret 
 to us " which implies the distinction between His secretive and 
 preceptive will. It relates to those " chosen in Christ out of 
 mankind," "as vessels made to honor." They are called "ac- 
 cording to God's purpose by His Spirit," "through grace obey," 
 are justified and adopted. The caution against looking over " the 
 sentence of God's predestination," a doctrine " secret and pleas- 
 ant to godly persons," would be quite out of place if conditional 
 predestination were referred to. To speak of the Article, however, 
 as " Calvinistic," meaning that its doctrine was learned from Cal- 
 vin, would be to say too much, although Calvin's influence even 
 then was strongly felt in England. The seventeenth Article asserts 
 the common doctrine of the Reformers the later views of Me- 
 lanchthon excepted. It stops short of Augustine's and Calvin's 
 teaching in that reprobation is left out. That is to say, it is an 
 expression of moderate Calvinism, or rather of an opinion which 
 
 1 See Stanley's Christian Institutions, pp. 109, 1 10. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 110-112. Respecting the additions to the Catechism, in the 
 time of James I., see Stanley, p. no. The Body and Blood "are verily and 
 indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper." The Decla- 
 ration added to the Communion Office in Edward's Prayer Book, omitted in 
 Elizabeth's time, excludes, as restored in 1661, the adoration of " any corporal 
 presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood." It originally read, " the Real 
 and Bodily, the Real and Essential Presence." A " real and essential Presence " 
 of the same is, therefore, not condemned. Ibid. p. in. See, also, Blunt's 
 Annotated Book of Common Prayer, p. 199.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 315 
 
 Cranmer and his associates held in common with Calvin. When 
 Arminianism was beginning to spread, the " Lambeth Articles " 
 were drawn up as a protest against it. But the rigid Calvinism of 
 these Articles, in their original forms, was decidedly softened by 
 the bishops and other theologians who revised them. They were 
 composed by Whitaker, a stout Calvinist. But in the revised form 
 the perseverance of all believers is exchanged for the perseverance 
 of " the elect," so that room is left open for the Augustinian view. 
 There were other changes of phraseology tending to mitigate the 
 rigidness of the language asserting predestination. And the Lam- 
 beth Articles were never incorporated into the Anglican prescribed 
 creed. 
 
 The definition of the Church (Art. XIX.) and the assertion of 
 the fallibility of General Councils (Art. XXI.) agree with the ordi- 
 nary Protestant doctrine. In the Articles nothing is said of Epis- 
 copacy. It was not a subject of contention among the Reformers 
 anywhere. On the one hand, Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin 
 have no objection to an Episcopacy existing jure humano. Epis- 
 copacy in England was no barrier to ecclesiastical fellowship with 
 the Protestant churches on the Continent. Cranmer distinctly 
 asserted the parity of bishops and presbyters, and that bishops 
 need no special consecration. There is no good ground for the 
 opinion that he changed his mind on this subject. Passages 
 from Cranmer's Catechism which have been quoted in support of 
 this assumption were taken by him from the Lutheran Catechism 
 of Justus Jonas, of which mention has been made. 1 Cranmer in 
 his last days was writing to the Continental Reformers with the 
 intent to bring together a general meeting to frame a consensus of 
 doctrine. To " unchurch " the Protestant bodies was a thought 
 that never entered into his mind. To Calvin he urges that har- 
 mony of doctrine will tend " to unite the Churches of God" 
 " The Church of God " he means the same churches " has 
 been injured," he says, "by divisions and varieties of opinion 
 respecting the sacrament of unity." Of the same tenor is his 
 letter to Bullinger. To Melanchthon he expresses the same de- 
 sire for an agreement in the formulating of doctrine among those 
 " in whose churches the doctrine of the Gospel has been restored 
 and purified." Nothing is said in this correspondence about 
 polity. Differences in this respect were not thought essential. 
 
 1 See Jacobs, The Lutheran Movement in England, p. 323.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, 
 
 The one subject on which there was discord that occasioned 
 anxiety was the Lord's Supper. After the accession of Elizabeth 
 and the return of the exiles, most of whom had sojourned with 
 the Swiss, the fraternal fellowship with the Reformed Churches 
 remained unbroken. As late as near the end of Elizabeth's reign, 
 Hooker recognizes the validity of the ordination practised in the 
 foreign Protestant churches, albeit he considers it not conformed 
 to the Apostolic model. Ministers having no other than Presby- 
 terian ordination, on coming into England, were admitted to liv- 
 ings on the basis of it. Even as late as Lord Bacon wrote his 
 " Advertisement " concerning controversies in the Church of Eng- 
 land, he refers to the denial that such persons are " lawful minis- 
 ters " as a novel and extremely censurable proceeding of " some 
 indiscreet persons." Those ministers thus spoken against he 
 describes as "some of our men," "ordained in foreign parts." 
 The contention that the Episcopal polity exists jure divino, and 
 is, therefore, essential to the being of a church, sprung up in con- 
 sequence of the conflict with the Presbyterians who made a like 
 assertion in behalf of their system. Such was the contention of 
 Cartwright, the champion of the Presbyterian polity. Elizabeth 
 was herself a Lutheran, but in her reign Calvin's personal influence 
 was dominant among the clergy, and Calvinism was long a syn- 
 onym of orthodoxy. Hooker compares Calvin's sway to the 
 authority of Peter Lombard in the flourishing period of Scholasti- 
 cism. He deprecates this almost absolute sway, although he lauds 
 Calvin's Institutes and Commentaries, and says of Calvin that he 
 was the greatest man whom the French Church meaning the 
 Protestant Church has produced. The Calvinistic doctrine of 
 the Lord's Supper was the prevailing doctrine, accepted almost 
 without dissent by churchmen. " The real presence of Christ's 
 body," wrote Hooker, " is not in the sacrament but in the worthy 
 receiver."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SECTS IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORMATION THE SOCINIAN SYSTEM 
 
 THE sects which sprang up in the wake of the Reformation had 
 their origin chiefly in the preexisting tendencies and opinions 
 which appear in the later portion of the Middle Ages. The 
 trumpet of Luther woke into vigorous life all forms of disaffection 
 with the existing order of things in Church and State. Real or 
 imagined defects in the systems of the Reformers called out 
 opposition and dissent, and attempts at organization on a different 
 basis. More radical movements broke out in different directions. 
 The steadfast adherence of the Protestant leaders to the objective 
 means of grace, the Bible and the sacraments, provoked dissent in 
 the form of Mysticism. Their conservatism in matters pertaining 
 to civil and ecclesiastical institutions excited a widespread revolt, 
 varying in its types. Side by side with their unshaken confidence 
 in the fundamental principles of the ancient, pre- scholastic creeds 
 there arose as a concomitant a more far-reaching skepticism 
 which did not spare the earlier, oecumenical creeds. This devel- 
 opment was the natural fruit of the seed sown in the period of the 
 Renaissance. 
 
 One of the most noteworthy phenomena on the mystical side 
 was the rise of the Schwenkfeldians, the disciples of a Silesian 
 nobleman, Caspar Schwenkfeld, who died in 1561. For a time 
 he stood in a friendly personal relation to Luther, but came out 
 in partial opposition to his teaching. He was probably somewhat 
 influenced by the reading of Tauler and other Mystics. Luther 
 and his followers, he held, made too much of salvation as an 
 objective institute. They were fettered to the external Scriptures, 
 in the room of the divine Word the word of the Spirit within 
 the soul. What man needs is the indwelling of God. This was not 
 attained by the first creation, even if sin is left out of the account. 
 
 3'7
 
 318 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 This new, immediate fellowship with God is gained through 
 Christ, in whom the divine presence and illumination are manifest. 
 Christ is truly human, but His humanity, owing to His birth from 
 the Virgin through the Spirit, is susceptible of a reception of 
 God and a close, albeit progressive, union with Him. Through 
 this union in the glorified Christ, the creaturely element vanishes. 
 God and man are now one. Christ imparts to believers His 
 divine nature. This He does in the Lord's Supper, where the 
 bread is the symbol of the true bread of the soul, which is Christ 
 himself. Schwenkfeld did not reject the doctrine of the death 
 of Christ, which effaces guilt; but this was only the stepping- 
 stone to the higher life which Christ makes the possession of His 
 followers through a real, spiritual communication of it. The true 
 believer can live without sin. Infant baptism he did not favor. 
 Schwenkfeld was a man of learning and piety. His followers 
 were not numerous. In 1734 a number of them emigrated to 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 The parties known by the name of Anabaptists embraced large 
 numbers of adherents. This movement is one of much historical 
 importance. The efforts to bring to pass revolutionary changes 
 of a social and political nature is one of its main characteristics. 
 It was only to a part, however, that the wild and destructive 
 fanaticism which belonged to many can be imputed. There 
 were drawn into the movement the mass of oppressed and muti- 
 nous peasants whose insurrection and defeat form a dark page 
 in the records of this period. ' Anabaptists ' is a word meaning 
 're-baptizers.' As a rule, the sects bearing this name were hostile 
 to infant baptism and baptized anew such as had received baptism 
 in infancy. There had been opposition to infant baptism among 
 a part of the Waldenses and among the Bohemian brethren the 
 unitas fratrum. It had been opposed, also, by Peter of Bruges 
 and Henry of Clugny. Yet this designation of Anabaptists does 
 not bring out what was really the central principle of the sects to 
 whom it was applied. They insisted that the Church must be 
 composed exclusively of the regenerate, and that the rule of the 
 civil authority over it has no rightful place. The substitution of 
 a kingdom of the saints was the war-cry of some ; notably of 
 Thomas Miinzer, the prophet of Zwickau, who was beheaded by 
 the magistrates in the Peasant War. Miinzer, it is worthy of 
 remark, was acquainted with the writings of Suso, Tauler, and
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 319 
 
 other Mystics. He pronounced infant baptism unscriptural, but 
 did not give it up. Storch, who was an associate of Miinzer at 
 Zwickau, introduced the chiliastic theory, which prevailed exten- 
 sively among the Anabaptists. 
 
 Quite different in spirit from Miinzer were the Anabaptists in 
 Switzerland, such as Hubmaier, and such as Grebel, Blaurock, and 
 others who organized a separate church at Zurich, which refused 
 to be governed in ecclesiastical matters by the city, and discarded 
 infant baptism. On this last point, Zwingli had been for a while of 
 a like opinion. Grebel and his associates were devout enthusi- 
 asts, but they were believed to aim at the overthrow of the 
 Magistracy, and their movement was quelled, not without cruel 
 persecution. It must be said of Grebel that while he did not 
 approve of rebellion, he preached in a district where the peasants 
 rose in armed revolt, and thus exposed himself to the suspicion of 
 sympathizing with fanatical schemes of sedition. Itinerant mis- 
 sionaries of the sect diffused Anabaptist opinions of the pacific 
 type far and wide in South Germany. Among them Chiliasts 
 were active and influential. Some of the Anabaptist leaders, 
 Denck and Hetzer among them, adopted a mystical form of anti- 
 trinitarian doctrine. An attempt was made at Miinster to set up 
 a theocracy (1532-35), but the town was captured and the tyranni- 
 cal leaders suffered a cruel death. The third and fourth decades of 
 the sixteenth century were a period in which " Anabaptism spread 
 like a burning fever through all Germany." It was not strange that 
 such events as the Miinster tragedy should give rise to a general 
 crusade against all who were identified with the Anabaptist cause, 
 a merciless crusade, because there was little discrimination 
 between the innocent and the guilty. In the Netherlands, after 
 about 1537, the anti-psedobaptists were organized in peaceful 
 communities, free from violence and fanaticism. The leader in 
 this work of organization was Menno Simons. Included in this 
 new body were many in the regions adjacent to the Netherlands. 
 The Mennonites discarded the use of weapons, oaths and every sort 
 of revenge, and would hold no office in the state. They became 
 divided, as to discipline, into a stricter and more lenient party. 
 Later they were influenced doctrinally by the Socinians. Ana- 
 baptist congregations were formed at Norwich and other places 
 in England by emigrants from the Low Countries. The practise 
 of immersion was not in vogue at first among the Anabaptists. It
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 was adopted, it is thought, after a time, by Grebel and his com- 
 panions in Switzerland. In 1605, Rev. John Smyth, an English- 
 man, separated from the Independent Church in Amsterdam 
 and rebaptized himself, there being no other to perform that 
 service for him. Whether he baptized himself by immersion 
 or not, and when this mode of baptism began among the Bap- 
 tists in England, are still subjects of controversy. 
 
 The rise and spread of anti-trinitarian opinions, especially the 
 development of Socinianism, constitute an important chapter in 
 the early history of Protestantism. The Reformers, while they 
 subjected the Scholastic theology to a sifting scrutiny, planted 
 themselves on an oecumenical basis the creeds of the ancient 
 Church. On this ground they stood in company with their 
 Roman Catholic adversaries. This position was not due mainly 
 to the power of tradition and a veneration for the Church of the 
 early centuries. Their religious life was interwoven with the con- 
 ceptions of God, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, which are 
 embodied in the ancient formularies. The anti-trinitarians, who 
 were generally Italians and imbued with the spirit of the Italian 
 Renaissance, felt no such restraint. They took the same attitude 
 in relation to the oecumenical faith as towards the systems of the 
 Scholastic age. It is true of Socinianism, as of like sporadic 
 movements preceding it, that it exhibits the combined effect of 
 the Nominalism of the later Schoolmen and of the rationalistic 
 drift of the contemporary Italian culture. Among the Italian Protest- 
 ants, who sought for a refuge north of the Alps, principally in Geneva 
 and other cities, were cultured persons, such as Camillo Renato, 
 Blandrata, Gentilis, and as Ochino, who in the latter part of his 
 life, agreed with the others just named in the adoption of Unita- 
 rian opinions. Laelius Socinus and his nephew, Faustus, were of 
 the same class. But prior to Faustus Socinus the most able and 
 distinguished of the opponents of the doctrine of the Trinity was 
 a Spaniard by birth, Michael Servetus. His theology was in no 
 small degree connected with his studies and speculations in natural 
 science. In his "Errors of the Trinity " and subsequently in his 
 " Restitution of Christianity," which included the substance of the 
 former work, he expounded the system which his acute and rest- 
 less intellect had wrought out. The doctrine of an immanent 
 Trinity is rejected. God is, in every sense, an indivisible essence.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 321 
 
 For personal differences there are substituted eternal self-mani- 
 festations. The Logos is impersonal, the image of the world, ever 
 present to God, of which the idea of Christ is the centre. The real- 
 izing of this idea in a human person is the self-revelation of God in 
 time. Servetus holds to the miraculous birth of Christ; but his 
 humanity is a divine substance, fitted for the incorporation of the 
 Logos, and so for the manifestation of the Father. A Pantheistic 
 leaven pervades the whole system of Servetus. Next to the error of 
 the Trinity the other two most baleful errors are declared by him to 
 be Infant Baptism and the doctrine of a hierarchy in the Church. 
 
 Laelius Socinus was an Italian of good birth and ample means, 
 and was one of the Protestants who crossed the Alps and found 
 an asylum in Switzerland. He visited Calvin at Geneva twice ; 
 conversed, also, on theological topics with many other eminent 
 Protestant teachers, and died in Zurich in 1562. His learning, his 
 polished manners, and interest in religious questions, were mani- 
 fest. In conversation he commonly took the part of an inquirer, 
 was reserved in communicating opinions of his own, but was 
 anxious for relief from doubts and difficulties. Calvin found fault 
 with his excessive curiosity. The papers of Laelius passed into the 
 hands of his gifted nephew, Faustus, who also spent a considerable 
 time in Switzerland at Zurich and at Basle, and originated, on the 
 basis of the hints and suggestions left by his uncle, the system 
 called Socinianism. In 1579, he went to Poland, where Unitarian 
 emigrants before him had settled, and where the influence of Ital- 
 ian culture and opinions was exclusive. At first, the Unitarians at 
 Cracow who held the Anabaptist opinion, demanded of him that 
 he should be rebaptized. Eventually he won them over from 
 their insistence on this test, to which he refused to conform. He 
 became the leader of the Polish Unitarians, who were protected 
 by sympathetic nobles of the country. A summary of the tenets 
 of the Polish Unitarians is given in the Racovian Catechism, com- 
 posed by the preachers of Racow, and first published in 1605, a 
 year after the death of Faustus. It was translated from Polish 
 into Latin in 1609. In 1659, it was issued in a much enlarged 
 form by Crell and Schlichting, eminent Socinian leaders. The 
 writings of Faustus, together with those of the two authors just 
 named, and the works of Wolzogenius, are the authorities for the 
 exposition of the Socinian system, a system which was wrought 
 out with remarkable logical and critical acumen. 
 
 Y
 
 322 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 The characteristics that strike us first in looking at this system 
 is the conjunction in it of rationalism and an extreme supernatural- 
 ism. This union is accounted for when we observe that religion 
 is conceived of as a way of attaining eternal life, and as having 
 its roots in obedience to God, of whose will it is professed that 
 we are not able by our unassisted faculties to become acquainted. 
 Connected with this view of the nature of religion as ethical in 
 its essence, and of human nature as incapable of discerning super- 
 natural realities, is the conception of God. In Him, will has the 
 central and supreme place. The whole view is closely akin to the 
 rationalism of Scotus and the other Nominalists, who, in despair 
 of otherwise ascertaining truths respecting divine things, fell back 
 exclusively on the testimony of revelation. In accord with this 
 peculiarity of Socinus and his associates, is their large reliance 
 on the miraculous proofs of the divine mission of Christ, and on 
 the external evidences of the authority of the Scriptures. The 
 Bible, especially the New Testament, is the authoritative source 
 of religious knowledge. As Christianity in its principal feature 
 is a revelation of God's will, or of law, and as the New Testa- 
 ment carries this to perfection, the value of the Old Testament 
 is considered to be chiefly historical. Reason is to be exercised 
 in interpreting the contents of the Bible, and Reason is expressly 
 associated with Scripture as a means of deciding what Christianity 
 really is. The point of difference between the Socinians and the 
 later Nominalists lies in the rejection by the former of the doc- 
 trines which constitute the mysterious side of Christian theology, 
 in particular the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. Here 
 we recognize the influence of the Italian Renaissance. Every- 
 thing is examined and judged in the dry light of the understand- 
 ing, yet under the prescribed limitations with consummate 
 ability. 
 
 The Socinians considered the Trinity to be inconceivable and 
 self-contradictory, and thus incapable of being really believed. 
 God is an individual. His will is exerted and manifested in Crea- 
 tion, in His universal Providence, and in the bestowal of rewards 
 upon those who obey Him. What God is in Himself is inscruta- 
 ble. We only know what He wills, and what He reveals concern- 
 ing His will. His revelation is made through Christ. He is a 
 man. A combination of two natures, as the orthodox doctrine 
 teaches, is impossible and hence incredible. But God can ira-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 323 
 
 part superhuman powers to creatures and commit to them offices 
 exalted above the capacity of unaided humanity to fulfil. Christ 
 differs from other men in his miraculous birth. His nature, how- 
 ever, is not the less exclusively human on account of this mode of 
 coming into being. He is the Son of God by adoption. Before 
 He enters upon His ministry He is taken up to Heaven and made 
 acquainted with what He has to teach. Upon His resurrection 
 He is exalted to the exercise of a subordinate but real dominion 
 over God's Kingdom, and so will be qualified supernaturally to 
 exercise judgment. Thus endowed and clothed with sovereignty, 
 He may be called God in the sense in which the Old Testament 
 uses the title respecting creatures raised by Him to a participation 
 in His counsels and His administration. He may even, Socinus 
 taught, be adored, and He may, without sin, be invoked. On this 
 point, an opposite opinion was advocated by Francis Davidis, a 
 prominent Socinian leader. There came to be two parties on the 
 question relative to adoring Christ, the adorantes and the non- 
 adorantes. The Holy Spirit, in the Socinian theology, is another 
 name for a power of influence, exerted by God. The church 
 doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ is denied. His death is a 
 manifestation of compassion, and its principal significance is the 
 assurance it furnishes of the reality of God's purpose to pardon 
 sin. It is the resurrection of Jesus which, in the Socinian system, 
 is the fact of primary importance. It confirms the divine offer 
 of forgiveness. It brings Christ into the glorified life, wherein He 
 exercises His High Priestly office as an intercessor. 
 
 The Socinian exegesis, as far as the divinity of Christ is con- 
 cerned, encountered the most difficulty in disposing of passages 
 concerning His preexistence. Some of the Socinians were con- 
 strained to teach a preexistence only in the divine purpose. As 
 to the prologue of John's Gospel, the Logos was said to be 
 impersonal, and the "all things" made were said to denote the 
 things of the Gospel, the spiritual creation which springs from 
 the Saviour's agency among men. The title of Logos is given 
 to Christ for what He is to be and for the exaltation which 
 He is to experience. 
 
 Socinus classified the Scriptural passages pertaining to the 
 Atonement under four heads. The passages which speak of 
 redemption by Christ or by His blood, or of His life as being 
 a ransom for us, are pronounced metaphorical. Moses is said to
 
 324 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 have redeemed Israel from bondage. The passages which say 
 that Christ died for us or for our sins are said to mean that our 
 sins were the cause or occasion of His death, or that He died to 
 win us from the practice of sin, nothing else being required as 
 the condition of pardon. The passages which refer to the bear- 
 ing of our sins by Christ e.g. i Peter ii. 14 are asserted to 
 denote simply that He took away our sins by moving us to aban- 
 don them, or (as possibly in the case of Isaiah Iviii. 6), that his 
 sufferings were occasioned by our transgressions, no idea of satis- 
 faction for sins being included. The passages which designate 
 the death of Christ as a sacrifice and Christ as a High Priest 
 contain no idea of expiation, for such an element is not in the 
 Old Testament institutions from which these expressions are 
 derived. The priestly office of Christ consists in His doing every- 
 thing requisite for the communication to us of the forgiveness 
 promised by God. The capital element in this function of Christ 
 is His intercession above, to which the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 refers. The objections of Socinus to the Church doctrine on 
 grounds of reason are acutely stated. He denies that retributive 
 justice is a property of God's nature any more than His com- 
 passion. Both are dependent upon His will. Forgiveness and 
 satisfaction are incompatible. Punishment is something purely 
 personal and hence not transferable. One or the other of two 
 kinds of obedience, active and passive, attributed to Christ, is 
 superfluous, since passive obedience removes all the guilt growing 
 out of a want of active obedience. It is impossible for Christ to 
 furnish the satisfaction required by the orthodox theory. He can 
 endure but one eternal death. He is not, as an exalted person, 
 to have on that account a lighter punishment. As God, He does 
 not suffer. If He did suffer, this would not atone for man's sin. 
 Moreover, Christ owes active obedience for Himself. If He did 
 not, it would avail for only one person. 
 
 The Socinians held that the natural body perishes utterly and 
 finally, and that the body with which the spirit is clothed hereafter 
 is a new spiritual body. The condition of the soul in the inter- 
 mediate state is very obscurely indicated, since it is the recipient 
 of no sorrow and the subject of no penal suffering. Without the 
 body, it is near to non-existence, since it is incapable of feeling or 
 perception. As immortality is represented as a gift of God to the 
 righteous, annihilation is the lot of the wicked, but the question
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 325 
 
 when this lot is experienced whether at the judgment or later 
 is also left unanswered. 1 
 
 The ultimate source of the antagonism of the Socinian theology 
 to Evangelical Protestantism lies in the radical difference on the 
 subject of sin and of its effects on the soul. The sin of the first 
 man is not transmitted to his posterity. Men in their natural state 
 are still free to choose the right. Their moral depravity is minified, 
 both as to its guilt and its control, in comparison with the doctrine 
 of the Reformers on this subject. They can still withstand 
 temptation, and comply with the special commandments of the 
 New Testament. The conception of the remedy is matched to the 
 lower conception of the malady from which man is to be delivered. 
 As critics the Socinians set exegesis free from the trammels of dog- 
 matic theology. They pursued their investigations into provinces 
 which had been guarded in a great degree from scrutiny by the 
 force of tradition. Thus they fill an important place in the progress 
 of theological science. But their service for the most part ends 
 here. Their positive construction of doctrine partakes of the 
 weakness of the foundations on which it is made to rest. "With 
 the old dogmas," says Harnack, " Socinianism has at bottom set 
 aside Christianity as a religion. Guilt and Penitence, Faith and 
 Grace, are conceptions which are only saved by inconsistencies 
 out of regard to the New Testament from being wholly elimi- 
 nated." 2 
 
 1 For the passages on this topic, see Fock, Der Socianistnus, Vol. II. p. 
 
 7!5 s q- 
 
 2 DG. III. 691.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE ROMAN CATHOLIC SYSTEM RESTATED IN THE CREED OF TRENT 
 THE THEOLOGY OF THE JESUITS JANSENISM QUIETISM 
 
 THE year 1541 may be considered a landmark in the course of 
 the contest between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics. In 
 that year occurred the Colloquy at Ratisbon between the theo- 
 logians of the two parties. Melanchthon, on the one side, the 
 most pacific of the Protestant theologians, conferred with Contarini, 
 a representative of those on the Papal side who had the least 
 antipathy to Protestant views of justification. They were able to 
 unite on several cardinal points, but were hopelessly at variance 
 on certain other points, including the Eucharist and the authority 
 of the Pope. An armed conflict between the parties in Germany 
 which were organized in distinct leagues was at that time threat- 
 ened. This effort to avert it proved futile. A year before the 
 conference at Ratisbon, the organization of the Society of Jesus 
 had received the Papal sanction. The various forces that brought 
 on the Counter-Reformation were beginning to operate with an 
 efficiency that went on increasing. The Popes had steadily re- 
 sisted and baffled attempts to procure the assembling of a General 
 Council. Apart from other considerations, the memory of Constance 
 and Basle was too fresh. At last there was no escape from taking 
 this unwelcome step. The independent action of princes and 
 countries in ecclesiastical affairs was equally, if not more, to be 
 dreaded than a council. The urgent demands of the Emperor, 
 Charles V., could not longer be evaded. At the call of Paul III., 
 in December, 1545, the Council of Trent Trent being under 
 German rule assembled. In this first period of the Council, 
 the number of members, all told, did not exceed 112. They were 
 mostly Italians. In 1547, the Council was adjourned sine die. It 
 was reassembled by Julius III. in 1551, but in the following year 
 
 326
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 327 
 
 was again adjourned. After ten years, in January, 1562, it met 
 once more, called together by Paul IV., and terminated its exist- 
 ence in December, 1563. In this third period, 255 persons were 
 counted as members, of whom two-thirds were Italians. 
 
 From the beginning, the Council was really under the direction 
 of the Pope. Votes were not taken by nations, as at Constance. 
 The Papal legates presided and in the main controlled the pro- 
 ceedings. It was insisted that no proposals should be brought 
 before the body except by them. By constant correspondence 
 with Rome the Papal approval was secured in advance for all 
 the propositions relative to doctrines for which the sanction of the 
 Council was asked. The topics were discussed in committees or 
 congregations of theologians and canonists, were sometimes taken 
 up in the general congregation, and, when adopted, were solemnly 
 proclaimed in the general sessions of the body. The history of 
 the Council was written by Father Paul Sarpi, who was a moderate 
 Catholic, with a strong anti-papal bias, and also by Pallivicini, with 
 a bias equally strong in the opposite direction. In the copious 
 literature on the subject, the publication by Theiner of the official 
 acts of the Council is a writing of great value. 1 
 
 The difficulties which the Council had to face might seem in- 
 superable. How should it begin ? Should the reform of abuses be 
 first undertaken, or should the initial work be the positive enunci- 
 ation of doctrine and the condemnation of the Protestant tenets ? 
 The decision was adverse to the urgent demand of the Emperor 
 Charles. Questions of doctrine and of reform were to be con- 
 sidered together, but it was decided to frame first the definitions 
 of doctrine, in opposition to heretical opinions. These definitions 
 were set forth in a series of decrees, with anathemas appended 
 under each head. In the Council there were advocates of the 
 Episcopal system, which made all bishops as to apostolical succes- 
 sion on a par with the Bishop of Rome. What should be deter- 
 mined on this subject? There were a few members who in their 
 ideas of Justification approached near to the Protestant opinion. 
 
 1 Theiner's work (2 vols. fol. 1874) contains only the official Relation, pre- 
 pared by the Secretary, of the public proceedings of the Council. Father 
 Paul's htoria, etc., was first published in London (1619). Pallivicini's Istoria 
 appeared in 1656-57. Both authors made use of important documents. For 
 the bibliography relating to the Council, see the Rtal-Encykl. d. Prof. Theol. 
 Vol. XVI. p. 12, Moller's Kirchcngesch. Vol. III. p. 215.
 
 328 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 They might, without great difficulty, be overruled and silenced. 
 But there was the marked diversity upon the relation of divine 
 agency to free-will, where the Franciscans followed the Scotist 
 tendency and leaned decidedly to Semi-Pelagian tenets, while 
 the Dominicans, the followers of Aquinas, who had of late brought 
 to the front the more Augustinian type of teaching, were arrayed 
 against them. The decrees were drawn up on the disputed ques- 
 tions, with patient and long-continued labor, and with exceeding 
 skill. The policy adopted was to abstain from any declaration on 
 points where the several schools were at variance, and to select 
 phraseology ambiguous enough to secure the assent of each of 
 them. Since the interpretation of the Tridentine Creed was rele- 
 gated to the Pope exclusively, its character led of necessity to an 
 augmenting of the Papal prerogative. The discussion of the most 
 weighty dogmatic questions began in the fourth session of the 
 Council. The first thing to be settled was the authoritative 
 sources of dogma. On this point, tradition was pronounced to 
 have equal authority with Scripture. The Bishop of Chiazza as- 
 serted in the discussion that this opinion is impious. He soon left 
 the Council and afterwards retracted his obnoxious statement. By 
 this decree, the usages sanctioned by Rome were furnished with an 
 apostolic warrant. The Vulgate translation was made authorita- 
 tive "pro authentica habeatur " in all public addresses, ex- 
 positions, and debates. The books in it, including the Old 
 Testament Apocrypha, were declared to be canonical, the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews being set down in the list as the four- 
 teenth Epistle of Paul. Moreover, it was decreed that interpre- 
 tations of Scripture must be in accord with those of " Holy Mother 
 Church," the judge of " its true sense." This criterion was set up 
 in place of the unanimous voice of the Fathers. In the fifth ses- 
 sion, Original Sin was expounded. It was necessary to provide 
 against a collision of the Thomists'and Scotists. The anathema 
 was pronounced against all who deny that " the entire Adam " 
 " as to body and soul," was changed for the worse " in deterius 
 commutatum." The phrase is vague and comprehensive. The 
 merit of Christ, the ground of salvation, is applied in baptism to 
 infants as well as adults. By this sacrament, " the guilt of original 
 sin " is remitted. The evil principle, concupiscence, remains, but 
 brings guilt only to those who consent to its impulses ; for as it 
 springs from sin, so is it an incentive to sin. We come in the
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 329 
 
 sixth session to the decree on Justification, which contains sixteen 
 chapters and is followed by the negations in thirty-three canons. 
 On this subject there was disagreement in the debates on many 
 particulars, and a vast amount of time was spent in settling upon 
 the formulas. At the outset, along with an assertion of the need 
 of the grace of the Gospel, free-will is declared to be attenuated 
 and bent down (inclinatum), but by no means (minime) extin- 
 guished. The merit of the passion of Christ is the basis of the 
 bestowal of the grace whereby men are " made just " (justi 
 fiunt). Justification is a translation from the natural state to the 
 state of grace, for which change baptism " or the desire thereof" 
 is necessary. As to the preparation for justification in the case of 
 adults, " prevenient grace " comes first, which men can consent 
 to or reject. It is to be observed that a thread of Semi-Pelagianism 
 runs through the whole series of definitions. If one accepts this 
 prevenient grace, he exercises faith ; that is, believes the revelations 
 and promises of God to be true. This is equivalent to saying that 
 he accepts the doctrinal teachings of the Church. When he thus 
 believes, when he begins to hope in the divine mercy, and to love 
 God, to hate sin, and purpose to be baptized and to begin a new 
 life, the preparation is complete. Next comes the answer to the 
 question what Justification is and its causes. It embraces the 
 remission of sins and sanctification. The instrumental cause is 
 the sacrament of baptism, the primal cause is God's justice (or 
 righteousness), whereby we are renewed in spirit by the Holy 
 Ghost, who distributes to every one as He wills and according to 
 " each one's disposition and co-operation" Man receives at once 
 forgiveness and grace, hope and charity. By this formula the 
 controversy in the Council on the question whether remission pre- 
 cedes or follows the infusion of subjective righteousness was 
 allayed. Justification is by faith and freely, first because faith 
 is the beginning and root of Justification, and secondly because 
 neither antecedent faith nor works merit the grace itself of Justi- 
 fication. There was a lack of unity among the Fathers of the 
 Council on the subject of assurance. They took refuge in the 
 statement that it is not to be said that sins are forgiven to any one 
 who boasts (jactanti) of the certainty of His forgiveness, and "rests 
 in that alone." As one ought not to doubt of the mercy of God, 
 so, in view of his own weakness, he may have " fear and appre- 
 hension" (formidare et timere). Justification is declared to be
 
 33O HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 capable of increase. As to Perseverance, one should have a firm 
 hope, but cannot be absolutely assured. If he is not himself over- 
 confident or negligent in doing his part, God's help will not be 
 wanting. Respecting Predestination, very little is said. It is 
 spoken of as a hidden mystery. No one is to presume that if he 
 is justified, he cannot sin or that he is sure to repent if he does 
 sin. Whom God has chosen can only be known by special reve- 
 lation. For those who have fallen from grace, the sacrament of 
 penance opens the way to receive this grace. Penance is " the 
 second plank after the shipwreck of grace lost." This is the 
 provision for those who sin after baptism. Its parts are confes- 
 sion, absolution, and satisfaction by fasts, prayers, alms, etc. 
 Eternal life is both a grace promised to the children of God and 
 a reward for their good works and merits. It is through the 
 virtue infused by the grace of Christ that their meritorious 
 works are performed. God will have His own gifts to be their 
 merits. The canons emphasize the part taken by free-will in 
 preparing for justification (IX.), and condemns the errors 
 that good works are purely the fruit of justification, do not 
 increase it, and are not meritorious (XXIV., XXXII.). 
 
 In the decree on the sacraments (Session VII.) the characteristics 
 of the Roman Catholic system are most distinctly brought out. 
 Through the sacraments, Justification in all its stages is imparted. 
 They are seven in number, all instituted by Christ. They convey 
 grace to all who interpose no obstacle thereto. Three of them, 
 baptism, confirmation, and orders, imprint an indelible character, 
 the meaning of which is not explained. The intention of doing 
 what the Church does is required in the minister. Baptism is 
 necessary to salvation. In the Eucharist (which is treated in 
 Session XIII.) Christ is said to be present in His own substance 
 by a manner of existing not explicable in words, but possible to God. 
 Transubstantiation takes place, and concomitance is affirmed. The 
 highest form of worship (latria) is due to the sacrament. The 
 annual festival of Corpus Christi is said to have been most 
 piously and religiously introduced into the Church. No one must 
 approach the sacrament except after sacramental confession, a 
 rule that applies to priests as well as laymen. In the twenty-first 
 session, it was declared that the Church has a right to withhold 
 the cup from communicants, and that when this is done, a true 
 sacrament is nevertheless fully received. In the sacrament of
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 33* 
 
 penance (Session XIV.) the priest fulfils th office of a judge. 
 Contrition is the first requirement and element. Attrition is 
 designated as an "imperfect contrition." It assists the penitent, 
 disposing him to obtain the grace of God in the sacrament. The 
 language here is not clear, but on the whole it appears that sanc- 
 tion is not given to the Scotist opinion on this topic. All mortal 
 sins must be confessed, and this must be done at least once a 
 year. The reservation of cases, both by the Pope, and by ordi- 
 nary bishops, each in his own diocese, is sanctioned. At the 
 point of death there is no reservation. Then all priests may ab- 
 solve all penitents. Satisfaction is required of such as are absolved, 
 the efficacy of which is through Christ. It is both medicinal and 
 penal. In the twenty-fifth session the doctrine concerning indul- 
 gences was set forth. Caution was imposed relative to entering, in 
 popular discourses, into subtile and difficult questions about Pur- 
 gatory. Whatever savors of filthy lucre in connection with this 
 matter of indulgences is to be avoided. It is ordained that all 
 evil gains from the issue of indulgences, " a prolific cause of 
 abuses," shall be abolished. But the people are to be taught that 
 masses, prayers, alms, and the like are to be performed according 
 to the rules of the Church, for the departed. Under the head of 
 Ordination (Session XXIII.), the divine institution of the hierarchy 
 is affirmed. Its divine orders are authorized either by Scripture 
 or tradition (c. II.) . Bishops are declared to be superior to pres- 
 byters. To bishops belong the right to confirm and to ordain. 
 But the disputed question whether bishops derive their succession 
 directly from Christ, as does the Pope, or through him, was left 
 untouched. There was a strenuous party on the side of Episco- 
 palism and against the Curialists. The brief reference (Session 
 XXIII. Canon VIII.) to the Roman Pontiff, in connection with 
 "legitimate and true bishops," is obscure and indeterminate. Nor 
 is the question settled by the phrases in the Roman Catechism 
 respecting the " legitimate successor of Peter " and the vicar of 
 Christ (c. 10. q. 10). One of the canons on marriage (X.) 
 anathematizes those who place it above the state of virginity, and 
 who say that the state of virginity and celibacy is not better than 
 that of matrimony. On the invocation of saints and the veneration 
 of relics and images, the established traditions were sanctioned, 
 but abuses that may have crept in were to be sedulously weeded 
 out by careful teaching. The Council of Trent did a good service
 
 332 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 by enactments relative to the education and morals of the clergy, 
 and by other ordinances bearing on practical reforms in matters 
 ecclesiastical. To the Roman Catholic Church it was of inesti- 
 mable value as furnishing a definite statement of its dogmas, and 
 a catalogue of the opinions which were to be considered false and 
 heretical. 
 
 Buttresses of Papal prerogative, which were not erected in the 
 Council itself, were indirectly supplied in the formularies which, in 
 accordance with an act of the Council, were issued later under 
 the auspices of the Pope. In 1564, the Professio Fidei, the form 
 of acceptance of the Tridentine Creed, to be subscribed by priests 
 and instructors of youth, was published by Pius V. It contains 
 an explicit promise of obedience to the Pontiffs. The Roman 
 Catechism Catechismus Romanus was composed under Do- 
 minican influence, and hence the Jesuits often preferred their own 
 Catechism, composed by Canisius. The Roman Catechism makes 
 the Pope the visible head, as Christ is the invisible, of the Church, 
 and styles him the "Vicar and Minister " of the powers of Christ. 1 
 
 The Jesuits were the stanch defenders of Papal supremacy 
 until their own opinions encountered Papal opposition, and finally 
 their policy in the conduct of missions in the East was con- 
 demned at Rome. The ablest theological champion of the 
 Roman Catholic doctrine was a Jesuit, Robert Bellarmine, whose 
 work furnished a storehouse of controversial weapons to be used 
 against Protestant heresies. Bellarmine advocates the doctrine of 
 the Pope's personal infallibility as a teacher of doctrine and also 
 of morals. He taught that the authority of bishops is derived, 
 not immediately from Christ, but from the Pope. On the ques- 
 tions which divided Thomists from the school opposed to them, 
 the Council of Trent had managed to steer between Scylla and 
 Charybdis, partly by means of silence and partly by ambiguity. 
 Subsequently there sprung up two movements adverse to one 
 another, and representing extremes as compared with the via 
 media of the Council. The Jesuit theologians contended with 
 zeal for an advanced type of Semi-Pelagianism. Against them, 
 there occurred a revival of Augustinianism, the authors of which 
 adhered closely to the tenets of the founder of the system. In 
 
 1 The Index libr. prohibit, was issued by Pius IV. ( 1 564) . The reading of 
 the Bible in the vernacular is permitted only to such as have a written license 
 from the Bishop and Inquisitor, given upon the advice of the Father Confessor.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 333 
 
 the Netherlands, where the revived Augustinianism first appeared, 
 the movement was not due to any Protestant influence, nor was 
 it so, to any material extent, elsewhere. Michael Bajus, at the 
 University of Louvain, promulgated the tenets of the Latin 
 Father in their pure form. Seventy-nine points of his teaching 
 were condemned by Pius V. in 1567. In the list are the state- 
 ments that no sin is in its nature venial, that free-will without 
 grace to help can only sin, that in the redeemed there is no 
 merit which is not gratuitously given by God, that concupiscence 
 continues to be sin. 1 Afterwards the Louvain faculty as well as 
 Bajus were compelled to abjure the obnoxious theses. In 1588, 
 Molina, a Spanish Jesuit, distinctly propounded Semi-Pelagianism. 
 He brought forward the theory of scientia media, the doctrine, 
 namely, that God, foreknowing what all persons would do under 
 any and all circumstances, sends to perdition such as He foresees 
 would remain obdurate, whatever exertions might be made, even 
 by divine grace, to recover them. This doctrine had been first set 
 forth by Fonseca, a Portuguese theologian. The Molinists were 
 combated not only by many outside of the Jesuit order, but even 
 by a party within it. The debate spread and became so excited 
 that Clement VIII. appointed a special congregation Congregafio 
 de auxiliis gratia to give a decision. This was in 1597. Noth- 
 ing but an unwillingness to offend the Jesuits deterred him from 
 rendering a decision against them. But the congregation came to 
 no result, and in 1607 Paul V. imposed silence on both parties of 
 disputants, forbidding anything written by them on the subject to 
 be printed. 
 
 In various other particulars, the Jesuits inculcated a lax theology. 
 They taught that in the Sacrament of Penance, where there is only 
 attrition, it suffices for Justification. 2 High authorities among 
 them, of whom Bellarmine was one, argued in favor of the propo- 
 sition that a Pope could not embrace heresy, and that an act 
 believed by one to be sinful, one ought, nevertheless if it were 
 enjoined by the Pope to perform. 3 The theory of popular sov- 
 ereignty was adopted and served as a means of exalting the Popes 
 as deriving their authority, in distinction from princes, directly 
 
 1 For the passages, see Gieseler, KG. Vol. III. iii. 59; Thomasius, DG. 
 Vol. II. p. 720. 
 
 2 For the passages from Jesuit authorities, see Gieseler, V. III. iii. 60. 
 8 Ibid. Vol. V. p. 99.
 
 334 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 from God. Laxness in theology was accompanied by a mis- 
 chievous casuistry and by a not unfrequent inculcation of ethical 
 precepts which strike at the foundations of morality. 1 The doc- 
 trine of " probabilism," which, if they did not originate, they took 
 up and spread abroad, sanctioned the doing of an act the lawful- 
 ness of which is supported by the authority of a single doctor. 
 The maxim that the end justifies the means, if it be not explicitly 
 avowed, is assumed. It is taught that a man without offending 
 conscience may do an act which conscience forbids, when his 
 design is not to sin, but to promote a good cause. So the doc- 
 trine of mental reservation in promises of qualifications, not 
 expressed, but purely mental had a wide approval. The right- 
 fulness of tyrannicide was frequently defended by Jesuit authors 
 of high repute. The murder of Henry III. was extensively ap- 
 proved. The assassin of Henry IV. had studied with Jesuits, and 
 had adopted the idea of the rectitude of such a deed. There were 
 also writers on casuistry, for the guidance of priests in the Confes- 
 sional, who, apart from other baneful teachings, gave such directions 
 and entered into such distinctions in respect to sexual relations as 
 are shameful in their indecency and corrupt tendency. The Jesuit 
 Society did important services to learning. It has comprehended 
 in its ranks many unselfish and holy men. But, while these merits 
 ought not to be overlooked, they ought not to screen from de- 
 served reprobation the sins in doctrine as well as practice 
 which brought upon the organization widespread condemnation. 
 
 The most noteworthy movement in this period in behalf of 
 Augustinian theology was Jansenism. It became the occasion of 
 a formidable and effective attack upon the Jesuit theology and 
 ethics. Jansenius was a professor at Louvain, and then Bishop of 
 Ypres. He died in middle life, in 1638. On his posthumous 
 work, Augusfinus, he had labored for twenty-two years. It is a 
 statement and defence of Augustine's system in its genuine form. 
 On Original Sin, the fall of the race in Adam, on human inability, 
 on irresistible grace, and the other kindred points, the actual 
 teaching of the Latin Father was clearly set forth. The book was 
 printed in 1640. Shortly after, it was prohibited by the Inquisitors 
 and by Urban VIII. The Papal bull (in eminenti) was not ac- 
 cepted in France by the group of men known as Port Royalists. 
 The Abbot of St. Cyran, Arnauld, Blaise Pascal, and Nicole, were 
 1 See Gieseler, ut supra.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 335 
 
 the leaders in an aggressive warfare upon the theology and ethics 
 of the Jesuits, by whom Jansenism was fiercely assailed. These 
 leaders were devoted Catholics, earnest and ascetic in their piety. 
 All were men of striking abilities. The great genius among them 
 was Pascal, whose Thoughts preliminary notes for an intended 
 work on Apologetics are marked by originality and insight. In 
 the Provincial Letters, Pascal held up to view, in a most attractive 
 literary style and with keen satire, the theology and ethics preva- 
 lent among the Jesuits. Innocent X., in 1653, in the bull cum 
 occasione, condemned five propositions purporting to be extracted 
 from Jansenius's work. One of them is the proposition that grace 
 is irresistible. Another is that it is Semi-Pelagian to assert that 
 Christ died for all men. In resisting this decision, Arnauld took 
 the ground that the propositions, as they were recited, were not 
 in the Augustimts, and that on this question question de fait 
 the Pope was not infallible. Pope Alexander VII., in 1656, anath- 
 ematized all those who should say that the five propositions are 
 not in Jansenius. To the formula of assent to the bulls against 
 him, including the last, all the French bishops were finally moved 
 to subscribe. The influence of the Jesuits and the power of their 
 ally, Louis XIV., secured their triumph. The cloister of Port 
 Royal was demolished. But Jansenism was not eradicated. The 
 last stage in the Jansenist controversies carries us into the 
 eighteenth century. The New Testament with Moral Reflections 
 of Quesnel was the work of a Jansenist. .The Jesuits obtained at 
 Rome, in the bull Unigenitus, a condemnation of the work, speci- 
 fying one hundred and one heresies said to be contained in it. 
 The King's confessor had charged it with containing more than a 
 hundred heresies, and the bull was shaped with a view to make 
 good the charge. The bull went beyond the denial of the plainest 
 utterances of Augustine and other Fathers of the Church, and in- 
 cluded the denunciation of doctrines accepted by Christians gener- 
 ally. The Cardinal de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, had approved 
 of Quesnel's book. Those who called for an appeal from the Pope 
 to a General Council were styled Appellants ; the opposite party 
 were the Acceptants. The Appellants were numerous and distin- 
 guished. Parliament was in favor of them. The government, 
 especially after Louis XV. acceded to the throne, was against them, 
 and their cause was crushed. The subsequent events relating to 
 Jansenism it does not belong to the History of Doctrine to narrate.
 
 336 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 In contrast with the prevalent externalism in religion was the 
 development of mysticism in the form which has received the 
 name of Quietism. Molinos published in 1675 The Spiritual 
 Guide, in which he unfolded his ideas pertaining to a devout life 
 and the sources of inward peace. Abstinence, maceration of the 
 body, penances, were deemed by him of little value, save at the 
 beginning of a course of self-discipline. The secret of peace is in 
 contemplation and self-surrender to God. The opposition of the 
 Jesuits was aroused. The Inquisition took up the matter. Mo- 
 linos was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. The charge that 
 he retracted his teachings, or that he taught an immoral doctrine of 
 the indifference of exterior acts when the soul is wedded to God, 
 is not sustained by adequate proofs. The ideas of Madame Guyon 
 respecting the bliss of an absorption of the human will in the divine 
 and the absorption of the soul in God, were judged to be heretical 
 by Bossuet and other prelates. Fenelon, who dissented from this 
 opinion, inculcated in his Maxims of the Saints a like mystical 
 doctrine. Bossuet was supported in his disapproval of this book 
 by the Sorbonne, and by the Pope, who, in 1699, declared that its 
 teachings are erroneous. Thereupon, Fenelon immediately and 
 in public retracted them. 
 
 Bossuet, in his Exposition of the Catholic Faith, presented 
 the tenets of the Church in a liberal and plausible form. His 
 polemical work, the History of the Variations of Protestantism, 
 (1688) is an ingenious attempt to show that Protestantism is 
 another name for a chaos of conflicting opinions, from which the 
 only escape is in submission to the authority of the Church. Dur- 
 ing the contest of Louis XIV. for absolutism in matters ecclesias- 
 tical as well as civil and secular, the clergy of France, in the 
 Assembly of 1682, asserted the four propositions of Gallicanism, 
 that the Pope's authority extends only to spiritual affairs, that his 
 authority is subordinate to that of a General Council, that he is 
 bound by the canon law and by the special institutions and usages 
 of the French Church, and that his doctrinal decisions are not 
 irreformable unless they have the concurrence of the whole Church. 
 After the King made peace with Innocent XL, the Articles were 
 no longer insisted upon, and the bishops were suffered to disavow 
 them. In this conflict, Bossuet was the champion of Gallican 
 freedom, but, owing to the settlement just referred to, his work 
 in defence of it did not see the light until 1729,
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ARMINIAN REVOLT AGAINST CALVINISM THE SCHOOL OF 
 
 SAUMUR PAJONISM THE FEDERAL THEOLOGY 
 
 CALVIN in his lifetime had to contend against adversaries who 
 assailed his doctrine of Predestination. One was Albert Pighius, 
 a Roman Catholic bishop at Utrecht, who, from a Pelagian point 
 of view, undertook to prove by the usual arguments that the doc- 
 trine was destructive of morality. Calvin answered him in his 
 book De Libero Arbitrio. Castellio, after he left Geneva, 
 attacked Calvin's opinion. Jerome Bolsec, who had been a 
 Carmelite, and had established himself as a physician at Geneva, 
 was imprisoned, and afterwards banished, on account of his hos- 
 tility to the doctrine of unconditional election, although the 
 theologians of Basle, Zurich, and Berne counselled milder treat- 
 ment. In consequence of these attacks, Calvin composed the 
 Consensus Genevensis. After the death of Calvin, the extreme 
 supralapsarian form of the doctrine was set forth without qualifica- 
 tion by his followers. This was Beza's opinion. Previous opposi- 
 tion was of little account, compared with the great Arminian 
 revolt. Arminianism was an uprising against the Calvinistic doc- 
 trine, of signal importance in the history of the Reformed Theol- 
 ogy. It appeared in Holland, which, even more than Switzerland, 
 became the centre of theological activity. This was owing, in no 
 small degree, to the influx of Protestant theologians of ability and 
 learning from France. Calvinistic influences more and more 
 gained the preponderance over the Lutheran, and found expres- 
 sion in the Belgic Confession, which was presented to Philip II. 
 in 1562. There were symptoms of dissent from the Calvinistic 
 tenet before James Arminius raised the standard against it. He 
 was a ripe scholar, had travelled extensively, had been a pupil of 
 Beza, and had followed his teaching. Being called upon, how- 
 z 337
 
 338 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 ever, to defend the supralapsarian opinion, against Koornheert and 
 Others, he entered into investigations which led him to renounce 
 it. When he became professor at Leyden (in 1603), he fell into 
 conflict with his colleague, Gomarus, a rigid Calvinist. Arminius 
 died in 1609, not before he had had time to set forth fully, and 
 in a lucid style, his theological system. There were leaders of 
 great talents to follow in his steps, of whom Episcopius, his suc- 
 cessor at Leyden, and Uytenbogaert, were the ablest. Arminian- 
 ism spread among the clergy and laity. Political differences 
 mingled in the theological dispute. The Calvinists were adhe- 
 rents of Maurice, Prince of Orange. The Arminians, who counted 
 on their side the great statesmen, Olden Barneveld and Hugo 
 Grotius, advocated the union of Church and State, and a Repub- 
 lican system. Strong as the Arminians were in the genius and 
 learning of their chiefs, they were greatly outnumbered, both 
 among the clergy and the laity, by their opponents. These were 
 not at all disposed to tolerate what they considered doctrinal and 
 political heresy. The Creed of the Arminians was set forth in 
 the Remonstrance addressed in 1610 to the States of Holland 
 and West Friesland, the document which gave to them the name 
 of Remonstrants. It consists of five Articles. The first asserts 
 conditional election, or election dependent on the foreknowledge 
 of faith. The second asserts universal atonement, in the sense 
 that it is intended, although it is not actually efficient, for all. 
 The third affirms the inability of men to exercise saving faith, or 
 to accomplish anything really good without regeneration through 
 the Holy Spirit. The fourth declares that although grace at every 
 step of the spiritual life is indispensable, it is yet not irresistible. 
 The fifth pronounces the Perseverance of all believers doubtful. 
 Later, the Arminians went further on this last point, maintaining 
 that believers may fall from grace finally. The Remonstrance 
 was met by a counter-Remonstrance from the Calvinists. An 
 epoch in the progress of the contention was reached through the 
 meeting of the Synod of Dort in 1618, which was attended by 
 delegates from England, sent by James I., and from a number 
 of other Reformed Churches. It was unquestionably a learned, 
 as well as an imposing, assembly. The Arminians were not per- 
 mitted to sit as members, but were invited to meet the Synod 
 and to represent their cause in public conference with its mem- 
 bers. Neither their arguments nor their pleas for toleration had
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 339 
 
 any effect. The Synod condemned their five Articles, sanctioned 
 the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, and pro- 
 mulgated five heads or chapters of doctrine of its own. Each 
 chapter is divided into a series of specifications. The chapters 
 open with the doctrine of Predestination, which is sub-lapsarian 
 in its form. So far the Dort Creed sanctioned (against Gomarus) 
 the more moderate type of Calvinism. Election is from the fallen 
 race, condemned for their sin in Adam (i.). The elect attain to 
 assurance in various degrees and in an unequal measure (xii.). 
 There is a prseterition of the non-elect, and " this is the decree 
 of reprobation " (xvi.). There follows, as in the case of each of 
 the articles, a list of Rejected Errors. The necessity of a com- 
 plete, objective satisfaction to the divine justice is affirmed. This 
 is through the death of Christ, which owes its atoning value to 
 His divine nature. There was difficulty and discussion respecting 
 the statement to be made as to the relation of the Atonement to 
 the non-elect. The Atonement was declared to be of infinite 
 value, and sufficient to expiate the sins of the world (II. iii.), so 
 that no one is lost for want of an Atonement (vi.). It was, how- 
 ever, the " will and intention " of God that the Atonement should 
 be efficacious only in relation to the elect, who are given to Christ 
 by the Father (viii.). The significance of "limited Atonement" 
 is thus seen to be that in the divine intention the " intention of 
 love," it was sometimes called the elect alone were included. 
 The relation of the Atonement to the non-elect is, therefore, only 
 incidental. The corruption of human nature is said to be propa- 
 gated from Adam (III. and IV. ii.). Without regenerating grace, 
 none can return to God (iii.). The call of the Gospel is made 
 earnestly to all who hear it (viii.). Nevertheless, the acceptance 
 of it is due solely to a discriminating, efficient act of God's grace, 
 founded exclusively on election (x.), an act to be compared to 
 the raising of the dead to life (xii.). The mode of this action of 
 the Spirit is inscrutable (xiii.), but it is not properly coercion, or 
 a destruction of the qualities of the human will (xvi.) . The Per- 
 severance of all the regenerated is positively asserted (V.) . 
 
 The Canons of Dort, both in spirit and letter, present Calvinism, 
 not in its extreme, yet in its unadulterated, form. The glory and 
 majesty of God are in the forefront. The starting-point of the 
 system is the eternal purposes of God. The Arminian system is 
 an attempt to formulate a protest from an ethical point of view.
 
 340 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 The end sought is the maintenance of human responsibility and 
 the moral conditions of praise and blame, reward and penalty, 
 while still upholding salvation by grace. But in pursuing this 
 end, the Arminian teachers fell back on the Scotist idea of the 
 absolute supremacy of the divine will. God is not more bound 
 to punish than to forgive. The difficulty of avoiding a more or 
 less subtle form of legalism is inherent in all denials of the sole 
 efficacy of grace. The Arminian teachers in their recoil from 
 mysticism and their anxiety to guard the liberty of the will, con- 
 structed their system on the basis of the formal principle of Prot- 
 estantism, the exclusive authority of the Scriptures, rather than on 
 the experience of justifying faith. The testimony of the Holy 
 Spirit to the divinity and verity of the Scriptures gave way to a 
 predominant reliance on miracles and other external evidences. 
 This is the character of the work of Grotius on Christian evidences. 1 
 In the Arminian theology faith is reception of the doctrines and 
 laws of revealed religion ; and faith is justifying, not as an instru- 
 ment uniting the soul to Christ, but as an imperfect righteousness, 
 which is mercifully accepted by God as if it were perfect. On the 
 subject of Original Sin, the Arminians taught that the inclinations 
 to evil inherited from Adam are not in themselves blameworthy. 
 It is only consent to them that brings real guilt. By Limborch 
 they are represented as only different in degree from the same 
 appetites in Adam. By Episcopius, they are declared to be so 
 controlling in their strength that without prevenient grace, restor- 
 ing human powers, there is no possibility of finding the way of 
 life and salvation and of returning to God. 2 Thus the gift of the 
 grace of God is made indispensable to an escape from sin and 
 perdition. It would seem to follow that the withholding of grace 
 would be unjust, that is, that grace is a debt. 
 
 The character of the Arminian theology is illustrated in one of 
 its most important writings, the treatise of Grotius on the satisfac- 
 tion of Christ, which was written in opposition to Socinianism. 
 Grotius sets out to vindicate the " Catholic doctrine," the ortho- 
 dox belief. The attack of Socinus had derived its force from the 
 assumption of the Anselmic theory that the relation of sinful man 
 
 1 De Veritate Christ. Relig. (1627). 
 
 2 See Limborch, Theolog. Christiana (L. III. c. 2, 24, c. 2, 1-4, c. 4, 
 i); Apol. Remonstr. (written by Episcopius), p. 84, b; Episcopius (L. IV. 
 5, cc. I, 2). See Jul. Miiller, Lehre v. d. Siinde, Vol. II. b. iv. c. 3, 3.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 341 
 
 to God is that of a debtor to a creditor. Grotius discards this 
 idea. The relation of God to man is that of a Ruler (Rector) to 
 a subject. A ruler has a right to remit a penalty, provided the 
 end for which the penalty is ordained is otherwise attained. This 
 end is the preservation of order and the prevention of future 
 transgressions. The death of Christ secures this end, as being a 
 " penal example " ; that is, as showing impressively what sin de- 
 serves, what the penalty would be were it actually inflicted on the 
 transgressor. It is a manifestation of the Lawgiver's hatred of 
 sin. It is not actual punishment, but rather a symbol of it. Not 
 being the literal penalty, God may determine what other condi- 
 tions are properly requisite for the issue of a pardon. This, in 
 brief outline, is the governmental theory of the Atonement. In 
 the room of the righteous necessity of the penalty, or the obliga- 
 tion of God to inflict it, we have the Scotist conception of the 
 liberty of the divine will in this respect. The penalty is not 
 endured ; but Grotius avoids a sanction of the Scotist term " ac- 
 ceptilation," on technical grounds. This term signifies something 
 received, as well as given ; and this cannot be said of Christ's 
 endurance of suffering. Calvinists considered that the govern- 
 mental theory was not a vindication, but a surrender, of the 
 " Catholic " doctrine, a defence which gave up the citadel to 
 the foe. Grotius simply carried out the Arminian conception of 
 " the wrath of God " as His goodness regulated by wisdom. The 
 motive of the divine government is conceived of as eudaemonistic. 
 Arminius, it is true, lays emphasis on the inflexibility of God's 
 righteousness, which consists, according to Episcopius, in main- 
 taining His truthfulness in attaching a penalty to His command- 
 ments. But Episcopius holds that the sacrifice of Christ is a 
 price because God is willing so to regard it. 1 The intercession of 
 Christ in heaven is, among the later Arminians, the chief element 
 in his High-Priestly office. 
 
 The Arminians denied the aseity of the Son, 2 which Calvin had 
 taught. He is subordinate to the Father, as the Spirit is to both 
 the Son and Father. The Father is first in dignity and power. 3 
 Yet the divine nature belongs to Son and Spirit. As to the 
 
 1 See Dorner, Hist, of Prof. Theology, II. p. 423. 
 
 2 That is, His avroOeorris. 
 
 8 So Episcopius and Limbroch. See the passages in Winer's Symbolik, 
 p. 43, and cf. Dorner, Person Christi, II. 891.
 
 342 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 person of Christ, Arminian leaders favored the Nestorian concep- 
 tion. Curcellaeus and the later Arminians make the agency of 
 the Logos to be a " special influx " or " operation " of the divine 
 nature. It is an assistance of God, involving a communication of 
 divine powers so far as a creature can receive them. 
 
 The Arminian scholars did much to liberate exegesis from 
 servitude under dogmatic theology. Clericus and VVetstein carried 
 forward the work of Biblical criticism which their predecessors 
 of the same school had begun. Affinities to Socinianism which 
 lurked in certain features of the Arminian system were developed 
 by the incoming of exiled Socinian scholars. There was a tendency 
 to intermingle the two systems and their adherents. But the 
 earlier founders of Arminianism are unjustly charged with 
 Pelagianism, which they repudiated. They insisted on the agency 
 of the Spirit in regeneration and sanctification as altogether the 
 predominant, as well as a necessary factor. The Wesleyan system, 
 an English product of the last century, was evangelical in its 
 spirit. It has been well described as " Arminianism on fire." 
 
 A remarkable attempt to mitigate the repugnance that was often 
 awakened by the Calvinistic doctrine of election is the theory of 
 Amyraldus (in the French, Amyraut) , designated as the doctrine 
 of hypothetic universal grace. The innovations which were 
 attributed to his colleagues in the Faculty at Saumur likewise 
 raised much opposition. 
 
 The French school of Saumur, one of the Protestant academies 
 of theology, had for its professors, after the year 1633, three men 
 of marked ability and erudition, Louis Capellus (Cappel), Moses 
 Amyraldus (Amyraut), and Joshua Placaeus (La Place). Before 
 them, John Cameron, a Scotchman by birth, had produced some 
 commotion by his doctrine as to the operation of grace, which was 
 that the spirit renews the soul, not by acting on the will directly, 
 but rather by an enlightening influence on the intellect. This was 
 broached partly for the sake of parrying Roman Catholic objections 
 to the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. Cameron's theory 
 did not attenuate this doctrine in the slightest degree, as was 
 admitted so soon as his theory was understood. His substantial 
 orthodoxy was allowed by those who withheld their sanction from 
 the theory. The most eminent of his pupils was Amyraut. He 
 boldly propounded the doctrine of hypothetical universal grace, 
 as it was called, which was substantially equivalent to a doctrine
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 343 
 
 of universal atonement. He maintained that there is in God, in 
 some proper sense, a will or desire (velleitas, affectus} that all 
 should repent and be saved. In case all should repent, no pur- 
 pose of God would stand in the way of their salvation. But the in- 
 dispensable means of repentance regenerating grace, following 
 election are not bestowed on them. In the order of nature the 
 decree of election follows the decree providing the atonement. 
 The attempt was made in two National Synods to procure a con- 
 demnation of his doctrine, but in both cases it failed. He success- 
 fully defended himself, and proved that his theory was not 
 inconsistent with the Creed of the Synod of Dort. 1 
 
 Cappel was a Biblical scholar, and by his critical opinions in 
 this department caused a commotion only less than that excited by 
 his colleague. He taught that the vowel-pointing of the Hebrew 
 text of the Old Testament is an invention later than the Christian 
 era, and is clothed with no infallible authority ; and that the 
 masoretic text of the Ancient Scriptures is open to amendment 
 from the comparison of manuscripts and versions. 
 
 Placseus is one of these three disturbers of theological quiet, 
 with whom we have to do at present. He was understood to deny 
 that the first sin of Adam is imputed to his posterity, and to resolve 
 original sin into mere hereditary depravity. At the Synod of 
 Charenton, in 1644-5, Garrisolius (Garrisole), the head of the 
 rival school of Montauban, presided. In no small degree through 
 his influence there was carried through the Synod a condemnation of 
 the opinion attributed to Placaeus, although his name was not men- 
 tioned. This opinion was pronounced an error, and was declared 
 
 1 A full sketch of the contents of Amyraut's first work, which was on Predes- 
 tination and its Principles, is given by Al. Schweizer, Die protestant. Central- 
 daymen^ c. 4. The end of God in creation is the exercise of His love. He 
 willed to impart even a higher good than Adam lost. Hence the gift of Christ 
 and the Atonement. This is made equally for all. There is a compassion 
 for all. To every one salvation is sincerely offered. Their common inability 
 to accept it is owing to the bent of the will, consequent on sin. At this point 
 it is that predestination comes in, whereby a portion of mankind are by grace 
 inwardly taught and enlightened. The will, just as Cameron taught, follows 
 the light thus imparted. As by the Calvinists generally, why this saving light 
 is given to some and withheld from the rest, is left an inscrutable mystery. 
 Only it should not be said that the latter class are predestinated to unbelief. 
 They are simply left as they are. They reject the objective means of salvation, 
 the offer of which is earnestly made. The resemblance of these views to the 
 " New England Theology " will be seen when we come to speak of the latter.
 
 344 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 to involve in peril the doctrine of inherent sin itself, on the ground 
 that, apart from the imputation of the first transgression, that 
 doctrine rests on no secure foundation. Placaeus did not consider 
 himself to be at all touched by the decree of Charenton. He 
 explained that he denied, not the imputation of Adam's sin, but 
 its priority to the imputation of inherent depravity. He held to 
 imputation, but to mediate imputation. This explanation satisfied 
 various prominent theologians who at first arrayed themselves 
 against him. The general theory to which Placseus agreed was 
 that the imputation of Adam's sin and native depravity are insep- 
 arable. On all sides there was held to be a responsible partici- 
 pation in the first transgression and the derivation of a sinful 
 nature from Adam. The testimonies collected by Rivet, in con- 
 nection with the controversy, are clear on this point. 1 Placaeus, 
 in his writings, both before and after Synod, 2 maintains that Adam's 
 sin is imputed to us as its authors, the guilt of Adam's first sin 
 and of inherent depravity being one and the same guilt. He had 
 not dropped, as his opponents supposed, the idea of participation 
 in the first sin. 3 
 
 1 Riveti, Opera, T. III. That participation is an essential element in origi- 
 nal sin, may be seen especially by reference to the passages, in Rivet, from 
 Pareus, Musculus, Viretus, Bucanus, Polanus, Chamierus, Mestrezatius, Whit- 
 taker (Professor at Cambridge), Davenant, Ames, Walaeus, Junius, Frisius, 
 Hommius who says, "Peccatum Adami non est nobis omnino alienum, sed 
 est proprium cujusque, quod propter hanc naturae communionem singulis homi- 
 nibus non tantum imputatur, sed a singulis etiam est perpetratum," Lauren- 
 tius, Zanchius, Piscator, Textor, Crocius, Bucer, Chemnitz (the author of the 
 Examen. Cone. Trid^). Compare the two Dissertations on Original Sin by 
 Rivet himself, Disput. II. (T. III. p. 747), and the Theses Theolog. de pec. 
 orig. (T. III. p. 824). In the former, sections x.-xvi. (inclusive) and xxiv. 
 deserve particular attention; in the latter, sections 5, 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 
 
 33. 34. 42. 
 
 2 Syntagma Thes. Theolog. in Acad. Salm, etc. Edit. Secunda. P. I. 205 sq. 
 Placsei opera Omnia : Edito novissima : Franequer. De Imp.primi pec. Adami 
 Disput. etc. Tom. I. p. 161 sq. 
 
 8 The doctrine of mediate imputation is advocated by an eminent Swiss 
 theologian of the seventeenth century, Stapfer, in his Theologia Polemica. 
 Jonathan Edwards is a defender of the same opinion. The passages quoted 
 by Edwards from Stapfer (Dwight's ed. of Edwards, Vol. II. pp. 545, 546) 
 explain what I conceive to be the real meaning of Placaeus. The language of 
 Stapfer closely resembles that of Placaeus; for example, in what is said of our 
 consent to Adam's sin (although his physical act was not ours) . The doctrine 
 of mediate imputation is clearly explained by Dr. H. B. Smith, System o/
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 345 
 
 One of the most active opponents of the doctrines of the 
 Saumur professors was Francis Turretine. Though he had 
 studied at Saumur as well as at Paris, he allied himself with the 
 more rigid theologians of Montauban. He became the head of 
 a party at Geneva, which labored to procure the condemnation of 
 the Saumur views by the Swiss Church. Opposed to this party at 
 Geneva were Mestrezat and Louis Tronchin, colleagues of Turre- 
 tine, and other theologians of a liberal and tolerant spirit. Turre- 
 tine and his party at length effected a partial success by securing 
 the promulgation and partial enforcement, for a time, in Switzer- 
 land, of the Formula Consensus Helvetica, which they took the 
 lead in framing. They were not deterred from this step by the 
 remonstrance of eminent ministers of foreign churches, among 
 whom were the Paris pastors, the younger Daill, and the famous 
 Claude, together with the distinguished theologian of Holland, 
 J. R. Wetstein. Turretine and the party to which he belonged 
 professed to regard with charity and toleration the ministers who 
 differed from them on the points of theology to which the Con- 
 sensus relates ; they were only anxious to keep the Swiss Church 
 free from erroneous teaching. Their creed is leveled at the peculiar 
 doctrines of each of the three Saumur professors. Against Cappel, 
 they go so far as to assert the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel- 
 points in the Old Testament, and to condemn, also, his critical 
 views respecting the Hebrew text thus giving their solemn 
 sanction to the Buxtorfian grammar and criticism ! Having 
 demolished Capellus, the Consensus condemns Amyraldism, 
 universal atonement and the doctrine that God desires the 
 salvation of all. Amyraut's doctrine of hypothetic universal 
 grace is carefully defined and denounced. Then the Placsean 
 doctrine, or the doctrine which Turretine persisted in ascribing 
 to Placseus, is put under the ban. The Consensus never acquired 
 authority outside of Switzerland. Within about fifty years it was 
 abrogated. One of the strongest advocates of this last measure 
 was Turretine's son, Alphonso Turretine, who was as zealous in 
 
 Christian Theology, pp. 285, 286, 314-323. (The Editor's Notes must be 
 carefully distinguished from the Author's.) 
 
 An interpretation of Placaeus, the same as that attached to it by his early 
 opponents, is adopted by Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of 
 the Reformation, p. 379 sq., and by Dr. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 
 p. 207 sq.
 
 346 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 opposing as his father had been in advocating it. 1 The Formula 
 Consensus was the manifesto of a theological party. 
 
 Another modification of doctrine, designed to blunt the edge of 
 Calvinistic particularism, while preserving its substance, was Pa- 
 jonism, so called from the name of its author. Claude Pajon be- 
 came professor of theology at Saumur in 1666. After a short ser- 
 vice he left that place to become a pastor at Orleans. He followed 
 Cameron and Amyraut in the opinion that the change wrought in 
 the soul of the regenerate by grace is an effect upon the intellect, 
 and not directly upon the heart or will. The will, by a psycho- 
 logical law, follows the perceptions of truth thus imparted to the 
 intellect. The adoption of this opinion sprung from an aversion to 
 the idea of anything like a physical operation of grace upon the 
 feelings and will. It was held at the same time, however, that 
 given this intellectual insight, the spiritual change ensues accord- 
 ing to an invariable moral necessity, albeit the will is active in the 
 production of it. The main peculiarity of Pajon's theory, and the 
 one which chiefly provoked dissent, was his conception of re- 
 generating grace. The Spirit uses the truth of the Gospel as its 
 instrument in effecting the antecedent intellectual change ; but 
 the Spirit also uses all the circumstances of the individual, his 
 whole providential environment. This aggregate of objective in- 
 fluence is not the same in different individuals. To this aggregate 
 regeneration, where it takes place, is due. It is the act of God be- 
 cause the antecedent circumstances are the effect of God's order- 
 ing and are adapted by him to produce the result. But, although 
 Pajon in words asserted that the influence of the Spirit upon the 
 soul is immediate, and although he was not insincere, yet in real- 
 ity this assumed influence does not include the exertion of any 
 direct action of the Spirit upon the soul. A leading opponent of 
 Pajon's doctrine was Claude, a distinguished preacher in Paris, and 
 
 1 In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the younger Turretine says 
 that the Consensus would exclude from the ministry many excellent ministers 
 of God; almost all the doctors of the first four centuries and a great number 
 of ages following; almost all of the Reformers, a great part of the Reformed 
 theologians of France, and the ablest among them; a great portion of the 
 German theologians, and almost all the theologians of the English Church. 
 
 This letter may be read in the Supplement to Bayle's Dictionary by Chau- 
 seppie, Art. " Louis Tronchin," Note C. The earlier letter of F. Turretine 
 to Claude, on the other side, is in curious contrast with the sentiments of his 
 son. This may also be read in Chauseppie.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 347 
 
 Jurieu, first professor at Saumur and then pastor at Rotterdam. 
 A prominent supporter was Lenfant, pastor at Chatillon. The 
 pupils of Pajon, Le Ce"ne, and Papin, swerved much farther from 
 the line of orthodoxy, and adopted Pelagian views. Pajonism ex- 
 cited widespread interest in the French Church, but the commo- 
 tion would have been much greater and more enduring but for the 
 political calamities that fell with such weight upon that church. 1 
 
 More and more, as the first generation of Protestant leaders 
 recedes into the past, the theology of those who come after passes 
 into the scholastic stage. It is the era especially of the earlier dec- 
 ades of the seventeenth century, in both the Lutheran and the Re- 
 formed churches. The material principle of the Reformation, and 
 the religious experience out of which it sprung, no longer exerted 
 the same influence in shaping the system as they had at first. The 
 formal principle, the principle of authority, was uppermost in its 
 construction. The Word of God and the Bible were held to be 
 identical, with the loss of certain qualifications which were potent 
 in Luther, and not without a decided influence on the other Re- 
 formers, in the formulating of doctrine. The Bible was looked upon 
 as an authoritative text-book, from which doctrines and proofs of 
 doctrine were to be drawn with little or no discrimination as to the 
 use to be made of the different sacred books. Such were the rami- 
 fications of the system that little if any space was left for varieties 
 of opinion, and dissent upon any point was treated as a heresy. 
 In the Reformed Church, predestination was taken for the initial 
 principle in the systematic exposition of the Christian religion. 
 The impression often made was that of a divine absolutism en- 
 throned in the souls of men as well as in the visible world of 
 creatures. 
 
 A change for the better was effected by the introduction of the 
 Federal Theology or the scheme of the Covenants. The idea of 
 the Covenant of Grace seems to have been based on such passages 
 as Heb. viii. 10; ix. 15, 16. The idea of the Covenant of works 
 which was entered into with Adam, was superadded to that of the 
 Covenant of Grace, which came into operation after his fall. The 
 Covenants were, of course, not conceived of as being like mutual 
 contracts among men. In the origin of them, men simply act the 
 part of recipients. The Covenants are divinely instituted. They 
 
 1 For a detailed account of the history and doctrine of Pajonism, see 
 A. Schweizer, Protestantische Centraldogmen, Vol. II. pp. 564-602.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 are promises of God. In the Covenant of works, an everlasting 
 good is promised as the reward of a brief term of obedience. 
 The Covenant of Grace is the method of forgiveness and salvation 
 through Christ. The scheme of the Covenants, whatever may be 
 thought of it in other respects, softened the rigor of Calvinistic 
 teaching by setting up jural relations in the room of bare sover- 
 eignty. 
 
 A leading advocate of the Federal theology was Cocceius, a 
 celebrated theologian of Holland, professor at Franeker and then 
 at Leyden, where he died in 1669. The idea of the Covenant, to be 
 sure, is found in some earlier theologians, 1 but it was Cocceius who 
 gave to the idea a precise and comprehensive form and made it 
 current. Cocceius divides the history of the new Covenant into 
 three parts, or " economies " ; the ante-legal, in the era of the 
 patriarchs, where the kingdom was a family, and law was given 
 
 1 See Dorner, Hist, of Prot. Theology, Vol. II. p. 36. Dorner refers to the 
 teaching of Eglinus, Professor at Marburg (d. 1622). But Rev. John Ball, a 
 moderate English Puritan, wrote a book entitled, A Treatise of the Covenant 
 of Grace, which was published after his death in 1645. It was recommended 
 by Calamy, Reynolds, and other members of the Westminster Assembly. This 
 shows that there was " a fully developed ' doctrine of the Covenants ' taught in 
 Britain before the time of the Westminster Assembly." (See A. F. Mitchell, 
 Catechisms of the Second Reformation, p. xlii.) William Ames, the famous 
 Independent preacher, who went over to Holland in the reign of James I. and 
 became a professor at Franeker in 1622, taught the fcedus operum. See his 
 Marrow of Sacred Divinity (1642) c. x., or the Medulla Theologies, c. x. 
 
 There is no mention of such a covenant of works in the Augsburg Confes- 
 sion, the Form of Concord, or in any other of the principal creeds of the Lu- 
 theran Church. There is no mention of it in the principal Confessions of the 
 Reformed Church, with the exception of the Creeds of Westminster; for the 
 Formula Consensus Helvetica, where the Covenant appears, is a creed of 
 minor importance and of comparatively insignificant authority. We do not 
 find the doctrine of a covenant with Adam in the First Basle Confession 
 (1532), the Second Basle (or First Helvetic) (1536), the Gallic (1559), the 
 First Scottish Confession (1560), the Belgic (1562), the Heidelberg Catechism 
 (1573), the Second Helvetic Confession (1565), the Hungarian (1570), the 
 Polish (Declaratio Thoruniensis) (1645), or tne Anglican Articles (1562). 
 Weissmann, a learned Lutheran, in his History of the Church in the Seventeenth 
 Century, has entered into a somewhat full account of the rise of the Federal 
 theology. He explains why the Federal method, which spread in the Reformed 
 churches, especially of Holland, so that the systems constructed on this method 
 could hardly be numbered, did " not find many favorers " among the Luther- 
 ans. Weissmann, Introductio in Memorabilia Eccl. Histories Sacrce, etc. 
 Vol. II. p. 698 sq. Ibid. p. 1103.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 349 
 
 through conscience ; the legal era, in which grace was shown through 
 the prophets and typical ceremonies, the kingdom being national ; 
 the post-legal, in which Christ appeared, and the kingdom became 
 universal. Cocceius carried the method of typical interpretation 
 through the writings and the ceremonial institutions of the Old 
 Testament. The exegesis in its particulars was often fanciful. 
 Although he failed to apprehend the progressive character of the 
 Biblical revelation in this respect, that he made the system of 
 grace pervade the Old Testament as it pervades the New, he 
 yet made a fruitful beginning of Biblical theology. He promoted 
 the study of the Scriptures. He broke the sway of the contem- 
 porary Scholastics. He was strongly opposed by Voetius and 
 others among them. There arose in Holland a Cocceian and a 
 Voetian party. The Cartesian philosophy which was favored by 
 the Cocceians brought into the contest a new element. The 
 division was attended by a political antagonism. A schism 
 was threatened, but was averted. 
 
 The Federal theology eventually occasioned important modifi- 
 cations in the explanation of Original Sin. The culpable corrup- 
 tion of the descendants of Adam at birth was the common ground 
 on which the Calvinistic expounders of the imputation of the first 
 transgression stood. What is the basis of this imputation ? The 
 Federal theory did not abolish the Augustinian idea that the first 
 sin was generic as well as personal. When the law was broken, 
 the Covenant was broken, for the Covenant was the law with a 
 gracious promise attached to the condition of obedience. The 
 prevailing theology in the Reformed Church long continued to 
 hold to the literal guilt of men as partners in Adam's trans- 
 gression, in distinction from guilt merely in the legal sense of 
 exposedness to penalty. The relation of mankind to Adam was 
 distinguished from the relation of the redeemed to Christ and the 
 imputation of his righteousness. 1 It became common, however, 
 to connect the quasi realistic conception of race-unity illustrated 
 often by the figure of the root and branches with the Federal 
 idea. From this last idea, aid was sought in explaining why the 
 
 1 This distinction is made explicitly and with emphasis, for example, by a 
 leading English Calvinist of the seventeenth century, John Owen. See his 
 Display of Arminianism, p. 74. See, also, pp. 71, 73, 74, 80. (Owen's 
 Works, Vol. X.) See, also, Owen, The Doctrine of Justification, etc., Phila- 
 delphia ed., p. 227.
 
 350 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 first sin of Adam is imputed to us, but not his subsequent offences 
 or the sins of immediate ancestors. Besides the effect of the 
 Covenant, Owen says : " We were then in him [Adam] and parts 
 of him." We are condemned by reason of " the iniquity of that 
 portion of nature in which we are proprietaries." l This may be 
 termed the Augustino-Federal solution of the problem of imputa- 
 tion. The more modern view rests upon the Covenant alone. 
 Adam is conceived to have been constituted in virtue of a sover- 
 eign constitution of the Creator a representative of mankind, the 
 kinship of Adam and his descendants being the reason why he and 
 not another is appointed to stand in their place. They have no 
 guilt, in the sense of culpableness, on account of his sin. Their 
 guilt is exclusively a legal liability to the penalty of that offence, by 
 reason of the representative relation established through God's 
 ordinance. It is a legal responsibility. The penalty of this vica- 
 rious breach of the Covenant is our inborn natural depravity, and 
 eternal death is the penalty of this depravity. 2 The Covenant 
 theory, separated from the Augustinian idea, gained acceptance 
 more and more, owing to the pressure of the difficulty, which had 
 so deeply perplexed the mind of Augustine himself, of reconciling 
 his doctrine of a generic sin in Adam with Creationism. Creation- 
 ism was the received opinion in the Reformed Church. 
 
 In the Roman Catholic theology the doctrine of immediate 
 imputation has found little favor. It has been broached by cer- 
 tain Nominalists in the Middle Ages. It is remarkable that in the 
 Council of Trent the Federal theory was brought forward by 
 Catharinus, the opponent of Calvin, and a man who was all his 
 life suspected in his own church of being loose in his theology in 
 relation to the points which separated Augustine from Pelagius. 
 According to Father Paul, Catharinus explained his opinion to be 
 that as " God made a covenant with Abraham and all his posterity, 
 when He made him father of the faithful, so when He gave original 
 righteousness to Adam and to all mankind, He made him seal an 
 obligation in the name of all, to keep it for himself and them, 
 observing the commandments ; which, because he transgressed, he 
 
 1 Owen, Works, Vol. X. pp. 75, 80. 
 
 2 For a clear exposition and vigorous defence of this doctrine of immediate 
 imputation of the first sin, on the ground of the Covenant, or sovereign consti- 
 tution, see Dr. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, c. xxi., and Dr. Charles 
 Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. II. p. 192 sq.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 351 
 
 lost, as well for others as fur himself, and incurred the punishments 
 also for them." l Against this opinion, the celebrated champion of 
 orthodoxy, Dominicus So':o, protested. 2 He distinguished between 
 the actual sin of Adam and the principle or habit " bred in the 
 mind of the actor." " This habitual quality," remaining in Adam, 
 " passed into the posterity, and is transfused as proper unto every 
 one." " He compareth," says Father Paul, " original sin to crook- 
 edness, as it is indeed a spiritual obliquity ; for the whole nature 
 of man being in Adam, when he made himself crooked by trans- 
 gressing the precept, the whole nature of man, and, by consequent, 
 every particular person remained crooked, not by the curvity of 
 Adam, but by his own, by which he is truly crooked and a sinner, 
 until he be straightened by the grace of God." Afterwards, Father 
 Paul observes that the opinion of Catharinus was best understood, 
 " because it was expressed by a political conceit of a bargain made 
 by one for his posterity, which being transgressed, they are all 
 undoubtedly bound ; and many of the Fathers did favor that ; 
 but perceiving the contradiction of the other divines, they durst 
 not receive it." In his theological writings, composed after the 
 Council, Soto opposed the covenant theory and defended pure 
 Augustinism. Bellarmine declares that the Council intended to 
 condemn the doctrine of Pighius and Catharinus, who denied that 
 innate depravity is properly sinful. This great expounder of 
 Catholic theology maintains that the first sin of Adam was 
 generic. "There could not be anything in infants," he says, 
 of the nature of sin, unless they were participant in the first 
 sin of Adam." 3 This sin is imputed to all who are born of 
 Adam, since all, existing in the loins of Adam, in him and by 
 him sinned, when he sinned." 4 
 
 By common consent of Protestants, Jansenius is considered to 
 have been, on the Catholic side in the seventeenth century, the 
 most faithful follower of Augustine. He read all the writings of 
 Augustine seventeen times. Jansenius opposes the Covenant 
 theory with all his might, as being at war with Augustinian the- 
 ology. Recent theologians have invented that theory, he says. 
 They could not have excogitated anything more foreign to Augus- 
 tine's thoughts, more absurd in relation to his system, or more 
 
 1 We quote from the old English translation of Father Paul's History of the 
 Council of Trent, pp. 175, 177. 3 Vol. III. Cont. II. Lib. V. c. xvii* 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 176. * Ibid. c. xiii.
 
 352 
 
 repugnant to his principles. l Augustine held that the greatness of 
 the first sin is the cause of the corruption of nature and of the 
 transmission of corruption ; and so that " all things take place by 
 no agreement, but happen from the nature of things, because the 
 children are said to have sinned in the parent and to have been 
 one with him." 2 " In Augustine's view nothing else is original sin, 
 but concupiscence with guilt." Jansenius declares that nobody ever 
 had so wild a dream as to imagine that this great depravation of 
 human nature comes upon men from some agreement made by 
 God with their parents, or is propagated by the positive law or will 
 of God. 3 Augustine, he says, never resorted to any compacts or 
 positive laws of God for the explication of this subject. It was 
 through the nature of things, in Augustine's view, that the first 
 great sin, together with human nature, pass to the posterity of 
 Adam. 4 There are found in Jansenius pages of argument and 
 warm denunciation directed against the Federal theory. It is not 
 merely the idea of imputation without inherent sin the notion of 
 Pighius and Catharinus that he opposes, but also the whole con- 
 ception of a covenant with Adam, entailing a curse on his pos- 
 terity. The importance of his sentiments on this subject grows 
 out of his standing as a champion of Augustine. He considers 
 the Federal hypothesis an innovation hostile to the spirit of the 
 Augustinian doctrine. 
 
 1 Jansenius, Augustinus (Louvain, 1640), T. II. p. 208. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 211. 8 Ibid. p. 247. * Ibid. p. 246.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THEOLOGY IN ENGLAND IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY RATIONAL 
 
 THEOLOGY THE LATITUDINARIANS 
 
 IN England in the seventeenth century there were numerous 
 theologians whose writings are worthy of respect. Among them 
 there are found authors of remarkable ability and of unsurpassed 
 learning. Yet the materials for an account of the historical devel- 
 opment of doctrine are comparatively scanty. The two systems 
 of Calvinism and Arminianism had been brought out on the 
 Continent. That issue, therefore, in England had only the effect 
 to call forth a large use of dialectic skill and of erudition. The 
 other principal controversy had to do with the constitution of the 
 Church and the nature of its government. Of this long debate 
 the same thing is to be said. The rise of " Rational Theology," 
 and the Latitudinarian school, interesting as it was, by which that 
 type of thought was promulgated, had no characteristics which 
 call for extended treatment in the history of dogmatic theology. 
 This is equally true of that more radical protest against the dog- 
 matic systems which emanated from the school of Deists. The 
 debate caused by the rise of Arianism, learned and sometimes 
 acute as it was, involved scarcely any points not already made 
 familiar by the theology of earlier times. 
 
 Within the Church of England the rise and progress of the Anglo- 
 Catholic party is a phenomenon of special interest. Hooker, 
 who died in 1600, may be regarded as standing on the border-line 
 between the periods embracing the reign of Elizabeth and the age 
 of the Stuarts. Through most of the former period the jure divino 
 theory of Episcopacy had no foothold. A prelate like Whitgift, 
 a vigorous defender of the Anglican polity as lawful and expedient 
 in England, had no disposition to find fault with the foreign Prot- 
 estant churches for the lack of it. Hooker, notwithstanding his 
 2 A 353
 
 354 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 strong preference of Episcopacy, and his belief in which he 
 came to differ from his master, Field that it had prevailed since 
 the time of the Apostles, contended that " there may be some- 
 times very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination without 
 a bishop." 1 That reason, he admitted, in the case of the foreign 
 churches, was valid. As far as his theological opinions are con- 
 cerned, Hooker holds to the Augustinian and Calvinistic principle 
 of unconditional election. 2 Thus far he follows Augustine, whc 
 has had, he says, " no equal in the Church of God from that day 
 to this." 3 God has ordained by " an act of special or personal 
 providence " " on whom [the Gospel] shall be effectual." 4 But 
 Hooker rejects reprobation and the whole supralapsarian scheme. 
 " Souls were not ordained for hell-fire, but hell-fire for them." 5 
 He affirms emphatically that God desires the salvation of all. 
 " He longeth for nothing more than that all men might be 
 saved." 6 He follows Augustine on the subject of the Fall and 
 Original Sin. The death of infants is a punishment. 7 In relation 
 to Justification, Hooker firmly adheres to the Protestant doctrine. 
 Nor does he differ materially, as to the effect of the Sacraments, 
 from the teaching of the Calvinists. While he sets the Lord's 
 Supper in a relation to the Incarnation, the reception of Christ is 
 held to be purely spiritual and by " the worthy alone." Nor is 
 there any reference to the Eucharist as a sacrifice, save the men- 
 tion of it as a thank-offering. " Sacrifice," he says, " is now no 
 part of the Christian ministry." 8 He earnestly contends against 
 the idea that there is a Sacrament of Penance. Ritual practices, 
 such as proved later a characteristic feature of the Anglo-Catholics, 
 are nowhere recommended, and are hardly noticed. It is not by 
 any novelties of opinion that Hooker was distinguished from the 
 Early English Reformers. He founded "no especial school." 9 
 
 1 Ecdesiast. Polity, B. VII. c. 14. u. 
 
 2 Hooker discusses, in his usual elevated tone, the subject of predestination, 
 in the Fragment of an Answer to a Letter (in Keble's ed. of Hooker, Vol. V. 
 App. I). 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 580. * Ibid. p. 574. 5 Ibid. p. 575. 
 
 6 Ibid. p. 573. Hooker, in the summary statement of his opinions on Elec- 
 tion (p. 596), evidently has in mind the Lambeth Articles. It is interesting to 
 notice the points of variation from them (which Keble, perhaps, somewhat 
 magnifies), (c. ii.) 
 
 7 Ibid. p. 570. 8 B. V. c. 78. 2. 
 
 9 Barry, in Masters of English Theology, p. 59.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 355 
 
 Yet the whole turn of his work served to give a new direction to 
 Anglican Theology. The contention of Cartwright and his sup- 
 porters for zjure divino Presbyterianism had much to do in leading 
 their opponents gradually to a like contention in behalf of their 
 system. That reverence for antiquity and the " Primitive Church," 
 that interest in the Fathers and deference to patristic teaching, 
 which had belonged to the English Reformation from the outset, 
 acquired an increasing sway in a class of minds to which the rigid 
 definitions of Calvinism, with its characteristic polity and forms of 
 worship, became more and more unattractive. These were disposed 
 to claim for the Anglican Church a distinct place in the Church 
 Catholic. They felt a growing willingness to withdraw from the 
 fraternal connection with the Protestant bodies with which the 
 English Church under Edward and Elizabeth had been so closely 
 allied. Among the founders of the Anglo-Catholic school, the fore- 
 most place belongs, on the whole, to Bishop Lancelot Andrewes. 
 Andrewes was only five years younger than Hooker, but he lived 
 until 1620. The depth of his learning, which he had at complete 
 command, the variety of his tastes and attainments, he was much 
 interested in the observation and study of nature, his logical 
 skill, and the sincerity of his piety, are beyond question. His 
 ritualistic tastes were manifest in the furniture and decorations of 
 his chapel. Yet he did not take upon himself the task of propa- 
 gating his preferences in respect to symbols and ceremonies. In 
 reply to Roman Catholic champions, Bellarmine and Duperron, 
 he wrote effectively against the pretensions of the Church of 
 Rome. But his polemical writings on this subject, although 
 vigorous, were free from animosity. Still he argues that the 
 Pope is probably Antichrist. Andrewes claimed for the Episco- 
 pal polity a divine right. His position is explained in his corre- 
 spondence with Du Moulin. He disclaims, however, the intention 
 to blame the foreign churches for not having bishops. It was not 
 their fault, but the fault of the times. 1 His comments on the 
 Lambeth Articles contain a moderate and guarded approval of 
 Augustinian election, a subject on which he says that he had 
 never debated, either in public or in private. 2 Respecting the 
 Eucharist, Andrews maintains with emphasis the reality of the 
 Presence of Christ. Of the mode in which the Bread is the body, 
 
 1 Resp. ad Ep. III. Opuscula, p. 211 (Lib. of Angl. Cath. Fathers). 
 
 2 Minor Works of Bishop Andrewes, p. 294 sq.
 
 356 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 " there is not a word in the Gospel." Transubstantiation, there- 
 fore, cannot be an article of faith. There is a true " fruition of 
 the body and blood of Christ," and not of a sign or remembrance 
 of it. It is, moreover, a sacrifice, a means of renewing a cov- 
 enant with God. It is a commemoration of the Sacrifice on the 
 Cross, as the Old Testament offerings were a " praefiguration " of 
 it. 1 In the Sacrament there is an "applying of the Sacrifice " of 
 Jesus. " In rigor of speech . . . there is but one only sacrifice . . . 
 Christ's death." 2 
 
 The ascription of a sacrificial quality to the Lord's Supper, the 
 sacrifice being commemorative in its meaning, and not implying 
 any deficiency to be made up in the Atonement made once for 
 all, is not very uncommon in the divines of the English Church, 
 especially in their Homiletic language. 3 But few writers, even 
 of the Anglo-Catholic type, go so far in their approximation to 
 Roman doctrine as Thorndike, Prebendary of Westminster. 4 It 
 need not be said that he is a stout advocate of jure divino Episco- 
 pacy. He maintains that the wicked as well as believers receive 
 the body and blood offered in the Sacrament, although they are 
 not " spiritually nourished by the Same." In this sense they do 
 not " eat " the Same ; yet in another sense, they do, for they are 
 to be condemned for " eating the Body and Blood " without the 
 faith of a Christian. The Eucharist is affirmed by Thorndike to 
 be not only representative, but propitiatory, its influence being 
 like that of Christ in the exercise of His intervening priesthood 
 on high, the efficacy of which is dependent on the Sacrifice upon 
 the Cross. 
 
 With the accession of James I. the Puritan age of English 
 history fairly begins. At this time the Puritans, who were in 
 control in the House of Commons, were generally not hostile to 
 Episcopacy or the Liturgy. But they were, first, thoroughly hos- 
 tile to political despotism, and, secondly, they were mostly Calvin- 
 ists, and deeply incensed at the idea of any movements looking 
 
 1 Against Bellarmine, c. 8. 
 
 2 Sermons of the Resurrection, p. 457. 
 
 3 For a large collection of passages, see No. IV. of the Catena Patrum, in 
 the "Tracts for the Times," on the Eucharistic Sacrifice. 
 
 4 Thorndike's ideas on the Eucharist are set forth in the Laws of the Church, 
 B. I. cc. i. and ii. For a full collection of extracts, see Chambers, The Doc- 
 trine of the Holy Eucharist, as expounded by Thorndike (1855).
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 357 
 
 to compromise with the Church of Rome. The Anglo-Catholics 
 became the ardent supporters of royalty. In the mixed contest, 
 which was both political and religious, they were easily drawn into 
 sympathy with Arminian theology. James himself was lukewarm in 
 his Calvinism, compared with the generality of the Puritans. He 
 would not have the Articles changed and he would prevent, if he 
 could, the public discussion of the disputed questions. The Cal- 
 vinists were everywhere against whatever savored of Erastianism ; 
 the Arminians were in favor of the close union of Church and 
 State. The defence of the royal prerogative and the defence of 
 Arminianism, or of neutrality between the contending religious 
 systems, became the common ground of numerous ecclesiastical 
 supporters of the Stuarts. Puritanism, in the course of the fierce 
 contest, turned into a warfare against "prelacy." The victory was 
 won by the party zealous for political freedom. The Long Parlia- 
 ment abolished Episcopacy. The Anglo-Catholic party continued 
 to cherish its zeal for the cause of monarchy. The Restoration of 
 Charles II. gave it a new lease of power. In the next reign, in 
 1683, the Declaration in behalf of the doctrine of passive obedi- 
 ence was framed. The party suffered a signal defeat at the Revo- 
 lution of 1688, but the Non-jurors did not forsake their position. 
 The prominent representative of the Anglo-Catholics under Charles 
 I. was Archbishop Laud. The public avowal of the advanced doc- 
 trine of the jure divino authority of bishops is commonly traced to 
 Bancroft's famous sermon at St. Paul's Cross in 1589. But this 
 general doctrine was often held later by Anglo-Catholic leaders 
 who did not press it to the extent of unchurching the foreign 
 Protestant bodies. Bishop Hall, being then Dean of Norwich, 
 one of James's deputies to the Synod of Dort, in his Apology 
 against the Brownists, spoke of his love to the Protestant churches 
 abroad, as the " sisters " of the Church of England. Later, at the 
 request of Laud (in 1640), he wrote his work on the Divine Right 
 of Episcopacy. In this work, and in the Defence of it, he does 
 not renounce his former position. In this last book, he distin- 
 guishes between "the being and the well-being" of a church. The 
 foreign churches " lose nothing of the true essence of a Church, 
 though they miss something of their glory and perfection." Laud, 
 in speaking of the foreign Protestant churches, wrote to Hall, in 
 relation to his Humble Remonstrance published after the De- 
 fence that he had been "a little more favorable than our [their]
 
 358 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 case will now bear." 1 This remark indicates Laud's point of view. 
 His doctrine of Apostolic Succession included the sacerdotal theory 
 of the ministry. As a theologian, he was a man of no mean ability ; 
 he had no intention to carry over the Church of England to the 
 Church of Rome, although he was not inclined to style Rome 
 " Antichrist," or to call it an apostate (instead of a merely cor- 
 rupted) church. As to the Real Presence in the Sacrament, his 
 opinion was identical with that of Calvin. He defends Calvin 
 against the misrepresentation of Bellarmine. "Calvinists," he 
 says, " maintain a most true and real presence." There is no 
 offering in the Sacrament except a " memory " of the Sacrifice of 
 Christ, an offering of praise and thanksgiving, and a self-surrender 
 of the communicant to God. Laud's sympathy was with the 
 Arminian doctrine. The two opposing opinions on election and 
 kindred topics were to be tolerated. On this point, he was more 
 Catholic than his adversaries. The policy was to silence conten- 
 tion on these litigated questions. But Laud was a lover of cere- 
 monies, and a martinet in respect to them. With him " the beauty 
 of holiness " was a phrase denoting the externals of worship. He 
 was of a hard, inflexible disposition. To enforce uniformity, to 
 compel submission to the ordinances of the Sovereign was his 
 obstinate purpose, whatever tyranny and cruelty might be required 
 to carry it out. 
 
 In the Long Parliament, as the hatred of prelacy grew, the 
 Presbyterian party increased in numbers. Their polity was finally 
 adopted, it being an indispensable condition of effecting a union 
 with the Scots in the conflict against the King. In 1642, Parlia- 
 ment called together the Westminster Assembly to give advice in 
 the matter of reconstructing the Church of England. One hun- 
 dred and twenty-one divines, among whom were men of great 
 learning and weight, were invited to sit in it. Ussher and nearly 
 all the prelates who were invited declined to attend the sessions 
 on account of their loyalty to the King and on account of the 
 control exercised by the Presbyterians. A small number of Inde- 
 pendents sat in the body. It was after the withdrawal of the 
 Independents and the Erastians that the vote was taken the 
 learned Lightfoot dissenting which asserted the divine right of 
 the Presbyterian system. The Assembly first undertook to modify 
 
 1 The correspondence with Hall is in Laud's Works, Vol. X. See, also, 
 Lawson's Life of Laud, II. pp. 334 sq.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 359 
 
 the thirty-nine Articles, with the intent to make them more sharply 
 Calvinistic. They labored for ten weeks on fifteen Articles, giving 
 to them this character. 1 The adoption by Parliament, in 1643, f 
 the Solemn League and Covenant put an end to the possibility of 
 setting up a modified Episcopacy, such a form of polity as 
 men like Ussher and Baxter would have agreed in approving. 
 The Assembly dropped the Articles and turned to the framing 
 of a new creed and polity. The creed was based on the Irish 
 Articles of 1615 Articles adopted by the convocation of the 
 Irish Episcopal Church, the composition of which is attributed 
 to Archbishop Ussher, then professor at Dublin. 2 
 
 It has never been doubted that the Westminster Confession is 
 Calvinistic. Although it brings into the foreground the doctrine 
 of God's decrees, it is, nevertheless, infralapsarian. The " full 
 persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divinity of the 
 Scriptures" springs from the witness of the Spirit in our hearts" 
 (I. v.). As to whatever is necessary to salvation, the Scriptures 
 are sufficiently plain (vii.). God foreordains all things, but with- 
 out violence to the will of creatures. Election is unconditional. 
 The non-elect He is pleased to pass by {prceterire) and to ordain 
 them to punishment, " to the praise of his glorious justice " 
 (III. vii.). Our first parents "were left to the liberty of their 
 own will" (IV. ii.). 3 Their sin is permitted (VI. i.). The Con- 
 fession sets forth the Federal System, and the Covenant of Grace, 
 as in Cocceius, is extended over the whole period after the Fall 
 (VII.). The guilt of the sin of the first parents is imputed to 
 their posterity and a sinful nature transmitted, "they being the 
 root of all mankind" (VI. 3). In the Shorter Catechism, the 
 Covenant with Adam " for himself and his posterity " is given as 
 the reason why " they sinned in him and fell with him in his first 
 transgression " (Qucest. 16). In the Irish Articles, the " Covenant 
 of the Law " is said to have been " engrafted in his [Adam's] 
 neart," and original sin is said to be the propagated "fault and 
 corruption of nature " in every man born of Adam. It is still a 
 litigated question whether the design of the Westminster divines 
 was to assert mediate or immediate imputation. There is no 
 
 1 See Neal, History of the Puritans, App. No. VII. 
 
 2 The Irish Articles directly assert reprobation. They lean strongly to the 
 supralapsarian opinion. (See 14.) 
 
 8 See, also, IX. i. ii.
 
 360 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 doubt that underlying their conception of the Fall was the Augus- 
 tinian idea. 1 Satisfaction to divine justice, reconciliation, and eter- 
 nal life were procured by Christ for the elect (among whom "elect 
 infants " are included) (VIII. 5 ) . There were some in the Assembly 
 who favored the idea of a design to provide a possible salvation for 
 all in case they should repent. Calamy, Arrowsmith, and others 
 advocated substantially the opinion of Cameron and Amyraut, the 
 opinion of the Saumur School, which Bishop Davenant had favored 
 at the Synod of Dort. They contended that God intended to pro- 
 vide a salvation for all, although He had a special intention respect- 
 ing the regeneration of the elect, and that the "world," in John 
 iii. 1 6, means the entire race of mankind. 2 But the more liberal 
 view, although not excluded, substantially finds no expression in 
 the Westminster creeds. 
 
 As in other Protestant creeds, the functions of the Civil Magis- 
 tracy are defined. As by the Calvinists generally, the right to 
 exercise ecclesiastical discipline within the Church is denied to 
 the civil authority. Yet the civil magistrate is to provide for the 
 unity and tranquillity of the Church, for the preservation of divine 
 truth in its purity and integrity, for the suppression of blasphemy 
 and heresy, and for the removal of all corruptions and abuses, and 
 for the right administration of all divinely established institutions. 
 He has power to convoke synods and to see that whatever is trans- 
 acted in them be "according to the mind of God" (XXIII. 3). 
 The Assembly could hardly attribute less authority to the magis- 
 trate without calling the acts of the Long Parliament, including 
 that to which they owed their own existence, a usurpation. But 
 in thus extending the power of the civil authority they are in 
 accord not only with the practice of Protestants generally, but 
 also of their uniform teaching. Melanchthon is equally explicit. 
 He comprises in the function and obligations of rulers the duty to 
 suppress " the ethnic doctrine of the Pope, the ethnic rites of the 
 invocation of the dead, and the horrid profanations of the Lord's 
 
 1 In Ball's Short Catechisme, which had gone through twelve editions in 
 1628, to the question "Did all mankind sinne in Adam?" the answer is given 
 "Yes; for we were all in his loynes." See A. F. Mitchell, Catechisms of the 
 Second Reformation, p. 71. 
 
 2 See Minutes of the Westminster Assembly, pp. 152, 154, 155, and Intro- 
 duction, p. Ivi. sq. For further illustrations of the liberal view from Arrow- 
 smith's writings, see the editor's notes to the passage; also SchafFs Creeds of 
 Christendom, Vol. I. p. 770 sq.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 361 
 
 Supper." 1 The Lutherans went much beyond the more narrow 
 definition of the sphere of the magistrate, as first set forth by 
 them in the Augsburg Confession. 2 Calvin, it need hardly be 
 said, has the same doctrine as Melanchthon on this subject. 3 In 
 England, ideas of toleration which border on more modern views 
 were entertained by a few Independents. 
 
 The Westminster Confession declares the fourth commandment 
 in the decalogue to be a positive, moral, and perpetual command- 
 ment, so far as the sanctification of one day in seven as a Sabbath 
 is concerned. It is added that from the resurrection of Christ the 
 Sabbath was "changed into the first day of the week" (XXI. 6). 
 The Reformers, Knox as well as Luther and Calvin, held that the 
 Lord's day is not to be identified with the Old Testament Sabbath. 
 They considered that the fourth commandment was a part of the 
 ceremonial law. With the early Fathers, Justin, Irenseus, Tertul- 
 lian, and others, they made the Sabbath typical of the continual 
 rest given to God's people in this world and the next. "The 
 substance of the Sabbath," says Calvin, is " not in one day but in 
 the whole course of our lives." The opinion that the observance 
 of one day in seven is an injunction still in force he puts among 
 " the dreams of false prophets." 4 Melanchthon, however, teaches 
 that in the commandment there is a moral part which still remains. 
 The part relating to the seventh day is abolished. But the moral 
 part requires that " on some day the people should be taught the 
 Gospel and the rites divinely ordained be observed." The com- 
 mand is broken by servile labor, and by spending the time in sports 
 and vicious pleasures, on the day "constituted" for the public 
 ministry of the Gospel. 5 The Synod of Dort recognized a moral 
 part of the Old Testament law, and inferred the existence of " a 
 certain and stated day appointed for worship." But Gomarus, as 
 well as Grotius, went no farther in their opinion on this subject. 
 Hooker affirms that one day in seven, or one-seventh part of the 
 time, is ordained for worship by an immutable law. The first day 
 was adopted in the room of the seventh, by the Church, to which 
 in this matter authority is ascribed. A similar idea of the Lord's 
 day is adopted by Andrewes. The Puritan doctrine carried in it 
 the obligation to abstain from all employments, save those of ne- 
 
 1 Loci, pp. 173, 174 (Hase's ed.). 8 Institutes, IV. xx. 3. 
 
 2 Ibid. Part II. vii. * Ibid. II. viii. 34. 
 
 5 Loci, pp. 123, 124.
 
 362 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE- 
 
 cessity and mercy (viii.). It extended the moral part so far as to 
 embrace in it a much closer conformity to the specific regulations 
 of the Old Testament respecting the Sabbath than it was customary 
 to connect with the Lord's day. The so-called " Sabbatarian " view 
 was publicly promulgated by Dr. Bound in 1575, in a sermon that 
 was printed but was suppressed by Whitgift. One of the grievances of 
 the Puritans was James's insisting on the proclamation by the clergy 
 of the liberty of the people to engage in sports on the Lord's day. 
 
 A signal attempt among the Puritans to mediate between the 
 Calvinists and the Arminians was made in the laborious endeavors 
 of Richard Baxter, whose mediating system received the name 
 of Baxterianism. 1 He was not less eminent for learning and 
 ingenuity than for ardent piety. Most differences, he judged, 
 grew out of the ambiguity of terms. He was a most voluminous 
 writer. He is the author of two copious and elaborate theologi- 
 cal treatises, The Catholic Theology and the Methodus Theologies. 
 On Original Sin, he advocates Augustinian Realism. God's 
 foreknowledge is not dependent on His purposes, but is an 
 independent attribute. To deny all " signs of imperfection " in 
 the Bible is one of the instances of " overdoing " " which tempt 
 men to infidelity." The sufferings of Christ are not the literal 
 penalty due to sinners. They so express God's hatred of sin that 
 they enable Him to attain the ends of government in a better way 
 than by executing the law. On this subject, Baxter waged a con- 
 troversy with John Owen, who contended for the judicial theory 
 of a vicarious endurance of the penalty. Baxter teaches that suffi- 
 cient grace is given to all to repent, but that the grace of the 
 Spirit is not given in equal measure to all. Where it is granted 
 in larger measure, it is partly on account of a greater receptivity, 
 but partly for good reasons inscrutable to us. Election is abso- 
 lute ; that is to say, it involves the giving of grace adequate to 
 secure the certainty of repentance in a certain portion of mankind. 
 
 As we approach the outbreaking of the Civil War, we come 
 upon the first stage of a movement which bears not inaptly the 
 name of " Rational Theology." 2 A lack of sympathy with either 
 
 1 I have given an elaborate statement of Baxter's teachings, in two articles 
 in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. IX. 
 
 2 An extremely interesting historical survey of the whole movement is given 
 by Dr. Tulloch in his Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England 
 in the Seventeenth Century. 2 vols. 1874.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 363 
 
 of the contending parties, the High Churchmen and the Puritans, 
 and a disposition to set a higher value upon the powers and pre- 
 rogatives of reason in matters of religion, are its characteristics. 
 From the outset, the influence of the opinions and spirit of the 
 Arminians is obvious. Lord Falkland was for a time the centre of 
 a group of able and inquisitive men who took up this middle posi- 
 tion. Falkland was in favor of Episcopacy, but denied the jure 
 divino opinion. He disliked Laud. He said in Parliament of 
 him and of the bishops who were his adherents that they had 
 "defiled our Church by adorning our churches." They have 
 "slackened," he said, "the strictness of that union which was 
 formerly between us and those of our religion beyond the sea: 
 an action as impolitic as ungodly." 1 We must follow reason in 
 interpreting Scripture ; where God has not clearly and indubitably 
 revealed, "it will not stand with His goodness to damn man for 
 not following it." 2 John Hales, of Eaton, was a friend of Falk- 
 land. His spirit is expressed in the following passage from a 
 letter to Laud : 
 
 " For the pursuit of truth hath been my only care ever since I 
 first understood the meaning of the word. For this I have for- 
 saken all hopes, all friends, all desires which might bias me and 
 hinder me from driving right at what I aimed. For this I have 
 spent my means, my youth, my age, and all I have, that I might 
 remove from myself that censure of Tertullian, ' Suo vitio quis 
 quid ignorat? ' If with all this cost and pains my purchase is 
 but error, I may safely say, to err hath cost me more than it has 
 many to find the truth ; and truth itself shall give me this testi- 
 mony at last, that if I have missed of her, it is not my fault, but 
 my misfortune." 
 
 Being chaplain of the English ambassador to the Hague, Hales 
 had attended the sessions of the Synod of Dort, and sent reports 
 to him of its doings. There he seems to have been by degrees 
 persuaded of the truth of the Arminian doctrine. The saying is 
 attributed to him that after hearing Episcopius address the Synod, 
 he said : " I did bid John Calvin good-night." 3 Hales insisted 
 on the distinction between dogmatic differences and religious 
 differences. The confounding of opinions with necessary truths, 
 he said, " is generally one of the greatest causes which keeps the 
 churches this day so far asunder." The remedy is " mutual for- 
 1 See Tulloch, Vol. I. pp. 138, 155. 2 Ibid. Vol. I. p. 161. 3 Ibid. p. 223.
 
 364 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 bearance in this kind." J Heresy is an act of the will, not of 
 reason. 2 There may be a schism when the " schismatic is not 
 he that separates," or when "both parties are the schismatics." 3 
 The foundation of convictions in religion should be personal 
 thought and investigation. The alleged authority of bishops and 
 councils, the real or pretended tests of " universality " and " an- 
 tiquity," are not proper grounds of belief. Antiquity is " man's 
 authority born some ages before us." " Universality is nothing 
 but a quainter and a trimmer name to signify the multitude." 4 A 
 more famous man belonging to this circle was William Chilling- 
 worth. His ability and fondness for debate remind us of an 
 adherent of the modern Oxford School, William G. Ward, who, 
 however, made a full surrender to the authority of Rome. Chil- 
 lingworth was a godson of Laud. While a student at Oxford he 
 was persuaded by Fisher, an acute Jesuit, to become a Roman 
 Catholic, but, as the result of his thoughts and experience at 
 Douay, he renounced his new creed. Thenceforward, he was a 
 churchman of the moderate and liberal class. The basis of belief 
 is affirmed by him to be Scripture, the truth of which is established 
 by just reasoning, and of the meaning of which every man is to 
 judge. But charity is to be exercised towards such as differ. 
 The way to heaven is not to be narrower "than Christ left it." 
 If instead of being zealous Papists, earnest Calvinists, rigid Luther- 
 ans, they would become themselves, and let others "be plain, 
 honest Christians," there would be as to essentials "unity of 
 opinion." 5 Chillingworth was persuaded by Laud to sign the 
 thirty-nine Articles, which he did professedly as "Articles of 
 peace," without an inward assent to all their specific statements. 
 It is remarkable that the work on which his fame rests, the 
 Religion of Protestants, was approved by Laud. In this work, 
 Chillingworth proves that the Romanist reasoning on the subject 
 of the seat of authority is reasoning in a circle. The authority of 
 the Church in interpreting Scripture is sought to be proved by the 
 declarations of Scripture. But unless it is conceded that these 
 can be interpreted by private judgment, the thing to be proved is 
 assumed. There are various reasons why Jeremy Taylor is hardly 
 to be classified with the men of whom we have spoken. He was 
 a bishop, was, in his way, a great preacher, and distinguished for 
 
 1 Tulloch, Vol. I. p. 226. 2 Ibid. p. 228. 3 Ibid. p. 232. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 250- 6 Ibid. p. 336.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 365 
 
 his devotional writings. Yet he is in accord in his leading 
 principles with Falkland, Hales, and Chillingworth. He was an 
 Arminian, and on such subjects as Original Sin and Regeneration 
 advocates the Arminian opinions. In his Liberty of Prophesying, 
 he is a liberal, not only on the subject of toleration, but also on 
 the whole subject of the just foundations of belief. He says that 
 the term "heresy" is never to be applied to " speculative proposi- 
 tions " or to " pious opinions." l It means " a wicked opinion, an 
 ungodly doctrine." The Nicene Fathers, although they did well, 
 might better have left the Creed undefined. 2 The "damnatory 
 appendix " of the Athanasian Creed is wrong. 3 General Councils 
 are not infallible and have contradicted one another. The same is 
 true of the Fathers. In interpreting divine revelation, every man 
 must fall back upon reason and private judgment. Taylor believed 
 strongly that Episcopacy is the primitive and the best method 
 of Church government, but not that the absence of it, any more 
 than the want of a liturgy, should exclude churches from fraternal 
 recognition. 4 
 
 Another ecclesiastic, who was, however, on a lower plane of 
 temper and character than Taylor, the author of Holy Living 
 and Dying, was Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Norwich, a man 
 of learning and an able controversialist. When a young rector 
 at Button he published The Irenicum, a Weapon-Salve for the 
 Church's Wounds, the second edition of which he issued in 1662. 
 Its tenor is signified in two of the mottoes on the title-page, one 
 from Casaubon, and one from Grotius. The purport of both is 
 that if men would discriminate between divine right jus divinum 
 and ecclesiastical law, controversy between good men would be 
 less long and less bitter. This thesis Stillingfleet advocates in 
 relation to Episcopacy and Presbyterianism. The liberal position 
 he proceeds to show was that of the English Reformers and of 
 Anglican divines before his time. In his later years, in 1680, 
 under Charles II., he published the Unreasonableness of Separa- 
 tion, wherein he referred to his former work as written in youth 
 and with " great tenderness towards Dissenters before the laws were 
 established." He is not carried so far, however, by the altered politi- 
 cal circumstances, as to disavow the main principles or question the 
 soundness of the arguments in the earlier treatise. 
 
 1 Tulloch, p. 387. 3 Ibid. p. 394. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 393. * Ibid. p. 408.
 
 366 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 The specific name of Latitudinarians or "men of latitude" 
 was attached by their opponents to a school of " Cambridge 
 Men," men connected with the University of Cambridge. Un- 
 like the group of men before considered, these, although church- 
 men, " belonged more to the Puritan side." They were many of 
 them graduates of Emmanuel College, the favorite nursery of 
 Puritan divines, where so many of the early New England clergy 
 were trained. They were appointed under the Long Parliament, 
 and kept in their places by Cromwell. They manifest in its most 
 tangible and effective form a rising spirit of liberalism, which was 
 more stimulated than repressed by the work of the Westminster 
 Assembly. The reading of Bacon and Descartes was not without 
 an influence in originating the Cambridge movement. Of greater 
 influence were the writings of the Arminian scholars. But beyond 
 these agencies, and of chief moment, was the forsaking of Aristotle, 
 and the earnest and sympathetic study of Plato and the Alexan- 
 drian Platonists of the Christian school. Bishop Burnet, who was 
 imbued with the spirit of the Latitudinarians, has described them 
 in an interesting passage, which must here be quoted : " These 
 were generally of Cambridge, formed under some divines, the 
 chief of whom were Drs. Whichcote, Cudworth, Wilkins, More, 
 and Worthington. Whichcote was a man of rare temper, very 
 mild and obliging. He had great credit with some that had been 
 eminent in the late times ; but made all the use he could of it to 
 protect good men of all persuasions. He was much for liberty of 
 conscience ; and being disgusted with the dry, systematical way 
 of those times, he studied to raise those who conversed with him 
 to a nobler set of thoughts, and to consider religion as a seed of a 
 deiform nature (to use one of his own phrases). In order to this, 
 he set young students much on reading the ancient philosophers, 
 chiefly Plato, Tully, and Plotin, and on considering the Christian 
 religion as a doctrine sent from God, both to elevate and sweeten 
 human nature ; in which he was a great example as well as a wise 
 and kind instructor. Cudworth carried this on with a great 
 strength of genius and a vast compass of learning." Burnet adds 
 that the principles of Hobbes, and the impiety produced by them, 
 stimulated these men. So this set of men at Cambridge studied 
 to assert and examine the principles of religion and morality on 
 clear grounds, and in a philosophical method : " all these and 
 those who were formed under them, studied to examine farther
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 367 
 
 into the nature of things than had been done formerly; they 
 declared against superstition on the one hand and enthusiasm on 
 the other; they loved the constitution of the Church, and the 
 liturgy, and could well live under them ; but they did not think 
 it unlawful to live under another form. They wished that things 
 might have been carried with more moderation ; and they con- 
 tinued to keep a good correspondence with those who had differed 
 with them in opinion, and allowed a greater freedom both in phi- 
 losophy and in divinity ; from whence they were called men of 
 latitude : and upon this men of narrower thoughts and fiercer 
 tempers fastened upon them the name of Latitudinarians. They 
 read Episcopius much ; and the making out the reasons of things, 
 being a main part of their studies, their enemies called them Socin- 
 ians." "The most eminent of these," says Burnet, speaking of 
 the preachers allied to the movement, " were Tillotson, Stilling- 
 fleet, and Patrick. This set of men," he adds, " contributed more 
 than can well be imagined, to reform the way of preaching, which 
 among the divines of England before them was overrun with 
 pedantry, a great mixture of quotations from Fathers and ancient 
 writers, a long opening of a text with the concordance of every 
 word of it, and a giving all the different expositions with the 
 grounds of them, and the entering into some parts of controversy, 
 and all concluding in some, but very short, practical applications, 
 according to the subject or the occasion. This was both long and 
 heavy, when all was piebald, full of many sayings of different lan- 
 guages. The common style of sermons was either very flat and 
 low, or swelled up with rhetoric to a false pitch of a wrong sub- 
 lime." Of the new preachers, he says : " Their style was clear, 
 plain, and short. They gave a short paraphrase of their text, 
 unless where great difficulties required a more copious enlarge- 
 ment : but even then they cut off unnecessary shows of learning, 
 and applied themselves to the matter, in which they opened the 
 nature and reasons of things so fully, and with that simplicity that 
 their hearers felt an instruction of another sort than had commonly 
 been observed before ; so that they became very much followed ; 
 and a set of these men brought off the city in a great measure 
 from the prejudices they had formerly to the Church." 
 
 The chief founders of the movement were Whichcote, John Smith, 
 Cudworth, and Henry More. Benjamin Whichcote deserves to be 
 called the first among them in point of time and in the effect of
 
 368 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 his teachings. In his correspondence with Tuckney, his former 
 tutor, his liberalism is clearly expressed, and appears in its con- 
 trast with the position, as to doctrine and liberty of thought, of a 
 divine of the old school. " I receive the truth of the Christian 
 religion," says Whichcote, " in a way of illumination, affection, and 
 choice." 1 "Let all uncertainties lie by themselves in the cata- 
 logue of disputables ; matters of further inquiry." 2 Ralph Cud- 
 worth, in the Intellectual System of the Universe, presented a 
 learned and profound refutation of Atheism and Pantheism, and 
 a noble exposition of the Platonic system. In his treatise on 
 Immutable Morality he defends the doctrine of intuitive mor- 
 als, and, generally, the validity of ideas not derived from sense- 
 perception. Henry More was an advocate of free inquiry and 
 of toleration. There was in him a peculiar vein of Mysticism, 
 which was attended by the belief that he had occasional visions 
 and states of rapture. One of the best of his writings is his Anti- 
 dote to Atheism. John Smith is the most attractive writer and, 
 with the possible exception of Cudworth, at the head of the four as 
 a speculative thinker. He was, moreover, a preacher of uncommon 
 power. The Select Discourses of Smith, published after his death, 
 are the direct source of our knowledge of his opinions. Other 
 prominent theologians of the Latitudinarian party are John Norris, 
 Theophilus Gale, and Richard Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough. 
 Conspicuous among the distinctive traits of the Cambridge School 
 were, first, their advocacy of freedom of inquiry, their allowance of 
 a large space for diversity of opinion in respect to non-essentials, 
 their genial temper in controversy, their interest in the cause of 
 toleration, their liking for episcopacy, while rejecting its exclusive 
 pretensions ; secondly, their love of learning, their interest in effect- 
 ing a reconcilement of theology and philosophy; thirdly, their 
 attachment to Platonic studies and Platonic doctrine ; fourthly, 
 their conception of religion, as far less a doctrine or a ritual than 
 an inward life ; fifthly, their purpose to found a rational theology 
 which should avail to answer atheistic objections. As defects in 
 the Latitudinarian school, Tulloch with justice enumerates three, 
 their lack of critical qualifications, which led to the confound- 
 ing of Platonism and New Platonism, the ideas of Plato and those 
 of Plotinus; a certain speculative fancifulness, from the lack of 
 
 1 Letters to Tuckney, p. 48. 
 
 2 Moral and Religious Aphorisms (547).
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 369 
 
 "adequate criteria, of knowledge"; "their misappreciation of 
 evidence as to the supernatural and spiritual world." l This criti- 
 cism is illustrated not in More alone, but also, although to a less 
 extent, even in Cudworth. Their positive work, we may add, was 
 rather an essay to construct, than an actual construction, of a 
 definite and stable religious philosophy. 
 
 i Tulloch. VoL II. pp. 478-488, 
 
 2 B
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE ARIAN CONTROVERSY IN ENGLAND THE ENGLISH DEISTIC 
 
 SCHOOL THEOLOGY OF THE QUAKERS EFFORTS ON THE CON- 
 TINENT FOR THE REUNION OF CHURCHES 
 
 THE ferment produced by the Socinian theology not only 
 extended into Holland, but also had its effect in England. The 
 Socinian and Arminian writings on this subject were the imme- 
 diate occasion of the Trinitarian controversy. In its first phase 
 it was mainly an historical debate. The great writer is Bishop 
 Bull, whose Defensio fidei Nicceni, published in 1689, was a ref- 
 utation of the views of Petavius, and also of Sandius and Zwicker, 
 both of the Socinian school. Bull sought to show that the ante- 
 Nicene Fathers were orthodox. His learning was great, and he 
 was a strong reasoner. He claimed somewhat more for the cor- 
 rectness of the pre-Arian Fathers than the scholarship of the 
 present day is able to sanction. Bull's later Judicium Ecclesix 
 Catholicce for which he was thanked by Bossuet in the name 
 of the Catholic clergy of France had reference to the views of 
 Episcopius and Curcellaeus. His last important work was his 
 Primitive and Apostolical Tradition. 
 
 The Trinitarian controversy was carried into the region of Meta- 
 physics. In 1690, Bishop (then Dean) Sherlock put forth his Vin- 
 dication of the Doctrine of the Trinity. His doctrine was that 
 in God there are three substances undivided, each being conscious 
 of each of the other's thoughts and spiritual states. This triplicity 
 is thus consistent with unity. This book was the signal for the 
 appearance of numerous books and pamphlets, mostly polemical. 
 Dr. Robert South wrote against Sherlock. He denies that self- 
 consciousness constitutes personality. Rather is it true that con- 
 sciousness presupposes personality. The opponents of Sherlock 
 pronounced his doctrine to be Tritheism. Among the authors 
 
 370
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 37* 
 
 who entered the lists in this controversy, besides South, were Wal- 
 lis, Stillingfleet, John Owen, and John Howe, one of the best of 
 the Nonconformist theologians, who wrote A Calm Discourse of 
 the Trinity. The warfare would have lasted longer and have 
 become more engrossing had it not been for the rise and prog- 
 ress of Deism, a common enemy. 
 
 The Arian controversy, properly so called, begins with the pub- 
 lication of Dr. Samuel Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, 
 in 1720. Clarke was the leading metaphysician of the day. In 
 the Boyle lectures for 1 704-5 he had presented his Demonstration 
 of the Being and Attributes of God, which was founded on the exist- 
 ence of one self-existent immutable being, necessarily implied in 
 the existence of the world, and in the implication of eternity and 
 omnipresence in duration and space, these being pronounced to be, 
 not substances, but attributes. A defence of Arianism, to be sure, 
 in the highest form, by such a man, excited a commotion. Clarke's 
 doctrine was that the Son derives His being and attributes from the 
 Supreme Cause, the Father. When the Son had His origin, and 
 whether from the will of the Father or not, the Scripture does not 
 explain. Several answers to Clarke soon appeared. His principal 
 opponent was Dr. Daniel Waterland, who published three succes- 
 sive writings in defence of the orthodox doctrine. 
 
 The same tendencies which produced the Latitudinarian move- 
 ment led, in minds of a different cast and training, to the develop- 
 ment of Deism, and gave rise to the Deistic controversy. 1 There 
 were minds less appreciative of the need and the nature of Chris- 
 tianity. There were special cooperative influences, among which 
 was the effect of the Copernican discovery upon the views taken 
 of Scripture, and its effect, along with that of the philosophy of 
 Bacon, and of the new studies in natural science, upon the general 
 mood of feeling. This new mood may be described, for the lack 
 of a better term, as rationalistic. Deism in its English type did 
 
 1 The old work on English Deism is Leland's View of the Deistical Writers 
 (1754-56), which is both descriptive and controversial. Lechler's Gesch. d. 
 Englisch. Deismus (1841) gives a full and fair account of the Deistic Writings. 
 Hunt's Religious Thought in England, 3 vols. (1870-72), gives a sketch of the 
 treatises on both sides of the controversy. Leslie Stephen's History of English 
 Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols., 1876, is an able criticism of the 
 principal writers in the warfare of opinion, in a spirit not unfriendly to the 
 rationalistic leaders. See, also, Mark Pattison's Essays on the Tendencies 
 of Religious Thought in England from 1688 to 1750.
 
 372 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 not, like the Epicurean theory, deny the Providence of the Deity. 
 It cast aside the belief in a special revelation, and of course the 
 reality of denied miracles. The Latitudinarians sought for the 
 basis of the religious creed in the truths held in common by 
 the various contending Christian, or, at least, Protestant bodies. 
 The Deists did the same in reference to the different forms of 
 religion, including the Christian. The value of the Bible is made 
 to consist in its republication, but without supernatural sanction, 
 of the principles of natural religion, ascertainable and ascertained 
 by " the light of nature." 
 
 The " father of Deism " was Lord Herbert, of Cherbury. His 
 treatise, De Veritate, which was published in 1624, was an able, if 
 not very successful, effort to set forth the philosophical principles 
 at the foundation of religious inquiry. His principal treatise, De 
 Religione Gentilium, brings forward the five truths at the basis of 
 all religions. There is no doubt that he means to be understood 
 to comprise in this list whatever he considers to be true and val- 
 uable in Christianity. They are the existence of a supreme God, 
 the duty of worship, the obligations of virtue and piety, the duty 
 of repentance of sin, the fact of rewards and punishment here and 
 hereafter. There is no polemic against Christianity, but there is 
 no doubt that, with most of the Deists, he considered all other 
 religious doctrines the offspring of superstition, or the invention of 
 priests for establishing their sway. 
 
 The writer on the Deistic side who more than any other pro- 
 voked controversy and occasioned numerous writings in defence 
 of Christianity was Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). The Levia- 
 than, which followed earlier productions from his pen, advocates 
 determinism in philosophy, and is probably the first distinct and 
 logical exposition of that theory, and one of the ablest defences 
 of it. In political ethics, he contended for absolutism in govern- 
 ment, embracing the right of the King to control, by his sole 
 authority, all expressions of religious belief and forms of worship. 
 The state of nature is the state of war, where every one desires 
 everything and has a right to everything. The only rescue from 
 destruction, the only way to peace, is in the institution of a com- 
 mon power. Hobbes recognizes no such thing as justice before 
 the organization of society, and society as a product of expediency. 
 Might has the precedence over right. It is only fair to add that 
 the political notions of Hobbes were adopted prior to the Restora-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 373 
 
 tion of the Stuarts, and were not first inspired by a spirit of ser- 
 vility to a reigning monarch. Hobbes enters into an analysis of 
 the contents of the Bible. He concludes that the only Article of 
 Faith which it makes the condition of salvation is that Jesus is the 
 Messiah. The extent of the influence of Hobbes is well sketched 
 by Mackintosh l : 
 
 " The answers to Leviathan would form a library. But the far 
 greater part have followed the fate of all controversial pamphlets. 
 Sir Robert Filmer was jealous of any rival theory of servitude. 
 Harrington defended liberty, and Clarendon the Church, against a 
 common enemy. His philosophical antagonists were Cumber- 
 land, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, Clarke, Butler, and Hutcheson. 
 Though the last four writers cannot be considered as properly 
 polemics, their labors were excited, and their doctrines modified, 
 by the stroke from a vigorous arm, which seemed to shake Ethics 
 to its foundation. They lead us far into the eighteenth century ; 
 and their works occasioned by the doctrines of Hobbes, sowed the 
 seed of the ethical writings of Hume, Smith, Price, Kant, and 
 Stewart ; in a less degree, also, of those of Tucker and Paley ; not 
 to mention Mandeville, the buffoon and sophister of the ale-house ; 
 or Helvetius, an ingenious but flimsy writer, the low and loose 
 moralist of the vain, the selfish, and the sensual." 
 
 Charles Blount was born in 1654 and died in 1693. His first 
 work was Anima Mundi : or, an Historical Narration of the 
 Opinions of the Ancients concerning Man's Soul after this Life : 
 according to Unenlightened Nature. The design was to raise the 
 esteem of his readers for heathen philosophy and thereby covertly 
 to depreciate Christianity. The title is an example of the usual 
 method of the Deists, who made no direct assault on Revelation, 
 but either made use of sarcasm or irony, or attacked the validity 
 of the principal arguments in its behalf. Apart from other 
 motives, an open assault was punishable by the civil law. Blount 
 published The First Two Books of Philostratus, concerning the 
 Life of Apollonius Tyanceus, translated with copious notes. The 
 obvious purpose was to disparage and refute the supernatural char- 
 acter of Christianity, by presenting in Apollonius a parallel narra- 
 tive. His miracles are explained on the naturalistic theory and 
 partly by suggestions resembling the modern mythical hypothesis. 
 Blount argues, as did Hobbes, against the Mosaic authorship of 
 1 Progress of Ethical Philosophy, p. 69.
 
 374 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the Pentateuch, and in favor of a literal (or physical) interpreta- 
 tion of the narrative of the Creation in Genesis. The Oracles of 
 Reason were published after his death by suicide. Blount adopted 
 Hobbes's notion of the authority of the State in matters of religion, 
 together with Herbert's five principles and his doctrine of the 
 corruption of the religion of reason by the selfish cunning of 
 priests. 
 
 The Latitudinarian theologians defended the cause of religion 
 and revelation. Henry More contended that the higher truth 
 taught by the sages of antiquity was derived either from the 
 Logos, or from the earliest doctrine of the Church and of the 
 Jewish Kabbala. Gale, in his Court of the Gentiles, endeavored to 
 show that the wisdom of the heathen philosophers was borrowed 
 from the Jewish Scriptures. Of the writers on the anti-deistic 
 side, there was none abler or more eminent than John Locke 
 (1632-1704). There was in him, associated with great upright- 
 ness and a noble love of liberty, a " rationalistic " tone which 
 belonged to him in common with his opponents. His intellectual 
 habit appears in his political theories ; in particular in his theory 
 of the Social Compact. His combat with Deism took the form of 
 a revision of orthodox theology, whereby it was hoped to render 
 it less vulnerable. In his Essay concerning Human Understand- 
 ing, he defines faith to be an assent to a proposition on the testi- 
 mony of Revelation, the credibility of Revelation being first proved. 1 
 This is declared to be the only shield against fancy and enthusi- 
 asm. 2 On liberty and necessity, Locke is a determinist. Liberty 
 relates to events consecutive to volition. Choice itself is accord- 
 ing to the last dictate of the understanding as regards personal 
 happiness. 3 Yet it appears from his letters that he did not 
 continue perfectly assured of his solution of the problem, but was 
 confident of the fact of freedom. As might be expected, Locke 
 rejects a priori proofs of the being of God. He presents an argu- 
 ment of his own from the existence of the soul, and the impossi- 
 bility that a " cogitative " being should spring from an " incogita- 
 tive " as its cause. His book on the Reasonableness of Christianity 
 was written, as he tells us, to influence disbelievers. Dissatisfied 
 with existing systems of divinity, he had turned from them to the 
 Scriptures. The condemnation of mankind for Adam's sin is an 
 opinion " that shakes the foundation of all religion." To make 
 
 i B. IV. c. 1 8. 2 Ibid. 3 B. II. 8 et passim.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 375 
 
 Christ to be only the restorer of pure natural religion makes 
 Christianity almost nothing. His own doctrine is that Adam's 
 sin brought upon the race death, or complete annihilation; the 
 race is saved from this death by Christ, and is continued, since 
 by Him is the resurrection ; mankind, however, put under a pro- 
 bation of law, sin for themselves ; through grace, salvation is offered 
 on the condition of faith; faith is the belief that Jesus is the 
 Messiah; all who believe Locke explained afterwards that he 
 included, also, the condition of repentance are saved ; all others 
 perish, or become utterly extinct ; the heathen may be saved by 
 repentance and using the light they have. The need of revelation 
 is based on five grounds, which include the desirableness of more 
 light respecting God and duty, and new incentives and helps to a 
 virtuous and holy life, such as the proclamation of immortal 
 life, the example of Jesus, the aids of the Spirit. The orthodox 
 critics of Locke complained that he had not included in his 
 system the Atonement. He answered that his object had been 
 simply to state what was necessary to be believed in order to be 
 saved. In truth, he did not accept the doctrine of the satisfac- 
 tion of Christ, but regarded his principal office to be that of a 
 legislator. Nor did he believe in the supreme divinity of Jesus. 
 He pronounces the doctrine of election practically harmful. 1 He 
 raises the question whether all that Luke wrote was inspired. 2 
 
 John Toland (1669-1722) was the author of Christianity not 
 Mysterious (1696) . He went beyond the assertion of Hobbes and 
 Locke, that there is nothing contrary to reason in Christianity, by 
 maintaining that there is nothing above reason in it ; that every- 
 thing is plain to reason, asserting that there is no profit in anything 
 not intelligible. In primitive Christianity there were no unsearch- 
 able mysteries, but these have been introduced, in the course of 
 time, partly in accommodation to Judaism with its levitical rites, 
 and Heathenism with its mysteries, and partly by the mixture of 
 philosophy. He wrote also, Amyntor, a defence of some remarks 
 in his life of Milton, in which he had been supposed to throw 
 out doubts concerning the canon of the New Testament. He 
 declared that he referred to the apocryphal books of the New 
 Testament, and the apostolical Fathers, whose alleged writings he 
 did not regard as genuine. Toland anticipated Baur in affirming 
 
 1 See extracts in King's Life of Locke, Vol. II. pp. 99, 103. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 96, 97.
 
 376 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 that the early Church was divided into two parties, the Ebionites 
 or Judaizers, and the liberal party of Paul ; and these discordant 
 schools (which, however, he does not affirm to have been hostile) 
 were brought together in an artificial union. 
 
 Amyntor drew out Dr. Samuel Clarke's Historical Account of the 
 Canon of the New Testament in Answer to Amyntor. The great 
 work of Nathaniel Lardner The Credibility of the Gospel History 
 was written later, and without reference to Toland. (It appeared 
 in I727.) 1 Toland's Pantheisticon, and other later writings, man- 
 ifest an embittered feeling towards Christianity and a decline into 
 a kind of "unscientific Pantheism." 
 
 Anthony Collins was one of the ablest of the Deists. In his 
 Discourse of Free-thinkers, he undertook to prove that free- 
 thinking cannot be restricted. To say that it can be involves 
 a contradiction. Neither ought it to be restricted. Without it, 
 no one can ever be convinced of error. Collins was answered by 
 Bentley, writing under the name of " Philoleutherus Lipsiensis," 
 a Leipsic Lover of Freedom. Bentley maintains that thinking 
 must be really free, and not subject to the bias of infidel preju- 
 dice. It may be observed here that " free-thinkers " came to be 
 a common designation of the Deists. Collins suggests that the 
 Jews may have derived their theological doctrines from Egyptians 
 and Chaldaeans. Probably a large portion of the Old Testament, 
 he says, was reconstructed by Ezra. The book of Daniel belongs 
 to the Maccabean age. Collins's work on Liberty and Necessity 
 is a very acute argument in behalf of determinism, with an answer 
 to objections. The curious correspondence between his reason- 
 ing and that of Jonathan Edwards is not due, as Dugald Stewart 
 suggested that it is, to a use of Collins's work by Edwards. It 
 is not probable that Edwards had read Collins. 
 
 Dr. Samuel Clarke, in his Remarks on Collins's book, attacks 
 his conception of the will. Clarke asserts that there exists a 
 principle of self-motion in man, a power of initiating motion, 
 or of voluntary self-determination. This power is not deter- 
 
 1 The Boyle lectures were founded by the will of Robert Boyle (who had 
 taken part in founding the Royal Society). Boyle died 1691. The lectures 
 were " to prove the truth of the Christian Religion against infidels, without 
 descending to any controversies among Christians." The first lecturer on 
 this foundation was Bentley. After him, are the names of Samuel Clarke 
 (Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God) and William Whiston.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 377 
 
 mined as to the mode of its exertion by anything but itself; that 
 would involve a contradiction. It is self-moving. It is absurd 
 to attribute efficiency to the mental states which are called 
 motives. If they had efficiency, man would be like a clock, 
 or a pair of scales, endowed with sensation or perception. 
 He would not be an agent. What we call motives are bare 
 antecedents, or occasional causes. 1 Clarke shows that the oppo- 
 site supposition involves an infinite regress of effects with no 
 cause at all. Moreover, uniformity of action does not imply a 
 necessity in the connection of the act with its antecedents. " The 
 experience of a man's ever doing what he judges reasonable to do, 
 is not at all an experience of his being under any necessity so 
 to do. For concomitancy in this case is no evidence at all of 
 physical connection." 2 The argument for necessity from God's 
 prescience, Clarke seeks to confute by maintaining the previous 
 certainty of acts, even on the supposition that they are free, and 
 by claiming for God " an infallible judgment concerning contin- 
 gent truths," which is only a power that we ourselves possess, 
 carried to perfection. 
 
 Woolston attacked the literal interpretation of the New Testa- 
 ment narratives of miracles, and contended for an allegorical 
 treatment of them. Among the replies to Woolston was Bishop 
 Sherlock's Trial of the Witnesses, an argument for the historical 
 reality of the resurrection of Christ. Matthew Tindal (1657- 
 1733) wrote Christianity as Old as Creation. It was an endeavor 
 to prove the sufficiency and perfection of natural religion, and that 
 Christianity, as far as it is true, republishes it in a form free from 
 corruptions. Among his opponents were Conybeare, Waterland, 
 and Law. Thomas Morgan, in his Moral Philosopher, contended 
 that the guides of the Jewish Church, as well as Jesus and the 
 Apostles, had practised an " accommodation " respecting persons 
 and events, in order to conciliate the ignorant and the bigoted. 
 Paul was the great free-thinker of his age. There was a division 
 in the primitive Church, but, unlike Tindal, Morgan holds that a 
 hostility sprang up between the two parties. Morgan's work was 
 the revision of the composition of Warburton's once famous work, 
 The Divine Legation of Moses, in which it was maintained that the 
 silence of the Pentateuch on the subject of the future life is a 
 decisive argument for, and not against, the divine origin of the 
 
 1 Remarks, etc. p. 9 (London, 1717). 3 Ibid. p. 25.
 
 378 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Hebrew religion. Such a silence is without a parallel in similar 
 circumstances, and warrants the conclusion that Moses was bent 
 on protecting his people from the superstitions which in Egypt 
 were inseparably mingled with this tenet. Chubb is a Deistic 
 writer of inferior consequence. Lord Shaftesbury was one of the 
 few Deists of rank and social position. He wrote the Character- 
 istics, which found fault with the Gospel for making the hope of 
 reward and the fear of punishment incentives to virtue. Virtue is 
 its own reward, and is vitiated so far as its source is a mercenary 
 motive. Bolingbroke (1678-1751), in writings left to be pub- 
 lished after his death, assumes that Monotheism was the primitive 
 religion, and argues for it on the ground of the consent of all 
 tradition that the world had a beginning. Almost everything not 
 contained in the creed of nature is ascribed to the shrewd inven- 
 tion of rulers, who, in order to keep the people in subjection, 
 have played on their fears. 
 
 It should occasion no surprise to the historical student that in 
 England, in the middle of the seventeenth century, in the midst of 
 the dogmatic strife, the debate among creeds, there should appear 
 such a development of mysticism, mingled, especially at first, with 
 enthusiasm, as we witness in the society called Quakers. Our atten- 
 tion here is to be directed only to the beliefs of the followers of 
 George Fox and of William Penn. A little less than twenty years 
 after Fox began his preaching tours, the Quakers were joined by 
 Robert Barclay, an educated Scotchman, who became the theologi- 
 cal expounder of the tenets of the new sect. His Apology for the 
 True Christian Divinity was published in 1675. The Catechism 
 and Confession of Faith, drawn up by Barclay, were adopted by the 
 sect. The central, conspicuous peculiarity in the theology of the 
 Quakers was the doctrine of " the inner light." The reformers 
 had carefully guarded against the introduction of teaching resting 
 upon subjective feeling by insisting that it is the office of the 
 Spirit to make the truths in Scripture evident and duly impressive 
 on the minds of men. The Quakers enlarged the function of the 
 Spirit by the doctrine that this illuminating power is bestowed on 
 all men, and that it is not confined to the use of truth already 
 believed, but may communicate additional truth to the mind open 
 to receive it. As the Bible is from God, the Bible is the umpire, 
 so far that nothing contrary to Scripture can be accepted as com- 
 ing from Him. In keeping with this idea concerning the Spirit
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 379 
 
 was the doctrine of the Quakers that redemption, although object- 
 ive, is of no value until there follows a mystical reception of Christ 
 by the soul. This is an essential side of Justification. The dis- 
 carding of the Sacraments altogether is another natural conse- 
 quence of the controlling place of the subjective factor in the 
 religious life. It was held that there is a transmitted seed of evil 
 in men since the Fall, but it is not reckoned to our account as sin 
 until actual transgression is connected with it. Election is rejected, 
 although in some cases Grace is said to act with an irresistible 
 power. But all have their time of visitation when they are inwardly 
 called by Christ and are able to hear and obey the call. The 
 equal position of women and their privilege of taking part in 
 religious meetings is an inference from the view taken of depend- 
 ence upon the Spirit as choosing for his organs whom he will. The 
 same is true of the refusal to permit an order of ministers to exist 
 or a liturgy to be used. The discarding of oaths, the ceasing to 
 use the names of the months and days which are of heathen origin, 
 the use of Christian names in converse with others, and the adhe- 
 rence to modes of dress which fashion has set aside, are all parts of 
 a certain simplicity which is congenial with the spirit of Quakerism. 
 The same literal intepretation of the Sermon on the Mount which 
 appears in various customs, operates, in conjunction with a domi- 
 nant spirit of Christian kindness, to give rise to an absolute con- 
 demnation of all war, whether offensive or defensive. 
 
 The seventeenth century, the period of theological warfare and 
 division, witnessed efforts in behalf of the reunion of sundered 
 and hostile churches. Persistent efforts were made to bring to 
 pass a good understanding and union between the Lutherans and 
 the Reformed. In these efforts, George Calixtus and the theo- 
 logians of Helmstadt earnestly engaged. Such attempts proved 
 abortive. They were resisted generally by the Lutherans. The 
 same result followed projects of this kind looking to a reunion of 
 the Protestants and the Roman Catholics. Erasmus had con- 
 tended for Christian union on the basis of a common acceptance 
 of essential truths, all minor points being waived, or postponed, 
 not until "the next general council," but until the future life. 
 Calixtus labored in the cause of a reunion on the basis of the 
 Scriptures and of the Church of the first five centuries. The con- 
 ciliatory spirit of Erasmus and Melanchthon was revived in Hugo 
 Grotius. By his own observation of the bitterness and calamities
 
 380 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 incident to the conflicts of party, and affected by his intercourse 
 with Roman Catholics during his sojourn in France, he was moved 
 to exert himself to bring to pass a reconciliation between the two 
 great divisions of the Western Church. In his publications, he 
 sought to mitigate the enmity to Roman Catholic dogmas by 
 showing that more than one interpretation might be attached to 
 them. Certain practices that were condemned by Protestants 
 might be admitted without wrong or harm. His method of union 
 was to ascertain by a universal council the propositions on which 
 all Christians could unite, and to make the resulting creed the 
 basis of ecclesiastical unity. On the Catholic side, Spinola, a 
 theologian of Vienna, engaged in a like undertaking, and travelled 
 through Germany in order to further it. This movement was the 
 occasion of a correspondence between Molanus, a Lutheran theo- 
 logian, and, afterwards, Leibnitz, on the one side, and Bossuet on 
 the other. The ground that Leibnitz took was almost the same 
 as that taken by Grotius. Both were willing to concede a primacy 
 to the Bishop of Rome. The point on vhich Leibnitz and Bos- 
 suet could not agree was the authority of the Council of Trent. 
 It is interesting to observe, in the pacific writings both of Grotius 
 and Leibnitz, how the sharp antagonism to the tenets of Rome, 
 which had formerly prevailed, is blunted. The mutual intolerance 
 of the Protestant sects, the evils of perpetual discord between 
 them, and of the perpetual contest between Protestantism and 
 Romanism, had inspired a longing for peace on the basis of a 
 comprehensive standard of belief.
 
 PERIOD V 
 
 THEOLOGY AS AFFECTED BY MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND 
 SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES 
 
 FROM THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOCKE AND LEIBNITZ TO THE PRESENT 
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 PHILOSOPHY ON THE CONTINENT AFTER DESCARTES : SPINOZA ; 
 LEIBNITZ PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND : FRANCIS BACON ; LOCKE ; 
 BERKELEY ; HUME ; REID THE WRITINGS OF BUTLER AND PALEY 
 
 CHARACTER OF ENGLISH THEOLOGY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE 
 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE WESLEYAN THEOLOGY 
 
 To find the beginning of the new epoch in the history of 
 philosophy when its independence of theology was asserted, we 
 must go back to Descartes. Instead of starting with the assump- 
 tion of a multiplicity of beliefs respecting things mundane and 
 divine, philosophy, he taught, begins with universal doubt, and 
 searches for a primal principle, something evident and undeniable. 
 This is the proposition, " I think and therefore I am," which is 
 not a syllogism, but the implication of the being of the thinker in 
 the act of thought. To say that I doubt that I think is a self- 
 contradiction. No other statement respecting myself has this 
 character. The criterion of truth is the clearness and distinctness 
 of the idea. This is inferred from the character of the basal con- 
 viction. Next, in the order of the objects of knowledge, is God. 
 The highest and clearest of all our ideas is that of God, the abso- 
 lutely perfect being. This is not derived from the senses, nor is 
 it formed by an act of my own. It must be implanted by the 
 infinite Being Himself. It is an innate idea. God's existence, 
 moreover, is involved in the concept of God, from which necessary 
 
 38'
 
 382 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 existence is inseparable. The Anselmic argument is presented in 
 a modified form. Besides, the idea of the supreme perfection of 
 God, including His veracity, cannot be an idea of our own devis- 
 ing. The veracity of God, once ascertained, establishes the truth 
 of our perceptions of the outward world. He cannot deceive us. 
 So we are saved from solipsism. We are sure of the existence of 
 other beings than ourselves. The soul and external things are 
 substances in the imperfect sense that they are not dependent upon 
 one another. God alone is substance in the strict sense, His 
 existence not being conditioned on the existence of anything else. 
 Finite substances are the mind, the thinking substance, and ex- 
 tended substance, or body. How the first finite substance can 
 cognize the second, which is essentially distinct from it, is one of 
 the cardinal problems of which the efforts of Descartes afford no 
 satisfactory solution. 
 
 To supply this defect, to build a bridge between the subject and 
 the object, was the endeavor of the " Occasionalists," first Geu- 
 lincx, and especially Malebranche. The former supposes imme- 
 diate acts of God whereby, for example, the movements of my 
 body are matched to my volitions. Malebranche's doctrine was 
 that "we see all things in God." All things are contained in a 
 spiritual or ideal way in God. So closely are we united to Him 
 that through Him we behold things even as He does. Ideas, as 
 well as we ourselves, are in God, who is the universal reason. We 
 see things as God sees them. 
 
 It was a difficulty, in the system of Descartes, to explain how 
 finite substances can be distinct from the substance in the strict 
 sense of the word. It was a difficulty, in the system of Male- 
 branche, to avoid falling into a pantheistic idealism and merging 
 the finite mind in the infinite. But both philosophers stood firmly 
 on the ground of theism. 
 
 Spinoza converted Cartesian principles into an explicit panthe- 
 ism, in which there is only one substance una et unica substan- 
 tia the infinite being. Substantial existence belongs to nothing 
 finite. To that being, as infinite, no predicates can, without con- 
 tradiction, be attached ; for " all determination " all affirmation 
 of qualities " is negation," or the subtraction of their opposites. 
 Yet two " attributes " are assigned to the infinite being, thought 
 and extension, whence comes the double theophany, mind, on the 
 one hand, and material things, on the other. All concrete things
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 383 
 
 are " modes " of these attributes. How the ascription of attributes 
 is consistent with the above-stated maxim is still a puzzle and a 
 subject of controversy among the interpreters of Spinoza. The 
 conception of infinitude excludes personality. With personality, 
 of course, design, final causes, vanish. The consciousness of free- 
 dom in man is an illusion which is owing to a failure to perceive 
 the proximate causes of choice. If religion is the communion of 
 person with person, religion disappears hi Spinoza's system ; and 
 the same fate must befall ethics, if moral liberty be the condition 
 of responsibility. Spinoza was a Hebrew by birth, but was cast 
 out of the synagogue for heresy. His ideas respecting the Script- 
 ures of the Old Testament, and his interpretations, are presented 
 with acuteness in the Tractatus Theologico-politicus, wherein not a 
 few modern critical theories and judgments are anticipated. 
 
 Leibnitz (1646-1716), whose genius and versatility almost 
 make him a peer of Aristotle, constructed a philosophy, the 
 antipode of Spinoza's system. Substance is characterized by 
 activity. Instead of there being but one substance, the universe 
 is composed of a multitude of created substances, which are 
 indivisible, unextended centres of force. Each is independent 
 of the others, yet related to all. Each represents in itself all 
 others, and is, so to speak, a mirror of the universe. Obscure 
 states of representation or perception pertain to the lower orders 
 of monads. In inorganic nature, this representation is com- 
 pared to a state of slumber. There is in nature a harmony in 
 the action of the monads which is preestablished by the Creator, 
 and there is a constant co-working of God (concursus Dei) , which 
 is not destructive of second causes. The soul is a monad, inde- 
 pendent of the body, but the two coincide as when the arm is 
 raised by a volition through the preestablished harmony. The 
 mind produces, on the condition of experience, the intuitions. 
 To the maxim, " There is nothing in intellect that was not pre- 
 viously in sense," Leibnitz added the qualifying clause, " save the 
 intellect itself" prater intellectum ipsum. In his doctrine of 
 the will, Leibnitz was a determinist. 
 
 In his Theodicy, Leibnitz discusses, with great ability and learn- 
 ing, the problem of evil. Why is evil permitted by the Almighty 
 to exist? The question turns finally on the ground of the per- 
 mission of moral evil. The answer is that the system which, in 
 the nature of things, is the best possible, involves the permission
 
 384 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of sin. Its existence, therefore, constitutes no objection to the 
 doctrine of God's omnipotence or benevolence. The occasion of 
 sin is owing to the metaphysical imperfections of man. Being 
 finite, he is liable to over-vivid impressions from objects near at 
 hand, or otherwise exerting an undue attraction. He does not 
 attempt to explicate the actuality of sin, which is a voluntary act, 
 but only its possibility. 1 
 
 If the tendencies of philosophy on the continent were towards 
 idealism, the drift of English philosophy was in the opposite 
 direction. If, in the one case, a gate was opened that might lead 
 off in the direction of an ideal pantheism, in the latter case a way 
 was left open in the direction of materialism. It was the object 
 of Bacon to cast aside a speculative and conjectural study of 
 nature, and to turn inquiries into the sure and alone fruitful path 
 of induction. Instead of taking for a torch to light his way the 
 idea of final causes, the student was diligently to explore for 
 secondary or efficient causes. But it was the handling of final 
 causes in Physics to which Bacon objected, and not in " Meta- 
 physic," nor did he think of denying their reality in the scheme 
 of nature. 2 As for theology, he says, it " ought to be derived 
 from the Word and works of God, and not from the light of 
 nature or the dictates of reason." 3 " We are to believe His Word, 
 though we find a reluctation in our reason," just as we obey His 
 law when our wills are reluctant. 4 
 
 If the actual influence of Bacon's writings was in favor of an 
 empirical philosophy, Locke was understood to propound a system 
 in which this philosophy is formulated. The sources of our knowl- 
 edge are declared to be two, sensation and reflection, the one a 
 perception of external phenomena, the other a perception of that 
 which is within. Of these two fountains of knowledge, sensation 
 is the first. The mind is like a blank sheet of paper on which are 
 written the things that are perceived. There are no innate ideas. 
 But when we proceed with the study of Locke's Essay and exam- 
 ine his Letter to Stillingfleet, we find that it is not his intention to 
 deny either that intuitions (as of cause and effect, etc.) are from 
 an inward source, or to call in question their validity. In truth, 
 both Locke and the advocates of the doctrine of innate ideas failed 
 
 1 See Jul. Miiller, Lehre v. d. Sunde, Vol. I. p. 578. 
 
 a De Augment. B. III. Works (Boston, 1864), Vol. VIII. p. 508. 
 
 * Ibid. B. IX. Vol. IX. p. 334. *Ibid. p. 346.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 385 
 
 adequately to define their meaning. Locke understands the phrase 
 to denote ideas of which we are conscious, holding that there are 
 none others. The Cartesians mean by it simply that the intui- 
 tions are potentially in the mind from the beginning, although not 
 elicited save on the condition of experience. There is a light 
 of reason, Locke teaches, or irresistible knowledge which is self- 
 evident, and on which demonstration is built. There is in us 
 a faculty enabling us to become conscious of intuitive ideas, a 
 faculty, also, of finding out the moral differences of actions. He 
 presents a demonstrative proof of the existence of God, a truth 
 which he considers to be necessarily inferred from the constitution 
 of ourselves and of the world. Every step in the process is taken 
 with an intuitive certainty. All this stands in at least a verbal 
 inconsistency with the fundamental statements relative to the 
 origin of our knowledge. It was these statements which furnished 
 Condillac and other pure empiricists with the premises for their 
 arguments. 
 
 After Locke the two principal English philosophers in the eigh- 
 teenth century were Berkeley and Hume. Their systems stand 
 in a near relation to theology. Reid, the founder of the Scottish 
 metaphysical school, sought to reestablish the foundations of 
 knowledge which the speculations of Hume had rendered inse- 
 cure. 
 
 Locke had taught that all our knowledge is of " ideas," but 
 " ideas " he had not undertaken fully or accurately to define. 
 They are another term for sense-perceptions or perceptions of 
 mental phenomena. The primary qualities of matter are what 
 we perceive them to be. There are two essential principles in 
 Berkeley's system. 1 In the first place, in opposition to Locke, 
 who was a conceptualist, he was a nominalist. Abstractions are 
 not objects of thought. We cannot represent them. It is only 
 things in the concrete that we can perceive. Secondly, the per- 
 ception of the primary qualities of matter is as purely subjective 
 as the perception of the secondary qualities, color, taste, etc. 
 Matter as an object independent of percipient subjects does not 
 exist. Ideas are the only objects which exist. There is no evi- 
 dence of the existence of any beings but spirits, finite minds and 
 
 1 For Berkeley's teaching, see Prof. A. C. Eraser's excellent edition of the 
 Works of Berkeley, 4 vols. (1871), and Professor Eraser's Life and Letters of 
 Berkeley. 
 
 2C
 
 386 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the infinite mind. To God alone can we refer the origin of the 
 ideas which are evidently not the product of our own minds. He 
 is their author and cause. The world is a world of ideas, and the 
 order of their occurrence, through the divine agency, is what is 
 meant by the laws of nature. To get rid of brute matter, and to 
 have left only a universe of spirits, removed, in Berkeley's judg- 
 ment, a prime source and support of Deism. He does not exam- 
 ine into the validity of the ideas of cause and substance. This is 
 taken for granted. The principal work of Berkeley in opposition 
 to the free-thinkers is the Minute Philosopher, which was published 
 in 1732. It is in the form of a dialogue. In this noble compo- 
 sition the author combats, through his own method, the different 
 types of infidelity current at the time. Berkeley's conception of 
 the nature of religion was more spiritual than that which was 
 prevalent in his day. Under his view of nature, all nature is the 
 manifestation of God. There is an inward light of God's grace 
 which, not less than reason and authority, is the source of 
 Christian belief. 
 
 Hume did not advocate nor dispute the reality of external 
 things. His philosophical skepticism struck deeper. It under- 
 mined the common beliefs respecting the reality of aught save 
 observed phenomena the objects of external and internal obser- 
 vation, or, in the Lockeian phrase, of "sensation and reflection." 
 Hume subtracted substance and cause from the catalogue of 
 things known. The notion of cause is the product of customary 
 association. When one event is always noticed to be accom- 
 panied by another, for example, a sensation of burning when 
 there is contact with fire, we involuntarily expect this concomi- 
 tance. This necessity of expectation is carried over, without 
 warrant, to the external phenomena. An imaginary tie of neces- 
 sity is attributed to antecedent and consequent. Pushing forward 
 in this scrutiny, Hume eliminates from things known to be, the 
 soul as a thinking substance, an ego, and the Supreme Being. 
 Hume's Natural History of Religion appeared in 1757, and his 
 Dialogues concerning Natural Religion in 1779, after his death. 
 In the Dialogues, the arguments for the being of God, beginning 
 with the ontological proof, are the object of a searching analysis. 
 The argument of design is alleged to fail, first, as being anthropo- 
 morphic in its character, the world being an effect not to be set 
 in analogy with the products of human art ; and secondly, as only
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 387 
 
 proving, if conceded to be valid, a Creator of limited power. 
 In an essay on " Providence and a Future State," Hume pursues 
 this same argument, applying it, also, to the doctrine of a moral 
 government of the world, which, it is said, can only be established 
 by assumptions as to a future state, not justified by the observed 
 facts. In the Natural History of Religion, it is argued, from the 
 point of view of the skeptic, that polytheism was the earliest form 
 of religion, that monotheism is the product of the elevation of a 
 favorite deity by his adoring worshippers, and that the constant 
 tendency is to revert to a polytheistic faith by imagining mediators 
 in other inferior deities. Religion originates in the natural habit 
 to refer events that affect our happiness to unknown causes which 
 the imagination personifies. In the Essay on Miracles, the design 
 is, not to question the possibility of a miracle, but to show that 
 it is impossible to prove one. Belief is founded on experience. 
 We have had no experience of the " transgression " of natural 
 laws. We have had experience of the falsehood of testimony. 
 Weighed in the scales, therefore, the improbability of the alleged 
 event outweighs the improbability that the testimony, however 
 accumulated, is, for one reason or another, false. Hume endeav- 
 ored to fortify his reasoning by reference to the testimony for the 
 alleged Jansenist miracles at the tomb of the Abbe" Paris. The 
 replies to this ingenious essay were numerous, and did not always 
 hit the mark. Apart from the assumption that belief is founded 
 wholly on experience, Hume departs from his own principles in 
 assuming that experience is all adverse to the recurrence of a 
 miracle. The evidence of such an assertion, as J. S. Mill points 
 out, " is diminished in force by whatever weight belongs to the 
 evidence that certain miracles have taken place." Moreover, the 
 further assumption is that there is no God with moral ends in 
 view, which a miracle in conceivable circumstances might pro- 
 mote. The argument deals with a naked miracle, cut off from 
 all consideration of any special use or design. 
 
 Reid assumes the immediate knowledge of fundamental axioms. 
 Proof of them there is none. They are the basis of all proof. 
 Among them is the principle that the qualities of external things, 
 which are perceived immediately, inhere in a subject or substance, 
 and that the same is true of our thoughts. The freedom of the 
 will is another basal principle, under a different class. Still an- 
 other of the same kind is that what is to occur in nature will
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 probably be like what has previously occurred in similar circum- 
 stances. 
 
 The Philosophy of Hume was a destructive assault upon the 
 main position of the Deists respecting the origin of all religions 
 save what they called "the religion of nature." On the other 
 hand, not only by its criticism of the basis of positive belief in 
 general, but also by its dealing with the proofs of the Christian 
 creed in particular, it presented to Christian Apologists problems 
 of the gravest consequence. 
 
 Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, had published (in 1736) his 
 Analogy the Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to 
 the Constitution and Course of Nature. It is sometimes said 
 that Hume, especially in his Essay on Providence, successfully 
 answered Butler. In reality Hume's reasoning does not touch 
 the proposition of the Analogy. Butler's argument is directed 
 against Deists, and takes for granted that which they concede. 
 He undertakes to prove that if there is a likeness between the 
 known course of nature and the system of religion, natural and 
 revealed, objections to the latter cannot be drawn from anything 
 similar in the former, " which is acknowledged to be from Him." 
 He takes it " for proved that there is an intelligent Author of 
 Nature and natural Governor of the world." Butler establishes 
 what he sets out to establish. A more sweeping and radical 
 skepticism, of course, requires to be met in another way. 1 
 
 Next to Butler, the most famous of the English Apologists in 
 this period was Paley. He was not, like Butler, an original 
 thinker, but he was possessed of remarkable tact and common 
 sense, and for lucidity of style is almost unrivalled. In the Horcz 
 Paulina he pointed out undesigned coincidences between the 
 Acts and the Epistles, proving the authenticity of all these writ- 
 ings. In his Evidences of Christianity he marshals, in the most 
 perspicuous and orderly manner, the proofs from testimony of the 
 miracles recorded in the Gospels. To the external argument from 
 miracles is given the leading place in the discussion. The Natural 
 Theology is the last in the order of time of this series of works. It 
 is a statement and illustration of the argument of design, the illus- 
 trations of it being drawn mainly from human and comparative 
 
 1 In his 22d year (1713), Butler corresponded with Clark respecting his 
 Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, and was convinced by his 
 arguments.
 
 389 
 
 anatomy. It is true that the progress of natural science modifies 
 the form, although it does not lessen, but rather increases, the 
 force of the teleological argument. Our attention is turned more 
 to the general order and progress of nature than to particular 
 specimens of contrivance. Yet an examination of Paley will show 
 that he anticipates the hypothesis of evolution and the theory 
 of indefinite, fortuitous variation, and shapes his argument accord- 
 ingly. In his theological opinions Paley may be called a latitudi- 
 narian, although in his whole cast of thought he was at a wide 
 remove from the school bearing that name. 
 
 The most learned contribution to Christian evidences was made 
 by Nathaniel Lardner, a Unitarian in his creed, an indefatigable 
 student, whose Credibility of the Gospel History, a thesaurus of 
 the testimonies of antiquity, was published in its different parts 
 at intervals from 1727 to 1755. 
 
 The three principal writers on ethics in England, in the last 
 century, were Butler, Price, and Paley. Butler's ethical doctrines 
 are found in his Dissertation on Virtue and in his Sermons on 
 Human Nature. He teaches that self-love and benevolence 
 or altruism, to use the phrase now in vogue are native, consti- 
 tutional principles. Conscience is the regulative principle, defin- 
 ing their due proportion to one another and binding to its ob- 
 servance. Equal love to self and to one's neighbor and supreme 
 love to God are the sum of duty. Veracity and justice are some- 
 times treated as forms or branches of benevolence. Elsewhere it 
 is intimated that they are virtues parallel with it, and independent. 
 Price maintained that right is a simple idea, not to be resolved 
 into constituents. Paley taught in his Moral Philosophy the utili- 
 tarian doctrine. Virtue is defined as the "doing good to man- 
 kind in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of 
 everlasting happiness." The sentence is stamped with Paley's 
 characteristic way of thinking as a theologian. Paley makes the 
 springs of virtue to be in self-love. At the opposite pole stands 
 Hutcheson, who identifies virtue with general benevolence, which 
 must enter into every action that partakes of virtue. 
 
 The interval between the accession of Anne, in 1714, and the 
 death of George II., in 1760, is a period in the religious history 
 of England to which neither Churchmen nor Dissenters can look 
 back without shame and regret. The efforts at comprehension 
 made by Tillotson and his school after the Revolution were baffled
 
 39 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 by the resolute intolerance of the High Churchmen and by the 
 fear of a division in the Church itself. Puritanism had lost not 
 only a great part of its influence, but also a great part of its vigor. 
 A prevalent indifference and skepticism, the spread of vice, partly 
 a heritage from the last Stuart kings, and .the ignorance of the 
 clergy, did not lessen a whit the acrimony of ecclesiastical dis- 
 putes. Convocation was reduced to silence in 1717, and until 
 1854 was not again allowed to transact business. After the middle 
 of the century the state of things, as regards education and prac- 
 tical religion, only gradually improved. What was the condition 
 of the universities in the period may be learned from such books 
 as the autobiography of Gibbon, who was matriculated at Magda- 
 len College in 1752. Bishop Burnet, in 1713, wrote of those who 
 came to be ordained as follows : " They can give no account, or 
 at least a very imperfect one, of the contents even of the Gospels, 
 or of the Catechism itself." Bishop Butler, in the Preface to the 
 Analogy, remarks that it had come to be taken for granted " that 
 Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry ; but that it is 
 now at length discovered to be fictitious." In 1751, in a charge, 
 he affirms the deplorable distinction of the age to be "an 
 avowed scorn of religion in some and a growing disregard of it 
 in the generality." The dark picture is somewhat relieved when 
 we see on the canvas such figures as Doddridge and Watts among 
 the Nonconformists, and Bishop Wilson, the author of Sacra 
 Privata, among the Churchmen. William Law was the writer 
 who, more than any other, promoted a spiritual awakening. By 
 his Serious Call, Dr. Johnson was first aroused " to thinking in 
 earnest on religion." Besides his influence in promoting piety, 
 he was an acute defender of theism and of the truth of Christian 
 miracles. His mystical tendencies, fostered by the influence of 
 Bohme, induced a change which led him to look on the inward 
 life and the inward light as the real verification of Christianity, 
 and to make the office of Christ to be principally the conquest of 
 evil of every sort, and the impartation of a new life to his fol- 
 lowers. He did not come, says Law, " to quiet an angry Deity." 
 Into the details of the history of the great Methodist Revival 
 we cannot here enter. It is only of its relation to the history of 
 doctrine that we have here to speak. If Whitefield was the most 
 persuasive and eloquent preacher of the early Methodists, John 
 Wesley was incomparably the greatest man. He was a trained
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 29 I 
 
 scholar, as well as an effective preacher, and he was an organizer, 
 in this respect on a level with the most renowned leaders of the 
 mediaeval monastic orders. He was born in 1703 and died in 
 1791. Wesley, with his brother Charles, and the others of the 
 group of young men at Oxford who originated the Methodist 
 movement, was at the outset a High Churchman and a ritualist. 
 There is a striking resemblance between these young Oxford 
 Methodists and the leaders of the modern Oxford movement. 
 But there entered into Wesley's mind and experience two potent 
 differentiating elements. There was in him, as in his associates, a 
 burning evangelistic zeal ; and in his religious experience he was 
 pretty early brought to a living apprehension of the Pauline doctrine 
 of justification by faith alone. At first he fed on mystical and devo- 
 tional writings. He was devoted to Law and his books ; he read 
 with deep sympathy Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying; he 
 was a disciple of Thomas a Kempis, whose Imitation of Christ 'was 
 one of the first books which he caused to be published. He was 
 long a seeker for inward religious peace. He came into intimate 
 relations with the Moravians, and his relation to Spangenberg and 
 others may remind one of Luther's relation to mystical teachers. 
 There was a great change in Wesley's inward life, a change that 
 gave character to his subsequent career, when, on the 28th of 
 May, 1738, at a meeting of a Moravian society in London, he 
 listened to a reading of Luther's Preface to his Commentary on 
 the Romans. There entered into his soul, as by a flash of light, 
 a joyful assurance that his sins were freely forgiven. After this 
 time William Law's teaching seemed to him quite inadequate. 
 He pronounced upon it a too harsh judgment. He parted by 
 degrees from the Moravians, partly because their teachers in Lon- 
 don at that time inculcated ideas concerning justification such 
 as that "weak faith is no faith" which he denied. In truth, 
 the leaven of quietism in the Moravian Christians with whom he 
 had consorted in London, was now foreign to his convictions. 
 
 Wesley was not only conversant with devout writers and cer- 
 tain mystical teachers; he had acquainted himself with the 
 ancient Greek theology. He had studied Chrysostom. He was 
 an Arminian in his creed. On this point Whitefield, who was a 
 devoted Calvinist, parted company with him, and was the leader 
 of the Calvinistic Methodists in England. Wesley's antagonism 
 to the Calvinistic doctrine of election and its correlate of exclusive
 
 392 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 divine agency in conversion was intense, and remained so through 
 his life. 1 It is natural to ask how it was that the evangelical 
 Arminianism of Wesley was so different in its tone and its practi- 
 cal effect from the Arminianism of Holland and the same system 
 as held by its English advocates contemporary with him. In 
 the first place, the Dutch Arminianism was early modified by 
 Socinian and other Pelagian elements. The central point in 
 Wesley's creed was always justification by faith alone. Secondly, 
 in Wesley it was not valued predominantly as an ethical theory, 
 but as being identified, according to his view, with the interests of 
 practical religion. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, of His indis- 
 pensable agency in conversion and sanctification, was never dis- 
 placed or lowered in the Wesleyan creed. This faith in the living 
 power of the Holy Spirit, not anything ascribed to unaided human 
 agency, was the secret of the emphasis which was laid on Assur- 
 ance as a privilege attainable by all believers. From the same 
 source sprang the Wesleyan doctrine of Perfection. All believers 
 may attain to a perfection, which, however, is not a legal, but 
 a Christian, perfection. It is a state where love to God and 
 man reigns continuously, where there are no presumptuous sins, 
 yet where there are still involuntary negligences and ignorances, 
 transgressions of the perfect law, for which, therefore, forgive- 
 ness, through the Atonement, is requisite. 
 
 Wesley holds to an inherited corruption, which, however, of 
 itself does not involve the desert of eternal condemnation. We 
 are implicated in the guilt of Adam's sin how, Wesley does not 
 distinctly explain. 2 Fletcher favors the realistic hypothesis. Wat- 
 son seems to adopt the federal theory. 3 But the Wesleyan doc- 
 trine is that the remedial system, dating from the fall of man, is 
 provided not only as a dictate of divine goodness, but also as 
 required by divine justice in case the race is to be continued in 
 being. The Atonement is a provision under the moral govern- 
 ment of God. It is a governmental provision, not a literal 
 satisfaction of the claims of law. It is universal in its design. 
 Regenerating grace is the primary and principal agent in conver- 
 sion, but grace is not irresistible. The unregenerate who will pray 
 
 1 See, for example, his " Sermon on Free Grace," Works, Vol. I., Sermon 
 LIV., and his Controversy with Toplady. 
 
 2 Works, Vol. V. pp. 526, 535, 577. Cf. Miley, Syst. Theol. II. 506. 
 *Ibid. Vol. I. p. 284; Vol. III. pp. 255-257. Cf. Miley, II. 507.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 393 
 
 for the Spirit, under a sense of their own inability and looking 
 upward for help, will be blessed with the needed aid from above. 
 The Wesleyan theology insists on the Gospel being a free gift 
 which is intended equally for all, and on a freedom of decision as 
 to the acceptance of it, along with the absolute necessity of regen- 
 erating grace. Whatever may be thought of this combination, 
 logically considered, it constituted in the hands of the Wesleyan 
 ministry a most effective instrument in the propagation of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 There were defenders of Calvinism, in the Church of England, 
 in the eighteenth century. Of their number were Toplady, and 
 Thomas Scott (1747-1821), whose chief distinction was that of a 
 commentator. Ridgley, Watts, and Doddridge, advocates of Cal- 
 vinism, were dissenters. Nominalistic philosophy and a theory of 
 individualism had now fully superseded the Augustinian concep- 
 tion of race-unity. It is evident that the writers named above are 
 struggling with difficulties on the subject of Original Sin and of 
 Election, which they are conscious of an inability to overcome. 
 They retreat upon the idea of a lessened and qualified responsi- 
 bility for the sin of Adam. Solutions are suggested only to be 
 given up, or confessed to be inadequate. Election, according to 
 Doddridge, secures such an influence of God on the hearts of the 
 elect that their salvation " should on the whole be ascribed to him 
 and not to themselves." Watts, it may be observed, in addition to 
 a like half-hearted, apologetic tone in reference to sin and election, 
 propounds a peculiar opinion on the person of Christ. He holds 
 to the preexistence of His human nature, which was the first of 
 created beings, and had existed in a mysterious, ineffable union 
 with God the Father. Under the assaults of the champions of 
 Arminian theology, prominent among whom were Whitby and Dr. 
 John Taylor of Norwich, the Calvinistic line if so it can be 
 called even metaphorically reeled and seemed anxious chiefly 
 to avoid a complete rout.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THEOLOGY IN AMERICA IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CEN- 
 TURIES THEOLOGY OF THE FIRST SETTLERS JONATHAN EDWARDS 
 
 AND HIS SCHOOL (" THE NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY ") THE RISE 
 OF UNITARIANISM : CHANNING, EMERSON, PARKER THE RISE OF 
 UNIVERSALISM NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF HORACE BUSHNELL THE THEOLOGY OF 
 
 HENRY B. SMITH CALVINISM IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH : 
 CHARLES HODGE 
 
 THE settlers of New England were strict Calvinists. Calvinism 
 was the creed of John Robinson, the pastor of the Leyden Church, 
 from which the Pilgrims came over to Plymouth. It was the com- 
 mon faith of the colonists who planted the other New England 
 communities, and adopted the Congregational polity. So it con- 
 tinued to be through the seventeenth century. A writing of 
 William Pynchon, of Springfield, The Meritorious Price of 
 Christ s Redemption, etc., presenting a view of the Atonement, 
 which is not essentially diverse from the governmental theory, was 
 condemned in 1650 by the General Court, the Colonial Legisla- 
 ture of Massachusetts, and burned in the market-place in Boston. 
 By direction of the Court, it was answered by John Norton, a 
 minister of Boston. In 1648, the "Cambridge Platform" was 
 adopted by a Massachusetts synod. It sanctioned the West- 
 minster Confession "for the substance thereof." The Savoy 
 Confession, which the English Congregationalists had adopted in 
 1658, was essentially the same as to doctrine as the Westminster 
 creed. It was adopted, with slight changes, by the Boston Synod of 
 1680. This creed of 1680 was approved by the Say brook Synod 
 in Connecticut in 1 708. But there was an increasing intercourse 
 and interchange of thought with the "mother country." The 
 eighteenth century brought in the Arminian theology, which had 
 
 394
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 395 
 
 spread among Dissenters as well as Churchmen in England. The 
 Arminian writers, Whitby, John Taylor, Dr. Samuel Clarke, were 
 imported and read. What was called Arminianism, coupled with 
 tendencies toward Arian and Socinian opinions, gradually super- 
 seded the old creed in the minds and in the teachings of many, 
 especially in eastern New England. The same decline of earnest- 
 ness in practical religion, which prevailed in England, was expe- 
 rienced on this side of the Atlantic. The " Great Awakening," 
 which began about 1740, was accompanied by the advocacy of 
 Calvinistic doctrines and attacks upon Arminianism. The leaders 
 in the Revival were aided in preaching by the eloquence of White- 
 field. Jonathan Edwards, to whom he looked up with admiring 
 reverence, was not only an eminent preacher ; he was the theo- 
 logian of the movement. He was the originator of that modified 
 Calvinism which is termed " New England Theology." 
 
 It is pretty clearly implied in a remark of Dugald Stewart that 
 up to his time Jonathan Edwards was the only philosopher of note 
 that America had produced. "He," it is added, "in logical 
 acuteness and subtilty, does not yield to any disputant bred in 
 the universities of Europe." 1 "The foundation of the literature 
 of independent America," writes F. D. Maurice, speaking of 
 Edwards's treatise on the Will, " was laid in a book which was 
 published while it was a subject of the British crown." 2 Edwards 
 is an example of that rare mingling of intellectual subtilty and 
 spiritual insight, of logical acumen with mystical fervor, which 
 qualify their possessor for the highest achievements in the field of 
 religious thought. In this respect, he resembles Augustine, and 
 the typical leaders of Scholasticism, Anselm and Aquinas. Let 
 any competent student take up Edwards's work on the Will, and 
 mark the keen, unrelenting logic with which he pursues his oppo- 
 nents through all the intricate windings of that perplexed contro- 
 versy, and then turn to the same author's sermon on the Nature 
 and Reality of Spiritual Light, or to his book on the Affections. 
 It is like passing from the pages of Aristotle to a sermon of 
 Tauler ; only that Edwards knows how to analyze the experiences 
 of the heart, and to use them as data for scientific conclusions. 
 He has left a record of meditations on " the beauty and sweet- 
 ness " of divine things, when even the whole face of nature was 
 
 1 Stewart's Works (Hamilton's ed.), Vol. I. p. 424. 
 
 2 Modern Philosophy, p. 469.
 
 396 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 transfigured to his vision. We see this cool dialectician, whose 
 power of subtile argument Sir James Mackintosh pronounces to 
 have been "perhaps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed, among 
 men," l overcome by the emotions excited by the contemplation 
 of the spiritual excellence of Christ. Edwards may be ranked 
 with Pascal as an example of precocious mental development. 
 He entered Yale College when he was not yet thirteen. It was 
 while he was a member of college that he committed to writing 
 philosophical remarks that would do credit to the ablest and 
 maturest mind. At the age of twelve, he wrote a letter, which 
 is really a well-reasoned scientific paper, on the habits of the 
 spider, as ascertained from his own singularly accurate observa- 
 tions. 2 His copious Notes on physics and natural science, which 
 afford a striking proof of his intellectual grasp and versatility, were 
 written, at least in great part, before he left college. But besides 
 the composition of these, he began, under the head of Mind, 
 a series of metaphysical definitions and discussions, which, as 
 emanating from a boy of sixteen or seventeen, are surprising. In 
 them may be found the germs of much that is developed after- 
 wards in his theological writings. A large part of these juvenile 
 papers are devoted to the elucidation and defence of what is known 
 as the Berkeleian doctrine that the percepts of sense have no exist- 
 ence independently of mind ; that, although they are not origi- 
 nated by us, but by a power without, that power is not a material 
 substance or substratum, but the will of God acting in a uniform 
 method. 3 The popular objections to the Berkeleian theory are 
 stated accurately, and are answered. Thus the way is open for the 
 conclusion, which Edwards considers to be the truth, that there 
 are only spiritual beings or substances in the universe. There is 
 not wanting evidence of a continued adherence of Edwards to this 
 opinion. In the treatise on " Original Sin," one of his latest compo- 
 sitions and a posthumous publication, this remark occurs : " The 
 course of nature is demonstrated by late improvements in phi- 
 losophy to be indeed what our author himself says it is, viz., 
 nothing but the established order of the agency and operation 
 of the Author of nature." 4 Here it is altogether probable that 
 
 1 Progress of Ethical Philosophy, p. 108 (Philadelphia ed. 1832). 
 
 2 In Dwight's Life of Edwards, c. ii. 
 8 Ibid. pp. 669, 674. 
 
 4 Dwight's ed. Vol. II. p. 540.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 307 
 
 the reference is to the philosophy of Berkeley. With this passage 
 may be compared incidental statements on perception, in the 
 treatise on the Will, which, however, do not go so far as neces- 
 sarily to imply the Berkeleian theory. 1 
 
 Locke is the author whose stimulating influence on Edwards is 
 most obvious. He read Locke when he was fourteen years old, 
 with a delight greater, to use his own words, " than the most 
 greedy miser finds when gathering up handfuls of silver and gold 
 from some newly discovered treasure." 2 Yet he read Locke with 
 independence, and not only pursued a theological direction quite 
 opposite to that of his master, but not unfrequently dissents from 
 his opinions and replies to his arguments. Of his relation to 
 Locke we shall soon have occasion to revert. 
 
 Edwards felt assured that the reasoning of the current Arminian 
 writers was erroneous and weak. He was quite confident that it 
 could be overthrown with ease. He was offended by the air of 
 invincibility which they seemed to him to assume. He went to 
 the heart of the controversy when, in 1754, he published his 
 Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions 
 of Freedom of Will. 
 
 An examination of the work shows that it is to Locke's chapter 
 on Power that the author was most indebted for quickening sug- 
 gestions. This discussion, as we are explicitly informed, caused 
 him to perceive that an evil man may properly be said to have a 
 natural or physical ability to be good. Locke anticipates Edwards 
 in combating the proposition that choice springs from a previous 
 state of indifference, an absolute neutrality of feeling, either pre- 
 ceding the act of judgment or interposed between that act and 
 the act of will. Locke's conception of liberty as relating exclu- 
 sively to the effects of choice, or events consecutive to volition, 
 and not to the origination of choice itself, is precisely coincident 
 with that of Edwards. " Freedom," says Locke, " consists in the 
 dependence of the existence, or non-existence, of any action upon 
 our volition of it." Locke asserts that the question whether the 
 will itself be free or not is unreasonable and unintelligible ; and 
 he precedes Edwards in seeking to fasten upon one who asks 
 whether a man is free to choose in a particular way rather than 
 in the opposite, the absurdity of assuming the possibility of an 
 infinite series of choices, or of inquiring whether an identical 
 1 Dwight's ed. Vol. II. pp. 206, 207. a Dwight's Life, p. 30.
 
 398 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 proposition is true. "To choose as one pleases," if one does not 
 mean "to choose as one chooses to choose" which involves 
 the absurdity of a series of choices ad infinitum can only mean 
 " to choose as one actually chooses," a futile identical proposition. 
 In the psychology of the act of choice there is no essential differ- 
 ence between Locke and Edwards. Both represent the mind as 
 perpetually moved by the desire of good. Locke's invariable 
 antecedent of choice, " uneasiness of desire," or last dictate of 
 the understanding as to good or happiness, does not differ from 
 Edwards's "view of the mind as to the greatest apparent good." 
 In one grand peculiarity they coincide : will and sensibility are 
 confounded. The twofold division of the powers of the mind 
 still prevailed in philosophy. We are endued with understanding 
 and will ; and mental phenomena which do not belong to the 
 understanding are relegated to the will. The principal inconsist- 
 ency of Edwards in his discussions of this subject, in his various 
 writings, is the failure persistently to identify or persistently to 
 distinguish voluntary and involuntary inclinations. Inclination 
 and choice are treated as indistinguishable, 1 and yet the one is 
 spoken of as the antecedent and cause of the other. The ambi- 
 guity of " inclination " and of its synonyms has been a fruitful 
 source of confusion. It was reserved for the metaphysicians of 
 the present century to establish the bounds between sensibility, 
 an involuntary function, and will. It is important, however, not 
 to overlook the distinction between those choices which are perma- 
 nent states of the will, and constitute the abiding principles of 
 character and motives of action, and the subsidiary purposes and 
 volitions which they dictate. It is right to add that, however 
 Edwards may have owed to Locke pregnant hints on the subject 
 of the will, these fell into the richest soil ; and the doctrine of 
 philosophical necessity was elaborated and fortified by the younger 
 writer with a much more rigid logic and a far wider sweep of 
 argument than can be claimed for Locke's discussion. Locke 
 modified his opinions from one edition to another ; and his cor- 
 respondence with Limborch discloses the fact that he was him- 
 self not satisfied with the views of the subject which he had 
 presented in his work. The conviction of Edwards, on the other 
 hand, was attended by no misgivings, and stayed with him to the 
 end of life, 
 
 1 See, e.g., Vol. V. pp. 10, n.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 There are striking resemblances between statements and argu- 
 ments in Edwards's book on the Will and passages in Hobbes and 
 Collins. Edwards incidentally remarks that he had never read 
 Hobbes, and the same is probably true respecting Collins. 1 
 
 These coincidences between Edwards and the authors above 
 named are really not remarkable. The defenders of the doctrine 
 of necessity naturally take one path. They demand an explana- 
 tion of the determination of the will, so far as it involves the 
 election of one thing in preference to another. They deny that 
 the mere power of willing accounts for the specification of the 
 choice, by which one thing is taken and another rejected. Tak- 
 ing this weapon, the axiom of cause and effect, they chase their 
 opponents out of every place of refuge. Edwards is peculiar only 
 in the surpassing keenness and unsparing persistency with which 
 he carries on the combat, even anticipating defences against his 
 logic which had not been as yet set up. He was anxious to de- 
 molish forts even before they were erected. His habit of taking 
 up all conceivable objections to the proposition which he advo- 
 cates, in advance of the opponent, is one main source of his 
 strength as a disputant. He not only fires his own gun, but 
 spikes that of the enemy. 
 
 Of course it is far from being true that Edwards was the first to 
 assert the impropriety of the term ' necessary ' as a predicate of 
 acts of will, on the ground that ' necessity ' presupposes an opposi- 
 tion of the will which, of course, is precluded when the occurrence 
 in question is itself a choice. I am constrained to that to which 
 my will is opposed, but which nevertheless occurs. That is nec- 
 essary "which choice cannot prevent." 2 The same objection 
 is made to the terms 'irresistible,' 'unavoidable,' 'inevitable,' 
 'unable,' and their synonyms, as descriptive of the determina- 
 tions of the will. If Augustine does not use the above-mentioned 
 terms in an explicit form, yet there lurks continually under his 
 statements the feeling that underlies this criticism ; as, for in- 
 stance, when he speaks of " the most blessed necessity " of not 
 sinning, under which the Deity is placed, " if necessity it is to be 
 called," "si necessitas dicenda est." 3 But the objection to all 
 
 1 See Hobbes's Works (Molesworth's ed.)> Vol. II. pp. 247, 410, and 
 Collins's Inquiry, pp. 2, 41, 58, 59, 83 sq. 
 
 2 Edwards's Works, Vol. II. p. 84, 
 8 Op, imp. I. 103.
 
 400 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 terms implying coercion, especially to the word ' necessity, 1 is set 
 forth by Thomas Aquinas as clearly as by Edwards. 1 
 
 It is the doctrine of Edwards, then, that the will is determined 
 by " that view of the mind which has the greatest degree of pre- 
 vious tendency to excite volition." 2 This antecedent mental 
 state secures the result by a strictly causal efficiency. Moral 
 necessity is distinguished from the natural necessity that prevails 
 in material nature, in that the former is concerned with mental 
 phenomena, with motives and the volitions which they produce ; 
 but the difference "does not lie so much in the nature of the 
 connection, as in the two terms connected" 3 It is cause and effect 
 in both cases. To the objection that morality and responsibility 
 are subverted by this doctrine, Edwards replies that men are re- 
 sponsible for their choices, no matter what the causes of them 
 may be ; that moral quality inheres in the choices themselves, and 
 not in their causes. As liberty " does not consider anything of the 
 cause of the choice," 4 so it is with moral accountableness, with 
 merit and ill-desert. Sufficient that the choice exists in the man as 
 an operation of will. 5 On no other hypothesis than the necessita- 
 rian did Edwards think it possible to hold to the omniscience of 
 God and His universal providence and government. Principles 
 which freethinkers maintained for other ends, he defended as the 
 indispensable foundations of religion. 
 
 Edwards, as we have intimated, came forward as the champion 
 of Calvinism against Whitby and its other English assailants. He 
 intended " to bring the late objections and outcries against Cal- 
 vinistic divinity to the test of the strictest reasoning." 6 He scat- 
 tered to the winds the loosely defined notions of free-will which 
 made it include the choosing of choices, and choice from a pre- 
 vious indifference, or apart from all influence of motives. It is not 
 true that, out of various possible choices, the mind decides upon, 
 i.e., chooses one. Nor is it true that the act of choice starts into 
 being independently of inducements. Although his adversaries 
 must have felt that he took advantage of the infirmities of lan- 
 guage, and confuted what they said rather than what they meant, 
 yet it is quite untrue that he was guilty of any conscious un- 
 fairness. 
 
 1 Summa, Part I. Qu. 5, Art. 4. * Ibid. p. 39; cf. p. 191. 
 
 2 Works, Vol. II. p. 25. 6 Ibid. p. 185 sq. (Part IV. i). 
 
 8 Ibid. Vol. II. p. 34. 6 Letter to Erskine, Dwight's Life, p. 497.
 
 4bi 
 
 He had no faith in their conception of freedom, however it 
 might be formulated. But, in prosecuting his purpose, Edwards 
 set up a philosophy of the will which is not consonant with the 
 doctrine that had been held by the main body, of Augustinian 
 theologians. It is true that the Wittenberg Reformers, at the 
 outset, and Calvin, in his earlier writings, especially the Institutes, 
 pushed predestination to the supralapsarian extreme. The doc- 
 trine of Augustine, however, and the more general doctrine even 
 of Calvinistic theologians, the doctrine of the Westminster As- 
 sembly's creeds, is that a certain liberty of will ad utrumvis, or 
 the power of contrary choice, had belonged to the first man, but 
 had disappeared in the act of transgression, which brought his 
 will into bondage to evil. It was the common doctrine, too, that 
 in mankind now, while the will is enslaved as regards religious 
 obedience, it remains free outside of this province, in all civil and 
 secular concerns. In this wide domain the power of contrary 
 choice still subsists. But Edwards's conception of the will admits 
 of no such distinction. In the room of an acquired slavery of 
 the will, he teaches a determinism belonging to its very nature. 
 Freedom is as predicable of men now as of Adam before he 
 sinned ; of religious morality as of the affairs of worldly business ; 
 of man as of God. He asserts most emphatically that he holds 
 men to be possessed now of all the liberty which it is possible to 
 imagine, or which it ever entered into the heart of any man to 
 conceive. 1 Of course, there can have been no loss of liberty, no 
 forfeiture of a prerogative once possessed. Philosophical neces- 
 sity belongs to the very nature of the will. Therefore it binds 
 all spiritual beings alike. This is not the philosophy of Augus- 
 tine or of the Westminster divines. They held to a mutability 
 of will once belonging to man, but now lost; to a freedom 
 pertaining at present to men in one sphere of action, but not 
 in another. 
 
 It is plain that Edwards believed in predestination in the 
 extreme supralapsarian form. He encloses in the network of 
 philosophical necessity all intelligent beings. The sovereignty of 
 God in the realm of choices, as in the realm of matter, and His 
 omnipresent agency, are fundamental in his creed. Sometimes 
 he seems to contend for a naked sovereignty, for the exercise and 
 manifestation, in a certain sphere of pure will. But the impression 
 
 1 Letter to Erskine, Dwight's Life, p. 293. 
 2 D
 
 402 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 is elsewhere corrected. 1 The Arminian objection that, according 
 to Calvinism, a sinful man cannot love God, cannot repent, is met 
 by a denial. He can if he will. If it be asked, can he will, the 
 question is pronounced to be nonsensical. He is possessed of 
 conscience and will ; he has a natural ability to do all duty, not- 
 withstanding the certainty that without the operations of grace, 
 he will not, that is, notwithstanding his moral inability. The 
 first is the ground of responsibility ; the second, of dependence. 
 Both are absolute. 
 
 We turn now to the second great subject on which Edwards 
 entered the lists against the Arminians, for the purpose of recover- 
 ing the ground which Watts, Doddridge, and other half-hearted 
 apologists for Calvinism seemed to have surrendered. His Doc- 
 trine of Original Sin Defended did not appear until 1758, just 
 after his death. In this treatise he blinks no difficulties; but, 
 having established by cogent reasoning and by Scripture, with 
 appeals to heathen as well as Christian authority, the tremendous 
 fact of sin, as a universal characteristic of mankind, he endeavors 
 to prove that men are truly, and not by any legal fiction, judged 
 to be sinful from the start, and literally guilty of the primal trans- 
 gression. To this end, he seeks to bring the continuance of sin 
 in the individuals of the race, onward from the beginning of their 
 personal life, under the familiar law of habit. It is analogous to 
 the self- perpetuation of any habit which arises from an initial act. 
 To prove that Adam's act was our act, he launches out into a 
 bold speculation on the nature of identity. Personal identity, he 
 asserts, is the effect of the divine will and ordinance. If it con- 
 sists in the sameness of consciousness, that is kept up by divine 
 acts from moment to moment. If it be thought to consist in the 
 sameness of substance, even this is due to the perpetual divine 
 preservation ; and preservation is not to be distinguished from 
 constantly repeated acts of creation. Our identity is a constituted 
 identity, dependent upon the creative will, and in this sense arbi- 
 trary, yet conformed to an idea of order. So the individuals of 
 the human race are the continuation of Adam ; they truly that 
 is, by the will and appointment of God constitute one moral 
 whole. It is strictly true that all participated in the act by which 
 
 1 See remarks of Prof. E. C. Smyth in the Andover Review, March, 1890, 
 in review of observations of Professor Allen (Life of Edwards, pp. 59, 60, 
 297)-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 403 
 
 " the species first rebelled against God." l We are not con- 
 demned for another's evil choice, but for our own, and the prin- 
 ciple of sin within us is only the natural consequence of that 
 original act. Time counts for nothing : the first rising of evil 
 inclination in us is one and the same with the first rising of evil 
 inclination in Adam ; it is the members participating in, and con- 
 senting to, the act of the head. The habit of sinning follows 
 upon this first rising of evil inclination, in us as in Adam. Such 
 is the constitution of things ; and on the divine constitution, the 
 persistence of individuality, of personal consciousness and iden- 
 tity, equally depends. It is to be noticed that, in defence of his 
 theory, Edwards does not lay hold of the traducian hypothesis of 
 the evolution of souls. He admits that souls are created ; but so 
 are consciousness and the substance of our individual being at 
 every successive instant of time. Like Anselm, and the School- 
 men generally, he is a creationist. It is evident that Locke's 
 curious chapter on Identity and Diversity 2 put Edwards on the 
 track on which he advanced to these novel opinions. Locke there 
 attempts to prove that sameness of consciousness is the sole bond 
 of identity, and that identity would remain were consciousness dis- 
 joined from one substance and connected with another. Edwards's 
 opinion is peculiar to himself, but there is no reason to doubt that 
 the initial impulse to the reflections that issued in it was imparted 
 by the discussion of Locke. Is an influence of Berkeley as well as 
 of Locke to be assumed in Edwards's speculation? It is really 
 the application of the Berkeleian idea to the mind a step which 
 of course Berkeley himself had not thought of taking. 3 
 
 The ethical theory of Edwards is propounded in his masterly 
 
 1 Edwards's Works, Vol. II. p. 543. 2 Locke's Essay, B. II. c. 27. 
 
 8 Professor Fraser, in his ed. of Berkeley's Writings (Vol. I. p. 179, n. 91), 
 says : " In several of his writings Edwards approaches the peculiar doctrines 
 of Berkeley regarding the material world. It is worthy of note that when 
 Berkeley was in Rhode Island, Edwards was settled in Massachusetts." See, 
 also, Vol. II. p. 155 n. An elaborate paper from the pen of Prof. E. C. Smyth, 
 published in the Proceedings of the Am. Antiq. Soc. (1895), discusses the "Early 
 Writings of Jonathan Edwards, 1714-1726." Professor Smyth writes after a 
 careful study of the manuscripts. His conclusion is adverse to the supposi- 
 tion that Edwards had read Berkeley. " From across the waters," says Pro- 
 fessor Smyth, " the minds that were most stirring his own were, in physics, 
 Sir Isaac Newton's ; in philosophy, Locke's. " The paper referred to is 
 highly instructive respecting the dates and chronological relation of these 
 early writings of Edwards.
 
 404 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 treatise on the " Nature of True Virtue." He does not content him- 
 self, as philosophers before him had so often done, with the inquiry, 
 What is the abstract quality of virtue, or the foundation of moral ob- 
 ligation ? but he sets forth the nature of virtue in the concrete, or the 
 principle of goodness. This he finds to be benevolence, or love to 
 intelligent being. It is love to the entire society of intelligent beings 
 according to their rank, or, to use his phrase, "the amount of being" 
 which belongs to them. It is thus a proportionate love ; supreme 
 and absolute as regards God, limited as regards inferior beings. 
 Under this conception, ethics and religion are inseparably con- 
 nected. True love to man is love to him as being, or as having 
 being in himself, and is indissolubly connected, if it be real and 
 genuine, with a proportionately greater love to God. This benev- 
 olence, which embraces in itself all goodness, is the fountain and 
 essence of specific virtues. It is described as a propensity to 
 being, a union of heart to intelligent being, a consent to being, 
 which prompts one to seek the welfare of the objects loved. It 
 is not synonymous with delight in the happiness of others, but is 
 the spring of that delight. Now, he who actually exercises this 
 love delights in the same love when it is seen in others ; and this 
 delight induces and involves an additional love to them, the love 
 of complacency. There is a spiritual beauty in benevolence 
 which is perceived only through experience. The relish which 
 this beauty excites and gratifies is possible only to him who is 
 himself benevolent. There is a rectitude in benevolence, a fitness 
 to the nature of the soul and the nature of things ; and the per- 
 ception of this rectitude awakens the sense of obligation, and 
 binds all men to be benevolent. The natural conscience makes 
 a man uneasy " in the consciousness of doing that to others which 
 he should be angry with them for doing to him, if they were in 
 his case, and he in theirs." This feeling may be resolved into a 
 consciousness of being inconsistent with himself, of a disagreement 
 with his own nature. With the feeling of approbation and disap- 
 probation, there is joined a sense of desert, which consists in a 
 natural agreement, proportion, and harmony between malevolence 
 or injury and resentment and punishment. An essential element 
 in Edwards's whole theory is this double excellence of universal 
 love : first, a rightness recognized by all men, whether they be 
 good or bad ; and a peculiar, transcendent beauty revealed only 
 to the good, or on the condition of the exercise of love as a prac-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 tical principle. Of the natural conscience in its relation to love he 
 says : " Although it sees not, or rather does not taste its primary 
 and essential beauty, i.e., it tastes no sweetness in benevolence 
 to being in general, simply considered, for nothing but general 
 benevolence itself can do that ; yet this natural conscience, common 
 to mankind, may approve it from that uniformity, equality, and jus- 
 tice, which there is in it ; and the demerit which is seen in the 
 contrary, consisting in the natural agreement between the con- 
 trary, and being hated of being-in-general." 1 The moral sense 
 which is common to all men, and the spiritual sense which belongs 
 to the benevolent, may be called sentiments ; but not with the 
 idea that they are merely subjective or arbitrary, and not corre- 
 spondent to the objective reality. The quality of Tightness and 
 the quality of spiritual beauty inhere in love as intrinsic attributes. 
 By means of this distinction between the intrinsic rectitude and 
 the spiritual beauty of the virtuous principle, Edwards built up 
 a foundation for his doctrine of spiritual light, or for that mystical 
 side which has been pointed out in his character and in his con- 
 ception of religion. The reaction of benevolence against its oppo- 
 site as being unrighteous and offensive to the sense of spiritual 
 beauty, and as an injury to the beings on whom benevolence fixes 
 its regard, is a form of hatred. This hatred on the part of God 
 and of all benevolent beings toward " the statedly and irreclaim- 
 ably evil " inspires a feeling of satisfaction in their punishment. 
 Those descriptions in Edwards of the sufferings of incorrigible 
 evil-doers in the future world, and of the contentment of the 
 righteous at beholding them, which grate on the sensibility of 
 most of the present generation, he felt no difficulty in reconciling 
 with the doctrine that impartial and universal love is the essence 
 of virtue. 
 
 The disinterested love which is identical with virtue is the an- 
 tipode of self-love. If self-love signifies nothing but a man's loving 
 what is pleasing to him, this is only to say that he loves what he 
 loves ; since, with Edwards, loving an object is synonymous with 
 being pleased with it. It is " the same thing as a man's having a 
 faculty of will." 2 But the proper meaning of self-love is regard 
 to self in distinction from others, or regard to some private inter- 
 est. Edwards undertakes to resolve all particular affections which 
 do not involve a regard to universal being, and a willingness that the 
 i Works, Vol. III. p. 132. 2 Ibid, Vol. III. p. 118.
 
 406 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 subordinate interest should give way whenever it competes with the 
 rights and the interests of the whole, into self-love. This is true of 
 habits of feeling and actions that are done at the dictate of natu- 
 ral conscience, which may be looked upon " as in some sort aris- 
 ing from self-love, or self-union," or the uneasy consciousness of 
 being inconsistent with one's self. The most questionable feature 
 in Edwards's whole theory is the position to which the natural 
 perception of right and sense of moral obligation are reduced, in 
 order to exalt the sense of spiritual beauty as the one necessary 
 attendant of true virtue. But he is not justly chargeable with dis- 
 placing the particular affections love of family, patriotism, and 
 the like although Robert Hall thinks that Godwin built up his 
 ethical notions on the reasoning of Edwards, as Godwin avowedly 
 leaned upon Edwards in his exposition of liberty and necessity. 1 
 
 In the dissertation on " God's Chief End in Creation," which, 
 like the essay on the " Nature of True Virtue," was posthumous, 
 Edwards " o'erleaped these earthly bounds," and sought to unveil 
 the motive of the Deity in calling the universe into being. He rejects 
 every notion of an indigence, insufficiency, and mutability in God, 
 or any dependence of the Creator on the creature for any part of 
 His perfection or happiness. Every pantheistic hypothesis of this 
 nature he repels. God must be conceived of as estimating the 
 sum total of His own excellence at its real worth. This regard for 
 His glory, or His glorious perfections, not because they are His, but 
 for their own sake, is not an unworthy feeling or motive to action. 
 The disposition to communicate the infinite fulness of good which 
 inheres eternally in Himself, ad extra, is an original property of 
 His nature. This incited Him to create the world. That His attri- 
 butes should be exerted and should be known and esteemed, and 
 become a source of joy to other beings, is fit and proper. His 
 delight in His creatures does not militate against His independence, 
 since the creation emanates from Himself, and this delight may be 
 resolved into a delight in Himself. In God, the love of Himself 
 and the love of the public are not to be distinguished as in man, 
 " because God's being, as it were, comprehends all." Nor is it 
 selfish in Him to seek for the holiness and happiness of the creat- 
 ure, out of supreme regard to Himself, or from the esteem which 
 He has for that excellence, a portion of which He imparts to them, 
 
 1 Compare Hall's Works (Bohn's ed.), p. 284; Godwin's Political Justice ; 
 Vol. I. p. 279 (Dublin, 1793).
 
 407 
 
 and which He reasonably desires to see an object of honor, and 
 the source of a joy like His own. " For it is the necessary conse- 
 quence of true esteem and love, that we value others' esteem of 
 the same object, and dislike the contrary. For the same reason, 
 God approves of others' esteem and love of Himself." The creat- 
 ure is intended for an eternally increasing nearness and union to 
 God. Under this idea, his " interest must be viewed as one with 
 God's interest," and is therefore not regarded by God as a thing 
 distinct and separate from Himself. Thus, all the activities of God 
 return to Himself as the final goal. 
 
 Edwards was acquainted with Hutcheson. " The calm, stable, 
 universal good-will to all, or the most extensive benevolence," and 
 " the relish and reputation of it," or " the esteem and good- will of 
 a higher kind to all in whom it is found," are phrases of this writer 1 
 which remind us of the American philosopher. But the scientific 
 construction of the theory of virtue, especially in the place which 
 love to God finds in it, is original with Edwards. The younger 
 Fichte expresses admiration for this essay, which is only known to 
 him through the brief sketch of Mackintosh. " What he reports 
 of it," says Fichte, " appears to me excellent." 2 He speaks of 
 the bold and profound thought that God, as the source of love in 
 all creatures, on the same ground loves Himself infinitely more 
 than any finite being ; and therefore in the creation of the world 
 can have no other end than the revelation of His own perfection, 
 which, it is to be observed, consists in love. 3 " So," concludes 
 Fichte, " has this solitary thinker of North America risen to the 
 deepest and loftiest ground which can underlie the principle 
 of morals : universal benevolence in us, as it were, potentially 
 latent, and in morality to emerge into full consciousness and 
 activity, is only the effect of the bond of love, which encloses 
 us all in God." The degree or amount of being is a somewhat 
 obscure idea ; nevertheless the German critic considers it a true 
 and profound thought that the degree of the perfection of a being 
 is to determine the degree of love to him. Mackintosh, to whom 
 Fichte owed his knowledge of Edwards, apparently fails, in one 
 passage, to apprehend Edwards's distinction between love and 
 esteem, or benevolence and moral complacency. 
 
 1 Moral Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 69. 
 
 2 " Was dieser von ihm berichtet finden wir vortrefflich." System der Ethik, 
 Vol. I. p. 544. * Ibid. pp. 544, 545.
 
 408 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Shortly before his death Edwards refers, in a letter, to an unfin- 
 ished work, "a body of divinity in an entire new method, being 
 thrown into the form of a history." It was to treat of the redemp- 
 tion of the world by Christ as the centre toward which the whole 
 current of anterior events converged, and from which all subse- 
 quent events radiate. There were to be interwoven in the work 
 " all parts of divinity," in such a method as to exhibit to the best 
 advantage their " admirable contexture and harmony." The con- 
 ception was not unlike that of Augustine in the De Civitate Dei. 
 The treatise, in its unfinished state, was published after the author's 
 death, under the title, A History of the Work of Redemption, con- 
 taining the Outlines of a Body of Divinity, including a View of 
 Church History in a Method entirely new. In its incomplete 
 form it remains an impressive monument of the variety of the 
 author's powers and of the broad range of his studies and reflec- 
 tions. The preparation of redemption, the accomplishment of it 
 through the life and death of Christ, and its effects, are the three 
 divisions into which the book is cast. He compares the work of 
 redemption, which he undertakes to delineate in its orderly prog- 
 ress, to " a temple that is building : first the workmen are sent 
 forth, then the materials are gathered, the ground is fitted, and 
 the foundation laid ; then the superstructure is erected, one part 
 after another, till at length the top stone is laid and all finished." 1 
 Of course the acts of the drama, which are still in the future, have 
 to be learned from prophecy. 
 
 Edwards's treatise on " Religious Affections " was published in 
 1 746. His satisfaction with the results of the Revival was mingled 
 with not a little disappointment. A portion of the converts fell 
 back to their former life. Excitement of the emotions was 
 attended by evil as well as good fruits. One design of this 
 treatise was to sift the converts, to distinguish between religious 
 feelings which are sound and such as are unhealthy or spurious. 
 The analysis is carried so far for example, in the distinction 
 of natural gratitude from pious gratitude, and so in respect to 
 other feelings that the effect of the book was to awaken in the 
 minds of many good Christians in after days a distrust, the anti- 
 pode of the Assurance which the Reformers valued as a great 
 advantage of their doctrine. But the treatise presents the author's 
 ideal of religious experience. It makes the indwelling of God's 
 1 Works, Vol. III. p. 171.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 Spirit in the souls of true believers the source of an inward state 
 which the natural man cannot conceive of, and begetting a love 
 of God from pure delight in His holiness, a love which is the 
 fountain of all Christian virtues. In this treatise the mystical 
 element in Edwards, the elements of insight and intuition in his 
 religious thoughts, find a full expression. 
 
 In Five Sermons on Justification Edwards includes a defence 
 of the proposition that faith justifies, not as being morally worthy, 
 but as a vinculum connecting the soul with Christ. In an essay 
 on the " Trinity," he presents an ingenious philosophical defence 
 of the Athanasian doctrine. A paper by Edwards on " The Satis- 
 faction of Christ " is one of the most profound of his numerous 
 discussions. He begins with the statement that, where there is 
 sin, something of the nature of compensation is required, either 
 punishment or a repentance, humiliation, and sorrow which are 
 proportionate to the guilt incurred. No repentance answerable 
 to the guilt of sin is possible to men. This Edwards avers on the 
 ground of the infinitude of guilt. Only a brief sketch of the 
 principal points in the exposition can here be given : 
 
 1. Christ is first presented in the character of an Intercessor. 
 Nor is this conception entirely dropped out of mind in the 
 process of the discussion. As a prerequisite to this office, He 
 must enter fully into the mind of the offended party, as well as 
 the distress of the party offending. This absolute sympathy, or 
 identification of Himself in feeling, with both parties, is neces- 
 sary to qualify Him to intercede. Without it, His intercessions 
 would not be intelligent on His own part, or acceptable and 
 prevailing. 
 
 2. The sympathy of Christ with God and with man, the offended 
 One and the offender, was perfected by means of His death. Then 
 and thereby it attained to its consummation. Then He under- 
 stood fully what guilt involves ; He appreciated both the holy 
 resentment of God, and the criminality and forlorn situation of 
 man. We do not depart from the spirit of Edwards's teaching, 
 if we say that the prayer of Christ for His enemies, on the cross, 
 emanated from a state of mind that absolutely meets the condi- 
 tions of acceptable intercession. 
 
 3. The substitution of Christ was primarily in His own heart. 
 It was love, which comes under another's burden, makes another's 
 suffering lot its own, lays aside self, as it were, and becomes an-
 
 4io 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 other. This inward substitution led to, and was completed in, 
 the final act of self-sacrifice. 
 
 4. By His voluntary submission to death, Christ signified His 
 absolute approval of the righteousness of the law, on its penal, as 
 well as its preceptive side. He gave the strongest possible proof 
 of His sense of the justice of the divine administration in the 
 allotment of death to the sinner. Being among men, and one of 
 them, He honored and sanctioned the law both by keeping it, by 
 overcoming temptation, and also by sharing, without a murmur, 
 in the righteous penalty which He had not personally incurred. 
 
 The originality and attractiveness of Edwards's discussion lies 
 in the circumstance that it is an attempt to find the moral and 
 spiritual elements of the Atonement, and thus unfold its rationale. 
 It is not in the quantity of the Saviour's suffering alone, but in the 
 sources and meaning of it, that he is interested. While holding 
 that Christ suffered the penalty of sin, Edwards not only care- 
 fully excludes the idea that He was in consciousness, or in fact, 
 an object of wrath ; but he dwells also upon those spiritual per- 
 ceptions and experiences which gave significance to the pain which 
 He endured. 1 
 
 The " Edwardeans," the theologians who modified Calvinism 
 under the stimulus imparted by the writings of Edwards, and in 
 a sense built on his foundations, were at first a small minority. 
 They grew in numbers until their theology well-nigh superseded 
 the traditional type of Calvinism, although they were divided 
 among themselves into different schools. On the other hand, 
 among the Arminians who looked with disfavor on the Revival 
 there was developed a tendency which issued in the Unitarian 
 movement. 
 
 We have first to attend to the Edwardean leaders, the represent- 
 atives of " the New England Theology." Their general aim, like 
 that of Edwards himself, was to wrest from Arminianism its 
 weapons. Their purpose was to maintain the distinctive principle 
 of Calvinism, the " sovereignty " of God, but, at the same time, 
 to present in pulpit instructions such a statement of Christianity 
 
 1 On the memorial window in honor of Edwards, in the chapel of Yale 
 College, of which he is an illustrious graduate, stands the just inscription : 
 "lonathan Edwards summi in ecclesia ordinis vates fuit, rerum sacrarum 
 philosophus qui sseculorum admirationem movet, Dei cultor mystice amantis- 
 simus: hie studebat, docebat."
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 as would leave unrepenting men without excuse for not accepting 
 the Gospel. Joseph Bellamy (1719-90) published in 1750 the 
 True Religion Delineated, an able and spirited work, in which the 
 way of salvation was set forth. It was read in manuscript by 
 Edwards, and was commended by him. It explains Original Sin 
 by the covenant or representative hypothesis. 1 Yet in another 
 publication in 1758, Bellamy refers to Edwards's unpublished 
 treatise on this subject. In his Wisdom of God in the Permission 
 of Sin (1758), Bellamy contended that the system is "more holy 
 and happy than if sin and misery had never entered." God 
 could have prevented sin without infringing on free-will. He 
 permits sin, in itself " infinitely evil," because it can be overruled 
 to a greater good. The question whether unconverted persons 
 should be urged to pray for regeneration, read the Scriptures as a 
 means to this end, etc., the question relative to " unregenerate 
 doings," was much discussed. Bellamy takes ground in the 
 affirmative. In relation to the Atonement, Bellamy represents it 
 to be a satisfaction of divine justice in the sense that God, con- 
 sistently with His honor and holiness, can offer pardon to men. 
 Christ died for the salvation of all who will repent and believe. 
 The conception resembles that of Amyraut. It is even said in 
 one place that God " heartily " invites all. 2 This goes beyond 
 Bellamy's usual statement that " God has opened a door for all to 
 be saved conditionally." There is at least a near approach to the 
 doctrine of a general Atonement. Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) 
 was a pupil of Edwards. In certain places he appears to sanc- 
 tion Edwards's theory of an identity with Adam. 3 But his ordi- 
 nary and more precise teaching is that men are sinners from birth 
 through a divine " constitution," establishing an infallible certainty 
 that, if Adam sins, all men after him will begin their existence as 
 sinners. But their sin is their own, and not his. 4 It is declared 
 to be a free act. As soon as children are capable of " motions 
 and exercises " of heart contrary to the law of God, they sin, 
 although "they have no consciousness " that such " exercises " are 
 wrong. Hopkins brought in the doctrine of " divine efficiency " 
 in the production even of sinful choices. This is deduced from 
 
 1 See Bellamy's Works, Vol. I. p. 300. 2 Ibid. Vol. I. p. 383. 
 
 8 See Hopkins's Works (1852), Vol. I. p. 199. He published with com- 
 mendation Edwards's book on Original Sin, 
 4 Ibid. Vol. I. pp. 211, 235.
 
 412 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Edwards's doctrine of a prior infallible certainty of their recur- 
 rence. From this time, imputation is discarded from the New 
 England theology. The theory of the Covenant, with Adam as a 
 representative, is exchanged for the theory of " sovereign consti- 
 tution," or fixed, established connection. Thenceforward the 
 doctrine was that Adam's sin carried with it, by a divine decree, 
 the certainty of his descendants being sinners from the outset of 
 their personal being. From Edwards's definition of virtue as 
 " love to being in general," Hopkins drew out his exposition of 
 disinterested benevolence. Man must love himself, not as self, 
 but only as a portion of universal being. Hence followed the 
 doctrine of "unconditional resignation," or a willingness to be 
 finally cast off and to perish, if the glory of God require it. A 
 doctrine often brought forward by the mystics for example, in 
 the " German Theology " is presented by Hopkins and his fol- 
 lowers in the hard terms of logic. By them, also, it is made an 
 element of practical piety. Hopkins asserted the sinfulness of 
 " unregenerate doings," and the consequent unlawfulness of ex- 
 horting sinners to pray for conversion or to do anything prelimi- 
 nary to conversion. The first duty is to repent and believe. 
 Thus there was combined the highest view of divine sovereignty 
 with the highest assertion of "natural ability" and consequent 
 responsibility. The certainty of conversion, whenever it occurs, 
 is the effect of the special agency of God's Spirit, in pursuance 
 of His elective purpose. Like Bellamy, Hopkins defends the 
 thesis that sin, as a part of the divine system, although the evil 
 act of the creature, is the necessary means of the greatest good. 
 
 The younger Edwards Jonathan Edwards, Jr. (1745-1801) 
 agrees with Hopkins, his teacher, respecting the sinfulness of " un- 
 regenerate doings" and the use of "means" by the unconverted 
 to pave the way to repentance and conversion. He concurs with 
 Hopkins in his idea of Original Sin. He dissents from his views 
 respecting disinterested benevolence. Regeneration, the younger 
 Edwards defines to be the communication of a new spiritual sense 
 or taste, " in consequence of which light breaks in upon the under- 
 standing, and joy enters the heart." His principal contribution 
 to theology is his Sermons on the Atonement together with his 
 Brief Thoughts on the same subject. With Grotius, he denies 
 that the Atonement is the payment of a debt. It is a satisfaction 
 to the general justice of God, by which is meant that regard to the
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 413 
 
 greatest good which leads Him, while bestowing forgiveness, to 
 sustain the authority of law. " Christ suffered that in the sinner's 
 stead which as effectually tended to discourage or prevent trans- 
 gression and excite to obedience as the punishment of the trans- 
 gressor according to the letter of the law would have done." The 
 end of punishment is the restraining of others from sin. The 
 Atonement does this because it shows God's hatred of sin and His 
 determination to punish it. Vicarious suffering not being the dis- 
 charge of a debt, does not bind the Ruler to remit the penalty. 
 Other conditions of pardon may be imposed. The matter of the 
 Atonement is the sufferings of Christ. His active obedience is 
 only a condition sine qua non. 
 
 Thenceforward the governmental theory of the Atonement 
 became a characteristic of the New England orthodoxy. It is 
 remarkable that substantially the Grotian or Arminian tenet on 
 this subject was set in connection with so high a doctrine of divine 
 sovereignty. But this very idea of God's sovereignty inspired a 
 reluctance to seem to fetter the exercise of it by assuming that 
 God is bound morally to extend pardon to the elect. Moreover, 
 the New England divines were ever in quest of a theology that 
 could be preached and defended against gainsayers. Under their 
 doctrine it could not be said by the impenitent, in reference to 
 exhortations to turn to God, that the Atonement was not intended, 
 in any proper sense, for them ; that is to say, did not spring from 
 love to them. 
 
 Nathaniel Emmons (1745-1801) was on most points of the 
 same mind as Hopkins. He taught in the most explicit terms 
 that God is the universal cause the cause of sinful as well as 
 holy actions. But He creates men free, and because they are sin- 
 ful it does not follow that He is, any more than He resembles the 
 poison of the asp which He creates. Men begin to sin, " proba- 
 bly," as soon as life begins, a fact resulting from the sin of 
 Adam. They are not, however, answerable for his transgression : 
 all sin is actual sin. All sins are "exercises" of will. But in 
 Emmons, as in so many, affections or feelings and will are not 
 carefully discriminated. So strongly did Emmons emphasize this 
 atomic view of character that he was understood to teach that the 
 mind consists of a chain of acts or exercises with no substratum of 
 personality beneath. In this part of his system we clearly discern 
 the influence of Edwards's idea of substance and consciousness as a
 
 414 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 continuous series of creative acts. Yet the strongest language is 
 used in the assertion of "natural ability," nothing being wanting 
 but choices to render a sinful man holy. The "unconditional 
 resignation " taught by Hopkins is reaffirmed. Justification is 
 defined to be pardon. Being pardoned, an imperfect Christian is 
 rewarded for the amount of holiness of which he is possessed. 
 But his distinction from an unregenerate person is that some of his 
 " exercises " are holy, while in such a person all the exercises 
 are morally evil. Each exercise is perfect in its kind. On this 
 idea of the nature of Christian character Emmons differed from 
 Hopkins. 
 
 Opposed to the peculiarities of Hopkins was another school of 
 Ed ward cans, of whom President D wight of Yale College (1752- 
 1817) was the most distinguished representative. An Hopkinsian 
 in early life, he discarded the special opinions of that school. His 
 system is exhibited in a series of sermons. Dwight rejects " divine 
 efficiency " in respect to evil actions. A discourse, entitled " The 
 Soul of Man, not a Chain of Ideas and Exercises," is aimed at 
 Emmons's philosophy. In it, he speaks of theology " in this part 
 of the country " as " verging towards Pantheism." He is moderate 
 in his Calvinism. He holds to the previous certainty of all events, 
 to the divine permission of sin, that foreknowledge and decrees 
 are "coetaneous." Virtue is founded in utility, that is, in its 
 tendency to promote the happiness of the universe. Virtue in the 
 concrete is benevolence ; sin is selfishness. Dwight rejects the 
 doctrine of imputation. We are not responsible for Adam's sin. 
 Through his sin, we become sinners, but how we cannot explain. 
 Nevertheless, Dwight asserts that infants are " contaminated in 
 their moral nature," and that this is proved by their death. 
 Regeneration does not consist in the creation of holy exercises, 
 but in the communication of a new taste or disposition ; it is 
 instantaneous, and at the moment imperceptible by the subject of 
 it. Dwight is strenuous in advocating " the use of means " of 
 prayer, etc. on the part of the unregenerate. 
 
 Excelled by none of the New England divines, after the elder 
 Edwards, as a metaphysician, a theological teacher, and as a 
 preacher of impressive power, was Nathaniel W. Taylor (1786- 
 1858). He was a pupil of Dwight. He undertook to complete 
 what he considered an unaccomplished effort of the Edwardeans 
 to reconcile human dependence and personal responsibility. To
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 this end he held that the conception of " natural ability " must 
 have a reality and fulness of meaning not conceded to it by them. 
 There is no such thing as hereditary sin. Nor is it correct to 
 say that the soul is " corrupt " prior to the exertion of moral 
 agency. When it is said that all men are sinners by nature, it is 
 meant that under all the appropriate circumstances of life they 
 will sin until renewed by the Gospel. Their sin is the result of 
 two factors, their subjective constitution in its present condition, 
 and their circumstance. To neither can the fact be exclusively re- 
 ferred. Nor is it certain that an infant, transferred to heaven before 
 a sinful act, would, left to himself, there develop a sinful character. 
 All sin is voluntary. In saying that there is no such thing as 
 hereditary sin, the Hopkinsians were right. But they were wrong 
 in resolving sin into particular acts of will. Rather is sin a per- 
 manent principle or state of the will, an abiding choice and 
 motive of subordinate choices ; and the same is true of holiness. 
 Man is the proximate cause of all his voluntary states and actions. 
 Into the idea of freedom or " ability," Taylor introduced the power 
 of contrary choice, which he held to be continuous and perpet- 
 ual and indispensable to accountable agency. Had he gone no 
 farther, his theory would be Arminian, if not Pelagian, as his oppo- 
 nents declared it to be. But the prior certainty of all moral 
 choices was also asserted ; and this certainty was admitted to be 
 the result, in each case, of their antecedents. In other words, 
 there is a special order of causes " motives " they are called 
 which give the certainty, but not the necessity of their effect. 
 The formula, in a brief phrase, is "certainty with power to the 
 contrary" ; the certainty of a persistence of all men in sin, from 
 the beginning of moral agency, until, under the influences of 
 grace, they are converted. Conversion is the superseding of the 
 wrong governing principle, love to the world, for the only right 
 ruling principle, love to God. Taylor brought in the threefold, 
 instead of the twofold, division of mental faculties. The sensibility, 
 the involuntary nature, which is neither morally good nor morally 
 evil, is capable of being acted upon by the truths of the Gospel, 
 and by its movements to become the motive of a reversal of the 
 governing purpose, which is the essence of character. The neutral 
 district in the soul, having this capacity, was considered to be the 
 natural love of happiness to which the not wholly fit name of 
 " self-love " was given. Thus in man, irrespective of grace, there
 
 is a full equipment for obeying the divine law, for accepting the 
 Gospel. He will not, although he can. As to the connection of 
 the race with Adam, their sinful actions are the consequences, 
 following with certainty, but there is no necessity such as destroys 
 the power to the contrary. 
 
 The solutions, which had been proposed by his New England 
 predecessors, and by theologians in the past generally, of the 
 problem of the theodicy Taylor considered to be inadequate. Sin 
 is not the " necessary means of the greatest good." It is not 
 better that sin should exist than that it should not exist. Because 
 it is better that sin should enter into the system, wherever sin is 
 found in it, than that it should, in these cases, be prevented by 
 divine intervention to exclude it, the conclusion does not follow 
 that it is a good thing, either in itself or " all things considered." 
 It might and would be prevented, if free agents avoided sinning. 
 As to the exclusion of sin, there are two conceivable ways of 
 effecting it. The method of divine power may be incompatible 
 with the constitution of the best system of the universe, in which 
 freedom is one main excellence. 
 
 Redemption is a method of excluding sin up to the limit pre- 
 scribed by wisdom by a regard for the greatest good to divine 
 interposition. Election is the plan of God for securing the largest 
 amount of holiness and consequent happiness which the necessary 
 conditions of the system render it possible for benevolence to 
 secure. The plan of the dispensation of the grace of the spirit, 
 as for the dissemination of the Gospel, is dictated by benevolence. 
 Thus grace is not given to all in an equal measure. The elect are 
 such as yield to the influences of grace under the most beneficent 
 allotment of them. One reason for the election of a person may 
 be his greater prospective influence in the kingdom. This was 
 apparently the fact in the case of the Apostle Paul. Another 
 reason may be a more pliable disposition in some. But reasons 
 may exist which are to us inscrutable. 
 
 There were many who looked upon " Taylorism," not as a vin- 
 dication, but as a surrender of the Calvinistic positions. A warm 
 controversy arose in New England. Bennet Tyler, and Leonard 
 Woods, Professor at Andover, were prominent writers against the 
 new teaching of Dr. Taylor, Dr. Fitch, and the defenders of it. The 
 antagonists generally clung to the belief in an inherited, properly 
 sinful, bias or tendency to evil-doing, an " inclination " prior to
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 personal choice. They rejected the definition of regeneration as 
 simply descriptive of a reversal of the central voluntary principle, 
 viewed from the side of divine agency in leading to it. And they 
 held fast to the thesis that sin is the necessary means of the great- 
 est good, and to the proposition that the exclusion of it by God 
 from the best moral system would involve no contradiction in the 
 nature of things. 
 
 The New England theology was cast by Dr. Mahan and Charles 
 G. Finney, in a peculiar form which bore the name of " Oberlin 
 Theology." Finney (1792-1875) taught in his Lectures on Sys- 
 tematic Theology (1846) that virtue is the choice of the greatest 
 happiness of the universe, including God ; that happiness is the 
 only ultimate good, giving to everything else its value ; that the 
 principle of love, the only virtue, is in the will ; that obligation is 
 limited by the agent's power ; that when a man's generic choice 
 or purpose is to promote the happiness of the universe, he is per- 
 fectly holy, and when this is not his choice, he is perfectly sinful ; 
 that conversion or regeneration is a change of purpose, but in 
 effecting it there is an agency of the Holy Spirit ; that Christian 
 Perfection is goodness up to the measure of present ability, which 
 limits present responsibility; that faith, repentance, sanctification, 
 are as truly the conditions of Justification as the Atonement, which 
 removes an obstacle to pardon. The doctrine of "Perfection" 
 was considered a most prominent feature of the Oberlin Theology. 
 
 A younger contemporary of Dr. Taylor, a remarkably able and 
 accomplished expositor of the New England divinity, is Edwards 
 A. Park, who was long a teacher of theology at Andover. But his 
 system has not been published. Its peculiar features may be 
 gathered from his critical biographies of Hopkins and Emmons, 
 from controversial papers in opposition to " Princeton theology," * 
 and from a number of sermons. Dr. Park is a champion of the 
 doctrine of a continued power of contrary choice, coupled with 
 the uniform result of like antecedents. He emphasizes the effect 
 of the Fall upon the propensities to inferior good, regards regener- 
 ation as a divinely effected change in the " balance of sensibili- 
 ties," and advocates the proposition that the rectitude of that 
 benevolence, which is the sum of goodness, is a simple idea, and 
 not the tendency to produce happiness. 
 
 Surpassed in learning and philosophical ability by none of the 
 l In the Bibliotheca Sacra, Vols. VIII., IX.
 
 4i8 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 New England School since the elder Edwards, was Henry B. 
 Smith. 1 With Edwards, he maintains the idea of mediate impu- 
 tation. " The race is not a mere aggregate of units, but rather 
 a physical and moral unity." There is a law of moral descent, 
 although not a mystical identity of substance. Because sin is 
 generic as well as individual, we come into the world in a state 
 of sin and death, and liable to penal evils now and hereafter. Sin 
 is an immanent state and preference. But as there is a bond of 
 race connecting us with Adam, so by a natural bond are we con- 
 nected with the incarnate Redeemer. The salvation procured by 
 him comes to us individually through faith. The Atonement is 
 not a matter of pure distributive justice. It answers the ends of 
 "public justice," that is, it shows God's supreme love of holi- 
 ness and hatred of sin. Thus the Atonement is general. Regen- 
 eration affects the immanent preference, which includes the 
 affections and the will. It illuminates the mind and gives to the 
 will a new bent. 
 
 The influence of the writings of the earlier theologians of the 
 Edwardean class, in particular of the elder Edwards, and of 
 Dwight, was extensive in Great Britain as well as in America. An- 
 drew Fuller professes to have learned his theology from Edwards. 
 The same is true of Dr. Thomas Chalmers. The Sermons of 
 Dwight, partly from their attractive rhetorical character, passed 
 through many editions in England, and were much read in Scot- 
 land. In America, the theology of the New England schools 
 eventually encountered the hostility of those Presbyterians in 
 the Middle States who adhered strictly to the Westminster Con- 
 fession. The spread of the theological principles of Dr. Taylor 
 beyond the limits of New England, was a potent influence, 
 along with others, which led to the division of the Presbyterian 
 Church, in the United States, into the " New School " and the 
 "Old School" branch. Many, however, who fell from choice 
 into the " New School " division, did not accept the distinctive 
 peculiarities of Taylor's system. 
 
 The rise and progress of Anti-Trinitarian opinions in New Eng- 
 land resembled the like changes that took place in England in 
 the same period. In both cases there was a reaction against 
 Puritan theology and in favor of the Arminian type of thought. 
 The English controversial writers on the Trinity, together with tne 
 1 See his Life and Work (1881).
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 writers in behalf of the Arminian ideas of sin and grace, were, 
 from the close of the seventeenth century, read on this side of 
 the Atlantic, especially in Boston and its vicinity. The " Conven- 
 tion Sermon," preached annually in that town to the Congrega- 
 tional clergy of Massachusetts, according as the preacher was of 
 the Calvinistic or of the opposite school, indicates the antagonism 
 that was more and more clearly coming to the surface. As early 
 as 1722, Cotton Mather, in his convention discourse, expresses 
 alarm at signs of lower views being cherished respecting the 
 person and offices of Christ. English Arians were in correspond- 
 ence with American ministers. The deviations of Watts from the 
 orthodox doctrine were not without their influence. In connec- 
 tion with a more or less conscious and explicit loss of sympathy 
 with Calvinistic orthodoxy, there grew up an outspoken hostility 
 to creeds of human composition, and a demand for a large charity 
 and liberty of thought on abstruse questions of divinity. In 1747, 
 Jonathan Mayhew was settled as a pastor in Boston. He was of 
 the class familiar with the writings of Locke, Samuel Clarke, 
 Whiston, John Taylor of Norwich,-and others of a like tendency. 
 A part of the clergy, on account of his Anti-Trinitarian belief, de- 
 clined to take part in Mayhew's ordination. In his published ser- 
 mons, he denounces with vigor the habit of magnifying the impor- 
 tance of opinions in contrast with practices. " Since the substance 
 of Christian duty is love to God and to our neighbor," he says, 
 " this shows us what a Gospel minister's preaching ought chiefly 
 to turn upon." He is not to dwell on " speculative points "or 
 " metaphysical niceties," but on the two commandments enjoining 
 love. In 1750, leading ministers in the neighborhood of Boston, 
 and many of the educated laity, had ceased to believe in the 
 Trinity. In 1768, Dr. Hopkins prepared a sermon to be preached 
 in Boston, " under the conviction that the doctrine of the divinity 
 of Christ was much neglected, if not disbelieved, by a number of 
 the ministers " there. In 1782 James Freeman was chosen pastor 
 of King's Chapel, an Episcopal church in Boston. As the bishop 
 declined to ordain him, he was ordained, in 1 788, by his congre- 
 gation. The liturgy was altered by the omission of passages recog- 
 nizing the doctrine of the Trinity. " The first Episcopal Church 
 in New England became the first Unitarian Church in America." 
 At the beginning of the new century, a majority of the minis- 
 ters in Eastern Massachusetts were dissenters from the orthodox
 
 4 20 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 doctrine. The division of parties was stimulated and accelerated 
 by the acceptance by many on the orthodox side of the severe 
 tenets of Hopkins and Emmons. In 1805, the election of Henry 
 Ware, a Unitarian, to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity in Har- 
 vard College was the signal for the outbreaking of a heated con- 
 troversy. In 1810, Noah Worcester published the Bible News, 
 in which Christ was said to be a being derived from God, but not 
 made outright, prior to the Creation, and entering into the flesh. 
 He broached this novel opinion, disclaiming alike the Arian and 
 the orthodox doctrine. From about this time, the debate be- 
 tween the respective parties, through periodicals and other chan- 
 nels, was prosecuted with increasing zeal. In 1815, William 
 Ellery Channing, who was to become the most distinguished 
 leader of the Unitarians, writes of the Unitarian ministers : 
 " Their Unitarianism is of a very different kind from that of Mr. 
 Belsham. ... A majority of our brethren believe that Jesus 
 Christ is more than man ; that he existed before the world ; that 
 he literally came from heaven to save our race," etc. Channing 
 adds that another class, while they reject the Trinity of persons, 
 profess no definite opinion on the subject, and that another class 
 still, few in number, " believe the simple humanity of Christ." In 
 another letter (November, 1815), he says that the prevalent senti- 
 ments of the " Liberal Christians " substantially agree with the views 
 of Dr. Samuel Clarke and Worcester. A sermon of Channing in 
 Baltimore, in 1819, was the signal for the opening of a new stage 
 in the doctrinal warfare. In this sermon the distinctive points of 
 Calvinism were assaulted without reserve. It occasioned the 
 publication of Letters in answer by Professor Moses Stuart of 
 Andover, the best equipped of the orthodox scholars in New 
 England. Since Hopkins, the doctrine of the eternal generation of 
 the Son had been given up for the most part in this region. 
 Stuart's conception of the Trinity is that of three eternal, imma- 
 nent " distinctions " in the Deity, not admitting of precise defini- 
 tion, and of the true and proper divinity of the Son and of the 
 Spirit. The ablest and most accurate scholar on the Unitarian 
 side was Professor Andrews Norton whose Statement of Reasons 
 for not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians, etc., appeared in 
 1833. There being no central authority among Congregation- 
 alists, a formal ecclesiastical rupture could not take place. But 
 practically a division was effected, by the ministers of the respec-
 
 421 
 
 tive parties ceasing to exchange ministerial services with one 
 another, or to unite in clerical associations, and by churches no 
 longer coming together in advisory Councils. 
 
 Channing is the most eminent representative of the Unitarian 
 movement in this country. It is true that others among the 
 gifted men who have been conspicuous in that school have 
 equalled or surpassed him in some of the titles to distinction. 
 There have been in their number more eloquent preachers. The 
 younger Buckminster was one, of whom Edward Everett declared 
 that he had the most melodious voice " that ever passed the lips 
 of man ; " 1 of whom, also, one of the ablest of the early Unitarian 
 preachers, who afterwards rendered most honorable service in 
 literature and in public life John Gorham Palfrey has said 
 that his pulpit utterances approached near " to what we imagine 
 of a prophet's or an angel's inspiration." 2 In the graces of style 
 and delivery, according to the taste of that time, Channing was 
 outdone by the youthful Everett himself, in the short time in 
 which the latter served as the successor of Buckminster in the 
 Brattle Street Church. No doubt, Channing's manner was marked 
 by a glow of chastened earnestness, indicating deep emotions 
 held under restraint, and thus had a peculiar fascination of its 
 own. Sometimes, though rarely, he broke out in a more impas- 
 sioned strain. Of a sermon preached by him in New York, in 
 1826, an admiring listener writes : "The man was full of fire, and 
 his body seemed, under some of his tremendous sentences, to 
 expand into that of a giant ; . . . his face was, if anything, more 
 meaning than his words." 3 
 
 If there were others who had more of the qualifications con- 
 sidered to be characteristic of the clerical orator than were pos- 
 sessed by Channing, it is also the fact that, as a theological 
 scholar, he was much surpassed by Andrews Norton; in famil- 
 iarity with philosophical and general literature, by George Ripley ; 
 and in a certain cautious accuracy and weight of reasoning in 
 moral science, by James Walker. Nor in devoutness of spirit 
 does he excel the younger Henry Ware and* Ephraim Peabody. 
 Those who knew Channing remarked in him something delicate, 
 fastidious, patrician, notwithstanding his humane sympathy ; and 
 hence in the aptitude to reach directly the common mind he was 
 
 1 Memoirs of the Buckminsiers, p. 396. 2 Ibid. p. 481. 
 
 8 Life of Henry Ware, Jr., Vol. I. p. 219.
 
 422 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 outstripped by Theodore Parker, whose robust energy and racy 
 dialect better fitted him for contact with the multitude. But 
 Channing unites in himself various characteristics which conspire 
 to give him preeminence. A clear mind, not wanting in imagi- 
 native warmth, a transparent, natural style, neither slovenly nor 
 overwrought, the sympathies and attainments of a man of letters, 
 even though he was not widely read are manifest in his writ- 
 ings. Superadded to these qualities, there was a sanctity of spirit 
 which was felt by those who heard him in the pulpit, or met him 
 even casually in conversation. It was not simply that he was sin- 
 cere, and that he spoke in the accents of conviction. It was not 
 simply that he was above the influence of personal motives, like 
 the love of praise and the dread of censure, and that he had a 
 courage corresponding to his convictions. This necessary attri- 
 bute in a popular leader he exemplified in an inspiriting letter 
 to Henry Ware, Jr., when the latter was desponding over the 
 poor outlook for their cause in New York, and in other more 
 serious emergencies. 1 Channing's eminence is chiefly due, first, 
 to the elevated fervor which inspired his teaching, and which was 
 of inestimable advantage in a movement in which the intellectual 
 factor stood in so high a ratio to the religious ; and, secondly, to 
 the circumstance that he embodied in himself so fully the ethical 
 and philanthropic impulse which principally constituted the posi- 
 tive living force of the Unitarian cause. Following out the 
 humanitarian tendency, he acquired, at home and abroad, a high 
 and, in the main, a deserved fame as the champion of justice 
 in opposition to slavery and other social evils. 
 
 It is remarkable that the Unitarian movement was confined 
 chiefly to Eastern New England, and did not extend into Western 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut. In Connecticut there were never 
 more than two or three Unitarian churches, and these in obscure 
 towns. One ground of this fact is, that in that State the Episco- 
 pal Church struck a deeper root than in Massachusetts. For all 
 who might dislike the style of preaching and the peculiar measures 
 which characterize what is called " revivalism," with its exciting 
 appeals and its prying interrogation of individuals as to their 
 religious experience, and for all who recoiled from rigorous meta- 
 physical definitions of religious truth, the door of the Episcopal 
 Church in Connecticut stood open. Here was a church with an 
 1 Life of Henry Ware, Jr., Vol. I. p. 132.
 
 423 
 
 evangelical creed and evangelical worship, where those who were 
 disaffected with Puritan ways, old or new, could find a quiet har- 
 bor. Another reason for the difference of which I speak lay in 
 the circumstances which gave to the Edwardeans a complete 
 ascendancy in Connecticut. The old Arminianism was not so 
 strong or so strongly intrenched there as in Eastern Massachu- 
 setts. The Calvinists of the older school, from their greater fear 
 of Arminian doctrine, were inclined to coalesce with the fol- 
 lowers of Edwards, as is seen in the case of President Clap, of 
 Yale College (1739-66). President Stiles, of the same college 
 (1777-95), was more of a latitudinarian in his opinions and affil- 
 iations ; he looked back on the Revival " as the late period of 
 enthusiasm." But he was succeeded by Dwight, whose acces- 
 sion to the presidency secured the complete ascendancy of the 
 school of Edwards. The moderation of Dwight in his theological 
 statements, his strenuous opposition to Hopkinsian extravagances, 
 and, more than all, his commanding influence as a preacher and 
 an instructor of theological students, contributed much towards 
 keeping the Congregational churches and ministers in the old 
 path. This result, however, might not have occurred had there 
 been that deep and varied preparation for a doctrinal revolution 
 which had been going forward in Boston and its neighborhood 
 through the greater part of the eighteenth century. 
 
 If we would understand the Unitarian schism, we must take 
 into account the fact that there were not only two interpretations 
 of the Bible which came into collision, but that there were, at the 
 same time, two types of culture. Unitarianism, as it has appeared 
 in history, has been conjoined with no single form of church pol- 
 ity. It has sprung up in the midst of Anglican Episcopacy. It 
 has sprung up at Geneva, in connection with Presbyterianism, and 
 close by Calvin's grave. But it has frequently gone hand in hand 
 with literary criticism and belles-lettres cultivation. This was the 
 case in the Italian Unitarianism of the sixteenth century, which 
 arose out of the Renaissance culture, and in the Unitarianism 
 that spread so widely among the gentry of Poland. The same 
 was conspicuously true of the Unitarian party in New England. 
 There grew up about Boston and Cambridge a method of Biblical 
 criticism which was nourished by the study of Griesbach and of 
 Arminian scholars of an earlier date. In connection with these 
 studies there was a new and wider range of literary activity, and
 
 424 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 an altered style and standard of literary and aesthetic training. 
 Dwight and the elder Buckminster had been fellow-students and 
 tutors together at Yale College in the latter part of the last cen- 
 tury. They broke loose from the metaphysical style of discussion 
 which had been in vogue before in the pulpit, and fostered the 
 reading of the contemporary English classics. But they still ex- 
 hibit a stiff and somewhat tumid quality of style. In the sermons 
 of the younger Buckminster we find that these faults have been 
 outgrown ; although even he expresses himself with a certain for- 
 mality, and with an avoidance of the vocabulary of common life. 
 From these remaining fetters Channing escaped, thereby evincing 
 the continued advance of literary taste. He speaks somewhere 
 of the habit that had prevailed of shunning familiar words as 
 if they had been soiled by common use. In his own style there 
 is nothirg artificial and nothing slovenly. As the Unitarian move- 
 ment vfent forward to later stages, the changes in the type of 
 literary culture became very decided and very influential. But 
 at the outset, at the epoch when Channing began his career, one 
 feels, in looking at the writers on the Unitarian side, that they 
 have passed beyond the point of bending entranced over the 
 pages of Sir Charles Grandison, and are likely soon to become 
 insensible to the attractions of Miss Hannah More. Theodore 
 Parker says of Unitarianism : " The protest began among a class 
 of cultivated men in the most cultivated part of America ; with 
 men who had not the religious element developed in proportion 
 to the intellectual or the aesthetic element." * Of this there can 
 be no doubt that, along with a real interest in theology and 
 religion, there was a very decided taste and aptitude for literary 
 pursuits. Among those who left the Unitarian pulpit to devote 
 themselves to literature or politics are Sparks, Everett, Ban- 
 croft, Emerson, Ripley, Palfrey, Upham. If an equal number of 
 leading minds had withdrawn themselves from the pulpit in the 
 Methodist body supposing that, in its early days, it had pos- 
 sessed so many able and learned men or from any other 
 religious body not more numerous than the Unitarians were, the 
 fact would be considered very remarkable. This matter is referred 
 to merely as an indication of the general change of atmosphere, so 
 to speak, in the places where Unitarianism appeared. The old 
 Puritan training, with its altogether predominant devotion to 
 1 Weiss's Life of Parker, Vol. I. p. 270.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 religious and theological writers, its austere jealousy of imagina- 
 tive literature, and its rigid metaphysical habit, was fast giving 
 way to a different and more diversified type of culture. In the 
 circle of students to which Channing belonged at Cambridge, 
 there was a newly awakened zeal in the study of Shakespeare. 
 
 Another powerful agency, after the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, had operated to turn the thoughts of men in that region 
 away from metaphysics and abstract inquiries in theology into 
 another channel. This was the discussion of political questions, 
 which formed the prelude to the American Revolution, and called 
 off many vigorous minds from theological controversy to another 
 arena. These discussions were afterwards carried forward with 
 absorbing interest during the administration of our first presidents, 
 when the French Revolution and the stirring events on the conti- 
 nent of Europe to which it gave rise brought forward questions of 
 the highest moment relating to government and society. Human 
 rights and the well-being of mankind were topics of which Chan- 
 ning had heard from his childhood. 
 
 Channing was in contact from early life on the one hand with 
 the strong religious influence which was still felt in Puritan New 
 England, and, on the other, with laudations of mental freedom 
 and with the growing tendencies to liberal or latitudinarian thought 
 in matters of belief. With his sensitive, conscientious spirit and 
 his passion for liberty, he responded to both these influences. 
 There were several critical epochs in his mental history. At New 
 London, where he was at school in his boyhood before entering 
 college, he received during a revival deep and lasting impressions, 
 and, as his biographer tells us, dated his religious life from that 
 time. 1 In college he read with delight Ferguson's work on " Civil 
 Society." The capacities and the destiny of mankind, human 
 nature and human progress, warmly interested his attention. 
 Hutcheson especially, the Scottish writer on " Morals," whose glow- 
 ing pictures of the beauty of universal benevolence produced a 
 strong effect on many other New Englanders, kindled Channing's 
 enthusiasm to a flame. On one occasion, when only fifteen, walk- 
 ing under the trees with his book in hand, these ideas of his favor- 
 ite author, which suggested to him the possibility of an endless 
 progress and the glory of disinterested virtue, awakened a rapture 
 that stamped the place and the hour indelibly upon his memory. 
 1 Memoirs of Channing (3 Vols. 1848), Vol. I. p. 43.
 
 426 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 But he passed through a sentimental period of considerable dura- 
 tion. He gave himself up to idle musings, to delicious or gloomy 
 reveries. He would stand upon the beach at Newport, and, in 
 a high Byronic mood, long to rush to the embrace of the waters, 
 whose tumultuous heavings harmonized with the mood of his own 
 spirit. He had read the Stoics, and fancied himself akin to them. 
 He wept over Goldsmith and over a sonnet of Southey, and even 
 over the poems of Rogers. It is hard to believe that these maud- 
 lin tempers could ever have belonged to a man of Channing's ster- 
 ling sincerity. He afterwards deplored them, and was ashamed 
 of them. After graduating, while he was teaching at Richmond, 
 Virginia, his more sensible brother writes to him : " You know 
 nothing of yourself. You talk of your apathy and stoicism, when 
 you are the baby of your emotions, and dandled by them without 
 any chance of being weaned." 1 He was weaned, however. At 
 Richmond a revolution took place in his inward life. " I was 
 blind," he says, "to the goodness of God, and blind to the love 
 of my Redeemer. Now I behold with shame and confusion the 
 depravity and rottenness of my heart. ... I have now solemnly 
 given myself up to God. ... I love mankind because they 
 are the children of God." This act of self-consecration put an 
 end to aimless sentiment, and morbid revery, and self-brooding. 
 Thenceforward it should be his undivided purpose to serve God 
 and mankind, oblivious of self. Of this moral crisis in Channing's 
 course we might be glad to have more definite knowledge. It 
 does not appear that perplexities of doctrine or metaphysical 
 problems, such as we might look for in a New Englander sprung 
 from the Puritan stock, disturbed his thoughts in the least at that 
 critical time. In truth, at all times moral and spiritual relations 
 were uppermost in his mind. His strongest objection to the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity is the practical perplexities which he supposed 
 it to occasion in worship ; his objections to Calvinism are not so 
 much logical, but lie principally in what he terms the moral argu- 
 ment against it. He was never fond of Priestley. In this case, to 
 be sure, the materialistic and necessarian theories of this author 
 were repugnant to his convictions. Much as he honored Locke 
 as a man, and frequently as he refers to him as an example of 
 Anti-Trinitarian belief in conjunction with high intellectual endow- 
 ments, Locke's philosophical tenets were not congenial to him. 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 108.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 He was delivered from them by his favorite writer, Price, whose 
 dissertations won him over to the intuitive school, and who con- 
 tributed essentially to the formation of his philosophical and 
 theological opinions. This author is really a lucid as well as an 
 animated expositor of the spiritual, in opposition to the empiri- 
 cal, philosophy. He vindicates the reality of a priori truth in 
 the spirit of Cudworth. The genial tone of Price and his Anti- 
 Trinitarian opinions also recommended him to Channing's favor. 
 There is one link of connection between Channing and the 
 earlier New England theologians. This is through Hopkins, who 
 was a minister at Newport in the youth of Channing, and had not 
 a little personal intercourse with him. A notice of his relation 
 with Hopkins brings us naturally to one of the cardinal features of 
 Channing's religious system. He says : " I was attached to Dr. 
 Hopkins chiefly by his theory of disinterestedness. I had studied 
 with great delight during my college life the philosophy of Hutche- 
 son and the stoical morality, and these had prepared me for the 
 noble, self-sacrificing doctrines of Dr. Hopkins." 1 The theory of 
 virtue to which Channing alludes was unfolded in its essential 
 points by Jonathan Edwards. Holiness, goodness, virtue moral 
 excellence, by whatever name it may be called consists in Love. 
 It is love towards the universal society of intelligent beings, of 
 which God is the head. This love is impartial; it goes out to 
 every being, and gives to each his due portion. God, the infinite 
 One, is entitled to love without limit. Every one who is of the 
 same order of being as myself I am to love equally with myself. 
 Love is disinterested. I am to love myself not as my self, but 
 only as one member of this universal society a member whose 
 welfare is a proper object of pursuit, not less and not more than 
 is the welfare of any other human being, every other one being 
 of equal worth or value. Self is merged in the sum total of being, 
 as a drop in the ocean. It is obvious that Love, as thus defined, 
 has two directions : one upward to God, and the other outward 
 towards our fellow-men. Not that piety and philanthropy, in their 
 true and perfect form, are really separable from one another ; yet 
 it is quite possible for the feelings of adoration, devotion, submis- 
 sion, and the whole religious side of love to engross as it were the 
 mind, so that the interests of man and of human life in this mun- 
 dane sphere, except so far as man is to be prevented from inflict- 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 137.
 
 428 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 ing dishonor on God and ruin upon himself by that means, should 
 be left in the background. God is to be exalted and glorified 
 this is the main thought. Such was the tendency of Calvinism ; 
 of Calvinism in New England as elsewhere. All such statements 
 are, indeed, subject to much qualification. Calvinists demanded 
 righteousness of conduct. Channing was taught by Hopkins to 
 hate slavery. This intrepid old man lifted his voice against 
 slavery and the slave-trade in Newport, when that town was a 
 principal mart of this iniquitous traffic. But, speaking generally, 
 it was the first and great commandment, and the feelings directly 
 involved in it, that mainly absorbed the attention. It was not ab- 
 solutely forgotten that the second commandment is " like unto it." 
 The duties of man to his neighbor were placed on the ground of 
 religious obligation. But an active, warm-hearted, many-sided 
 philanthropy, which looks after the temporal as well as the eternal 
 interests of mankind, and goes out with tender sympathy to min- 
 ister to suffering of every kind; which raises hospitals, builds 
 comfortable habitations for the honest poor, visits those who are 
 sick and in prison, cherishes a conception of education as com- 
 prehensive as the faculties of the mind such a spirit of philan- 
 thropy was not characteristic of the religion of New England, and 
 Channing and Unitarianism have done much to promote it. The 
 disinterested benevolence of Edwards and Hopkins now turned 
 from lofty and sometimes almost ecstatic meditations upon the 
 sovereignty and perfection of God, and the iteration of the solemn 
 demand to submit to His authority and to live to His glory, to the 
 man-ward side of this principle. Edwards was transported by 
 visions of the sweetness of Christ and of the sublime attributes 
 of God ; Channing, by the exalted nature and infinite possibilities 
 of man. 
 
 The dignity of human nature, then, was a fundamental article 
 in Channing's creed. In every human being there is the germ of 
 an unbounded progress. An unspeakable value belongs to him. 
 His nature is not to be vilified. A wrong done to him is like 
 violence offered to an angel. 
 
 This idea of the dignity of man is a great Christian truth. No 
 one can doubt that it was a living conviction in Channing's mind. 
 It imparted to him that " enthusiasm of humanity " which became 
 the passion of his soul. He was not equally impressed by another 
 side to the picture. " It is dangerous," says Pascal, " to make man
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 see how he is on a level with the brutes, without showing him his 
 greatness. It is dangerous, again, to make him see his greatness 
 without seeing his baseness. . . . Let man estimate himself at 
 his real value. Let him love himself, if he has in him a nature 
 capable of good ; but let him not love on this account the vile- 
 nesses that belongs to it. Let him despise himself, because this 
 capacity is waste ; but let him not on this account despise this 
 natural capacity. Let him hate himself; let him love himself." 
 Channing considered the Church in all past ages to have been im- 
 mersed in error on religious themes of capital importance. This 
 was his judgment respecting the churches of the Reformation, as 
 well as the church of the Middle Ages. On these topics, which 
 stand in the forefront of Christian theology, he frankly and boldly, 
 but always without bitterness or malignity, declared that the lead- 
 ing Reformers were the victims of superstition. The movement of 
 which he was an advocate was represented as a new instauration 
 of Christianity. The light which had been obscured by dismal 
 clouds had at last broken forth in its full illuminating power. He 
 openly, though without the least arrogance, claims the character 
 of an innovator and a dissentient. 
 
 The orthodox critics of Channing miss in him a strong grasp of 
 sin as a principle, revealing itself in multiform expressions or phe- 
 nomena, entering into numberless phases of manifestation, exer- 
 cising sway in mankind, and holding fast the will in a kind of 
 bondage. The diversified forms of selfish and unrighteous action 
 are not habitually traced back by him to the /0ns <?/ origo malorum 
 the mysterious alienation of men from the fellowship of God. 
 The moral malady is not explored to its sources ; and hence the 
 tendency is to treat it with palliatives. He is too much inclined 
 to rely on education to do the work of regeneration. He speaks 
 of customary accusations of sin brought against mankind as ex- 
 aggerated. In dealing with the doctrine of Man, Channing was 
 captivated by an ideal. He saw what man might be, what man 
 ought to be ; but not so clearly what man really is. 
 
 It must be remembered that the real point of controversy be- 
 tween the two parties in New England was the doctrine of Sin 
 and the correlated doctrine of Conversion. The field of debate 
 was Anthropology. The New England mind was not speculative ; 
 and Jonathan Edwards was almost the only one of our divines 
 who showed an extraordinary talent or relish for speculative
 
 430 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 divinity. It was the practical side of theology, sin and regenera- 
 tion in their relation to the conditions of human responsibility, 
 that interested his successors. They wanted to make Calvinism 
 self-consistent, and to parry objections that arose in the minds 
 of their own hearers, or were disseminated by the English Armin- 
 ian writers. It is remarkable, although the Trinity and the person 
 of Christ were nominally the subject of contention in the Uni- 
 tarian controversy, how little of importance was contributed on 
 either side to the elucidation of these topics. Even Norton and 
 Stuart, the best- equipped disputants, say little that had not been 
 said before. 
 
 The next of the leading ideas of Channing was that of the 
 Fatherhood of God. Against the Calvinistic assertion of the 
 sovereignty of God, he was never tired of proclaiming God's 
 paternal character. He meant and professed to follow the Script- 
 ures ; but he dwelt on the paternal relation of God to mankind, 
 and insisted less on the fact that a relation which is practically 
 subverted by their disloyalty can be restored only by their return 
 to filial allegiance. The severe side, the side of judgment and 
 penalty, which is adapted to produce fear, had been held up to 
 view, sometimes disproportionately. Both Edwards and Hopkins 
 had stated in the baldest language that the righteous in heaven 
 would derive satisfaction from contemplating the torments of the 
 lost. This conclusion they supposed to follow by an irresistible 
 logic from the justice of the appointed penalty as if a due 
 sympathy with the righteous administration of law requires that 
 we should attend and enjoy public executions. In the powerful 
 reaction against representations of this character, against the 
 corresponding portraiture of God, against sensuous pictures of 
 retributive torment, and the predominant appeals to fear, the 
 Unitarians tended to divest religion of those elements which 
 awaken dread in the guilty. Channing, when he was a boy, 
 not only never killed a bird, and avoided crushing an insect, but 
 he let rats out of a trap to save them from being drowned. 1 
 
 What was Channing's conception of Christ ? Christ was a pre- 
 existent rational creature, an angel or spirit of some sort, who 
 had entered into a human body. He was not even a man except 
 so far as His corporeal part is concerned, but was a creature from 
 some upper sphere. The particular conception which Channing 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 40.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 43r 
 
 set up in the room of the church doctrine of the Incarnation is 
 one of the crudest notions which the history of speculation on 
 this subject has ever presented. The transitional character of 
 Channing's type of theology is strikingly indicated in this indefi- 
 nite, unphilosophical sort of Arianism, to which it would seem 
 that he adhered to the end. 
 
 Channing did not absolutely renounce the orthodox opinion. 
 Having referred to the opposite view, he says : " Many of us are 
 dissatisfied with this explanation, and think that the Scriptures 
 ascribe the remission of sins to Christ's death, with an emphasis 
 so peculiar that we ought to consider this event as having a 
 special influence in removing punishment, though the Scriptures 
 may not reveal the way in which it contributes to this end." But, 
 in keeping with his transitional position, he lays no stress on this 
 truth. On the contrary, he is unsparing, though never inten- 
 tionally unfair or extravagant, in his denunciation of the current 
 expressions in which it is set forth. Either from a want of famil- 
 iarity with the history of doctrine, or from not being addicted to 
 patient intellectual analysis, he is content with giving expression 
 to his revolted feeling. He does not stop to inquire whether a 
 profound truth may not be contained in a statement which, if 
 literally taken, is obnoxious. Nor does he attempt to separate a 
 particular representation of some school in theology from the 
 underlying truth which theology, with varying degrees of success, 
 has been endeavoring to formulate. 
 
 Apart from his criticism of adverse views, Channing's positive 
 idea is that Christ does His work of reclaiming men from sin by 
 teaching truth, which is recommended by His spotless character 
 and by His death, and confirmed as having authority by His mir- 
 acles, especially His resurrection from the dead. Of the teaching 
 of Christ, especially of His ethical teaching, and of the unapproach- 
 able beauty and perfection of His character, it is well known that 
 Channing has written much that is admirable. When we inquire 
 specifically what the capital points of that doctrine are which 
 Christ was sent into the world to announce, we find them to be 
 the doctrine of God the Father, and of the immortality of the 
 soul. This last truth is brought home to men's belief by the res- 
 urrection of Jesus. These two truths are singled out by Channing, 
 in writing on Christian Evidences, as most important points of 
 the Saviour's teaching. The paternal character of God is de-
 
 432 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 clared and evinced, and thereby superstitions and gloomy fears 
 growing out of them are dispelled ; and the soul's destiny to sur- 
 vive death is vividly exhibited, and is also proved, by the raising 
 of Jesus from the dead. The Christian revelation is reduced in 
 its contents substantially to these two articles of faith. 
 
 It might have been predicted, from the analogies of experience, 
 that the Liberal movement would not stop with the abandonment 
 of the doctrines of the Incarnation and Atonement, and with the 
 resolution of Christianity into the inculcation of an elevated mon- 
 otheism, coupled with the truth of immortality, and verified by 
 miracles. 1 A ferment like that which Channing and his associates 
 excited could not stop where it began. In such an atmosphere 
 changes occur fast. The revolution of thought, like political rev- 
 olutions, could not halt where its authors might wish it to stop, 
 but must move on to more advanced stages. 
 
 The first remarkable phenomenon was the development of the 
 Intuitional Theory, if so it may be styled. Schleiermacher, and 
 the French and German philosophers, were read by some. The 
 thoughts of these writers fell into a genial soil. Religious truth, 
 which the older Unitarians, after the manner of Locke and Paley, 
 received on the ground of miraculous proof, was now affirmed to 
 be evident to the soul independently of that species of evidence, 
 which was pronounced to be of secondary value. This view of 
 things involved a carrying of mental freedom further than had 
 been anticipated. It was supposed to threaten the basis of super- 
 naturalism. It awakened alarm. Professor Norton, learned in 
 New Testament criticism and in the early patristic literature, in an 
 address to the Cambridge Divinity School, in 1839, uttered a 
 warning against the new doctrine of a light within the soul, as the 
 latest form of infidelity. Spinoza, Schleiermacher, De Wette, and 
 kindred spirits, were put under the ban, and their followers excom- 
 
 1 Among the works which throw light on the history of Unitarianism in 
 New England, in its successive phases, are the Memoirs of Dr. Buckminster 
 and of y. S. Buckminster, Channing's Memoirs (by W. H. Channing), the 
 Life of Dr. Gannett (by his son), the Biographies of Parker (by Weiss and by 
 Frothingham) , Frothingham's Transcendentalism, and the Memoir of Mar- 
 garet Fuller : also, History of the Unitarians in the U.S. (by J. H. Allen), 
 articles on Unitarianism and on Channing (by J. W. Chadwick) in John- 
 son's Encyclopedia, (new ed.). See, also, a learned article on the History and 
 Literature of the Unitarian Controversy (by E. H. Gillett), Historical Maga- 
 zine, 2d series, April, 1871.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 433 
 
 municated with bell and candle. His position was that "no proof 
 of the divine commission of Christ could be afforded save through 
 miraculous displays of God's power." " No rational man," he 
 said, " can suppose that God has miraculously revealed facts which 
 the very constitution of our nature enables us to perceive." To 
 this address, Mr. George Ripley responded in a scholarly and 
 trenchant pamphlet, in which he earnestly vindicated Schleier- 
 macher and others from the charge of infidelity, and proved by 
 citations from eminent theologians that the internal proof of the 
 Gospel had been considered by the deepest thinkers of various 
 schools the principal evidence of its divine origin. 
 
 In this discussion both Ripley and Theodore Parker, who wrote 
 under a nom de plume on the same side, professed their belief in 
 the historical reality of the Gospel miracles. By degrees the 
 Transcendental School, of which Ralph Waldo Emerson was the 
 inspiring genius, although he could never act as the general of a 
 party, emerged into a distinct flourishing life. In 1832 Emerson 
 had resigned his office as a pastor in Boston, for the reason that 
 he was not willing to administer the Lord's Supper. He printed 
 by way of explanation a sermon to show that it was not meant to 
 be a perpetual observance. In 1836, in a published address to 
 the Divinity School at Cambridge, he brought forward his charac- 
 teristic ideas respecting religion, which were considered by the 
 conservative Unitarians to be pantheistic in their import. His 
 utterances won a slowly increasing sympathy and excited, at the 
 same time, an ardent opposition. In this new teaching Christian- 
 ity was not recognized as a specially revealed or authoritative relig- 
 ion. Inspiration is not limited to the men of the Bible ; the soul 
 has voices within it which reveal eternal truth : let the individual 
 hearken for these utterances of the universal spirit, and no longer 
 lean on the crutches of authority. The maxim " Every man his 
 own prophet" seemed to some to need no further verification 
 when Mr. Emerson, professing a carelessness of logic, as with the 
 insight though with none of the assumption of an oracle, and with 
 the subtile, exquisite charm of his peculiar genius, began to impro- 
 vise in the hearing of sympathetic listeners of both sexes. 
 
 A crisis in the development of Unitarianism was reached when 
 Theodore Parker, in 1841, delivered a discourse on "The Tran- 
 sient and the Permanent in Christianity," in which the New Tes- 
 tament narratives of miracles were pronounced to be myths. In 
 
 2F
 
 434 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 1842 he set forth his opinions more fully in a volume entitled Dis- 
 course of Matters pertaining to Religion. Miracles were relegated 
 by Parker to the transient in Christianity, and by him Christianity 
 was classified with the ethnic religions as a purely natural product. 
 Without renouncing theism, he affirmed that its doctrine issues 
 from the progress of religion on the plane of nature, and is not 
 derived from supernatural teaching. The truths which the Unita- 
 rians had made the sum and substance of the Gospel he asserted 
 that we know intuitively. What need, then, to use Paley's phrase, 
 of " the splendid apparatus of miracles," to prove what we already 
 know by the light of Nature ? The immortality of the soul, it had 
 been said, is established by the resurrection of Jesus. But it is 
 easier, Parker declared, to prove that we are immortal than to 
 prove the resurrection. In short, he pronounced the evidence of 
 miracles superfluous : there was no dignus vindice nodus. If there 
 was nothing to prove, why should there be any proof? The essen- 
 tials of Christianity had been reduced to a minimum; that mini- 
 mum Parker conveyed over to natural theology. His opinions at 
 first encountered a pretty general protest from the side of the 
 Unitarian clergy and churches. 
 
 As between the older Unitarians and the orthodox, so now 
 between the conservative Unitarians and the Radicals, there was 
 a striking difference in the type of culture. The intuitional party 
 had given a hospitable and eager welcome to the continental 
 literature, not only to the metaphysicians and theologians, like 
 Cousin, Schleiermacher, and De Wette, but also to the poets and 
 critics to such as Herder and Schiller, and especially to Goethe. 
 Carlyle's critical essays, before and after he began to pour out the 
 powerful jargon which became the characteristic of his style, were 
 eagerly read, and the new evangel of sincerity, unconscious genius, 
 and hero-worship mingled its stream in the current already swollen 
 by its Teutonic tributaries. The memoir of that woman of rare 
 intellectual gifts, Margaret Fuller, gives one a lively impression of 
 the enthusiasm awakened by the European authors. To men like 
 Professor Norton, a student of German, but who had derived no 
 very agreeable conception of the German mind from the earlier 
 Rationalistic writers whom he had been called upon to confute 
 to men like him, highly cultivated, according to the older stan- 
 dard, by the perusal of Locke and the English classics, and whose 
 favorite poet was not Goethe but Mrs. Hemans, this influx of
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY * + * 
 
 continental speculative mysticism and poetry was odious in the 
 extreme. Some of the devotees of the new culture cherished 
 ardent visions of an improved organization of society, in which 
 existing abuses and hindrances to intellectual progress should be 
 swept away. The Brook Farm Association, with its highly edu- 
 cated circle of members, was one fruit of this class of ideas. 
 
 Mr. Parker was not the man to hide his light under a bushel. 
 The open avowal in the pulpit of opinions which had commonly 
 been considered infidel, made it necessary to draw lines. This, 
 on several accounts, was awkward. There was, to be sure, a real 
 difference between those who admitted and those who denied a 
 miraculous element in Christianity. But the promoters of the 
 Unitarian movement had made large professions of liberality. 
 They had called for an unrestricted mental freedom. They had 
 uttered a constant protest against "the system of exclusion," 
 which thrusts men out of the pale of the Church for their opinions. 
 They had made it a merit to cast off the yoke of creeds. Now it 
 seemed requisite to construct a creed, to define Christianity, to 
 separate between liberality and license, and practically to excom- 
 municate ministers, not for an alleged want of the Christian spirit, 
 but for their doctrines. No one will doubt that the appearance 
 of Parkerism was a highly unwelcome phenomenon, and a rather 
 unmanageable one, to the leading representatives of the liberal 
 theology. What added to the difficulty was, that there might not 
 be that amount of agreement among themselves which would 
 appear requisite if a creed were to be framed that should embrace 
 even so much as a tolerably precise definition of the authority to 
 be ascribed to the Scriptures and to Christ. 
 
 Channing naturally leaned strongly to an intuitional philosophy. 
 We have seen how he was drawn away from Locke by the influ- 
 ence of Price. He had made much of the moral and spiritual 
 faculties of man, and of the spontaneous response which the con- 
 tents of the Gospel call forth from human nature. There were 
 not wanting, then, affinities to draw him towards the new school 
 of Liberals. On the other hand, however, he was deeply attached 
 to historical Christianity. His biography contains a number of 
 memorable and beautiful letters in which he expresses himself 
 respecting Parkerism temperately but frankly. In their whole 
 tone they manifest, in the most attractive way, the loveliness of 
 his Christian spirit. He felt that a rejection of the miracles was
 
 436 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 a rejection of Christ. The miracles, he says, are so interwoven 
 with His history that, if they are torn away, nothing is left ; that 
 history is turned into fable ; the historical Christ is gone. But 
 why not let Him go ? First, the soul craves not only the idea, but 
 the existence, of perfection. Christian truth without Christ and 
 His character loses a great portion of its quickening power. The 
 miracles are among the manifestations of Christ's character ; they 
 are symbolical of His spiritual influence for these reasons they 
 cannot be spared. The miracles are credible. God could not 
 approach a darkened, sensual world by mere abstract teaching. 
 The inward perfection of Christ is itself a miracle, which renders 
 the outward acts of superhuman power easy of belief. Channing 
 recoils from pantheism, which he sees to be latent in the mind of 
 the new school of "true spiritualists." Speaking of a sermon 
 which he had heard on " the loneliness of Christ," he says : " I 
 claim little resemblance to my divine Friend and Saviour, but I 
 seem doomed to drink of this cup with Him to the last. I see 
 and feel the harm done by this crude speculation, while I also 
 see much nobleness to bind me to its advocates. In its opinions 
 generally I see nothing to give me hope. . . . The immense 
 distance of us all from Christ " in character is a fact so obvious 
 that not to recognize it implies such a degree of self- ignorance, 
 and of ignorance of human history, " that one wonders how it can 
 have entered a sound mind." * In these letters there is no un- 
 seemly denunciation, but there is genuine, manly sorrow at the 
 promulgation of opinions that are regarded as undermining his- 
 torical Christianity. 
 
 From about the time of Parker's innovations in theology, the 
 conservative class of Unitarians, who resisted them, were gener- 
 ally, although not universally, simple humanitarians in their doc- 
 trine concerning Christ. They discarded the belief of Channing 
 in His preexistence as an exalted creature. But the repugnance 
 to Parker's negative positions gradually lessened. He came to 
 be commonly recognized by Unitarians as representing one admis- 
 sible type of Unitarian theology. Even sympathy with his rejec- 
 tion of the miraculous elements and events of the Gospel spread 
 until it became the prevailing sentiment. 
 
 The Universalist denomination began in America with the 
 preaching of John Murray (1741-1815), an Englishman, a con- 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. II. p. 448.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 vert to Methodism, and for a time a Wesleyan preacher. He 
 adopted the doctrine of the final salvation of all, which he 
 preached along the Atlantic seaboard, but principally in New 
 England from 1 770 until his death. He was a Trinitarian. Another 
 early leader of the Universalists was Elhanan Winchester (1751- 
 1797), who began his ministry as a Baptist pastor. On various 
 points he differed from the theology of Murray. Walter Balfour 
 (c. 1776-1852), a Presbyterian minister from Scotland, preached 
 Universalism in America, and published the Inquiry, etc., and 
 other writings in behalf of this tenet. The most effectual agent 
 in propagating Universalism and in giving definite form to its 
 creed was Hosea Ballou (1771-1852). The Universalists have 
 recognized the Scriptures as a divine revelation. They have 
 rejected the doctrines of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and 
 His expiatory office. At the outset they were generally Restora- 
 tionists. Later they commonly disbelieved in future punishment 
 altogether ; but in more recent times they have often reverted to 
 the former opinion, in some instances with higher views of the 
 person and work of Christ. 
 
 By the middle of the present century the themes which had 
 most engaged the attention of the Evangelical party in New Eng- 
 land since Edwards's day were beginning decidedly to lose their 
 special attraction. Questions relating to the effect of Adam's sin, 
 to the divine permission of sin, to natural and moral ability, were 
 perceptibly receding into the background. The person of Christ, 
 the Atonement, the authority of the Scriptures, naturalism and 
 supernaturalism, were the topics that were obviously coming to 
 the front. Among those called orthodox, the German theology 
 was modifying the type of theological culture and tendencies in 
 philosophy. To give a single example, Henry B. Smith was 
 thoroughly conversant with the modern phases of German thought. 
 Upon certain able and inquisitive minds, the writings of Coleridge, 
 which were first introduced to American readers by President 
 Marsh of the University of Vermont, opened new vistas of thought 
 and inquiry. 
 
 The indirect influence of German speculative thought in some 
 
 degree, and still more the direct influence of Coleridge, appeared 
 
 in Horace Bushnell, an original and gifted preacher, but not a 
 
 technical scholar. 1 If a book was really stimulating, he found it 
 
 1 His Life and Letters, edited by his daughter, appeared in 1 880.
 
 433 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 difficult, he said, to read it through, its effect being to start his 
 " mind off on some track of its own." A few sentences of Cole- 
 ridge in the Aids to Reflection were the germ of an eloquent trea- 
 tise by Bushnell on "Nature and the Supernatural" (1858). In 
 it the thesis is illustrated that the will by virtue of its power of 
 initiating action is itself a supernatural agent. The first publica- 
 tion, however, which brought Dr. Bushnell prominently before the 
 public as a theological author was his discourses on " Christian 
 Nurture." In this discussion he took up the divine constitution 
 of the family as a provision for planting Christian character in 
 children, and of thus extending the kingdom of God. The 
 organic relation of parents to their offspring, the organic unity of 
 the family, was insisted on in opposition to an extreme theory of 
 individualism. The atomic conception of Christian society was 
 vigorously attacked. It was the design of Providence that char- 
 acter should be transmitted from parent to child. It should be 
 expected of children that they should grow up in the exercise of 
 Christian piety. To take it for granted that the young born in 
 religious households are to be irreligious up to the age of matu- 
 rity, and are then to be suddenly converted, was pronounced a 
 gross practical error. The main reliance of the Church for the 
 spread of religion should not be revivals and revivalism, but right 
 methods of Christian nurture. Spasmodic excitements and spo- 
 radic conversions were of minor utility compared with the silent 
 agency of the family within its own circle. The criticism was 
 made that the author had accounted for the congenital origin and 
 the progressive growth of Christian character on the plane of 
 naturalism, by the law of heredity : there was no more recognition 
 of the agency of the Spirit of God, it was said, than a pious deist, 
 who holds to the immanence of the divine Spirit and Providence 
 in the whole creation, might allow. This criticism, however, was 
 conceded not to be valid as regards the intent of the author, and 
 could be justified only by reference to the apparent drift of a 
 portion of his language. He postulated an operation of Grace, 
 and an operation as immediate as is presupposed in the prevailing 
 creed, in the case of adult conversions. It was evident to all 
 that the book exhibited modes of thought diverse from those 
 in vogue among the principal adherents of the New England 
 theology. 
 
 In the volume entitled God in Christ (1849), ^ r - Bushnell
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 4,0 
 
 discussed the doctrine of the Trinity. An essay of Schleiermacher, 
 translated by Professor Stuart, was at the basis of this discussion. 
 This was followed, in 1851, by Christ in Theology. In these 
 works it is contended that since language is made up of symbols 
 it is of necessity inaccurate, so that theological definitions are 
 metaphors and creeds are in reality poems. They are only par- 
 tially successful attempts to express that which can only be set 
 forth in forms of the imagination. Following the hints derived 
 from Schleiermacher, Bushnell undertook to solve the problem of 
 the Trinity by bringing forward the Sabellian hypothesis, that of 
 the Trinity as solely a method of Revelation, with which he con- 
 nected a view that did not essentially differ from the Patripassian 
 theory of the person of Christ. Schleiermacher had been led into 
 his doctrine by his speculative difficulties respecting the person- 
 ality of God. Bushnell was no Pantheist. Yet he sought to show 
 that personality in the Deity is to us incomprehensible, and 
 appears to clash with the infinitude of the divine attributes. It is 
 through the medium of three modes of personal action that the 
 ineffable One discloses Himself and comes near to the apprehen- 
 sion of His creatures. The Logos is the self-revealing faculty of 
 the Deity; Father, Son, and Spirit are the dramatis persona 
 through which the hidden Being reveals Himself. In Christ, Bush- 
 nell said, God manifests Himself under the limitations of human 
 life, thinking, feeling, suffering with us. The existence of a 
 human spiritual nature, if not expressly denied, was held to be 
 practically of no account. It was substantially the Apollinarian 
 idea. " The human element is nothing to me, save as it brings 
 me to God, or discovers to me, a sinner, the patience and brother- 
 hood of God as a Redeemer from sin. . . . The union of the 
 divine and human, being only for expression, what is there in it for 
 us beyond the expression ? There may be a human soul here, or 
 there may not : that is a matter with which we have nothing to do, 
 and about which we have not only no right to affirm, but no right 
 to inquire." * This was Bushnell's conception of Christ. God 
 surrenders Himself to the restrictions of a human organization, and 
 subjects Himself to the conditions of an earthly life on our level, as 
 a medium through which to manifest Himself to us. It is all, liter- 
 ally speaking, divine thought, divine emotion, divine action, even 
 divine suffering. This was the fundamental thought in Dr. Bush- 
 1 Christ in Theology, pp. 93, 96.
 
 440 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 nell's Christology, the thought which, whatever were his muta- 
 tions of opinion, was always uppermost. 
 
 But Dr. Bushnell did not stay by the modal theory of the 
 Trinity. Smitten by antagonistic critics on all sides, he began to 
 explore the history of doctrine, and discovered discovered more 
 and more that the Nicene or Catholic definitions embraced wel- 
 come features which had been dropped out of later and more pro- 
 vincial representations of the doctrine. There was the great idea 
 of self-expression, " God of God," " Light of Light," etc. ; there 
 was the subordination of the Son, the Revealer, though not in the 
 Arian sense of inferiority of attributes ; there was especially a 
 Trinity belonging to the life and activity of the Deity, and not a 
 mechanical juxtaposition of three individuals or "distinctions." 
 "On a careful study of the creed prepared by this council [of 
 Nicaea] , as interpreted by the writings of Athanasius in defence of 
 it, I feel obliged to confess that I had not sufficiently conceived its 
 import, or the title it has to respect as a Christian document." 1 
 However, notwithstanding his effort to prove his close approach to 
 the Nicene formula, he still withholds his assent to the hypothesis 
 of an immanent Trinity. He holds that the distinction of persons 
 is incidental to revelation, which, to be sure, may but may 
 not have been eternal. Whether that distinction will ever cease 
 to be, he likewise finds it impossible to conclude. In short, the 
 immanence and eternity of the personal distinctions in the Deity 
 he is not quite prepared to admit. Still later, in an article marked 
 by consummate ability, the ablest of his contributions to this 
 discussion, 2 he makes a further advance towards the Nicene 
 standard. Here he argues that the infinity of God engulfs us in 
 Pantheism unless we conceive of Him as a triple personality ; the 
 term ' person,' whether as a predicate of the One or of each of 
 the Three, being a figure, an approximative term, and so far inde- 
 finable. The " practical infinity of God and the practical person- 
 ality of God " are both secured by the Trinitarian conception. By 
 some interior necessity of His nature, He is thus " accommodated 
 in His action to the finite ; . . . He is eternally threeing Himself, or 
 generating three persons. ... In some high sense indefinable, He 
 is datelessly and eternally becoming three, or by a certain inward 
 
 1 Christ in Theology, p. 177. 
 
 2 The Christian Trinity a Practical Truth. New Englander, November, 
 1854.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 44 j 
 
 necessity being accommodated in His action to the categories of 
 finite apprehension, adjusted to that as that to the receiving of 
 this mystery. . . . We must have no jealousy of the Three, as if 
 they were to drift us away from the unity or from reason ; being 
 perfectly assured of this, that in using the triune formula, in the 
 limberest, least constrained way possible, and allowing the plu- 
 rality to blend, in the freest manner possible, with all our acts of 
 worship, preaching, praying, singing, and adoring, we are 
 only doing with three persons just what we do with one ; making 
 no infringement of the unity with the Three, more than of the 
 infinity with the One." Here is a certain real immanence of the 
 Trinity. Still, however, there is a relation, as a necessary property 
 of the Deity, to the finite and to revelation ; hence a dependence 
 on the finite, at least as a possible existence. It is immanence 
 conditioned on relativity. The Nicene doctrine holds to the 
 Trinity as being independent of such a relation, as belonging to 
 the eternal necessary activity of the Divine Being, because it is the 
 realization to Himself of His own nature. It steers clear of every 
 germ of Pantheism. Bushnell's statement still postulates a poten- 
 tial relation to the finite as the ground or condition of tri-person- 
 ality. It is evident, however, that the Athanasian theology more 
 and more commended itself to Bushnell's mind. The movement 
 of his thought was in this direction. 
 
 Bushnell's departure from the prevalent doctrine of the Atone- 
 ment was even more provocative of dissent. On the orthodox 
 side in New England there was a popular representation of the 
 work of Christ which was offensively meagre. His death was 
 treated as a make-weight in a scheme of moral government. At 
 a given point a certain amount of suffering was wanted by way of 
 counterpoise to the penalty remitted, and the passion of Christ 
 served the purpose. The defect arising from the limited quantity 
 of suffering was said to be balanced by the dignity of His person. 
 The governmental theory as set forth by the younger Edwards, and 
 before him by Grotius, was the opinion in vogue. The death of 
 Christ was not penalty, but a substitute for it, an expression of 
 God's abhorrence of sin, equivalent, in respect to the ends of gov- 
 ernment, to the infliction of the penalty. Very well, said Bushnell, 
 let it be considered an "expression." The correlate of expression 
 is impression ; and if there is expression it must be according to 
 aesthetic laws ; it must be in a mode conformed to the laws by
 
 442 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 which thought or feeling is conveyed from mind to mind. What 
 are those laws? How is it that the death of Christ is thus expres- 
 sive? To this question the New England theology, as he con- 
 tended, gave no intelligible answer. But Bushnell, in his earlier 
 expositions of the subject, gave up altogether the propitiatory 
 idea as a literal truth. Christ, he taught, came into the world to 
 renovate character. This was the one comprehensive end of His 
 mission. Nothing was needed but the reconciliation of men to 
 God, or a new spirit in men. Christ produces this through the 
 power exerted by Him as bringing into visible manifestation the 
 forbearance, pity, yearning, forgiving love of God. Disobedience 
 and distrust are both conquered ; they melt away under this face- 
 to-face view of the divine goodness. The restoration of the trans- 
 gressor to confiding communion with God arrests the progress of 
 that disordered action of our spiritual nature which is the principal 
 penalty of sin. There results a healing of the soul, inward 
 health and peace. This is the moral view of the Atonement 
 which, in its characteristic principle, was advocated by Abelard. 
 It is not radically different from the Socinian theory. But Bush- 
 nell held fast to the divinity of Christ, who is ever present to the 
 believing soul ; and he emphasized the truth that our life is per- 
 petually in Christ. He is infinitely more than an example to be 
 copied : he is a power of righteousness. Much that was involved 
 in the old idea of the unio mystica Bushnell interwove in his con- 
 ception. There is a living, spiritual, reciprocal fellowship between 
 the believer and Christ ; but propitiation and all kindred terms 
 were declared to be the language of appearance : they are figures, 
 as when we say that the sun rises. A change which takes place 
 in ourselves we metaphorically impute to God. The removal of 
 our distrust and alienation, which sets us at one with Him, we rep- 
 resent to ourselves as a removal of hostility in Him. But this 
 imaginative exercise, Bushnell contended, is necessary to the end 
 in view, which is the production within us of penitent and trust- 
 ful feeling towards God. It is the means, therefore, of that change 
 in us which is the indispensable condition of restored communion 
 with Him. The sacrifices of the old covenant were a " transac- 
 tional liturgy," which was operative in this way. Bushnell's 
 standing illustration is the analogy of prayer. This is not, he 
 tells us, a self- magnetizing process. Prayer is to produce an 
 effect. Nevertheless the effect is only indirectly an effect on
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 443 
 
 God. He is not changed. The effort to change Him produces 
 such a change in us that the sole obstacle to the exercise of His 
 beneficence towards us is removed. In this circuitous way we 
 may be said to prevail with God in supplication. In no other 
 way is He said to be propitiated. 
 
 It cannot be said that the " altar form," as originally presented, 
 continued to satisfy Bushnell himself. In his elaborate treatise 
 on "Vicarious Sacrifice," he set forth the moral view of the Atone- 
 ment, the renewing influence upon character which flows out 
 from Christ, from His sympathy and suffering with us, and His 
 whole collective manifestation. He went beyond his former dog- 
 matic statements so far as to give some place to the voluntary 
 participation of Christ in " the corporate curse " of the race, or 
 in the sufferings which come upon mankind as a retributive inflic- 
 tion consequent upon sin. But he was careful to say that he laid 
 no great amount of stress on this element in his view. One lead- 
 ing proposition, it should be remarked, in this treatise is that the 
 incarnation and suffering of Christ fall under a law of self-sacrifice 
 which is of universal obligation. 
 
 It is a fine instance of Bushnell's intellectual honesty that he 
 came before the public once more with a frank avowal of a modi- 
 fication of his opinion on this momentous theme. This was in his 
 Forgiveness and Law (1874). He still considered the aton- 
 ing function of Christ to be nothing exceptional in its principle, 
 to be nothing at variance with general law. It was grounded, as 
 the title-page announced, "in principles interpreted by human 
 analogies." Bnt there had been " an unexpected arrival of fresh 
 light " into his mind. He had caught sight of a meaning and a 
 reality in propitiation which he had not discerned before. It had 
 struck him that in all cases of heavy grievance, even though there 
 is a placable wish and intent, it is psychologically impossible to 
 quiet the resentful, retributive impulse inherent in one's own 
 conscience, save by undertaking some work involving loss and 
 suffering in behalf of the offender. Only by this means is the 
 feeling of forgiveness realized in the heart of the party wronged ; 
 only thus are all traces of the vengeful sentiment of justice dissi- 
 pated. This Dr. Bushnell supposed to be a general fact, holding 
 true of men, and by analogy presumably of all rational beings. It 
 is a fact of experience, however inexplicable it may be. Accord- 
 ingly God Himself in Christ enters upon a work of self-sacrifice
 
 444 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 and self-propitiation. By undergoing suffering, by the cross and 
 passion, He realizes in Himself the clemency which He would fain 
 exercise. He appeases His own justly indignant sentiment. The 
 end was still the recovery of the sinful creature from the guilty and 
 painful bondage of sin. This was the benefit to be imparted. It 
 is to be observed that one leading idea runs like a thread through 
 all his thinking on this subject, in its successive stages. It is God 
 Himself who is active and passive in all the experiences of Christ. 
 They are an expression of God. It is the divine, not the human, 
 which acts and suffers. The human is at best but a transparent 
 glass, through which we look directly into the heart of God. The 
 fundamental thought with which Bushnell started remained with 
 him to the end. There is not a full recognition of the real human- 
 ity of Christ. 
 
 In this treatise 1 Dr. Bushnell remarks that " the staple of being 
 and capacity" in wicked men diminishes by a natural law, and 
 adds that the possibility is thus suggested that at some remote 
 period they may be quite wasted away or extirpated." The opin- 
 ion that reprobate men will thus be " annihilated," which, as will 
 be seen, has had its advocates in Germany and in England, has 
 been maintained in the United States in writings of Dr. Lyman 
 Abbott and by other authors. The doctrine not coupled with 
 the doctrine of " conditional immortality " of a continued pro- 
 bation of such as do not hear or wilfully reject the offers of 
 salvation through Christ has been supported as the necessary 
 consequence of a general Atonement by able theologians of the 
 Andover School of Theology. 
 
 The modifications of Calvinism in the New England theology 
 have met with a steady opposition which has had its principal 
 centre in the Princeton Theological School, founded in 1812. Its 
 doctrines are presented in the elaborate treatise of its most cele- 
 brated teacher, Charles Hodge. 2 By him the church doctrine of 
 the eternal generation of the Son is defended. This doctrine was 
 maintained, in opposition to Stuart, by Miller, also a professor at 
 Princeton. On the subject of Original Sin, the doctrine of the 
 immediate imputation of Adam's sin on the basis of the Covenant 
 
 1 p- 147- 
 
 2 Systematic Theology (3 vols. 1872). A clear summary of the Princeton 
 theology is given by Dr. A. A. Hodge in his Outlines of Theology (i vol, 
 1879).
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 445 
 
 is supported. The realistic hypothesis, which is taught in the 
 system of Shedd, is combated. The relation of Adam is alleged 
 to be that of a representative, acting for the posterity to be born 
 of him, according to a benevolent, as well as righteous, arrange- 
 ment instituted of God, whereby the penalty of his sin is judicially 
 inflicted upon them. Consequently, they are born with a sinful 
 tendency to evil-doing, which realizes itself at the beginning of 
 personal agency in actual transgressions. This inborn depravity 
 carries in it a just condemnation to eternal death, unless redeem- 
 ing grace intervenes. A parallelism is affirmed to exist between 
 the relation of Adam on the one hand, as the author and source 
 of condemnation, and the relation of Christ on the other. The 
 righteousness of God requires that all sin should be adequately 
 punished. The Atonement is a substitution judicial in its nature 
 and effect, and thus avails necessarily for the salvation of all for 
 whom it was intended. 
 
 The spread of the New England theology, especially in the 
 later developments of the School of Edwards, produced theological 
 contests in the Presbyterian Church. Their result, in connection 
 with other causes of difference, led to the division of that body 
 in 1838, which continued down to 1869-70; the Presbyterian 
 Church of the South, in the interval, in consequence of political 
 estrangement, having broken off from the " Old School " section.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THEOLOGY IN ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY : THE EVAN- 
 GELICAL SCHOOL IN THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH THE PHILOSOPHY 
 AND THE THEOLOGY OF COLERIDGE THE EARLY ORIEL SCHOOL: 
 WHATELYj ARNOLD THE OXFORD MOVEMENT : ITS SOURCES AND 
 LEADERS : ITS PRINCIPLES AND AIMS : THE TRACTS : THE HAMP- 
 DEN CONTROVERSY : THE CONVERSION OF NEWMAN : THE DOCTRINE 
 OF THE EUCHARIST AND OTHER TENETS OF THE OXFORD SCHOOL : 
 THE GORHAM CASE : CANON LIDDON : CANON GORE : J. B. MOZ- 
 LEY'S THEOLOGICAL TEACHING 
 
 THE Evangelical School in the Established Church was largely, 
 although by no means wholly, the fruit of the Methodist revival. 
 If Whitefield was not its founder, he was its efficient promoter. 
 Among the preachers and writers of this school are Henry Venn, 
 Romaine, John Newton, the pastor of Cowper, Thomas Scott, 
 Milner, and Hannah More. WiVbeiiorce's Practical View, published 
 in 1797, had a great influence both in Great Britain and America, 
 and was translated into a number of languages. Simeon had a 
 remarkably successful career at Cambridge as a preacher of the 
 Evangelical School. But of this school, great as was the service 
 rendered to the cause of practical religion by it, little is to be said 
 in a history of theology. It formed the strength of the Low Church 
 party, which was prevalent in the early decades of the present 
 century. Its leaders cherished Calvinistic opinions. It was one 
 of their defects that so little was done by them to throw light upon 
 the reasonableness of the doctrines which were inculcated with so 
 much faith and fervor. 
 
 The distinction of introducing a new and more spiritual method 
 into English theology belongs to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, equally 
 eminent as a poet and philosopher. Versed in the systems 
 of the later German philosophers, and drawing from these 
 
 446
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 447 
 
 sources what was congenial with his own thoughts, he still evinces 
 always the originality of true genius. Unhappily, he constructed 
 no system. The most orderly exposition of his religious ideas and 
 speculations is found in the Aids to Reflection, and in essays in The 
 Friend. But scattered through his writings of a more miscella- 
 neous nature are quickening suggestions and criticisms. Through 
 Coleridge, the characteristic defect of the orthodoxy of the last 
 century, its external and rationalizing mode of explaining and 
 defending Christianity, gives place to a deeper insight and a more 
 profound philosophical apprehension. A fundamental principle 
 in the teaching of Coleridge is the distinction between reason and 
 understanding. It is substantially the distinction of Kant, but 
 modified in such a way that reason is conceived of as the organ 
 of supersensuous realities, by which they are recognized and their 
 existence is verified. It is the faculty of intuitions as to things 
 above sense. With Jacobi, it is described as an organ " bearing 
 the same relation to spiritual objects, the universal, the eternal, 
 and the necessary, as the eye bears to material and contingent phe- 
 nomena" This doctrine bears directly on the relative place and 
 weight of what are called the " evidences " of religion, both nat- 
 ural and revealed. A second fundamental principle of Coleridge 
 is the distinction between Nature and Spirit. Nature embraces 
 the realm subject to the law of cause and effect. Spirit is self- 
 determining and self-conscious. The will, not being in this net- 
 work of causation, but self-determining, that is, originating 
 its own acts and states, belongs in another and higher order 
 than that of Nature. Coleridge condemns the theory of " mod- 
 ern Calvinism " as really destructive of will, and as dissonant 
 from the conception of early Lutheranism and Calvinism. It is 
 " the difference of a captive and enslaved will, and no will at all." 
 
 Coleridge holds of all the ideas of which we are assured by 
 conscience, directly or implicitly, ideas derived "from the moral 
 being," that they cannot, like " theoretical positions, be pressed 
 onward into all their logical consequences." On these, the law of 
 conscience, and not the canons of logic, must be heeded. A veto 
 at least belongs to this law. Inferences are not to be admitted 
 which are repugnant to the dictates of conscience. 
 
 The ultimate source of our belief in God is to be found in 
 the moral and spiritual nature of man. His existence is not 
 literally demonstrable. Some room is left "for will and moral
 
 448 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 election." It is a truth corroborated by everything without as 
 well as within us. Scripture teaches us that miracles of them- 
 selves cannot work conviction in the mind, not if a man were 
 to rise from the dead to confirm them. If the spiritual truths 
 " which derive their evidence from within " are not believed, mira- 
 cles, even were they credited, would be of no practical efficacy. 
 The right order of proofs is inverted by the Paleyan school. 
 There must be " a predisposing warmth " in the soul. Moreover, 
 the attempt must not be made to carry conviction respecting the 
 mysteries of faith by borrowing faulty analogies from human ex- 
 perience. The proofs of the divinity of Christ are in the require- 
 ments of our moral being. "On the doctrine of Redemption 
 depends the faith, the duty, of believing in the divinity of our 
 Lord." There is an "utter incompatibility" of the offices of 
 Christ as Saviour and Mediator with a mere creature. 
 
 In his posthumous Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, Coleridge 
 has presented striking suggestions respecting the inspiration of the 
 Scriptures. The evidence of the inspiration of the Bible is internal. 
 In the Scriptures, says Coleridge, "I have met everywhere more 
 or less copious sources of truth, and power, and purifying im- 
 pulses. . . . Need I say that I have found words for my inmost 
 thoughts, sounds for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and 
 pleadings for my shame and my feebleness ? . . . Whatever finds 
 me, bears witness for itself that it has proceeded from a Holy 
 Spirit," etc. Coleridge does not hold to the infallibility of all 
 parts of the Scriptures. He suggests that the spirit of the whole 
 book is to judge each separate part. But faith in Christ precedes 
 faith in the Scriptures. 
 
 Coleridge rejects the Arminian solution of the problem of 
 Original Sin, and criticises Jeremy Taylor's exposition of the sub- 
 ject. His own view is as follows : At the beginning of the con- 
 scious life of each individual, his will is found to be determined 
 to the inferior good. This evil direction of the will is common to 
 all men, and is the source of all particular sins of habit and act. 
 This evil disposition presupposes an act originating it, but known 
 only through its consequences. It is a timeless act. "It is a 
 link in the chain of historic instances whereof Adam is the first." 
 It is not, however, instilled into my will by the will of another. 
 The phrase, " the old man," is used in the Epistles of Paul as the 
 equivalent of " Adam," and is used symbolically and universally.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 In this matter, every man is the adequate representative of all. 
 That anything further is involved in the relation of our sin to 
 Adam's can neither be denied nor conceived. 
 
 Respecting the Atonement, Coleridge says that the four generic 
 representations in the New Testament of this truth are representa- 
 tions not of the redemption act itself, but of its effects. These 
 effects are depicted by so many analogies drawn from human rela- 
 tions. The effect itself is denoted by St. John, as far as it can 
 be to our minds, by the term ' regeneration,' involving deliver- 
 ance from spiritual death. As to the redemption act itself, we 
 are taught that Christ was made a life-giving Spirit, and that the 
 Incarnation, the obedience of Christ, His death for us, which 
 involves a conquest of death for all who receive Him, was neces- 
 sary. The redemptive act presupposes an Agent who can at once 
 act on the Will as an exciting cause, quasi ab extra, and in the 
 will " as the condition of its potential and the ground of its actual 
 being." Regeneration is the sum total of the effect, but its conse- 
 quences are purification from sin and deliverance from its inherent 
 and penal consequences in the world to come. It is a mistake to 
 attribute to Coleridge the opinion that the atoning work of Christ 
 consists in its power to affect the minds of men. That Act is left, 
 a mystery on which only partial light can be thrown. 
 
 In the view which Coleridge presents of the Church, he 
 dissents from Hooker. Church and State are not one and the 
 same society in different aspects. He agrees with Warburton that 
 originally they are distinct and independent. The Visible Church 
 of Christ is not to be confounded with the National Church. The 
 former has ministers of its own, appointed and sustained by itself. 
 The National Church is created by the Nation for the moral cult- 
 ure of the people. The Nation, on fixed terms, employs the 
 ministers of the Visible Church, to do the work. The connection, 
 however, is a separable one. Coleridge's hostility both to the 
 identifying of the Church with the State, and of the Church with 
 the clergy, is thus emphatically expressed : 
 
 " As far as the principle on which Archbishop Laud and his 
 followers acted went to reactuate the idea of the Church, as a 
 coordinate and living power by right of Christ's institution and 
 express promise, I go along with them ; but I soon discover that 
 by the Church they meant the clergy, the hierarchy exclusively, 
 and then I fly off from them in a tangent. For it is this very 
 
 2G
 
 450 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 interpretation of the Church, that according to my conviction 
 constituted the first and fundamental apostasy ; and I hold it for 
 one of the greatest mistakes of our polemic divines, in their con- 
 troversies with the Romanists, that they trace all the corruptions 
 of the gospel faith to the Papacy." 
 
 From about the year 1815 to the middle of the present century, 
 Oxford was the centre and source of theological movements of 
 great moment. The first of these was connected with what is 
 designated the Earlier Oriel School. It is in strong contrast with 
 the later school, led by John Henry Newman and his associates, 
 which is also linked in its origin to the same college. The prin- 
 cipal representatives of the Earlier Oriel School are Richard 
 Whately, who became Archbishop of Dublin, and Thomas Arnold, 
 the head- master of Rugby School. In a sense they stood by 
 themselves. They were not affiliated with the Evangelical Party, 
 not being in sympathy with its tone or with its standard of ortho- 
 doxy, and they were at a further remove still from High Church 
 doctrine in any of its phases. Whately, as to his point of view 
 and general spirit as a religious thinker, has been fitly likened to 
 Grotius. He handled with clearness and logical strength what- 
 ever subject he took up. In his Christian Evidences and in 
 his annotated edition of Paley on the same theme, a quite promi- 
 nent place is assigned to the external proofs, after the manner 
 of the apologists of the eighteenth century. In his work on 
 the " Kingdom of Christ " he holds fast to the idea that the Church 
 is a distinct society, not to be confounded with the State, with 
 which it may be allied. He approximates to a Congregational 
 idea of the nature of the Church. He denies Apostolic Succes- 
 sion as not capable of proof and as not necessary to the valid 
 exercise of the ministry. The analogies of political obligations 
 are applied to the duty of conforming to existing modes of eccle- 
 siastical organization, and, as an extreme resort, to the right of 
 secession or revolution. In his Essays on Some of the Difficulties 
 in the Writings of St. Paul, he opposes Calvinistic election. This 
 position, with other kindred views, along with his opinions per- 
 taining to the future state he held to conditional immortality 
 and his rejection of the doctrine that the observance of Sunday 
 rests on the legal basis of the Jewish Sabbath, were obnoxious to 
 the Evangelical Party. But the Broad Church position of Whately 
 lacked certain vital characteristics of the party bearing the same
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 451 
 
 name at a later day. This last took a different view of the nature 
 of revelation and of its evidences. 
 
 The theological opinions of Arnold are disclosed in his pub- 
 lished sermons, his reviews and essays, and in the correspondence 
 printed in Stanley's Memoir. Everywhere in Arnold's utterances 
 there is manifest an intense moral earnestness. He gives the 
 foremost place in his creed to the truth of the divinity of Jesus 
 Christ. He rejects the doctrine of the absolute inerrancy of the 
 Scriptures ; but he holds that concerning the things of faith, in 
 cases where the Apostles were in error, as in the expectation of 
 a speedy Second Advent of Christ, a special provision has been 
 made to guard against conclusions adverse to their authority, 
 and against harmful practical inferences on the part of their 
 readers. He expresses critical views pertaining to the Canon 
 for example, the origin and date of the book of Daniel views 
 at variance with the traditional opinion, and foretells that the 
 coming discussion of these topics will produce a commotion like 
 that caused by the Reformation. On the subject of the Church, 
 Arnold reproduces Hooker's theory of the identity of Church and 
 State in a Christian community. Their functions are inseparable. 
 He would make the English Church so comprehensive as to include 
 in it the body of the people, and thus to become literally national. 
 Arnold contends with the utmost ardor of conviction against the 
 doctrine of a priesthood in the Christian Church, a doctrine which 
 he considers to have been the fountain of ecclesiastical tyranny and 
 corruption. Apostolical Succession, and everything which is made 
 a part or warrant of sacerdotalism, he vigorously repudiates. 
 
 To the " Oxford Movement," to give it the title usually applied 
 to it at present, Whately and Arnold were always hostile. From 
 the talents of its originators and the interest that belongs to their 
 personal history, and from its profound and, as the event has 
 proved, lasting influence on the Anglican Church in its various 
 branches, the Movement must retain a conspicuous place in the 
 annals of English Christianity. Here we have to consider it in 
 its bearings on Christian doctrine. In that fascinating piece of 
 autobiography, the Apologia of Newman, we have an account of 
 the rise and progress of the party of which up to the time 
 of his secession to Rome he was the life and soul. 1 
 
 1 The literature relating to the Oxford Movement is copious. The Apologia 
 pro sua Vita, occasioned by a paragraph from the pen of Charles Kingsley,
 
 452 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Newman gives John Keble the credit of starting the Movement 
 by his assize sermon at Oxford in July, 1833, in which Keble dis- 
 cussed the existing perils of the Church. Hurrell Froude was a 
 pupil of Keble, and in his turn influenced his teacher. Froude 
 brought Newman into personal connection with Keble. Pusey, 
 who enlisted somewhat later in the cause (in 1835), brought to 
 the advocacy of it advantages arising from his aristocratic con- 
 nections, his academic station of Regius Professor, and his repute 
 as an Oriental scholar. The proceeding of these and the rest of 
 the group who participated in the Movement in its early stages, 
 not unlike as it was in some respects to the undertaking of John 
 Wesley and his Oxford associates a century before, differed from 
 it in one striking particular. Wesley and his companions em- 
 barked in the work of propagating the Gospel among the people by 
 preaching in-doors and out-of-doors. It was the primary aim of 
 Newman and his friends to produce a change within the Church. 
 Their appeals were to the cultivated class, and especially to the 
 clergy. 
 
 The enemy which the Oxford leaders set out to resist and to 
 baffle was " Liberalism." It was the period in Great Britain of 
 Catholic Emancipation and of the Reform Bill. The state of 
 things is sketched by Newman in the Apologia, and by William 
 Palmer, a learned scholar who cooperated with the promoters 
 
 was published in 1864. It was recast and printed in 1865, as A History of 
 my Religious Opinions. The editions after the first introduced some changes, 
 examples of which are given in E. A. Abbott's The Anglican Career of Car- 
 dinal Newman (1892), Vol. II. c. vii. Church's The Oxford Movement, 
 Twelve Years, 1833-1845 (1891), is a sympathetic but candid narrative. 
 The Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, was begun by Liddon and was com- 
 pleted and edited by Johnston and Wilson, in 4 vols. (1893-95). Other impor- 
 tant books bearing on the Oxford Movement are the Remains of Hurrell 
 Froude; the Letters of Newman while in the Anglican Church; the Reminis- 
 cences of T. Mozley; the Letters of James B. Mozley; the Contributions, etc., 
 of Newman's younger brother, F. W. Newman (written in advanced age, 
 but of some value respecting J. H. Newman's early days) ; E. A. Abbott's 
 work, referred to above, together with his earlier Philomythus (1891), both 
 of which are adverse in tone, but the first-named especially of value as a care- 
 f :1 critical study ; the Memoirs of Mark Pattison (somewhat cynical, as by one 
 who looks back on his discipleship as a period of delusion). The Memoirs of 
 Archbishop Tait, of Dean Stanley, of William George Ward, of Mark Pattison, 
 the Autobiography of Isaac Williams, are among the numerous publications 
 which throw almost an excess of light on the general subject.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 453 
 
 of the Movement at the beginning, before Romanist tendencies 
 repelled him, and whose work on the Church is one of the most 
 erudite and solid productions emanating from the High Church 
 theologians. " Bulwarks " of the English Church, like the Test 
 and Corporation Acts, had been repealed in 1828. Parliament 
 opened its doors to the admission of Romanists and Dissenters. 
 The democratic principle seemed on the road to a triumph which 
 would strip the Anglican Church of whatever independence had 
 been left to it by former political encroachments. In the progress 
 of political reform ten of the Irish bishoprics had been effaced. 
 Lord Grey had met the spirit of resistance to liberal measures in 
 an uncompromising spirit, warning the bishops in England to set 
 their house in order. It is undoubtedly true that the power of 
 ecclesiastical defence against innovation under the banner of lib- 
 eralism, seemed feeble. The Evangelical party had somewhat 
 degenerated in character. It could not be counted upon to sup- 
 port measures at variance with Low Church principles. The 
 High Church, not inaptly characterized as " High and Dry," had 
 in it good and scholarly men, whose temper, however, was not 
 adapted to conflict. In it, likewise, among the clergy, there was 
 a worldly, self-seeking class, pervaded by a spirit of insular Angli- 
 canism, in distinction from what may be called a catholic con- 
 sciousness. Its supporters were, for the most part, inert. 
 
 The Oxford Movement was essentially a revival of the Anglo- 
 Catholicism of the days of Andrewes and Thornd ; ke. Hooker was 
 revered, and there was a disposition to seek shelter behind his 
 shield ; but Hooker cannot fairly be counted among the doctors 
 of this school. Other influences, as Newman has pointed out, 
 conjoined to foster the theological tendency now awakened to a 
 new life. Such was the effect of the writings of Walter Scott, 
 which lent a charm to medievalism. Such, in a different way, 
 was the impression made by the poetry of Wordsworth. There 
 was no purpose to aid the cause of the Church of Rome. On the 
 other hand, the political concessions to Rome in relation to Ire- 
 land formed one of the grounds of complaint. The Movement 
 was a rally against Erastianism. It was an uprising, on the part of 
 a few religious and highly gifted men, in behalf of that conserva- 
 tive, patristic, sacramental form of Anglican piety and theology, of 
 which Laud was the precursor and Andrewes the typical repre- 
 sentative, which had been cherished among the non-jurors, but
 
 454 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 had undergone a long, if not a total, eclipse, at least as to some 
 of its distinguishing features. The ideas and intentions of the 
 authors of the Movement are presented in the document that was 
 adopted at a meeting held at the house of Rev. Hugh James Rose, 
 one of the most eminent High Church divines of the day. 1 It was 
 resolved "to maintain inviolate the doctrines, the services, and 
 the discipline of the Church," " the primitive practice in religious 
 offices," the Apostolical prerogatives and commission of the three 
 orders in the ministry. Dangers to the Establishment was a topic 
 waived for the time in view of graver perils. In some minds, 
 especially in the case of Keble, the liking to the Establishment 
 had become chilled, owing to disgust at the expansion of secular 
 control. Preparatory to the meeting with Mr. Rose, Newman 
 had drawn up a programme, which was published by Mr. Perceval. 
 It is more full and specific than the paper (composed mainly by 
 Palmer) which it was decided to adopt. It comprises four heads : 
 i. The only way of life is the partaking of the body and blood of 
 Christ. 2. The expressly authorized means is the sacrament. 
 3. The expressly authorized security for the continuance and due 
 administration of the sacrament is the apostolical commission of 
 bishops. 4. In view of the danger, under present circumstances, 
 that these things will be slighted and practically disowned, several 
 pledges are proposed : ( i ) to be on the watch for opportunities 
 to inculcate them ; (2 and 3) to circulate books and tracts to the 
 same end ; (4) to endeavor to secure the revival among Church- 
 men of daily common prayer, and more frequent partaking of 
 the Lord's Supper; (5) to resist unauthorized alterations of the 
 Liturgy; (6) to diffuse accounts of points in discipline and wor- 
 ship "most likely to be undervalued or misunderstood." The 
 character of this statement maybe summed up in one word, 
 Sacramentalism. It is Apostolical Succession, associated with the 
 efficacy of the Eucharist, and the preservation of the Prayer Book 
 from being robbed of phraseology which was thought to inculcate 
 the views taken of sacramental grace ; for this is the motive of the 
 pledge relative to the Liturgy. Other particulars of doctrine were 
 subsequently contended for. One was the authority of Tradition, 
 in connection with Scripture, as handing down the teaching of the 
 Apostles. The authority of the undivided Church, prior to the 
 separation of the East from the West, was maintained by Pusey in 
 1 Palmer, Narrative of Events, etc. (1883), p. 104.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 455 
 
 his Eirenicon and in various earlier writings by him, and by the 
 party generally. It was insisted that if justification is by faith, 
 judgment is by works. For other practices, such as the adoration 
 of Christ in the Sacrament, invocation, prayers of a certain kind 
 for the dead, practices generally supposed to belong distinctively 
 to Romanism, authority was diligently sought, and not without a 
 degree of success, in earlier doctors of the Anglo-Catholic school. 
 The attitude of the Movement in relation to the Reformers was 
 necessarily that of only partial sympathy, which might easily lapse 
 into antipathy. Not only were the Oxford leaders strangers to 
 that unenlightened hostility to the Church of Rome, which it has 
 commonly been easy to kindle into a flame ; they were naturally 
 prompted, both by their own predilections and by their desire to 
 infuse into the current Protestantism phases of opinion common 
 to themselves and to the Roman Church, virtually to take sides on 
 many points with the Romanists. To exhibit the Church of Eng- 
 land as one branch of the Church Catholic, the Church of Rome 
 being a coordinate branch ; to maintain that for Anglicans there 
 is a seat of authority in the Church Visible, the Church of the 
 first centuries, and a secure possession of sacramental grace 
 through an Apostolic priesthood ; in short, to assert the reality of 
 a satisfactory via media between Protestantism as ordinarily under- 
 stood and Rome such was the task undertaken. The Declara- 
 tion, in the moderate shape in which it was cast at the meeting 
 with Mr. Rose, received the signatures of seven thousand of the 
 clergy. In a modified form it was signed by 230,000 heads of 
 families. The somewhat informal propaganda which had been 
 started at that conference bore its fruit in the Tracts for the 
 Times ; these gave to the party the nickname of " Tractarians." 
 Subsequently they were popularly styled " Puseyites." Several of 
 the first tracts in the series were composed by Newman. The 
 doctrine on which he specially insisted was that of Apostolic Suc- 
 cession. In the earliest of them presbyters and deacons are 
 addressed. It is said : " I fear we have neglected the real ground 
 on which our authority is built "OUR APOSTOLICAL DESCENT." 
 The clergy are exhorted to exalt the bishops " as representatives 
 of the Apostles," and to magnify their own office " as being 
 ordained by them." l In the preface to the first volume of the 
 Tracts, which comprises forty-six, there is the same train of re- 
 
 1 Quoted in Church, pp. 101, 103.
 
 456 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 mark. It is said that " Sacraments, not preaching, are the sources 
 of divine grace." J In 1835 three elaborate tracts in a series (67, 
 68, 69) on " Baptism," were contributed by Pusey. They inculcate 
 the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, and the imparting by it 
 of spiritual life. Baptism, it is taught, washes away all guilt. But 
 sins, save venial faults, committed afterwards, could never in this 
 life be fully pardoned. There might be an admission to a lower 
 state of divine favor. But, as Newman phrases it in his explana- 
 tion of the doctrine of this Tract, there is nothing more " than the 
 suspension of our sins over our heads " until the Last Judgment. 
 The contrast between Luther's idea of baptism, as being, through 
 the recollection of it, a source of comfort to the distressed peni- 
 tent ever afterwards, and Pusey's doctrine is absolute. By this 
 essay space is really cleared for a resort to Confession, to Penance, 
 and Absolution, and for a new conception of the import and value 
 of the Eucharist. Like most of the author's writings, it is thickly 
 strewn with quotations from the Fathers. In 1836 Dr. Hampden 
 was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity. This appointment 
 called out a storm of opposition, in which Pusey and his friends 
 were joined by a large body of conservative Churchmen in the 
 University, who were not of their party. This opposition was 
 based principally on Hampden's Bampton Lectures for 1832, on 
 "The Scholastic Philosophy in Relation to Christianity." It is 
 conceded that he was in truth " unexceptionably, even rigidly, 
 orthodox in his acceptance of Church doctrine and Church 
 creeds." 2 He had even defended the Athanasian creed. His 
 offence lay in his drawing a distinction between the facts of 
 Scripture, the doctrines as there expressed, and the human infer- 
 ences deduced from them, which he did not consider that the 
 " immemorial judgment of the Church " necessarily bound us to 
 accept. His book was accused of a rationalistic drift. A personal 
 element mingled in the strife, and consequent bitterness. Dr. 
 Arnold's spirit was aflame at what he considered a cruel persecu- 
 tion, and he poured out his hot indignation in the article in the 
 Edinburgh Review on "The Oxford Malignants." In the same 
 year (1836), the Library of the Fathers, prior to the division of 
 the East and West, under the editorship of Pusey, Keble, and 
 Newman, was announced. Its translations, introductions, and 
 notes were to exhibit from the original sources the genuine 
 1 Quoted in Church, p. 108. 2 Church, p. 144.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 457 
 
 Catholic theology, before the errors of Romanism or of Protes- 
 tantism had a being. 
 
 For a series of years, the Movement made rapid progress. It 
 was in everybody's thoughts and speech at Oxford, and the fer- 
 ment excited there spread abroad. The preaching of Newman 
 and his personal fascination were the most potent agency in 
 exciting attention and winning adherents. His influence for a 
 time at Oxford was something almost unprecedented. It was in 
 truth a powerful influence which cast a spell over so many persons 
 of high promise. It was felt by some, as Mark Pattison and James 
 Anthony Froude, who in the reaction from it lapsed into skepti- 
 cism. It entered as a disturbing force for a while into the minds 
 of devoted admirers of Arnold, such as Arthur Clough, and even 
 in a perceptible degree impressed Arthur Stanley. But the charge 
 made from the beginning against the fomenters of the Movement, 
 that it was really if not consciously Romanist in its character, 
 some even denouncing it as a treasonable conspiracy to betray 
 the English Church, was conceived by an increasing number to 
 be sustained by the course of events. Injudicious tracts were 
 published, notably the tract on " Reserve," by Isaac Williams, 
 which taught that religious beliefs, from prudential motives, may 
 be expressed only in part, and may be veiled until the fitting 
 moment for announcing them arrives. It was the doctrine of 
 "economy," of the "tact and management" rightly to be em- 
 ployed in the inculcation of truth. Aside from circumstances of 
 this kind, among the followers of Newman there were able men 
 whose drift was from the beginning Romewards, and who became 
 conscious of it sooner than Newman was distinctly aware of such 
 a drift in himself. 1 Perplexities that operated to obstruct his 
 progress in that direction retarded them in a less degree. Francis 
 Faber and William George Ward belonged to this section. But it 
 was the issue, early in 1841, of the tract No. 90, from the pen of 
 Newman, that caused the storm of disapproval to break out in the 
 English Church from Anti-Romanists of every shade. The design 
 of the tract was to show that the language of the Thirty-nine 
 Articles admits of a " Catholic " interpretation, and is designed in 
 some cases to oppose dogmas of Rome, but more often abuses 
 connected with them, but not taken up into the Roman system. 
 Its intent was to prove that an Anglo-Catholic need not desert 
 
 1 See Church, p. 208.
 
 458 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the Church of England, although he might in certain instances 
 condemn Papal doctrine. It is an extremely ingenious essay. It 
 reads, however, more like the plea of a skilful advocate, than like 
 the opinion of a fair-minded judge. This is substantially admitted 
 by Dean Church, so far as the actual impression made by it is con- 
 cerned. " Some of the interpretations," says Church, " undoubt- 
 edly seemed far-fetched and artificial." * There were numerous 
 readers of tract No. 90 who felt it to be an example of immoral 
 sophistry. Especially offensive to Arnold was the attempt to ex- 
 plain away the real purport of the XXIst Article, which declares 
 that General Councils " may err, and sometimes have erred." An 
 example equally open to censure is the comments on the XXVIIIth 
 Article, in which transubstantiation is denied, and on the explana- 
 tion appended to the Communion Service that the " natural body 
 and blood " of Christ are " in heaven and not here" Resort is 
 had to a speculation on the nature of locality, in which it is emp- 
 tied of the meaning commonly attached to it. This is well styled 
 by the author himself a " specious defence," the validity of which 
 is not absolutely asserted. It is remarkable how Newman leans 
 upon the Homilies for the support of his interpretations of the 
 Articles. The XXXVth Article says of the Homilies that they 
 " contain a godly and wholesome doctrine." Their popular style 
 and patristic phraseology easily lend themselves to this use. He 
 dismisses their repeated designation of the " Bishop or the Church 
 of Rome " as Antichrist, on the ground that the statement does 
 not bear on doctrine. 8 
 
 At this time Newman himself was not without misgivings 
 respecting the title of the Anglican Church to the character of 
 "catholicity." He was in a measure debating with himself. He 
 had grown to believe that a portion of the arguments which he had 
 used against Rome were unsound. This inward questioning had 
 commenced several years earlier. The drawing towards Rome 
 was not a little due to the influence of Hurrell Froude, who was 
 a medievalist in all his tendencies. In 1834 Froude writes to a 
 correspondent that it is no matter where the pulpit is placed, if it 
 do not " stand in the light of the Altar, which is more sacred than 
 the Holy of Holies in the Jewish Temple." 3 From Froude, New- 
 
 1 p. 248. 2 Tract 90, p. 33. 
 
 3 Quoted by E. A. Abbott, The Anglican Career of Cardinal 
 Vol. I. p. 1 66.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 man says that he derived his admiration for Rome, his dislike of 
 the Reformation, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and belief in the 
 Real Presence. 1 This is a large debt, although its items are not 
 exhaustively recounted. Newman's memory was haunted by the 
 sounding phrase of Augustine : "Securus judicat orbis terrarum." 
 His faith in Anglicanism as a via media was not subverted, but 
 was felt to be less secure. It was no longer a tranquil faith. 2 
 The severe handling of the tract by the dignitaries of the Univer- 
 sity and the Church could not fail to strengthen the nascent sense 
 of alienation from a communion which apparently had no shelter 
 under its roof for such as he. For several years after the issue of 
 the famous tract, he gradually withdrew from public activity and 
 social intimacies, and lived, with a few disciples, in retirement in 
 the immediate vicinity of Oxford, 3 much absorbed in the reflec- 
 tions and inward struggles through which he was making his way 
 to the goal that was finally reached in 1845, when he professed 
 conversion and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. In 
 this year he was engaged in composing his essay on "Development." 
 It exhibits the process of thought which yielded a solvent for the 
 difficulties he had felt, arising from the obvious differences between 
 the primitive Apostolic Church, and the Latin Church as it now is. 
 The effect of this event was like that of an earthquake. Al- 
 though it was not sudden or wholly unexpected, it spread con- 
 sternation for the moment among the adherents of the Movement. 
 Beyond their ranks, it seemed to confirm the worst suspicions that 
 had been entertained respecting Newman's sincerity in his pro- 
 fessed loyalty to the Church of England and in his opposition to 
 Romanism. This mistrust derived support from the avowals of 
 such as Ward, the author of the Ideal of a Christian Church, 
 whose secession preceded that of Newman, and who, with a 
 
 1 Quoted by E. A. Abbott, The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman, 
 Vol. I. p. 137. The whole chapter (VII.) is instructive. 
 
 2 In a letter to J. B. Mozley (Nov. 24, 1843), he says that in 1839, in the 
 study of the Monophysite and Donatist controversies, the feeling "came 
 strongly upon " him that Anglicans were external to the Catholic Church. 
 He was slow in giving way to this feeling. See Newman's Letters and Cor- 
 respondence, Vol. II. p. 384. 
 
 3 J. B. Mozley writes at this time : " With respect to J. H. N., all I know 
 about him is he has been regularly down about things for the last year or two, 
 and that he has expressed doubts about the catholicity of the English Church." 
 Letters of Rev. J. B. Mozley, D.D., p. 157.
 
 460 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 blunt, but as it seemed to many, an almost shameless, honesty, 
 avowed that he was delaying his desertion to Rome in order to 
 carry others along into the same camp. The psychological inter- 
 est, in connection with the many problems, connected with New- 
 man's career and the catastrophe by which he was lost to the 
 English Church, have naturally given rise to a world of com- 
 ment and discussion. The charge of conscious dishonesty may 
 be at once dismissed. Whatever fluctuation in his expressions 
 may be discerned in the interval between about 1839 and 
 1845, they are not more remarkable than like phenomena in 
 the experience of Luther during several years after the posting 
 of his Theses, when he was moving in a direction opposite to that 
 taken by Newman. Thirlwall, perhaps the ablest man on the 
 bench of English bishops at that time, who, however, did not 
 know Newman personally, expresses the opinion of many when 
 he says " that his mind was essentially skeptical and sophistical " 
 . . . without " the power of taking firm hold on either speculative 
 or historical truth. Yet his craving for truth was strong in pro- 
 portion to the purity of his life and conscience. He felt that he 
 was naturally unable to satisfy this craving by any mental opera- 
 tions of his own, and that if he was to depend on his own ability 
 to arrive at any settled conclusion, he should be forever floating 
 in a sea of doubt ; therefore he was irresistibly impelled to take 
 refuge under the wings of an infallible authority. . . . He bowed 
 to an image which he had first set up. There was at once his 
 strength and his weakness. He could deceive himself and could 
 not help letting himself be deceived." 1 Archbishop Tail writes 
 thus : " I have always regarded Newman as having a strange 
 duality of mind. On the one side is a wonderfully strong and 
 subtle reasoning faculty, on the other a blind faith, raised almost 
 entirely by his emotions. It seems to me that in all matters of 
 belief he first acts on his emotions and then he brings the subtlety 
 of his reason to bear until he has ingeniously persuaded himself 
 that he is logically right. The result is a condition in which he 
 is practically unable to distinguish truth from falsehood." 2 R. H. 
 Hutton, in his appreciative essay on Newman, refers to "the 
 imaginative power which he shows in getting over religious objec- 
 
 1 Letters of Thirlwall (1867), pp. 260, 261. Compare the Letter on pp. 268, 
 269, which speaks of Newman's " utter want uf historical tact and judgment." 
 
 2 Benham's Life of Tait, Vol. I. p. 89.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 461 
 
 tions to his faith." 1 In a memorable passage of the Apologia, 
 Newman depicts with graphic eloquence the confused scene of 
 human life and history, implying an aboriginal catastrophe hap- 
 pening to the race. 2 He dwells, also, on the restless character of 
 the human intellect, the impossibility of curbing it in its wayward, 
 wild excursions. Were it not for the conscience and heart, he 
 would be an atheist, or pantheist, or polytheist. On the supposi- 
 tion that God wills to interfere for the rescue of mankind, for 
 retaining in the world a knowledge of Himself, there is no im- 
 probability in supposing that He would introduce a power into the 
 world " invested with the prerogative of infallibility in religious 
 matters." 3 This passage brings out that assumption of the proba- 
 bility of an infallible Church, as the only salvation from intellectual 
 as well as moral anarchy, which underlies Newman's entire career. 
 The ark of safety in the flood is an ecclesia docens. Failing to 
 find the criteria of such a Church, of such a Seat of Authority, 
 within the pale of Anglicanism, he found it in that imperial, en- 
 during, world-wide Institution having its centre in Rome. Diffi- 
 culties, historical or doctrinal in its structure, were disposed of 
 by that marvellous sublety so evident in all his writings. They 
 vanished to his eye, as the spots on the disk of the sun disappear 
 in the blaze of its radiance. There is no evidence that he was 
 ever skeptical respecting the fundamental truths of natural or re- 
 vealed religion. The roots of his personal faith were in his moral 
 nature. But a subtlety so wonderful might be a means of mis- 
 leading its possessor as well as others. There was a snare in this 
 rare power of delicate discrimination and exquisite expression. 
 A mind of another cast, while assenting to the vivid description 
 of the moral situation of the race and the perils of the intellect, 
 which the passage in the Apologia presents, may be moved to 
 assume as probable a divine guidance of men more immediate 
 than through the instrumentality of a human tribunal to sit in 
 judgment on the operations of their minds. There are threads 
 of unity running through the successive stages of Newman's career. 
 One he professed to point out, when, on the occasion of receiving 
 the dignity of Cardinal, he said that for thirty, forty, fifty years he 
 had been contending against liberalism the idea " that there 
 is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as 
 
 1 Hutton, Modern Guides of English Thought in Matters of Faith, p. 50. 
 
 2 p. 266 sq. 3 Apologia, p. 266 sq.
 
 462 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 another." There are two additional facts to be taken into the 
 account if one would explain the career of Newman. The one 
 is the imaginative habit, which even in boyhood led him some- 
 times to indulge the thought that life is a dream and the world 
 unreal, the idea of its reality being a deception wrought by the 
 angels. Thirlwall, in a letter previously quoted, ascribes to him 
 in one respect the credulity of a " born Papist," and illustrates 
 his meaning by referring to a conception of Newman that the 
 work of the physical universe, from " planetary and sidereal rota- 
 tion " to the " dislocations of the molecules of an atom," is carried 
 forward by the agency of personal beings. One may conjecture 
 that there is some bond of connection between his youthful fancy 
 that matter is an illusion with such a strange conception. At 
 least we are aided in accounting for his belief that " material phe- 
 nomena are both the types and the instruments of things unseen." l 
 The other fact is the predominant quality of his religious experi- 
 ence as discovered in his sermons in all of the Anglican period. 
 It is the sense of the holiness and righteousness of God that 
 breathes through these discourses. It is a religion in which fear 
 is a pervasive element. The tenderness and love manifested in 
 the Gospel are by no means proportionately emphasized. It is 
 worthy of notice that for so great a theologian he was restricted, 
 not in the amount, but in the range, of his reading. This is true 
 in relation to the department of philosophy. He passes by in 
 silence the German philosophers and the theologians of the pres- 
 ent century. "How different," remarked Stanley, "the fortunes 
 of England might have been if Newman had been able to read 
 German \" 2 It was not until 1884 that he read Kant. Then he 
 expressed his sympathy with Kant's making our moral nature the 
 basis of religious beliefs. 
 
 After the secession of Newman, Pusey was the recognized 
 leader of the party. In his youthful days, having, as a student 
 in Germany, had an acquaintance with Tholuck and Ewald, he 
 had replied to Rose's strictures on the state of German theology, 
 and had brought forward suggestions on Inspiration more free 
 than the traditional view permitted. But these afterwards were 
 spoken of by him with regret. This supposed indiscretion was 
 fully atoned for during the rest of his life by a rigorous orthodoxy 
 
 1 The words are R. H. Hutton's (Modern Guides, etc.), p. 73. 
 
 2 Quoted in Mark Pattison's Memoirs, p. 210.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 463 
 
 on the critical questions, as is evinced in his commentaries on 
 Jonah and Daniel. His confidence in his own position and in 
 the via media was tranquil. His piety was deep and sincere. 
 While he lacks the imagination and power of luminous exposition 
 which belong to Newman, he was a miracle of industry, his acqui- 
 sitions of learning were large, and his mind was straightforward 
 in its operations. James Mozley said of him that he had no idea 
 of " economy," that is, of prudential reserve in the expression 
 of beliefs. 1 The editors of Liddon's biography of Pusey say of 
 him that from 1845 to l8 5^ ne was engaged in convincing people 
 that there was a firm foothold for Tractarians in the English 
 Church, and in vindicating " the Anglican claim to the doctrine 
 of Regeneration, of Absolution, of the Real Presence, of the 
 Eucharistic Sacrifice, and other important truths." 2 
 
 In 1843 Pusey preached a sermon on the "Eucharist as a 
 Comfort to the Penitent." It was meant as a counterpart an anti- 
 dote, his critics might say to his disheartening sermon on " Bap- 
 tism." It was fervid in style, abounds in citations from the Fathers, 
 and in the printed form presented in the Appendix corroborative 
 extracts from the old English divines. 3 Great hostility was 
 awakened by this discourse, and its author was suspended for two 
 years from preaching within the precincts of the University. In 
 the outcry against the sermon, wrong interpretations were fastened 
 upon it. The objections to it from the point of view of adverse, 
 but intelligent, critics, are summarized in a letter of Bishop 
 Wilberforce written at the time. He thinks that its great evil is 
 a sort of " misty exaggeration " of the truth, which is adapted to 
 breed errors in others. He censures its un-Anglican tone, its un- 
 qualified quotations of uncareful expressions from the Fathers 
 such as " having on your very lips the blood of Christ," etc., and, 
 most of all, its connection of the remission of sins with the Eu- 
 charist, as if the justified man were not in a forgiven state, and 
 as if there were in the Eucharist, the act, rather than the seal, 
 of remission. 4 The Pauline doctrine of Justification, Wilberforce 
 thought, was virtually denied. As was the case three centuries 
 before, the doctrine of the Lord's Supper became once more in 
 
 1 See E. A. Abbott, Vol. I. p. 218. 2 Life of Pusey, Vol. III. p. vi. 
 
 8 These are reprinted in Pusey's The Doctrine of the Real Presence, etc. 
 
 0855)- 
 
 * Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. I. pp. 230, 231.
 
 464 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 England an engrossing theme of controversy. To get at the exact 
 doctrine of Dr. Pusey and his school on this subject, is a task of 
 some difficulty. On the one hand the tenet of transubstantiation 
 is not accepted, because it is a mode of explanation not verified 
 by Scripture and not in the creed of the Patristic Church. How 
 does Pusey's opinion differ from the Lutheran? The Lutherans 
 did not hold that in the Sacrament the body of Christ occupies 
 space. Pusey himself defends them from the charge of teaching 
 consubstantiation. 1 "The weak point in the Lutheran system," 
 says Pusey, " is that the only office assigned to the Sacrament is 
 to kindle faith. . . . Union with Christ is the end of the Sacra- 
 ments and the reward of faith ; faith is not the object of the 
 Sacraments." Here Pusey fails to do full justice to the Lutheran 
 view. It embraced under the term ' faith ' union to Christ. 
 Pusey himself cites the Apology of the Augsburg Confession as 
 teaching a spiritual union with Christ " by faith and sincere love." 
 The real difference from the Lutheran tenet is another, as will 
 soon be pointed out. Respecting the Calvinistic opinion, Pusey 
 himself, in a letter to Newman, truly remarks : " Such persons as 
 Laud, Cosin, not to say Hooker, and, I believe, all our writers 
 until ourselves, have interpreted Calvin, etc., in a sound sense as 
 to the Sacraments." 2 But Pusey's objection to Calvin, so far as 
 the question of the Reality of the Presence is concerned, rests 
 upon an incorrect interpretation of the single passage respecting 
 the communicant being taken up to Christ. 3 Calvin, like Pusey, 
 rejected the notion of a corporeal Presence as of a body, and of 
 a local Presence, in the strict and proper sense. Calvin says that 
 " Christ presents the spiritual meat and the spiritual drink to all. 
 ... He literally offers to them that which they reject." 4 The 
 most obvious point of dissent from Calvin, which is a point of 
 agreement with the Lutherans, is that the body and blood are 
 received really, although not spiritually, by the unworthy, as well 
 as the worthy, communicant. Yet among the authorities ap- 
 pended by Pusey to his sermon, is Palmer, who teaches as the 
 probable opinion of the Church that " Sinners . . . partake only 
 
 1 Doctrine of the Real Presence, p. 32 sq. 
 
 2 Life of Pusey, Vol. II. p. 224. 
 
 8 See supra, pp. 291, 306, where Calvin's opinion is explained. 
 * Inst. IV. xvii. 33. " Spiritualem hunc cibum omnibus porrigit Christus," 
 etc. For other references, see Muller, Wissenschaftl. Abhandll. p. 424.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 of the bread and wine." In truth, very few of the authorities there 
 cited run counter to this statement. Overall and Jackson are 
 among the exceptions. Pusey and most of the representatives of 
 the Oxford Movement hold to the physical reception by the un- 
 worthy, and undertake to reconcile this opinion with Art. XXIX., 
 which affirms of the wicked and unbelieving that while they eat 
 and drink " the sign or Sacrament " of the Body and Blood of 
 Christ, " yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ." 1 The main 
 divergence of the Oxford School from the Protestant Reformers 
 relates to the effect of the consecration of the bread and wine, 
 and to the question whether the Real Presence is or is not extra 
 usum, that is, independent of the communicant. The Oxford 
 School maintain that after consecration the Presence abides, 
 unless, as may be the case, the Presence is miraculously with- 
 drawn when the consecrated bread is eaten by an animal. How 
 the bread and wine are affected by the consecrating act there is 
 no attempt to explain. The simple proposition is that when they 
 are received the body and blood are received. 2 The Caroline 
 divines taught the extra usum? Bishop Cosin asserts this with 
 much emphasis. 4 This is true also of Bishop Sparrow in treating 
 of communion of the sick. 5 Both these bishops were active in 
 the revision of the Prayer Book at the Savoy Conference in 1661, 
 when the rubric was introduced into the Communion Service, 
 providing that what is left of the consecrated bread and wine 
 shall not be carried out of the church, but the minister and other 
 communicants shall reverently eat and drink the same. 6 
 
 A certain sacrificial character is attributed by the Oxford School 
 to the Eucharist. Here it is important to inquire, Is the Eucharist 
 
 1 The XXIXth Article was not printed until 1571. The contention is that 
 to be " a partaker of Christ " means here to experience " the wholesome oper- 
 ation " of the Sacrament. So Forbes, Bishop of Brechin, Explanation of the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, p. 581. See, also, Bishop Guest's Articles XXVIII. 
 and XXIX. (by G. F. Hodges, 1894). 
 
 2 See Forbes, Bishop of Brechin, Primary Charge (1857), pp. 26-29, an d 
 Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles, p. 574 sq. 
 
 8 See Hallam, Const. Hist. c. VIII. (p. 272 n. in Am. ed. 1847). 
 * Works, Vol. V. p. 131. 
 
 5 Rationale of the Prayer Book (1684), p. 266. 
 
 6 See Kempe, Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, etc. (1887) ; also, 
 Cobb, Kiss of Peace (last ed.). For clear statements on this and other topics 
 of divinity, from the point of view of the Oxford School, see the able and 
 learned Digest of Theology, by H. R. Percival (1893). 
 
 2H
 
 466 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 a purely commemorative sacrifice of the finished propitiation on 
 the Cross, or is it in itself likewise propitiatory? The answers to 
 this question are not always lucid. The Bishop of Brechin argues 
 that, as the Same Body, which is naturally in heaven, is " supra- 
 locally and mystically" taken and received, its "faculty of impe- 
 tration" that is, its intercessory appeal continues, while yet 
 there is no repetition of the sacrifice of the Cross. 1 The twenty- 
 first of the Articles affirms that masses for "the remission of 
 pain or guilt " are " blasphemous fables and dangerous conceits." 
 Pusey, in a letter to Bishop Bloomfield, states that he had termed 
 the Eucharist a propitiatory sacrifice, but in the sense that the 
 Church in this act pleads the efficacy of the one sacrifice.- As 
 to adoration of the Lord in the Eucharist, he cites with approval 
 a saying of Andrews that wherever Christ is present, He is " truly 
 to be adored." 3 
 
 In the letter referred to above, Pusey states that he had called 
 Absolution a " sacrament," in the lower sense of this word. He 
 had taught that there are higher forms of service and devotion to 
 which all are not called. This appears to sanction the Roman 
 tenet as to a salvable, and a higher than salvable, type of Christian 
 character. He defends the adaptation he had made of Roman 
 Catholic books of devotion, and what they say of our Lord's Five 
 Wounds, of the use of "rosaries" (simple forms of devotion), 
 etc. He claims English precedents of a similar adoption of 
 revised Roman productions. 4 It is evident, not only from his writ- 
 ings, but from his practice, for example, from the disciplinary 
 penances to which he subjected himself with the consent of Keble, 
 
 1 Sermon, p. 40. For a clear exposition of the Anglo-Catholic view, see 
 Blunt's Annotated Prayer Book, p. 155. 
 
 2 See Life of Pusey, Vol. III. pp. 297, 298. For other explanations by 
 Pusey of his teaching on various topics, which, as was natural, was extensively 
 regarded as encouraging Romanism, see his Correspondence with Bishop 
 Wilberforce in 1851. Pusey's "Letters" are in his Life, Vol. III. App. to 
 Chap. XII. 
 
 * J. B. Mozley, with his usual clearness, explains that without faith the body 
 and blood are not partaken of, that the sacrifice of the Eucharist is purely 
 commemorative, and that the worship paid to Christ is "not a worship paid 
 to Him as present under the form of the sacramental elements," but only " a 
 worship paid to Him upon the particular opportunity of the Sacrament." 
 The body and blood is " not the object of the worship, but only the occasion 
 of it." Mozley's Lectures, etc., pp. 208, 209, 213, 216, 217. 
 
 4 Life of Pusey, Vol. III. pp. 100, 104, 107, 108.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 467 
 
 whom he had persuaded to act as confessor, that he made such 
 an approach to the Roman Catholic system, doctrinal and prac- 
 tical, as is certainly not compatible with the principles and spirit 
 of the Reformers. This disparity is most apparent in his doctrine 
 as to post-baptismal sins, with the sacramental corollaries adhering 
 to it. "I cannot but think," he wrote in 1845, "that Rome and 
 we are not irreconcilably at variance." l 
 
 The Anglo-Catholic party were deeply moved by the unsuc- 
 cessful result of the strenuous efforts made by them in 1848 to 
 prevent the induction of Hampden into the bishopric of Hereford. 
 They were still more exasperated and alarmed by the refusal of 
 the judicial committee of the Privy Council to sanction the deci- 
 sion of the Court of Arches against Gorham, when the Bishop of 
 Exeter declined to institute him to a cure within his jurisdiction. 
 Gorham was charged with rejecting the doctrine of baptismal regen- 
 eration, his opinion being that the grace of the Spirit and its effect 
 must precede the administration of the Sacrament to infants. Two 
 facts in relation to this case were considered to be in the highest 
 measure grievous. One was the adjudication of a doctrinal dis- 
 pute by a civil tribunal. The other was the sanction supposed to 
 be given to a heretical opinion. Then followed a new wave of 
 secession to Rome, which carried over Archdeacon Manning and 
 R. I. Wilberforce. Manning, in a work on the " Holy Spirit," pub- 
 lished in 1875, founds his allegiance to Rome on his perception of 
 the Christian doctrine on this subject. He came to see, he tells 
 us, that it is in the Church, in the visible Apostolic Organization, 
 that the Spirit has His abode. 
 
 It may be added that Pusey did not personally partake in the 
 growing zeal for ritualistic innovations. He insisted, however, 
 that nothing should be prohibited which established law per- 
 mitted ; and, as on other matters, and in common with his party, 
 he always protested against a policy of legal restraint against their 
 type of churchmanship, while immunity was conceded to the 
 advocates of latitudinarian opinions deemed by him to be plainly 
 inconsistent with the Anglican standards. 
 
 The late Henry Parry Liddon, Canon of St. Paul's, eminent as 
 
 1 Life of Pusey, Vol. III. p. 45. Pusey was confident in his hopes for the 
 future of Tractarianism. He says that " even the pared and maimed Prayer 
 Book of the Church in the United States still affords it a home." Letter 
 (1851), Vol. III. p. 300.
 
 468 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 a preacher, was the author of a learned and carefully written vol- 
 ume (of Batnpton Lectures) on the " Divinity of Christ." A living 
 writer, Charles Gore, not departing from the essential ideas of the 
 Oxford School, is not unwilling to modify its usual beliefs in some 
 respects, and even to make room for opinions characteristic of the 
 later Biblical criticism. His work on the "Christian Ministry," 
 although defending the High Church theories respecting the 
 origin of Episcopacy, is remarkable likewise for its concessions. 
 For example, it is admitted that in the church of Corinth, to which 
 the Epistle of the Roman Church, written by Clement, was sent, 
 there was no vacancy in the bishopric, and no bishopric, in the 
 ordinary sense, to be vacant, but only a plurality of presbyters, 
 constituting, it is said, a hierarchy with the functions inhering in 
 the Apostolic Succession. 1 Canon Liddon, commenting on the 
 Saviour's " professed ignorance of the day of the last judgment," 
 does not surrender the view that there was a co-existence of igno- 
 rance and knowledge. Canon Gore, in his lectures on the " Incar- 
 nation," 2 cautiously and reverently indicates the belief that the 
 " Eternal Son," to a certain extent, " restrained the natural action 
 of the divine being," 3 that there was a " refraining from the exer- 
 cise of what He possessed," that " He was so truly acting under 
 the conditions of human nature as Himself to be ignorant." 4 
 There is a guarded admission of a certain Kenosis. More 
 noteworthy still are the observations of Canon Gore in Lux 
 Mundi, on the subject of " Inspiration." 5 There was a conscious 
 inspiration of the Jews as a people, although there were " special 
 men," " the inspired interpreters of the divine message to and in 
 the race." 6 Their natural activity is not superseded by the super- 
 natural influence. 7 In the sacred books the aim is not the discov- 
 ery of science. 8 In Genesis, the first traditions of the race are 
 given "from a special point of view." The inspiration of prophets 
 is consistent with certain " erroneous anticipations " analogous to 
 St. Paul's expectation of the " second coming of Christ within his 
 own lifetime." Limitations as to "the powers and possibilities of 
 the divine compassion are characteristic of the Psalms and of the 
 
 1 p. 322 sq. 
 
 a "The Incarnation of the Son of God," Bampton Lectures for 1891. 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 162. * Ibid. p. 266. 
 
 6 Lux Mundi (5th ed.), Essay VII. "The Holy Spirit and Inspiration." 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 342. 1 Ibid. pp. 342, 345. 8 Ibid. p. 344.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 469 
 
 Old Testament generally." 1 The historical record from Abraham 
 downward is "in substance, in the strict sense, historical," yet 
 there " is still room for the admixture of what, though marked by 
 a spiritual purpose, is yet not strictly historical." 2 Inspiration is 
 not shut out if we admit " distinct stages in the growth of the law 
 of worship" an " unconscious idealizing of history." 3 It may 
 even be admitted with safety that the earlier Biblical narratives 
 prior to the call of Abraham are " of the nature of myth in which 
 we cannot distinguish the historical germ, though we do not at all 
 deny that it exists." 4 The use made by Christ of the Old Testa- 
 ment is not an argument against concessions of this kind. 5 If He 
 had " intended to convey instruction to us on critical and literary 
 questions, He would have made His purpose plainer." 
 
 James B. Mozley (1813-78) was a theologian of extraordi- 
 nary vigor and independence. He was long closely allied with 
 the leaders of the Oxford Movement, with whom he was per- 
 sonally intimate. After the withdrawal of Newman, by whose 
 secession his opinions were not in the least affected, he was led 
 to differ from the party on certain important questions, and, 
 although always a High Churchman, to take up a position by 
 himself. Among his writings in the earlier period is the able, but 
 one-sided, essay on Luther, whose depth and power both of intel- 
 lect and character he fails to appreciate. A similar comment 
 would not be unjust if applied to his essay on Dr. Arnold. From 
 the epoch marked by the Gorham case, he disagreed with his 
 former associates. He was so far an Augustinian as to consider 
 it necessary to formulate the doctrine of baptism so as to har- 
 monize it with the doctrine of predestination. His treatise On 
 the Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination (1855) was followed, 
 in 1856, by his work on The Primitive Doctrine of Baptismal 
 Regeneration. In the later edition (1862) it appears under the 
 title, A Review of the Baptismal Controversy. The editor of 
 the volume soon to be noticed says of him, that " he undertook 
 the task of reconciling the tradition about baptism with the theol- 
 ogy of what is called Calvinism." He says that " Scripture is 
 silent with respect to infants as recipients of the grace of bap- 
 
 1 Lux Mundi (5th ed.), Essay VII. "The Holy Spirit and Inspiration," 
 
 P- 35- 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 351, 352. 4 Ibid. p. 358. 6 Ibid. p. 359. 
 8 Ibid. p. 353. 6 Ibid. p. 358 sq.
 
 4/0 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 tism," that the Fathers take one view and the Reformers another, 
 and "that according to the rule of our [the English] Church 
 the regeneration of all infants in baptism is not an article of the 
 faith." * " There is nothing, in the Gorham judgment, that in- 
 volves a departure from Anglican principles." 2 In the treatise on 
 Augustinianism, and in the posthumous volume of Lectures and 
 Other Theological Papers (1883), Mozley has propounded, in his 
 usual clear and impressive style, his philosophy respecting " Myste- 
 rious Truths." This is applied to such truths as Original Sin, 
 the Trinity, and the Atonement. Such, we are told, are truths 
 "which agree with human reason in a large and general way," 3 
 which we recognize as truths, but of which we have not the full 
 idea or conception. 4 Our conception is real but indistinct. 
 There is a field of thought where we are not shut up to " pure 
 ignorance or pure knowledge." This is true of the "ideas of 
 substance, cause, Mind or Spirit, Power, Infinity." Of these we 
 have some idea, but "no adequate or complete idea." Now in the 
 case of truths of this class we are not at liberty to draw logical 
 inferences, practical conclusions, which offend the moral sense. 
 When moral truth is contradicted by logic, there is a flaw in 
 the logic ; and this is traceable to the imperfect character of 
 the notions which enter into the premises. Mozley appears to 
 sanction the dictum of Coleridge that, when logic seems to clash 
 with moral intuitions, the superior authority belongs to conscience. 
 As to the truth of Original Sin, the inference of the perdition of 
 infants is under this test excluded. So as to predestination. It 
 is a truth on which sound practical convictions rest ; but there 
 is apparently a counter-truth. It, likewise, must not be ignored. 
 They meet somewhere in the region of mystery. Objections 
 such as that a truth not understood cannot be believed are 
 grappled with in this essay and in the treatise on "Augustinianism." 
 They are asserted to have their parallel in certain truths of science. 
 Truths at the bottom of all religion "we feel and reach after 
 rather than intellectually apprehend." 5 Here is the place for 
 faith ; for " reasonable faith " does not require full intellectual 
 apprehension. 6 The lesson of this philosophy is, for example, 
 that we are not to demand a middle formula between predesti- 
 nation and free-will, a compromise in which neither is embraced, 
 
 1 A Review, etc., p. 226. 3 Lectures, p. 102. 5 Ibid. p. 114. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. vi. 4 Ibid. p. 408. Ibid. p. 115,
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 471 
 
 or a formula in which one or the other is given up. Rather are 
 we to hold both, with an interrogation mark or a minus sign if 
 one may so say affixed to each, whereby practical inferences, un- 
 scriptural or immoral, are ruled out. In the Ruling Ideas in Early 
 Ages, Mozley exhibits the progressive character of the Old Tes- 
 tament Revelation. Acts may be done, and may be commanded, 
 which on a higher stage of moral development could not be done, 
 and would not be commanded, but which " are the highest and 
 most noble acts " to which the conceptions of an age, lower down 
 in the scale of moral perception, can give rise. Reference has 
 already been made to Mozley's Lectures on Miracles. Among 
 his essays are included extremely valuable discussions of the 
 " Argument of Design " and of " Causation." In the first of 
 these papers, objections brought against the doctrine of final 
 causes in nature, on the ground of evolution as taught by Dar- 
 win, are met by an invincible logic. 
 
 One of Mozley's sermons is on the Atonement. 1 After reject- 
 ing the idea that there is a satisfaction to justice by the literal 
 bearing of the penalty by a substitute, he adds : 
 
 "There is, however, undoubtedly contained in the Scriptural 
 doctrine of the Atonement, a kind, and a true kind, of fulfilment of 
 justice. It is a fulfilment in the sense of appeasing and satisfy- 
 ing justice ; appeasing that appetite for punishment which is the 
 characteristic of justice in relation to evil. There is obviously an 
 appetite for justice which is implied in that very anger which is 
 occasioned by crime, by a wrong being committed ; we desire the 
 punishment of the criminal as a kind of redress, and his punish- 
 ment undoubtedly satisfies a natural craving of our mind. But 
 let any one have exposed himself thus to the appetite for punish- 
 ment in our nature, and it is undoubtedly the case, however we 
 may account for it, that the real suffering of another for him, of 
 a good person for a guilty one, will mollify the appetite for pun- 
 ishment, which was possibly up to that time in full possession of 
 our minds ; and this kind of satisfaction to justice, and appeasing 
 of it, is involved in the Scriptural doctrine of the Atonement. 
 And so, also, there is a kind of substitution involved in the Script- 
 ure doctrine of the Atonement, and a true kind ; but it is not a 
 literal, but a moral kind of substitution. It is one person suffer- 
 ing in behalf of another, for the sake of another : in that sense 
 1 University Sermons, p. 175 sq.
 
 472 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 he takes the place and acts in the stead of another, he suffers 
 that another may escape suffering, he condemns himself to a 
 burden that another may be relieved. But this is the moral sub- 
 stitution which is inherent in acts of love and labor for others; it 
 is a totally different thing from the literal substitution of one per- 
 son for another in punishment. The outspoken witness in the 
 human heart, which has from the beginning embraced the doc- 
 trine of the Atonement with the warmth of religious affection, has 
 been, indeed, a better judge on the moral question than particular 
 formal schools of theological philosophy. The atoning act of 
 the Son, as an act of love on behalf of sinful man, appealed to 
 wonder and praise : the effect of the act in changing the regards 
 of the Father towards the sinner, was only the representation, in 
 the sublime and ineffable region of mystery, of an effect which 
 men recognized in their own minds. The human heart accepts 
 mediation. It does not understand it as a whole ; but the frag- 
 ment of which it is conscious is enough to defend the doctrine 
 upon the score of morals." "Justice is a fragment, mercy is a 
 fragment, mediation is a fragment ; justice, mercy, mediation as 
 a reason for mercy all three; what indeed are they but great 
 vistas and openings into an invisible world in which is the point 
 of view which brings them all together?"
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THEOLOGY IN ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (CONTINUED): 
 THE BROAD CHURCHMEN THE "ESSAYS AND REVIEWS" THE 
 BROAD CHURCH IN SCOTLAND : THOMAS ERSKINE ; McLEOD CAMP- 
 BELL THEOLOGICAL OPINIONS OF MATTHEW ARNOLD THE 
 CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM OF HAMILTON AND MANSEL POSITIVISM 
 
 THE REVIVAL OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY: J. S. MILL THE 
 
 AGNOSTICISM OF HERBERT SPENCER INFLUENCE OF DARWINISM 
 ON THEOLOGY AGNOSTIC OPINIONS OF T. H. HUXLEY 
 
 WHILE the Oxford Movement was spreading, liberalism in the 
 English Church was advancing and assuming different phases. 
 The name of " Broad Church " is indefinite, and embraces under 
 it writers of widely varying tenets. The influence of Arnold was 
 continued, but was greatly modified by the effect of the religious 
 philosophy of Coleridge. The " evidential " or Paleyan spirit, 
 which belonged to Whately and his school, gave way to a differ- 
 ent tone. Archdeacon Julius Charles Hare, a warm friend of 
 Bunsen, who had for a time considerable influence on theological 
 thought in England, was ' broad,' yet evangelical in the true mean- 
 ing of the term. This is apparent in his Victory of Faith (1840), 
 and in his earlier work, the Mission of the Comforter. Frederick 
 Denison Maurice was a leader, with not a few disciples, in the 
 Broad Church party. He began life as a Unitarian, but became 
 a fervent believer in the Incarnation, which had a central place 
 in his beliefs. Of his many productions in theology and philoso- 
 phy, perhaps the Kingdom of Christ is the most important. In 
 his work on " Sacrifice " and in his Theological Essays, he discards 
 the idea of satisfaction by suffering of a penal nature. " Christ 
 satisfied the Father by presenting the image of His own holiness 
 and love." " In His sacrifice, this holiness and love came forth 
 completely." " He bore the sins of the world in the sense that 
 
 473
 
 474 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 He felt them with that anguish with which only a perfectly pure 
 and holy being, who is also a perfectly sympathizing and gracious 
 being, can feel the sins of others." " His whole life was a reflec- 
 tion of the mind of God." There is no " artificial substitution," 
 Christ being the "sinless root of humanity," the source of all 
 light in them, " the root of righteousness in each man." Maurice 
 was involved in a controversy in consequence of his expressions 
 on the subject of eternal punishment. His views on this topic are 
 presented in the volume of Essays, in his treatise on the Gospel 
 of John, and in his Letter to Dr. Jelf. In this last publication he 
 denies that he is a Universalist. Whether suffering hereafter will 
 be without end, he professes himself unable to affirm or deny. 
 The word 'eternal' (aiowos) in Scripture is said to have no 
 reference to time ; it is applied to God and to things extra- 
 temporal. It denotes not duration, but a state or quality. Life 
 eternal is the knowledge of God ; it is now as well as hereafter. 
 The opposite is the condition of a soul bereft of God. F. W. Rob- 
 ertson and Charles Kingsley were among the many who looked 
 up to Maurice as their inspiring teacher. 
 
 Dean Stanley, so prominent a personage among Broad Church- 
 men, was a much more advanced latitudinarian than men like 
 Hare and Maurice. But his predominant tastes were literary and 
 historical. Although keen in his perceptions, he was constitu- 
 tionally averse to metaphysics, and, as a rule, we seek in vain 
 in his writings for positive or sharp definitions on litigated points 
 of doctrine. In his History of the Jewish Church he follows in 
 general, as lie professes to do, in the steps of Ewald. He disavows 
 the intention to discriminate between the natural and supernatural 
 in the events of Old Testament history. In his interesting book 
 on Christian Institutions, Stanley touches on various doctrinal 
 topics in a manner characteristic of the author's habit of thought. 
 In baptism no efficacy is imputed to the water. " Infant baptism 
 is a recognition of the good there is in every human soul." * " In 
 eaclj little child our Saviour saw, and we may see, the promise 
 of a glorious future." 2 In the Eucharist, the body is " the essence 
 of Christ's character." 3 The Supper signifies that we must " in- 
 corporate and incarnate in ourselves that is, in our moral natures 
 the substance, the moral substance, of the teaching and char- 
 acter of Jesus Christ." 4 The Cup is a sign of the offering made, 
 1 Christian Institutions, p. 14. 2 Ibid. p. 27. 3 Ibid. p. 1 17. 4 Ibid. p. 121.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 475 
 
 " not by a feeble, erring mortal, but by Him who is by all of us 
 acknowledged to be the Ideal of man and the Likeness of God." 1 
 It signifies the self-denying, life-giving love of Christ, and is a test 
 of our love and loyalty in self-sacrifice. The rite of Absolution 
 is founded on a " misinterpretation of texts." " The mystical 
 offices of a sacerdotal caste will vanish " as alchemy and astrol- 
 ogy, brutal amusements and scholastic casuistry " before the 
 growth of manly Christian independence and generous Christian 
 sympathy." The institution of the Clergy or Bishops sprang up 
 after the death of Christ. The primitive offices (the pastoral 
 and intellectual) were in a sense His gift after His earthly life. 2 
 Episcopacy was a gradual growth. The various grades of the 
 Christian clergy have sprung up in the same ways and by the 
 same divine, because the same natural, necessity as the various 
 grades of government, law, and science. 3 The ministry is divine 
 as being " the inevitable growth of Christian hopes and sympa- 
 thies, of increasing truth, of enlarging charity." 4 Stanley was in 
 full sympathy with Arnold's theory of the oneness of Church and 
 State, and of the consequent obligation of making the Church as 
 nearly as possible coextensive with the nation by the process 
 of ecclesiastical tolerance and comprehension. The usual note 
 of vagueness belongs to Stanley's statements respecting the Trin- 
 ity. The name " The Father " in the Creed " expresses to us the 
 whole faith of what we call Natural Religion." 5 It represents to 
 us God in nature, "in the heavenly or ideal world." 6 The Son 
 represents to us God in history. 7 In Christ the kindness, wisdom, 
 and tenderness of God are reflected. 8 His life is the Word, the 
 speech that comes out of " that eternal silence which surrounds 
 the Unseen Divinity." " To believe in the name of Christ is to 
 believe that no other approach to God exists except through the 
 same qualities of justice, truth, and love which make up the mind 
 of Christ." 9 " The name of the Holy Ghost represents to us God 
 in our own hearts and spirits and consciences." 10 "The Spirit 
 is manifest in this teaching within us, in the promptings of truth 
 and purity, of justice and humility." 1 
 
 The Oxford Movement appeared to come to a head in the pub- 
 
 i i. 
 
 1 Christian Institutions, p. 1 32. '" Ibid. p. 288. 
 
 ' 2 Ibid. pp. 2 1 6, 217. c Ibid. p. 299. 
 
 8 Ibid. p. 2F8. 7 Ibid. pp. 209, 305. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 220. 8 Ibid. p. 300. 
 
 9 Ibid. p. 301. 
 10 Ibid. p. 305. 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 220. 8 Ibid. p. 300.
 
 476 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 lication of Tract No. 90, and was the signal for the adverse parties 
 to combine against it. In like manner, the publication of Essays 
 and Reviews, in 1860, was regarded as the climax of tendencies 
 of liberalism which had excited dread and hostility. The volume 
 was the product of seven authors, each writing independently of 
 the others. The essays were written with great, although unequal, 
 ability. They were from authors who would have found it diffi- 
 cult to agree upon theological formulas. The first essay, by 
 Dr. Temple, would probably have provoked comparatively little 
 antagonism, but for the company in which it was found. Yet 
 through the volume there runs a thread of criticism upon prevail- 
 ing views relative to the inspiration and authority of the Bible. 
 It was naturally complained that, as concerns the miracles as his- 
 torical facts, there was a kind of ambiguity or indecision, as well 
 as respecting what is meant by the authority of Scripture. It is 
 intimated by Dr. Temple that there is occasional inaccuracy in the 
 Bible, and it is said that " the principle of private judgment puts 
 conscience between us and the Bible " ; l the effect of which is 
 that, as a matter of fact, interpretation is determined in accord 
 with the verdicts of conscience. The essay of Rowland Williams, 
 on " Bunsen's Biblical Researches." adopts the opinions in what 
 is now called " higher criticism " of that learned, yet somewhat 
 dilettantish, writer. Baden Powell's essay on " The Study of the 
 Evidences of Christianity " is an able discussion, cautious, but at 
 bottom incredulous as to the methods adopted by Apologists in proof 
 of the truth of the Scriptural miracles. The essay of Wilson on 
 the " National Church " points out the comfort to the " ideologist " 
 of perceiving that if the fact of miracles cannot be accepted, their 
 " spiritual significance " is not lost, since they may " be equally 
 suggestive of true ideas." - The essay of Godwin on the " Mosaic 
 Cosmogony " argues for the impossibility of reconciling the truths 
 of science with the conceptions of the author of Genesis, believed 
 by him to be accordant with fact. The essay of Jowett on " The 
 Interpretation of Scripture," while it insists that Scripture, con- 
 trary to usage in the past, must be "interpreted like any other 
 book," brings forward "difficulties" in Scripture, historical and 
 doctrinal, which are evidently considered by the author to be 
 incompatible with the traditions as to the origin of some of its 
 books and with current opinions as to its inerrancy. 8 Mr. Wilson 
 i pp. 50, 51,54. 2 p. 227. 8 E.g., pp. 376, 416.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 477 
 
 concludes his essay by professing the hope that after death there shall 
 be found receptacles for those who are infants as to spiritual develop- 
 ment, nurseries where the undeveloped may grow up and the per- 
 verted be restored, so that finally all shall find a refuge " in the bosom 
 of the Universal Parent." 1 The opinions expressed in the volume 
 by Rowland Williams on the inspiration of the Bible and against the 
 eternity of future punishment were pronounced by the Judicial Com- 
 mittee of the Privy Council lawful for an English clergyman to hold. 
 
 "Broad Church Theology" deviations from Calvinism not 
 unfitly so designated has had conspicuous representatives in 
 Scotland. Thomas Erskine of Linlathen (1788-1870), who was 
 educated as a lawyer, but early retired from legal practice, pub- 
 lished in 1820 the Internal Evidence for the truth of Revela- 
 tion. His main idea, then and afterwards, was that the adapted- 
 ness of the Gospel to man's nature and needs is the proof of its 
 truth. Faith is the principle of spiritual life, which is awakened by 
 Christ, and is the eternal righteousness which God bestows. In 
 it love is felt to be the law of life. He advocated universal restora- 
 tion on the ground of the fatherly character of God, whose love 
 will attain to its end and aim. 2 The Shepherd will seek for the lost 
 sheep "until he is found." This doctrine Erskine supposed to 
 be taught by the Apostle Paul in Rom. v. and xi. 3 " Eternal " 
 in Matt. xxv. "means essential in opposition to phenomenal." 
 It does not refer to duration. 4 Erskine's influence upon Maurice, 
 Stanley, and others, by his books, his correspondence, and con- 
 versation, was of much weight. 
 
 John McLeod Campbell (1800-1872) was excluded from the 
 ministry of the Scottish Church by the Assembly in 1831, for 
 preaching the unlimited Atonement of Christ as the only warrant 
 for bidding men to be assured of God's love to them. He lived, 
 however, to be universally esteemed and honored for his religious 
 excellence. Norman McLeod said of him that he had never seen 
 any one whose character so closely resembled that of Jesus. Camp- 
 bell published a book on the Eucharist. 5 But his principal pro- 
 duction is on the subject of the Atonement 6 a treatise which 
 
 1 p. 232. 8 Ibid. p. 239. 
 
 2 See Erskine's Letters, Vol. II. p. 243. 4 Ibid. pp. 135, 240. 
 
 5 Christ the Bread of Life (1851, 2d ed. 1869). 
 
 6 The Nature of the Atonement, and its Relation to Remission of Sins and 
 Eternal Life (1856, 4th ed. 1873).
 
 478 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 for its depth and religious earnestness has commanded general 
 respect. He starts with the alternative of Jonathan Edwards, that 
 sin must be followed by punishment, or by an adequate repent- 
 ance. Discarding the idea that the Atonement is the bearing of 
 the penalty, he regards it as an adequate repentance effected in 
 the consciousness of Christ, the ingredient of personal remorse 
 being absent, but all the spiritual elements being present which 
 Edwards finds in the experience of Christ. Christ made an 
 expiatory confession of our sins, which was " a perfect Amen in 
 humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man." l Faith is 
 our " Amen " to this condemnation in the soul of Christ. Christ 
 enters fully into the mind of God respecting sin ; into His con- 
 demnation of it, and into His love to the sinner. There was " the 
 equivalent repentance " which Edwards makes the alternative of 
 punishment. With this, sanctioned, reproduced in its essential 
 elements, in the believer, through his connection with Christ, God 
 is satisfied. 
 
 Campbell goes beyond the Moral View of the Atonement. 
 He makes the death of Christ necessary to the realization by Him 
 of God's feeling and man's need. Without " the perfected expe- 
 rience of the enmity of the carnal mind to God," " an adequate 
 confession of man's sin " could not have " been offered to God 
 in humanity in expiation of man's sin, nor intercession have been 
 made according to the extent of man's need of forgiveness." 2 
 Moreover, it is declared that Christ endured, and that it was nec- 
 essary to the development of His inward experience that He 
 should endure, death, under a sense of its character as " the 
 wages of sin." " As our Lord alone truly tasted death, so to 
 Him alone had death its perfect meaning as the wages of sin, for 
 in Him alone was there full entrance into the mind of God 
 towards sin, and perfect unity with that mind." 3 Christ, as being 
 alone holy, could alone understand, and duly feel, what the for- 
 feiting of life means. If men were mere spirits, a response to 
 the divine mind concerning sin could only have had spiritual ele- 
 ments; but man being capable of death, and death being the 
 wages of sin, it was not simply sin that had to be dealt with, but 
 "an existing law with its penalty of death, and that death as 
 already incurred." Hence a response was necessary to " that 
 
 1 The Nature of the Atonement, etc., 3d ed., p. 136. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 289. 8 Ibid. p. 302.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 479 
 
 expression of the divine mind which was contained in God's 
 making death the penalty of sin." 1 The characteristic of Camp- 
 bell's view is that suffering, as such, he regards as of no account, 
 but suffering and death are necessary as a conditio sine qua non 
 of that entering into the mind of God that expiatory confes- 
 sion which he considers the moral essence of the Atonement. 
 Yet, it will be observed that, according to this representation 
 Christ endures death, and with a vivid, painful, complete con- 
 sciousness of the penal quality that belongs to it. It may be 
 asked, how could this death come nearer to being identical with 
 penalty, save by the introduction of an element of personal 
 remorse or self-accusation, which Edwards equally excludes? 
 
 Campbell's conception approaches nearer to the idea of an 
 objective, penal satisfaction not, however, a legal substitution 
 than he appears distinctly to perceive. This is suggested in 
 Dr. R. W. Dale's thoughtful work on the Atonement, in which it 
 is urged that the obstacle to the offer and exercise of divine for- 
 giveness is removed objectively by the sanction which Christ 
 lenders to the law of God through His willing endurance of the 
 \:jt justly suffered by transgressors. 
 
 An appreciative criticism of Campbell's treatise is included in 
 Dr. A. B. Bruce's work, The Humiliation of Christ. This author, who 
 reviews in an enlightened spirit modern as well as ancient types 
 of opinion respecting the Atonement, finds room for the aspects 
 of the subject which are of later origin, yet does not give up the 
 penal element in the sufferings of Christ, the objective imputation 
 of sin to the Redeemer. 2 
 
 The doctrine of conditional immortality, or the ultimate annihi- 
 lation of the incorrigibly wicked, has been espoused in England by 
 a number of distinguished writers. It has been controverted with 
 ability in the writings of James Baldwin Brown. It is presented 
 in the Life of Christ and in other writings of Mr. Edward White. 
 He maintains that immortality is a truth, not of reason but of 
 revelation, and that it is a gift of God not indiscriminately bestowed. 
 Mr. White connects with this opinion a belief in a continued pro- 
 bation after death for such as have not hardened their hearts by 
 a rejection of Christ. On this point he is in accord with Dorner. 
 Dr. Orr, in his recent work, while bringing forward arguments 
 
 1 The Nature of the Atonement, etc., 3d ed., p. 303. 
 
 2 See his 2d ed., p. 351.
 
 480 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 against this opinion of Mr. White, says : " The conclusion I arrive 
 at is, that we have not the elements of a complete evolution and 
 we ought not to attempt it. What visions beyond there may be, 
 what larger hopes, what ultimate harmonies, if such there are in 
 store, will come in God's good time ; it is not ours to anticipate 
 them or lift the veil where God has left it drawn ! " l 
 
 In Mr. Mutton's Essays on Modern Guides of English Thought, 
 Matthew Arnold is one of the four later writers to whom a place 
 in this list is accorded. It is, no doubt, owing much to the 
 attraction which he was able, as a master of the literary art, to 
 lend to his discussions of religious topics. His position is unique 
 and hardly falls within the limit of any creed recognized as 
 Christian. Yet he deserves credit for a sincere desire to rescue 
 the Bible from the neglect and even contempt with which it is 
 often treated in these days, especially by the uneducated class. 
 There is an important basis of truth in the general affirmation, on 
 which Arnold is never tired of insisting, that " the language of 
 the Bible is fluid, passing, and literary, not rigid, fixed, and scien- 
 tific." He is not a profound Biblical scholar, nor, on the other 
 nand, is he a superficial or ill-informed writer, even on matters 
 pertaining to New Testament criticism. Among the exceptions 
 ot a general nature to be taken to his ways of thought, there is to 
 be reckoned his overweening regard for that impersonal divinity, 
 the Zeitgeist, or "Time-Spirit," as he well renders the German 
 phrase. The "Time-Spirit" was never more self-assured, never 
 more full of disdain for all who questioned its authority, than in 
 the eighteenth century, in the period when a shallow deistic philos- 
 ophy was prevalent. In the earlier part of the present century the 
 "Time-Spirit " in Germany found in the older and now exploded 
 naturalistic Rationalism, springing from the Kantian school, the 
 acme of possible attainment in the sphere of religion. The in- 
 junction of the Apostle is to "hold fast" not that which is new 
 but " that which is good." 
 
 Arnold wished to find " for the Bible a basis in something which 
 can be verified." The corner-stone of his system, if system it is 
 to be called, is a conception of God which he not only regards as 
 true, and evidently so, but even identifies with the Biblical idea 
 respecting this fundamental point. His theory may be termed 
 an unscientific Pantheism ; or perhaps, inasmuch as he does not 
 1 The Christian View of God and the World (2d ed.), p. 397.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 481 
 
 profess to exhaust the conception of the Deity by his definition, 
 an Agnostic Pantheism. In Literature and Dogma, with much, 
 although it can scarcely be said with wearisome, iteration he ex- 
 plains that the equivalent of God is " the Power, not ourselves, that 
 makes for righteousness." Does " Power " here mean " Cause "? 
 There is a Power, a Power exerting itself, or being exerted, a 
 Power exerting itself for a particular end, or producing a definite 
 effect ; yet it must not be denominated a " cause." In his sec- 
 ond work, God and the Bible, he makes an elaborate effort to 
 explain his remarkable definition of God, and the Israelites' con- 
 ception of Him, and to rule out the idea that under the " Power, 
 not ourselves," there is included the notion of a being. In this 
 latter work we are told that we must not think of " the Power that 
 makes for righteousness " as inhering in a subject : this is a mis- 
 conception ; it is anthropomorphic. Yet there is an " operation " 
 of which blessedness is the result. Things are so constituted that 
 the supposed effect is produced. It is a " law of nature " like the 
 law of gravitation. It is a " stream of tendency." When we 
 speak, and when the Israelites spoke, of the " Power that makes 
 for righteousness " as " eternal," all that is really signified is that 
 righteousness always was and always will be attended with blessing. 
 Arnold does not seem to be aware that in trying to fence off the 
 conception of being as connected with the " Power, not ourselves," 
 he does not succeed in escaping from what he styles "meta- 
 physics." There is an "operation" left; there is "a perceived 
 energy." The doctrine is simply this: that the world things 
 collectively taken is such that a certain result, namely, blessed- 
 ness, is sure to be worked out by the practice of righteousness. 
 It falls short of being a dogmatic Pantheism by the added state- 
 ment that we cannot " pretend to know the origin and composi- 
 tion of the Power " ; we cannot say that it is a person or thing. 
 In one place Arnold professes that he will not deny that "the 
 Power" is "a conscious intelligence." But ordinarily he treats 
 the conception that this "Power" is intelligent as pure anthropo- 
 morphism. If it be this, why admit it even as a possibility? Per- 
 haps the study of a few pages of Lotze might have convinced 
 him that, if by anthropomorphism is meant the limiting of God, or 
 making Him finite, no such consequence follows from personality. 
 What becomes of devotion, of what men have always meant by 
 prayer and communion with God, when God is made to be nothing 
 
 21
 
 482 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 more than a law of things, " a stream of tendency " ? In a foot- 
 note Arnold gives the following answer : " All good and fruitful 
 prayer, however men may describe it, is at bottom nothing else 
 than an energy of aspiration towards the Eternal, not ourselves, that 
 makes for righteousness, of aspiration towards it, and coopera- 
 tion with it." The Eternal, it must be remembered, which is 
 referred to by the use of the pronoun it, signifies no being, 
 this is expressly disclaimed. " It," " the Eternal," is the fact 
 that " righteousness was salvation," and will " go on being salva- 
 tion." " It," " the Eternal," is the experienced and expected 
 conjunction of these two things. What aspiration towards " it," 
 and cooperation with " it " denote, and with what propriety either 
 of these or both together can be taken to signify prayer, in partic- 
 ular the supplication which has always been held to be the prime 
 essential in prayer, is not explained. 
 
 Considering the tendencies of the time in the direction of 
 Pantheistic thought, it is not a matter of surprise that Arnold 
 should bring forward the notion of an impersonal divinity. There 
 is surely some reason for surprise that Arnold should present his 
 conception as the kernel of the Israelites' faith, the living God of 
 whom the prophets spoke, and in praise of whose perfection the 
 Psalms were composed. He admits, to be sure, that the Hebrews 
 personified, and could not but personify, "the Stream of ten- 
 dency." Yet he regards the personal qualities which the Hebrews 
 attached to God as an accidental and separable element in their 
 faith. Not even an intuition is allowed them of this imaginary 
 divinity, the connection of righteousness with happiness, but their 
 knowedge of " it " is described as empirical ; it is something 
 found out by experience. " From all they could themselves make 
 out, and from all that their fathers had told them," they arrived at 
 the conclusion that righteousness is the way to happiness. 
 
 Having subtracted from religion and theology the fundamental 
 truth of a personal God, what account does Arnold give of the 
 substance of Christianity? Certainly he presents thoughts and 
 suggestions of spiritual value, and certain felicitous phrases respect- 
 ing Christ which easily take lodgment in the memory. The sum 
 of his doctrine is contained in his often-repeated statement of the 
 " method " and the " secret " of Jesus, and the spirit or tone of 
 His teaching. The method is that of "inwardness," "Cleanse 
 the inside of the cup." So far there is nothing novel and nothing
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 483 
 
 to be disputed in our author's exposition. The secret is self- 
 renouncement, " He that will save his life, shall lose it." The 
 element in which the method and spirit are worked is mildness, or 
 what is expressively termed " sweet reasonableness." There was, 
 it is well said, a " winning felicity " and a " balance," free from all 
 fanaticism and extravagance. But the " secret " of Jesus leaves 
 out all that Jesus says of the Father in heaven, of the relation of 
 the human soul to Him, of the joy of personal trust in Him, of His 
 unsleeping care of His children. The Divine Father Himself is 
 left out. It leaves out the conception which Jesus has of the 
 inward life of the soul, of his conscious relation to the Father. It 
 takes no account of the prayers of Jesus, of the saying that He 
 was not alone because the Father was with Him, of His last words, 
 "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." We are not 
 surprised when Arnold tells us that Buddhism has not only the 
 sense for righteousness, but has even the " secret of Jesus." But 
 it employs the secret ill, it is added, because it lacks the method, 
 " the sweet reasonableness, the unerring balance." The central, 
 substantial principle, the " secret," is declared to be in both sys- 
 tems the same. The real distinction between them, the radical 
 distinction and source of differences, Arnold omits to point out, 
 namely, the Pantheistic root of the Buddhistic ethics, in con- 
 trast with the doctrine of the living, personal God and Father, 
 which is involved in all the teaching of Jesus, and pervades Chris- 
 tianity as a religious and ethical system. 
 
 That Arnold should discard the New Testament miracles alto- 
 gether, is the necessary consequence of his repudiation of Christian 
 theism. If nature and the course of nature are not traced back 
 to the will of a Creator and Sustainer of all things, there is no 
 room left for the supernatural either in the realm of matter or in 
 that of spirit. Arnold well defines his position on this subject 
 when he says that if we had accounts of the ministry of Christ 
 which we knew to have come from the immediate Disciples, we 
 should not have in them a whit less of the miraculous than the 
 canonical Gospels contain. We must infer that it was impossible 
 for Jesus, in case He really healed the blind and the lame, as the 
 Gospels record, to have furnished any credible evidence that He 
 did it, any evidence to be relied on in after times, or affording 
 ground for reasonable belief in the facts even to those who were 
 with Him when they occurred. Our conception of Christ Himself
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 must be seriously affected if it could be assumed that the family of 
 followers whom He associated with Himself, whom He personally 
 taught and trained, were utterly disqualified from giving substan- 
 tially trustworthy testimony concerning what with their own eyes 
 they saw Him do. In his comments on the Gospels, Arnold shows 
 himself quite capable of discerning the weak side of the criticisms 
 of Baur and the Tubingen School. He rejects the idea that the 
 Fourth Gospel is a theological romance, as Baur conceived it to 
 be, and with it the notion that the Apostle John did not live at 
 Ephesus. 1 
 
 A kind of believing and Christian agnosticism was introduced 
 into theology by Sir William Hamilton and some of his disciples. 
 Hamilton followed Kant in denying that the Unconditioned can 
 be an object of conception or positive thought. The Uncondi- 
 tioned embraces the Infinite and the Absolute. The Absolute 
 denotes that which is free from all necessary relations to any other 
 being which is free from every relation as a condition of exist- 
 ence. The Infinite denotes that which is free from all possible 
 limitations ; than which a greater is inconceivable, and which, 
 therefore, can be possessed of no attribute which it had not from 
 
 1 The contrast is striking between the light humor of Matthew Arnold's 
 prose writings and the gloom of his poetry. In the poems, which are so ad- 
 mirable in their way, one may not doubt that his inmost feeling finds expres- 
 sion. There pervades them a tone of sadness, a sadness without remedy 
 and without solace. Faith gone, the fountains of joy are dry. And yet he 
 sees that the millions 
 
 " Have such need of joy ! " 
 
 The want of the world is 
 
 " One mighty wave of thought and joy lifting mankind amain." 
 
 But the poet sees no ground of hope. He has no counsel to give to mortals, 
 in their unquenchable yearning for bliss, but to " moderate desire," to be con- 
 tent with what a few days on earth may yield. A lesson may be read in 
 Tennyson the reverse of the despairing inference of Arnold : 
 
 " My own dim life should teach me this, 
 That life shall live for evermore, 
 Else earth is darkness at the core, 
 And dust and ashes all that is ; 
 
 "This round of green, this orb of flame, 
 Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks 
 In some wild poet, when he works 
 Without a conscience or an aim."
 
 485 
 
 eternity. They involve the negation of conceivability. Yet in 
 reference to space, time, and degree, " the three species of quan- 
 tity which constitute the relations of existence," we are presented 
 with contradictory propositions, one of which, therefore, must be 
 true. For example, we can conceive of space neither as infinitely 
 extended nor as absolutely bounded. Yet one or the other must 
 be real. Hamilton's inference is that the limits of our thought are 
 not the limits of existence. He blames Kant for not showing that 
 the antinomies are due to the fact that the Unconditioned is not a 
 notion, either simple or positive, but " only a fasciculus of nega- 
 tives." The truth is that we are not able to understand as possi- 
 ble either of two extremes, one of which must be recognized as 
 true. 1 The sources of religious and Christian belief are in our 
 moral nature. Which horn in each case of the dilemma for 
 example, the dilemma of necessity or freedom we are to take, 
 is determined by our moral nature. In Hansel's Limitations of 
 Religious Thought, the Hamiltonian philosophy is applied to 
 Christian Theology. Faith rests on the feeling of dependence 
 and the feeling of obligation, and on the Christian Revelation. 
 But Rationalism and Dogmatic Theology are both silenced by 
 reason of the inconceivable nature of the objects of faith. Our 
 knowledge in this province is relative. It is symbolic rather than 
 literal. It tells us how God would have us think of Him, but not 
 what He is in itself. This last is incommunicable. Even the 
 moral attributes cannot be affirmed to correspond fully to the 
 same qualities in men. Even his personality must be asserted 
 with a like reservation. Mansel's work evoked energetic protests 
 in very diverse quarters. Among the antagonists who wrote 
 against it were F. D. Maurice, Goldwin Smith, and John Stuart 
 Mill. 
 
 Before touching on the renewed appearance of an empirical 
 philosophy in England, a brief reference may be made to a like 
 event in France. The Sensualistic and Materialistic School, which 
 professed to build upon the premises of Locke, was assailed by a 
 spiritual eclectic philosophy, of which Royer-Collard (1763-1845) 
 was the founder. He was a disciple of Reid. The work that he 
 began was carried forward by Victor Cousin (1792-1867) and his 
 followers, of whom Jouffroy (1796-1842) was the ablest. The 
 
 1 Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 527 ; Appendix, p. 647. "Phi- 
 losophy of the Conditioned " (in Wright's ed. of Hamilton's Philosophy), p. 459.
 
 486 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Eclectic School was influenced by Kant, and to some extent by 
 Schelling. It was under the auspices of Auguste Comte (1798- 
 1857) that the grounds of theism were once more attacked. From 
 him sprung the Positivist School. He maintained that we have 
 no knowledge save of phenomena, or things as manifested to our 
 consciousness. Phenomena are arranged according to their like- 
 ness or unlikeness, and in their chronological order of occurrence. 
 How we become possessed of the notions of likeness and of suc- 
 cession is not cleared up. Of efficient or final causes, if they 
 exist, we have no knowledge. Religion is a product of imagination. 
 There are three stages of thought, the mythical, the metaphysical, 
 and the scientific or positivist. In the first the personifying 
 imagination attributes natural phenomena to personal agents. 
 Theism is the ripe form of this tendency. In the second stage 
 persons are exchanged for substances and causes. In the third, 
 it becomes plain that knowledge is limited to phenomena, to be 
 classified by their degree of resemblance and their temporal rela- 
 tion. In his old age Comte sought, to the disgust of many of his 
 followers, to bring back religion, which his system had banished, 
 in the form of a sentimental worship of humanity, of which woman, 
 the Virgin Mary in particular, is the symbol. 
 
 In England, the philosophy of Hume was reproduced by John 
 Stuart Mill. The associational psychology found in him an 
 acute advocate. It is expounded in his Inductive Logic, in his 
 Review of Sir W. Hamilton's Writings, and in miscellaneous 
 essays. " Intuitions " are the product of experience. They arise 
 from impressions which begin in infancy, and are so frequently 
 conjoined as to seem native to the mind. This is said of geo- 
 metrical axioms. We are told that there may be other planets 
 where two and two are five. Causation is another name for the 
 invariable association of phenomena by which an expectation as 
 to their recurrence is created that is delusively thought to be 
 instinctive. The mind is a series of sensations with the possibility 
 of other sensations. We are hindered only by the fact of memory 
 from asserting the mind to be nothing but such a " series " con- 
 scious of itself. In his later writings, Mill was disposed to believe 
 in a form of theism, and to find considerations in favor of the 
 doctrine of a future life. He attributed weight to the argument 
 of design, but his faith in it was weakened by the appearance of 
 Darwinism.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 487 
 
 The agnostic system of Herbert Spencer accords with Hume 
 and Mill in tracing intuitions to an empirical source. It is not, 
 however, the experience of the individual, but that of the race, to 
 which their origin is attributed. Heredity is taken as the clew to 
 the solution of the problem of their emergence in the conscious- 
 ness of the individual. They are a legacy of remote ancestors, 
 by whom they were gradually acquired. This is one of Spencer's 
 modifications of the Positivist Creed. Moreover, with the Posi- 
 tivist doctrine that all our knowledge is of phenomena, he seeks 
 to connect the Pantheistic theory of an unknown substance or 
 power called "the Unknowable" at the root of all phenom- 
 ena. We only know that it is, and that all phenomena are its 
 manifestations in consciousness. From Hamilton is adopted the 
 notion of the relativity of knowledge, and the inconceivability of 
 " the Infinite " ; but the supplementary doctrine of Kant and 
 Hamilton of a well-grounded belief in God and in freedom, on 
 the basis of our moral nature, is set aside or left out. That which 
 we call mind in man is the outcome of an all-comprehensive 
 process of evolution. Nervous organism is the product of develop- 
 ment ; from nervous organism emerge mental phenomena. " Rea- 
 son rejects " the belief in our personality, unavoidable as this 
 belief is confessed to be. 1 But materialism is disavowed, on the 
 ground that the nerve-movement is not less phenomenal than the 
 feeling; both being assumed to be the "faces" or "sides" of 
 the same unknown reality. "The force by which we ourselves 
 produce changes and which serves to symbolize the cause of 
 changes in general " is all that we know of cause in the Absolute, 
 the Unknowable. If Spencer made the causal idea as thus de- 
 rived the symbol for the interpretation of " changes in general," 
 he would be a theist. By deftly resolving cause into the physical 
 idea of force, he stamps upon his system a Pantheistic character. 
 Were he to predicate intelligence of God, he would be guilty of 
 no graver assumption than when he ascribes intelligence to his 
 fellow-men. It has been conclusively shown that, according to 
 Spencer's principles, whatever anthropomorphism can be laid to 
 the door of Christian theism must be predicated of the whole 
 fabric of natural and physical science. " Relativity " is not more 
 fatal in the one place than in the other. Religion, in Spencer's 
 theory of its origin, begins in the worship of ancestors. 2 The 
 
 1 First Principles, pp. 64, 65. 2 Principles of Sociology, Vol. I. c, viii. sq.
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 belief in their continued existence after death arises partly through 
 dreams. The " primitive man," too, mistakes his shadow for 
 another man, the duplicate of himself. Epilepsy, insanity, and 
 like maladies confirm the notion that ghosts come and go. 
 Temples were at first tombs of the dead. Fetiches were parts 
 of their clothing. Idols were their images. To explain the wor- 
 ship of plants, animals, and of heavenly bodies, other hypotheses 
 or conjectures, such as linguistic blunders, figures of speech being 
 taken as literal expressions, are brought in. 
 
 It is pretty generally agreed that the Darwinian theory of the 
 descent of existing animal species, even when man is included, 
 does not militate against theism, or sap the foundation, however 
 it may vary the form, of the argument of design. " The teleo- 
 logical and the mechanical views of nature are not mutually exclu- 
 sive." 1 Darwin himself, to be sure, admitted an element of 
 " chance " in the variation which furnishes the materials for 
 " natural selection " ; but " chance," he said, is an incorrect 
 expression of our "ignorance of the cause of each particular va- 
 riation." 2 Yet he can see no evidence of design as to the use to 
 be made of the results of variation, and finds here " an insoluble 
 difficulty," like that of "free-will and predestination." 3 Such a 
 difficulty, it is plain, would at best have force as an objection, not 
 against the existence, but against the wisdom, of an intelligent 
 Creator. However, the fact of such a haphazard variation is 
 disputed or doubted by naturalists of the highest ability who 
 accept the evolutionary hypothesis of Darwin. 4 Intelligent advo- 
 cates of evolutionary doctrine in its extreme form perceive that 
 the gulf between physical states and consciousness is impassable. 5 
 It is more and more recognized that such questions as those of the 
 personality of God and the free and responsible nature of man, 
 are beyond the province and the power of physical science to 
 determine. Verified knowledge in this department may affect tra- 
 ditional interpretations of early narratives in the book of Genesis, 
 or ideas relative to their inspiration, but can reach no farther. 
 
 1 Huxley, Critiques, p. 307. 2 Origin of Species, p. 137. 
 
 3 Animals and Plants under Domestication, p. 58. 
 
 * For example, Dr. Asa Gray, Darwiniana, p. 148; Huxley, Encycl. Brit. 
 Vol. VIII. p. 751. 
 
 6 For example, Tyndall, Fragments of Science, p. 121 : "The passage from 
 the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthink- 
 able," etc.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 489 
 
 "It may be remarked," writes an able expositor of natural sci- 
 ence, " that scientific men often give utterance to opinions which 
 far transcend the limits which we have assigned for the scope of 
 science. . . . When a scientific man expresses an opinion on 
 such questions as the existence of God and the immateriality of 
 the human soul, his utterances are not science but philosophy, 
 good or bad philosophy, as the case may be. The opinions of a 
 scientific man on philosophy or theology are no more a part of 
 science than are his opinions on politics or poetry." 1 
 
 One of the class of scientific men who have interested themselves 
 in questions of philosophy and theology that class, of which 
 Professor Rice remarks that to their opinions " the popular mind 
 often attributes the same degree of probability as belongs to the 
 legitimate conclusions of science " is Professor Huxley. In his 
 little book on Hume, in his Lay Sermons, in his controversial 
 papers against Professor Wace, he has expressed himself too 
 clearly to leave us in any doubt in reference to his philosophical 
 opinions. He has explained how he came to invent the term 
 'Agnostic,' which describes his position. 2 Professor Huxley 
 thinks that what we call the mind is a collection or series of sen- 
 sations standing in certain relations to each other, and that this is 
 all we know about it. That there is a thinking agent, such as 
 men generally suppose to exist when they use the word ' I,' there 
 is no proof. Their conviction is not an intuition ; it is not a 
 rational postulate ; it is naught except a bare hypothesis which 
 there is no ground for affirming as a fact. There is a uniformity 
 of succession in the sensations which constitute the soul, as far as 
 we know anything of it or have any reason to assert anything of 
 it ; but there is no freedom of choice, in the sense that the cir- 
 cumstances, internal and external, being the same, any different 
 determination of the will from that which actually takes place is 
 possible. It is a natural inquiry, What space is there, on this 
 view of things, for personal responsibility, or for the obligations 
 
 1 The passage is from Professor W. N. Rice's admirable little book, Twenty- 
 five Years of Scientific Progress and Other Essays (New York, 1894), p. 106. 
 
 2 If the name is new, the main thing denoted by it is expressed by the 
 Apostle Paul when he says of the world, that it " knew not God" although 
 the agnosticism to which the Apostle referred commonly had a stock of 
 beliefs of its own in regard to the world unseen, therein differing from the 
 agnosticism of which Professor Huxley has the distinction of being the god- 
 father.
 
 490 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of morality? "What we call the operations of the mind," says 
 Professor Huxley, " are functions of the brain, and the materials 
 of consciousness are products of cerebral activity." But the 
 brain, like everything else that is alive, is developed from proto- 
 plasm, the primitive form of living matter. Still Huxley resents 
 the imputation of materialism. He insists that we have no knowl- 
 edge of anything but the heap of sensations, impressions, feelings, 
 or by whatever name they may be called. There may be a 
 real something without, which is the cause of all our impressions. 
 In that case, sensations are the symbols of that unknown some- 
 thing. This conclusion Huxley favors, although he is at pains to 
 declare that idealism is unassailable by any means of disproof 
 within the limits of positive knowledge. It is not explained how, 
 if this last alternative is accepted, the idealist is to avoid the con- 
 clusion which metaphysicians style ' solipsism.' But the " some- 
 thing " of which the brain is a product is unintelligent ; and when 
 the brain dissolves, there is nothing to prove that the phenomena 
 of intelligence continue. There is no proof that the soul that 
 is, the series of sensations does not come to an end. The 
 existence of a personal God is another of the propositions which 
 are incapable of being established. " In respect to the existence 
 and attributes of the soul, as of those of the Deity," says Huxley, 
 " logic is powerless and reason silent." As regards the attributes 
 of God, justice, benevolence, and the like, he indicates no 
 dissent from the " searching critical negation " of Hume. If there 
 be a God, he thinks it demonstrable that God must be " the cause 
 of all evil as well as all good," a conclusion which would follow, 
 to be sure, from the tenet that man is not a personal agent, freely 
 originating his voluntary actions, but is no proper adjunct of the 
 opposite doctrine. As a consistent agnostic, Huxley rejects 
 Hume's definition of a miracle as a violation of the order of 
 nature, for the reason that the " laws of nature " are based on 
 incomplete knowledge. But in dealing with the New Testament 
 narratives he follows Hume in treating the miracle as an isolated 
 marvel. He confines his attention to its unusual character, if we 
 suppose it to be an actual occurrence. His philosophy admits of 
 no interpretation of it save as requiring an alteration of our con- 
 ception of the constitution of nature. 1 
 
 1 On what is meant by the " order of nature," and the relation of miracles 
 to it, see Mozley, Bampton Lectures, p. 43.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 49 i 
 
 No more searching and cogent answers to the assailants of the 
 fundamental truths of religion in recent times have appeared than 
 are contained in writings of the most eminent of the English 
 Unitarian ministers, James Martineau. In defending a spiritual 
 philosophy against materialism and agnosticism, he has carried 
 the war with equal energy and courtesy into the enemy's coun- 
 try. 1 Other authors, such as Robert Flint 2 and Samuel Harris, 3 
 and not a few other names would have to be added to complete 
 the list, have exposed the fallacies of antagonistic schools, and 
 have set forth the rational foundations of Christian theism. 
 
 1 Dr. Martineau is the author of Religion and Modern Materialism (1874), 
 A Study of Religion, its Sources and Contents (1888), Types of Ethical Theory 
 (1886), etc. In The Seat of Authority in Religion (1890), Dr. Martineau 
 takes up questions pertaining to Revealed Religion. Here he advocates 
 opinions characteristic of the Tubingen School and of the later German 
 Critical School. 
 
 2 Author of Theism (7th ed. revised, 1874), Anti- Theistic Theories 
 (2 ed. 1880). 
 
 8 Author of The Philosophical Basis of Theism (1883), The Self- Revelation
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ANGLO-FRENCH DEISM THEOLOGY IN GERMANY IN THE NINE- 
 TEENTH CENTURY : DEISTIC ILLUMINISM IN GERMANY ZTNZEN- 
 
 DORF AND THE MORAVIANS THE THEOLOGY OF LESSING THE 
 RATIONALISTIC BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM : SEMLER ; 
 EICHHORN "THE THEOLOGY OF THE UNDERSTANDING" THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF KANT THE KANTIAN ETHICAL RATIONALISM 
 
 JACOBI AND HERDER TWO DIVERGENT CURRENTS OF THEOLOGI- 
 CAL THOUGHT 
 
 THE last century witnessed in France the spread of deism, which 
 took its rise in England, and with deism the advocacy and spread 
 of a materialistic atheism. Voltaire (1694-1778), whose sway 
 in the domain of letters surpassed that of any other author since 
 Erasmus, defended deism, as verified both on moral grounds 
 and by scientific proof. He held likewise the doctrine of immor- 
 tality. At the same time he used his wonderful resources of wit 
 and sarcasm to assail ' superstition,' under which term he included 
 not only perversions and abuses in current conceptions of Chris- 
 tianity, but also the distinctive facts and doctrines of Christianity 
 itself. A step farther was taken by Condillac (1715-80), build- 
 ing upon the premises of Locke, who, as he judged, had failed to 
 press to its proper conclusion the proposition that all mental states 
 spring from sensation. Self-love, Condillac taught, is the source 
 of all our inclinations, whether evil or good. Man's superiority 
 to the brute is largely owing to his possession of language. 
 Yet he does not go so far as to assert the materiality of the 
 soul or to deny the being of God. Helvetius (1715-71), in his 
 work On the Mind, carries out the idea of Condillac respecting 
 the principle of self-love, by tracing in detail all virtue to self- 
 interest, and identifying morality with selfishness. The deism 
 of Voltaire was followed by the materialism and atheism of the 
 
 492
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 " Encyclopaedists," so called from the title of the copious work 
 of Diderot and D'Alembert, the Encyclopedic, which was sympa- 
 thetic with these extremes of infidelity. They were explicitly set 
 forth in The System of Nature, of which Baron Holbach (1723- 
 1789), a German by birth, was the author. God, freedom, and 
 immortality are treated as chimeras, and duty is resolved into 
 a form of self-gratification. 
 
 Against these debasing opinions Rousseau protested in the 
 Savoyard Vicar's Profession of Faith (contained in Emile). 
 The fundamental truths of religion rest upon our feeling of 
 their truth, although dogmatic atheism and materialism may be 
 met by reasoning as cogent as the pleas in their favor. The 
 authority of conscience is stamped upon the heart of man. 
 When we examine the evidences of Christianity, we are left in 
 doubts and difficulties. Reasons on one side are balanced by 
 reasons on the other. But the heart speaks with a convincing 
 voice, affirming the inspiration of the Scriptures and that Jesus 
 is more than man. The moral excellence which He exhibited 
 in precept and example, when the time and place in which 
 He lived are considered, could not have had a human origin. 
 Despite oscillation and an excess of sentiment in his utterances 
 respecting religion, Rousseau anticipates in a more indefinite 
 way the ideas of Kant in his Practical Reason. 
 
 In a work like the present some notice should be taken of the 
 tenets of Emanuel Swedenborg, although it has the appearance of 
 a digression. Swedenborg was born in 1688. Well educated, he 
 was a remarkable proficient in mathematical and physical science, 
 combining scientific insight with practical skill. In 1 743 he first 
 believed himself to have a vision of Christ and direct intercourse, 
 through angels and by immediate perception, with supernatural 
 states of existence. By special illumination he was qualified to 
 unveil their nature and to set forth the true theology. He was a 
 voluminous writer. In the Arcana Ccelestia and elsewhere he 
 expounds his system. The universe is one whole, the outward 
 world being the counterpart of the inward and spiritual. There 
 is a correspondence between the two. Nature is a parable. In 
 the Bible beneath the literal sense, there is the occult, spiritual 
 meaning, the Word of God, open to the discerning. Swedenborg 
 dissents in many points from the ordinary church theology. He 
 denounces without stint the doctrine of justification by faith alone,
 
 494 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 as set forth in the current Lutheran teaching. 1 God is in His 
 essence Love and Wisdom. There is an approach to an ideal 
 theory of matter. God is a single person. The idea of an imma- 
 nent Trinity is rejected. There was no Trinity before the creation. 
 Jesus derived His body from Mary. That which is divine in Christ 
 is the Father, the name of God after He has "assumed the 
 human " ; the divine in this connection with the human is the 
 Son ; the divine which proceeds from Him is the Holy Spirit. 
 Thus the Trinity is in Christ. Christ was victor over the powers 
 of hell. A substitutionary atonement is rejected. Christ is glori- 
 fied, and, through Him, the divine man, we have the true idea of 
 God and are conjoined by love to Him. A physical resurrection 
 is discarded. At death the eyes are opened to the spiritual world 
 in which we exist now. After death men live essentially as they 
 lived here. At length they are drawn by their affinities to hell or 
 to heaven. Angels are the spirits of departed human beings. 
 
 It is in Germany, eminently " the land of scholars," that in these 
 latter days, theological thought, as well as investigation, has more 
 than elsewhere flourished. The history of German theology in the 
 modern period comprises in it a record of the different types of 
 " Rationalism " which have appeared, together with a sketch of the 
 counter-movements in the exposition and defence of the evan- 
 gelical cause. Rationalism is a word of not very exact meaning, 
 but it is used to designate the partial or total denial of the fact of 
 Revelation, or the rejection of the Scriptures as the rule of faith, 
 or, still further, the discarding of what have been generally termed 
 the principles of natural religion. 
 
 The first era of Rationalism was the period when the Anglo-French 
 deism was dominant. It was the age of Frederick the Great, who 
 began to reign in 1740 and died in 1786. The sway of France, 
 in opinions as well as in respect to language and manners, pre- 
 vailed on the Continent. Frederick was himself a disciple of the 
 school of Voltaire, who resided for a time at his court, and 
 corrected the bad French of his verses. It was the period of 
 " illuminism " in Europe, styled by the Germans the period of 
 Aufklarung. The reign of superstition, it was thought, was now 
 at an end. Darkness was giving way to the broad sunlight of a 
 new day. Living faith in Christianity, however, did not perish. 
 It survived in Pietism, the name derisively applied to the religious 
 l See, e.g., The True Christian Religion, 98, 181, 389.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 405 
 
 spirit of those who set a value, and the highest value, on the 
 religion of personal experience, but with less than a just respect 
 for thought and science. It survived in the Moravians, the 
 followers of Zinzendorf (1700-60), with whom Christ and the 
 Atonement had a central place, and whose love and zeal operated 
 as a leaven beyond their ranks. Among them the worship of 
 Christ was sometimes too exclusive to conform to the Apostolic 
 standard, and was one of the peculiarities which incurred the 
 censure of such truly Christian scholars in the Lutheran Church 
 as Bengel, the author of that admirable commentary of the New 
 Testament, the Gnomon. 
 
 In this period falls the career of the great poet and critic, 
 Lessing, who mingled in the religious controversies of the time. 
 He believed with deists, that true religion is a religion of reason. 
 He dissented from them in holding that religion reaches the 
 rational stage, the stage when its truths are discerned as founded 
 in reason, only at the end of a course of development. Positive 
 religions precede and lead up to this goal. But the historical and 
 statutory part of religion is like a shell, the result of an organic 
 growth, and not superimposed from without. This integument 
 is dropped off by degrees until religion in its rational content or 
 essence remains, having and needing no other support than its 
 recognized reasonableness. He begins his suggestive essay on the 
 " Education of the Human Race " with the remark that " Revela- 
 tion, in the case of the entire human race, is what education is in 
 the case of the individual." l Education gives nothing which the 
 individual could not have from himself, only it gives "more 
 quickly and more easily." The same is true of revelation. As 
 in education, so in revelation, there is an order and a progress. 
 A particular people was chosen for a special education. 2 God 
 caused Himself to be disclosed to them by degrees. He did 
 not commit the fault of a vain pedagogue, whose teaching is 
 beyond the capacity of the pupil. The experiences of the Israel- 
 ite, out of his own land " with other children," helped him to 
 some knowledge. "A better pedagogue must come, and take 
 the exhausted elementary book out of his hands. Christ came." 3 
 The reason of the race in pupilage had advanced. The New 
 Testament is a second, a better, elementary book for the race. 
 
 1 Werke (Boxberger's ed.), Vol. XII. p. 348. 
 8 Ibid. p. 349. 3 Ibid. p. 361.
 
 496 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 It was necessary that every people should for a while regard it 
 as the ne plus ultra of its knowledge. 1 Just as we can dispense, 
 as to the doctrine of the unity of God, with the Old Testament, 
 and, as to the doctrine of immortality, with the New, so will it be 
 as to the other Biblical truths. So it is, Lessing attempts to show, 
 in regard to the Trinity, to which he offers what he thinks a 
 philosophical equivalent, 2 as also to the doctrines of Original Sin 3 
 and the Satisfaction of Christ. 4 What if here we have taken all 
 the steps towards perfection that temporal rewards and penalties 
 can lead to? " Is not all eternity mine?" 5 In Lessing's post- 
 humous essays and fragments of essays, there are interesting state- 
 ments indicative of his opinions. He distinguishes between " the 
 religion of Christ," the religion which He as a man recognized 
 and practised, and "the Christian religion," which assumes as 
 true that He was more than a man, and " as such makes Him an 
 object of worship." The religion in the Gospels is not the Chris- 
 tian, but the religion of Christ. The latter is clearly set forth. 
 As to the former, two men will hardly ever, as long as the world 
 stands, be found to attach to it the same meaning. 6 Respecting 
 the evidences of Christianity, proof from miracles avails only to 
 the Apostles and their contemporaries. Lessing is at pains to show 
 that the Gospel was taught before the New Testament was writ- 
 ten. Christ, not the Scriptures, is the primary object of belief. 
 In the drama of Nathan the Wise, a Jew, Mohammedan, and 
 Christian are brought together in the time. of the Crusades. The 
 lesson from the spirit of Nathan, the Jew, is that one's creed is of 
 little moment, provided there is a temper of charity and tolerance. 
 Lessing published the Wolfenbuttel Fragments, purporting to be 
 from a manuscript of an unknown author, found in the library of 
 VVolfenbiittel, of which he had charge. It was really the work of 
 Reimarus, a physician. It was an attack on the credibility of the 
 Gospels. The greatest excitement was occasioned by it. Lessing 
 defended the right and expediency of publishing the book, in the 
 interest of free discussion, and in opposition to an orthodox Ham- 
 burg pastor, Goze. He himself wrote an essay, showing much re- 
 search, on the Evangelists considered as merely human historians, 7 
 
 1 Werke (Boxberger's ed.), Vol. XII. p. 363. * Ibid. p. 366. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 364. 6 Ibid. p. 370. 
 
 Ibid. p. 365. 6 Vol. XIII. pp. 475, 4?6. 
 
 7 It is in the Nachlasse, Werke, Vol. XIII. p. 350 sq., "Neue Hypothesen," etc.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 The period of " illumination " in Biblical and historical criti- 
 cism, although it had its forerunner in the Socinian and Arminian 
 scholars, was opened by Semler (1725-91), a contemporary of 
 Lessing. In Germany, says Tholuck, " it is Semler by whom, in 
 the whole expanse of Biblical and historical criticism, traditional 
 assumptions and opinions are combated, now the text of the Bible 
 attacked, now the genuineness of Biblical books contested, now 
 the foundation of received views respecting the Church and the 
 history of doctrines taken away." Zeal for exploration in all these 
 directions was kindled in all the German universities. Among 
 the critics, Eichhorn (1752-1827), for fifty- two years a teacher at 
 Jena and Gottingen, brought forward suggestions and problems 
 without number which stimulated thought and demanded solution. 
 For example, the documentary hypothesis as to the composition 
 of Genesis, first propounded by Astruc, was introduced into Eich- 
 horn's Introduction to the Old Testament. The way was opened 
 for the discussions relative to the authorship of the Pentateuch 
 and of Joshua, in which, in later times, De Wette, Bleek, Ewald, 
 Hupfeld, and, more recently, Kuenen, Graf, Reuss, Wellhausen, 
 and many others, have taken part. In the period of Semler and 
 Eichhorn, there were not wanting orthodox men of distinction, 
 such as Michaelis, Ernesti, Mosheim, but their orthodoxy was of 
 a dry and unspiritual kind, a "theology of the understand- 
 ing," as the Germans commonly characterize it. 
 
 It was inevitable that a powerful influence on the course of 
 theology an influence not confined to his own country and 
 time should be exerted by the foremost philosopher of modern 
 days, Immanuel Kant (1722-1804). He began as an adherent 
 of the philosophy of Leibnitz in the form in which it was cast by 
 Wolf. The speculations of Hume awoke him from his "dog- 
 matic slumber," and compelled him to inquire for a basis of 
 knowledge not resting on unverified assumptions, or leading to 
 universal skepticism. He was thus prompted to examine the 
 mind itself as an organ of knowledge, and in the Critique of 
 Pure Reason to undertake to distinguish between that which is 
 contributed by the object and by the knowing instrument, the 
 mind itself between the objective and subjective sources of 
 knowledge. By the criteria of universality and necessity we are 
 assured that while objects of perception "the thing in itself" 
 are real and external, the " forms " of perception, space and time, 
 ax
 
 498 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 are purely subjective. By the same criteria, we are assured that 
 the "categories," or concepts, by which the understanding, the 
 faculty of judging, connects the objects of perception into an 
 orderly experience, are likewise subjective, and belong to the 
 constitution or mechanism of the knowing agent. For example, 
 cause is not a function of things, an external power binding 
 together antecedent and consequent ; nor is it, as Hume said, a 
 mere result of customary association, an objectified product of 
 fancy. It is a necessary mode of our mental activity in contact 
 with phenomena, for it is only of phenomena, not of the nou- 
 mena behind them, that we have cognizance. Only the world as 
 it is related to the mind can we know. The legitimate action of 
 the understanding through the a priori concepts or categories 
 "hath this extent, no more." But there is a third department of 
 mental activity, the Reason. We seek to unify the knowledge 
 acquired by experience acquired through the understanding. 
 Thence arise ideas or suggestions, the presuppositions of all our 
 judgments. The ultimate premises implied in the different forms 
 of syllogism give us these ideas. They are the unconditioned 
 subject, the ego, not capable of being a predicate ; the world, as 
 a complete series of conditions resting on nothing beyond itself; 
 God, the supreme condition of " the possibility of all realities." 
 But while we are thus brought, as it were, to the threshold of a 
 supernatural realm, we are stopped there. The reality of the 
 objects thus suggested by reason is not only unverifiable, as 
 beyond experience; it is inconceivable. For the moment it is 
 assumed and reasoned upon, we land in antinomies in dilem- 
 mas, each branch of which in every case is demonstrable, yet 
 each is the contradiction of the other. The mind is straying 
 beyond its province. Thus Kant argues that freedom and neces- 
 sity are each provable, but each inconsistent with the other. He 
 considers the proofs of the being of God untenable. The onto- 
 logical proof is a fallacy, a thing being inferred from a thought ; 
 the cosmological has to fall back on the ontological for support ; 
 and even the argument of design is not demonstrative, and at the 
 best could not establish the infinitude of the divine attributes. 
 Rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational theology 
 have no foothold. The upshot of the Kantian achievement is the 
 organization of skepticism. 
 
 But in the Practical Reason, that which is lost is recovered.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 The moral nature testifies to God, freedom, and immortality. I 
 ought, and, if I ought, it is true that I can. I am made for virtue 
 and for happiness, two ends. Of this I am conscious. Then 
 there is a Moral Governor by whom these ends are made to coin- 
 cide, and an immortality, the scene of their junction. The free- 
 dom of which I am possessed is the power of determining the 
 will by the moral law, uninfluenced by the desires. The Practical 
 Reason gives the rule : " So act that your act can be generalized 
 into a maxim " ; that is, will nothing that you cannot will as uni- 
 versal. Religion, according to Kant, is the recognition of our 
 duties as divine commands. It is throughout ethical and legal. 
 It is the " categorical imperative " that is exalted. There is no 
 place for Love, the content of the law. It is in his Religion 
 within the Bounds of Pure Reason that we find the exposition of 
 Kant's religious views. In consonance with the thought of Lessing, 
 whatever in religion is exterior to ethics, whether it be facts or 
 doctrines, the "statutory faith," is simply valuable on account 
 of the weakness of human nature. As reason becomes more 
 mature, and as the moral sense comes to exercise control, every- 
 thing not recognized and verified by reason will cease to be of any 
 account. Even now we must deduce from Scripture in our inter- 
 pretations that, and that only, which conforms to universal morality. 
 Kant holds that the subjection of the will to the propensities, as it 
 must be self-originated, implies an Ur-bose, a transcendental act of 
 which it is the result, an act independent of our present conscious- 
 ness or memory. The new birth is the reversal of that underlying 
 disposition of the will. The Son of God is the ideal of the per- 
 fect man. Saving faith is the belief in that ideal which is repre- 
 sented in Christ. It is not the belief in historical circumstances 
 respecting Him. The various doctrines of the Christian system 
 are subjected to a transformation of the same general character. 
 The Church is a community for mutual help in the practice of 
 virtue. It is thus a family of the children of God. Any service 
 of God beyond the service of morality is either superfluous and 
 sometimes practically harmful, or a useful crutch for the weak. 
 Belief in divine influences on the soul can neither be approved nor 
 denied. Belief in miracles cannot be sustained by proof, and is 
 not helpful in the performance of duty. 
 
 The teaching of Kant on the moral side was a most healthful 
 rebuke of the lax tone and low ideals of the deistic illuminism.
 
 5oo 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Its bracing atmosphere was wholesome for many minds. But it 
 brought in a type of rationalism in which the distinctively religious 
 character of Christianity was eclipsed or subordinated to an ethical 
 legalism, and in which the miraculous parts of the Gospel narra- 
 tives were interpreted out of them by such devices as the pushing 
 of the notion of accommodation on the part of Christ Himself to 
 a groundless extreme. Misconceptions of an absurd nature were 
 attributed to the Apostles to account for their testimony. Paulus 
 (1761-1848) was the most conspicuous example of this style 
 of exegesis. In dogmatic theology, Wegscheider (1771-1848) 
 believed in a high providential mission of Jesus, but resolved 
 the miracles into mistakes of witnesses and reporters. Other 
 prominent exponents of this general type of teaching were Rohr 
 (1777-1848) and Bretschneider (1776-1848). Even preachers 
 like Reinhard (1753-1812), and theologians like Storr (1746- 
 1805), while not adopting the Kantian theology, were affected by 
 its influence. 
 
 A system which made religion a function of the will and exalted 
 the behest of conscience in such a way as to leave no verification 
 of the truths of religion in the voices of the heart such a lofty 
 but barren legalism could not but evoke dissent and a reaction. 
 Prominent in proclaiming the high place that belongs to feeling 
 in religion was Herder (1744-1803). If not an exact and self- 
 consistent thinker, he was fertile in quickening suggestions, full of 
 a genial enthusiasm, and versatile, a poet of merit and an elo- 
 quent preacher. He exerted a kindling influence in every direc- 
 tion. In his book on the Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, and in various 
 other writings, he impressed his readers with the sublimity and 
 attractiveness of the Scriptures, although a somewhat undue stress 
 was laid upon their aesthetic and literary charm. Without reject- 
 ing the facts of revelation, he dwells on their spiritual import. 
 He is interested in the allegorical significance of Biblical narra- 
 tives. He assumes a primitive revelation to communicate to men 
 language and the foundations of knowledge. His principal work 
 is the Ideas towards a Philosophy of the History of Mankind. 
 Nature is looked upon as a progressive development looking 
 towards man as the goal. So there is an ascending development 
 of mankind. But development is not a genetic evolution of 
 organisms, as in recent theories of natural science. The lower 
 stage prefigures the stage that follows. Reason directly recog-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 501 
 
 nizes God as the Supreme Reason, the primary cause and the 
 bond of all things. As man's development is incomplete here, 
 we are warranted in our expectation of immortality. Christ knows 
 God as His Father and all men as His brethren, and is thus the 
 ideal man. Inspiration is the enlivening of all the higher powers 
 of the human soul. There are nobler impulses of action than 
 mere law. Such are love and the enthusiasm of truth. With 
 the traditional dogmatic construction of the Christian teaching 
 Herder has no sympathy. Less indefinite than Herder's pro- 
 test against Kant's philosophy of religion was the protest of 
 Jacobi (1743-1819). He agreed that the fundamental truths 
 of natural religion are indemonstrable. They are objects of an 
 immediate belief, a belief spontaneous, inspired by a necessity of 
 feeling and connected with a spiritual craving. This instinctive 
 faith is an act of Reason. Reason is not, as according to Kant, 
 merely regulative ; it is intuitive. " Nature conceals God ; " it 
 is a chain of efficient causes, excluding both chance and provi- 
 dence. " Man reveals God." As he is conscious of a power 
 within him which is independent of nature, superior to nature, 
 " so has he a belief in God, a feeling, an experience of His 
 existence." 1 Jacobi's exposition of his ideas in the book Of the 
 Divine Things had a great number of sympathetic readers who 
 were repelled by the frigid rationalism of the Kantian School. 
 Thenceforward, there appear two streams in the field of Ger- 
 man thought, a believing Christian theology, founded on the 
 recognition of a " consciousness of God," indigenous in the soul, 
 and a speculative Pantheism, the fruit of a modification, in this 
 direction, of Kant's philosophy. 
 
 1 Jacobi, Werke, Vol. III. pp. 424-426.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SCHLEIERMACHER'S THEOLOGICAL SYSTEM 
 
 HERDER and Jacob! were only forerunners of a prince among 
 theologians, an extraordinary genius, who exerted an influence 
 proportionate to his powers, Frederic Schleiermacher (1768- 
 1834). He early received deep religious impressions from the 
 Moravians. He was a philosopher who was excelled by none in 
 dialectic and speculative ability. His translation of all Plato's 
 writings is only one evidence of his interest in metaphysical 
 studies. Mingled with the powerful Christian influence in deter- 
 mining the cast of his thought was an early and lasting attraction 
 exerted by the doctrine of Spinoza. On the one hand, a deep 
 appreciation of Christ as the Redeemer, a rare insight, in whatever 
 respects it may be defective, into His character and office among 
 men, and, on the other hand, speculative difficulties in conceiving 
 of God as possessed of attributes of personality these are the 
 two facts explanatory of Schleiermacher's system. His Discourses 
 on Religion to the Cultivated among its Despisers (1799) and his 
 Monologues ( 1 800) , vague as they are in respect to doctrine, are 
 an impressive, and proved an effective, appeal in behalf of spiritual 
 religion as the true life of the soul. His principal theological work, 
 a consecutive exposition of his system, is The Christian Faith 
 Der christliche Glaube (1822). 
 
 In this " epoch-making " treatise the author sets aside the ration- 
 alistic dogmatics as identifying religion with ethics, the orthodox 
 dogmatics as comprising propositions not involved in Christian 
 experience, and as deducing its contents from no single principle. 
 Dogmatics is a theological science. As such it is related to the 
 Church. What is the Church? It is a society, a communion 
 (Gemeinschafi), based on piety. This is the bond of union. What 
 is piety ? It is not a function of the knowing faculty, for its seat is 
 
 502
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 503 
 
 not the intellect, nor of the will. We are always carried back of 
 the voluntary act to the impulse behind it (Antrieb) . The seat of 
 piety is feeling. But what specifically is the feeling which consti- 
 tutes piety? It is the feeling of absolute dependence. It is not 
 the feeling of freedom ; it is not the feeling of relative dependence 
 which we have towards the world, or finite things about us. In feel- 
 ing, the soul is closely united with the object in the embrace of 
 its object. In knowing, the object stands over against the subject ; 
 it is defined. The feeling of absolute dependence coexists with 
 the feeling of relative dependence. It is in the due relation of 
 these feelings, the dominating, determining power of the former 
 that piety consists. They are the " consciousness of God " and 
 " the consciousness of the world." It is by this postulate of piety as 
 purely subjective, that not only at the outset, but always, Schleier- 
 macher steers clear of his speculative difficulties connected with 
 theism. Christian piety is the piety which is conscious of being 
 related to Christ as its author, of itself as an effect of the soul's 
 connection with Him. The Church, as the society of the religious, 
 is an organism whose members are active and passive, who give 
 and receive religious impressions (Erregungen) . 
 
 The function of Dogmatic Theology can now be stated. Its 
 principle is the feeling of absolute dependence in its relation to 
 Christ. It is the statement of the contents of Christian experience. 
 Nothing else has any place in this science. Other facts and doc- 
 trines belong elsewhere to Ethics or to other branches of knowl- 
 edge. Dogmatics considers, first, the pious experience (Gottes- 
 bewusstseiti) in itself; secondly, the development of the sinful 
 experience or principle ; and thirdly, the consciousness of grace, 
 or the inward experience of redemption, as related to Christ. 
 
 I. It is not creation, but divine preservation, that is involved in 
 the religious feeling, the sense of absolute dependence. Creation 
 from eternity is the true conception, God having no relation to 
 time. And the only attribute to be ascribed to God, on the 
 foundation of the religious feeling, is primal causal agency (urs'dch- 
 lichkeif). The world as a totality is referred to God, not anything 
 singly considered. He is the immanent cause of the world. His 
 omnipotence only signifies that all separate causes, manifestations 
 of power, are referable to Him. It is not implied in the religious 
 feeling that there is in God surplus, unexerted power. His om- 
 niscience signifies that His agency is a living power ; but this is all.
 
 504 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Plans and execution of plans are not to be attributed to Him. 
 The activity designated as omniscience is not to be distinguished 
 from omnipotence. 
 
 II. Sin is the predominance, the victory, of the flesh over the 
 spirit. It consists in the subordination, the subjugation, of the re- 
 ligious feeling under the lower nature, or worldliness. This condi- 
 tion as common to the race is Original Sin. It is the natural 
 condition of all men from the beginning. Thus there is no real 
 distinction between sin, and the consciousness of sin. Adam was 
 like us in this respect : there was no fall from holiness. Here the 
 creeds are said to be in error. 
 
 III. Christ is distinguished from other men by the absolute 
 control from the start of the religious feeling the sense of God. 
 He is sinless, yet His character made progress by continual victories 
 as the appetencies of nature unfolded themselves. His continu- 
 ous and perfect religiousness is the indwelling of God in Christ 
 and is the peculiarity of His person. 
 
 His person is supernatural as not explicable by circumstances, 
 by His environment, but only by reference to an act of God. 
 This, however, is not to be understood as an interposition in time. 
 It is nature as a whole, or the race, which evolves this person at a 
 particular time. We are not required, therefore, to deny that He 
 had a human father. In Christ the human is wholly passive and 
 receptive. The formula that He had a divine nature is question- 
 able, since nature implies passivity. The perfection of Christ is 
 in the religious province. He must, moreover, express Himself 
 through national peculiarities and modes of thought. He is not 
 properly styled the Example ( Vorbild} , but the Type, of Mankind. 
 He realizes in Himself the ideal of man. 
 
 To Schleiermacher, Christ is the Source of a new spiritual life of 
 communion with God, first realized in the Saviour Himself, and 
 from Him communicated to those who are drawn out of them- 
 selves into fellowship with Him. But this effect is conditioned on 
 the entering of the individual within the historically constituted 
 sphere of the Saviour's influence, the community of believers. It 
 is not the effect of a direct, supernatural act of Christ in relation 
 to the individual. Christ is compared to an individual in whom 
 the idea of the State should first come to consciousness, and who 
 should gather the unorganized mass of men from the state of 
 nature into a civil community by taking them up into a participa-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY c o c 
 
 tion in this new life the life of citizenship. The redemptive 
 agency of Christ consists in the imparting to men, through the 
 attractive power which He exerts upon them, that inward con- 
 sciousness of fellowship with God (Gottesbewusstsrin) which in 
 Him is absolutely controlling, and holds every other feeling in due 
 subordination to itself. His atoning work is the communication to 
 them of His own undisturbed blessedness, which is the concomi- 
 tant of this filial communion with God. Christ receives the 
 believer to be a partaker of His holiness and blessedness of His 
 inward spiritual life. He acts upon men to this end. God looks 
 upon the sinner, not as he is actually, but as he is in virtue of his 
 relation to Christ as he is ideally, as he will be when the process 
 which has begun is complete. Sin still exists in him, but as a 
 vanishing element. 
 
 The union of the believer with Christ brings the forgiveness of 
 sin ; since, the principle of sin being itself destroyed at the root, 
 sin being driven, as it were, from the centre to the circumference 
 of the character, evil or pain does not break up the harmony of 
 the inward life ; if the disciple suffered, the Master suffered like- 
 wise : and evil, including death, loses its punitive aspect, and is 
 transmuted into chastisement, or a merciful infliction. Forgive- 
 ness does not free from suffering ; it simply changes its effect and 
 its significance. The sufferings of Christ are not directly essential 
 to His work as a Saviour. They are needful, first, as His devotion 
 to the work of founding the new kingdom could be manifested in 
 its fulness only by His not giving way to the utmost resistance, 
 even to that which involved the destruction of His person ; and, 
 secondly, because His blessedness could only appear in its perfec- 
 tion in the continuance of it through the most extreme suffering, 
 even that which grew out of the withstanding of sin, and out of 
 His own fellow-feeling with sinful men, which attended this most 
 bitter experience. 
 
 In the exposition of the priestly office of Christ, Schleiermacher 
 fully develops the idea sketched above. " The fact that only what 
 Christ does corresponds perfectly to the divine will, and expresses 
 purely and completely the reign of godliness ( Gottesbewusstseiri) 
 in human nature, is the foundation of our relation to Him ; and 
 on the recognition of this everything that is distinctively Christian 
 rests. In this is included the fact that, independently of his con- 
 nection with Christ, neither any individual man, nor any particular
 
 506 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 part of the collective life of humanity, in any era, is, in and of 
 itself, righteous before God, or an object of His approbation." 
 " In living fellowship with Christ, no one will be, or will be con- 
 sidered by God, anything for himself; but every one will appear 
 only as inspired by Him, and as a portion, in the process of 
 development, of His work." He is like the High Priest in rela- 
 tion to the people ; God looks on them as in Him. " His pure 
 will to fulfil the divine will is, by means of the vital fellowship 
 between Him and us, operative in us, and we thus have part in 
 His perfection, if not in the actual realization, nevertheless in the 
 stimulus and spur (Antrieb)." Christ has actually fulfilled the 
 will of God, therefore, "not in our stead, but for our benefit." As 
 concerns the passive obedience, or sufferings, of Christ, "in 
 every human community, so far as it can be considered a distinct 
 whole, there is as much evil as there is sin ; so that, to be sure, 
 evil is the punishment of sin; not, however, in the sense that each 
 individual suffers completely and exclusively just the evil which 
 stands in connection with his personal sin. Therefore, in every 
 case where another suffers evils which are not connected with his 
 own sin, it can be said that he suffers punishment for others, who, 
 since the sin, as the cause and fountain of evil, has exhausted 
 itself, are no longer smitten with evils in consequence of it. Since 
 Christ, in order to take us up into the fellowship of His life, must 
 enter into the fellowship of our life which is sinful, where sin is 
 continually begetting suffering and evil, He suffered for the entire 
 human race ; for to the whole race He chose to ally Himself. As 
 High Priest, moreover, His sympathy with human guilt and ill- 
 desert, or His sympathetic apprehension of it, which was the 
 motive of His redemptive work, reached its highest pitch when it 
 inspired Him to undergo death at the hands of sinners. Here 
 was His victory over sin ; and with it, over evil which sin brings 
 in its train. Hence, by the sufferings of Christ punishment may 
 be said to be abolished, because in the communion of His blessed 
 life, evil, which becomes a vanishing element, is no longer felt as 
 a penalty. It is in His sufferings that we behold His holiness, 
 and His blessedness also, which are seen to be invincible under the 
 severest test. By entering into His sufferings, the conviction of 
 His holiness and blessedness is brought home to us. The suffer- 
 ing of Christ is vicarious, in that His sympathetic apprehension 
 (Mitgefiiht) of sin is complete, even as regards those who are not
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 SO/ 
 
 themselves distressed by the consciousness of sin; and in the 
 sense that, being Himself sinless, He is not under obligation to 
 suffer. His sympathetic compassion for men as sinners is strong 
 enough to take in all ; it exhibits itself fully in His freely giving 
 Himself up to death ; and it serves ever to complete and perfect 
 our imperfect consciousness of sin. Christ sustains a relation to 
 us which renders Him the representative of the entire human 
 race, inasmuch as, in the character of a High Priest, He brings 
 our prayers to God, and brings to us the divine blessing. He is 
 the Priest whom all preceding priesthoods imperfectly foreshadow. 
 He is the most perfect Mediator between God and every separate 
 portion of the human race, no one of whom, in and for himself, 
 could be an object for God, or come into any connection with 
 Him. In His consciousness is the norm and the fountain of 
 acceptable piety. Even the penitence which is appropriate for 
 sin, finds its pattern and potence in His sympathetic sense of its 
 evil." 1 
 
 It is impossible not to be struck with the spiritual insight and 
 scientific method which mark Schleiermacher's discussion of this 
 subject. Christ, bringing into the race the life of holy and blessed 
 communion with God ; maintaining in Himself this life of filial love 
 and of deep, inward peace consequent upon it, even in the midst 
 of death inflicted by the malignity of men, into whose condition 
 of sin and misery He entered with an exhaustive sympathy ; anni- 
 hilating thus, by His holy constancy, sin as a principle, and with 
 it the suffering of which sin is the parent, and which is put in 
 the way of gradual extinguishment ; propagating this inward life, 
 within the circle of His historic influence, by drawing sinful men 
 up into the fellowship of His filial relation to God, and thus giving 
 them, too, the victory of the spirit over the flesh ; lifting them, 
 also, above the power of outward calamity to break the soul's 
 calm, and transmuting for them all outward suffering, including 
 physical death, into a means of purification and peace, these 
 ideas surely include an important part of the Gospel. 
 
 But the subjective character of Schleiermacher's theology is 
 manifest in this discussion of the Atonement. Sin is not con- 
 ceived of strictly as something abnormal, but as a lower stage in 
 human development. The end of the work of Christ is not so 
 much to rescue, as to elevate, human nature. Hence the feeling 
 1 Der Christliche Glaube, II. I, 51 sq.
 
 508 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 of guilt and its correlate, the holy displeasure of God, are left out. 
 When the principle of sin is broken in its control, it is conceived 
 that guilt and the sense of guilt disappear of themselves. Guilt 
 is really made to be a spur to an onward development, instead of 
 being retrospective and retributive in its import. Therefore a 
 conscious need of expiation finds no place. According to Schlei- 
 ermacher, the work of Christ, and His death as a part of it, 
 delivers from sin, and delivers from punishment; but this last 
 effect is within the sphere of the natural order, in the way of 
 cause and effect, and not from any other influence upon the mind 
 of God. 
 
 The new life through Christ is progressive. As beginning, it is 
 Regeneration ; as in progress, it is Sanctification. Viewed from 
 the side of man, Regeneration is termed Conversion; from the 
 side of God, Justification. When the will ceases to be determined 
 by the " flesh," by the influences of the world of sense, and when 
 the religious consciousness, the incentives emanating from this 
 source, become dominant, the change is " conversion." Justifica- 
 tion is the removal by God of our consciousness of guilt and of 
 ill-desert. It begins with forgiveness. This is simultaneous with 
 the sinner's union to Christ, when he begins to contend against 
 his own sin, makes it no longer his own. Then the sense of guilt 
 vanishes. Then he becomes willing to suffer with Christ. Hence 
 natural evil is no longer felt to be penal. Against future evil he 
 is secured by his part in the kingly office of Christ. As Christ 
 lives in us, we become partakers of His Sonship. But Justification 
 is not a distinct act of God in time, but a single, temporal effect 
 of one comprehensive act of God. It is the effect in time of one 
 eternal and universal " purpose " the last term being figuratively 
 used. 
 
 Respecting the miracles of Christ, Schleiermacher is obliged to 
 deny the possibility of miracles in the sense of special interposi- 
 tions, effects of supernatural power. Whatever phenomena are 
 called miraculous, in case their occurrence is established, are effects 
 of the Power immanent in the world effects provided for in 
 nature. Miracles are not a component element in our faith in 
 Christ. But the rejection of them would be such an impeachment 
 of the competency of the original reporters as to cast discredit on 
 their testimony, in general, respecting Christ, and thus destroy the 
 basis of faith. This is the case as concerns His resurrection.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 509 
 
 His Ascension is not sufficiently verified by the evidence, out 
 nothing can be admitted inconsistent with our faith in Him, 
 for example, that He lived on in concealment. His Second 
 Advent signifies that the perfecting of the Church is possible only 
 by a sudden advance as it were, a bound when the propaga- 
 tion of the race ceases, and the mingling of the good and the evil. 
 It can only be looked upon as proceeding from the kingly office 
 of Christ. The great miracle for us is the effect of Christianity on 
 mankind. The greatest miracle of all is Christ Himself. Schleier- 
 macher must conceive of conversion as exclusively due to God's 
 agency. This is expressed by the term ' Election,' with the ad- 
 ditional fact that the occurrence of conversion in each case is at 
 a particular time. But all are ultimately saved. The Church is 
 one, as a nation is one, through the one spirit that pervades it and 
 unites all its members, amid individual peculiarities. Reception 
 into fellowship with Christ and reception of the Holy Spirit, are 
 one and the same thing. Faith in Christ precedes a doctrine 
 concerning the Scriptures. They are the first exposition of the 
 Christian faith, and the norm of all that follow it. The call to the 
 ministry is the inward disposition in some to exercise predomi- 
 nantly the forth-going, rather than the receptive, species of activity, 
 both species being characteristic of the members of the Church. 
 Prayer is not to be conceived of as producing an effect on God. 
 True prayer springs from a presage in the Christian mind of what is 
 to be done by Christ, of what is to occur in His kingdom. The 
 prayer, as well as its answer, are products of Christ's agency as 
 king. True prayer has no other object than something that is 
 included in the divine order of events. Moreover, the state of 
 mind out of which prayer arises is one of the conditions, in the 
 natural order, of its fulfilment. The Visible and the Invisible 
 Church are not spatially separated. Every visible part of the 
 Church is a mixture of the Church and the world. The Invisible 
 Church is the sum of all the effects of the Spirit. The Church 
 will be perfect when all reactionary influences of the world upon 
 it and within it cease. This gives the distinction of the Militant 
 and the Triumphant Church. Belief in immortality may be a 
 selfish or an unselfish belief. The real foundation of it is the fact 
 of the union of God and man in Christ, and its design to 
 redeem and perfect the individuals of the race. In eschatology, 
 no systematic construction of doctrine is possible. The con-
 
 5io 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 tinuance of personal life is represented under the image of the 
 resurrection of the body : it is the taking away of death. The 
 perfection of the Church, from one point of view, as the 
 Church is no more to be acted upon to its hurt by the world, 
 is the Last Judgment. From another point of view, as excluding 
 all imperfection, it is eternal blessedness. Schleiermacher argues 
 against the doctrine of eternal punishment, on the ground that it 
 would interfere with the happiness of heaven. Whether the in- 
 dividual at death takes on a new organism, or whether the " gen- 
 eral resurrection " takes place at the Last Judgment, is a question 
 on which Schleiermacher gives no decision. The divine govern- 
 ment is the causal agency of God as directed to the existence and 
 spread of the Church. The Church, or the kingdom of God, in 
 its whole extent and in all its consequences, is the end of the 
 divine government. Love is the tendency of one to unite himself 
 to another and to live in another. In the Church God unites Him- 
 self with men. Thus Love is the controlling principle, just as in the 
 harmonious ordering of redemption God's Wisdom is discovered. 
 But the application of these terms to the undivided causal agency 
 of God is anthropopathic. The Church doctrine of the Trinity 
 is not an "immediate expression respecting the Christian self- 
 consciousness, but only a conjunction of several such expressions." 
 Consistently with his whole system, Schleiermacher declares for 
 the Sabellian conception. 
 
 In any brief sketch of Schleiermacher's system justice can hardly 
 be done to the Christian elements that pervade it. Religion is 
 set free from servitude to philosophy, and gains an independent 
 footing for itself. A central place is given to Christ. His influ- 
 ence, His relation to His disciples, is conceived of as deep and 
 controlling. Schleiermacher is not ashamed to call it mystical, in 
 contrast with the rationalistic descriptions of it. Yet it is a system 
 such that one is at a loss whether to call it Christianity leavened 
 with Pantheism, or Pantheism leavened with Christianity. In truth, 
 as it has been said, it is a mixture of the two where each is com- 
 pletely pulverized and both so thoroughly mixed that it is not easy 
 to discern them separately. In the conception of God at the 
 outset His transcendence is sacrificed and absorbed in His imma- 
 nence. At the starting-point religion is resolved into the sense of 
 dependence. Personality, freedom, fail of a due recognition. 
 The radical assumption of an immanent, intramundane causality
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 5! I 
 
 moulds the conception of sin, of the person of Christ, of prayer, 
 of justification in short, of every point of Christian doctrine. 
 Although personality is wanting in Schleiermacher's conception of 
 God, yet it is something different from the bare substance of 
 Spinoza. It embraces the idea of a living, active energy.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE LIBERAL EVANGELICAL OR MEDIATING SCHOOL: THE INFLUENCE 
 OF SCHLEIERMACHER ; DORNER ; JULIUS MULLER ; NITZSCH 
 THE SYSTEM OF ROTHE LIPSIUS THE CONFESSIONAL LUTHERANS 
 THE RITSCHLIANS 
 
 SCHLEIERMACHER broke a pathway out of the ethical rationalism 
 to a more living apprehension of religion and the Gospel. He 
 was the founder of the School of Liberal Evangelical Theology, 
 which not only drew inspiration from his teaching, but took up rich 
 materials from it to be incorporated in systems differing from his 
 own. The Mediating School, as it is called, counts among its 
 members the great historian Neander, exegetes like Liicke, 
 Tholuck, Bleek, and numerous writers in dogmatic theology, of 
 whom Twesten, Nitzsch, Julius Mtiller, Rothe, Dorner, are among 
 the most eminent. For many years the Studien und Kritiken, a 
 quarterly review, was the organ of the school. It is a school 
 whose representatives naturally have differed widely among them- 
 selves in theological opinion. They carry us back to the point 
 of view taken by Origen in his time, where diversity on many 
 important questions is not regarded as a ground for sundering 
 fellowship, and problems not a few are admitted to be waiting for 
 a satisfactory solution. In relation to Schleiermacher, his influ- 
 ence is perceptible in all their theological constructions. At 
 every point, he is both followed, and, if not combated, is criticised. 
 The Mediating School accepted the conclusions of theological 
 investigation ; it partook earnestly of the scientific spirit, but planted 
 itself firmly on the ground of supernatural revelation and the 
 evangelical faith. It was "mediating," moreover, as supporting 
 the union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches, on the basis 
 of the consensus of their confessions in things deemed to be essen- 
 tial. Although the epithet " mediating " was sometimes applied
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 513 
 
 as a term of reproach, the theologians of this class are not 
 chargeable with a weak eclecticism. They were not at all inter- 
 ested in making a patchwork out of conflicting systems. The 
 principal theologians in their ranks have been independent in 
 their thinking, as they have been vigorous and learned in their 
 discussions. 
 
 While agreeing with Schleiermacher that religion is not a prod- 
 uct of philosophy, but has roots of its own in the spirit of man, 
 they, generally speaking, consider his definition of piety to be 
 quite incomplete. It designates piety in its nascent life in the 
 soul; but piety faith involves thought and will as well as 
 feeling. In the origin of religion, psychologically viewed, con- 
 science has a part. Freedom, as well as dependence, is an ele- 
 ment. Man not only consciously depends on God, he gives himself 
 to God. God is personal; personality does not exclude infini- 
 tude in the proper idea of the infinite ; His power is not confined 
 to the extent of its exertion in the finite world ; He is transcendent 
 as well as immanent. The mediating theologians accept the char- 
 acteristic doctrines of the Reformers. They present modified 
 views of Inspiration, not holding to the inerrancy of Scripture, yet 
 maintaining that the Scriptures as a whole are the norm of doc- 
 trine. Justification by faith alone, the Christian life as the off- 
 spring of faith, are, likewise, tenets earnestly maintained. They 
 are agreed in believing in the divinity of Christ, although not at 
 one as to the mode of the Incarnation, and the connection of the 
 divine and the human in the historical Christ. They defend the 
 historical verity of the miracles of Scripture, including the miracle 
 of the Resurrection of Jesus, although not holding that all the 
 recorded miracles, more than the rest of the incidents in the Biblical 
 record, have an equal historical verification, or are equally entitled 
 to credence. As on the subject of Inspiration, so on the subject 
 of Eschatology, for example, in respect to the eternity of future 
 punishment, there is no absolute concurrence of opinion. As to 
 this particular question, many lean towards a negative judgment, 
 and many consider it doubtful. Commonly it is held by them 
 that the opportunity of repentance and reclamation continues after 
 death, and can only terminate when a state of incurable obduracy 
 supervenes, or the power of spiritual sensibility and of response 
 to the incentives to repentance, is exhausted. As to the proba- 
 bility of the occurrence of such a fatal event in the case of 
 
 2L
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 any, the mediating theologians, it has already been remarked, 
 variously judge, in view of considerations drawn from reason 
 and the Bible. 
 
 Dorner is the author of four extended works, all of them monu- 
 ments of his extraordinary talents and learning, and of his genuine 
 piety : The History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, The 
 History of Protestant Theology, The System of Christian Doctrine, 
 and Christian Ethics. He is a philosophical, as well as Scriptural, 
 theologian, and suggestions, especially as to the method of historical 
 development, remind one of Hegel. The centre of his system is 
 the union of God and man in Christ, the consummation to which 
 not only the Old Testament Revelation, but all religions, point to 
 or look towards. Dorner rejects the theory of Kenosis. Incarna- 
 tion, real from the beginning, is gradual in its effect, keeping pace 
 with the ethical development of Jesus. Thus, his limitations as to 
 knowledge, etc., are to be explained. In the experience of justifi- 
 cation by faith, wherein faith advances from lower stages to its 
 goal, are contained the truths of which it is the province of 
 Christian thought to gain a scientific apprehension. Here is 
 opened the field of Biblical study and of legitimate speculation. 
 Men in their natural state are in an abnormal condition which is 
 the inherited consequence of the fall, and is displeasing to God, 
 yet not imputed to the individual, until his personality is developed, 
 with the power to struggle against it. 1 There may be said to be 
 a collective sin and a collective guilt. This is punishable, and is 
 punished. 2 But as the evil of the personal subject and of the race 
 are mingled, although the consequence without divine help is a 
 sinking to an even lower depth morally, yet it does not bring 
 final condemnation until and unless sin advances to obduracy 
 under the test presented by a knowledge of the Gospel. With- 
 out this knowledge, there is deserved condemnation, and the 
 provision for salvation is wholly of grace. But nothing short 
 of a wilful failure to meet the test involved in the coming of 
 the light of the Gospel can lead to hopeless perdition. They 
 to whom this opportunity has not been given fairly and fully, 
 will enjoy it beyond this life. But that it will prove effectual 
 for good in all cases cannot be confidently asserted. The 
 Anselmic idea of Atonement is discarded, yet the fact of an 
 objective change in the relation of God to mankind through 
 
 1 Glaubenslthre, Vol. II. p. 165 sq. 2 Ibid. p. 173.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 515 
 
 the work of Christ is maintained in a discussion pursued with a 
 keen discrimination. 1 
 
 Julius Miiller taught theology with a masterly vigor and clear- 
 ness of discernment, mingled with profound moral earnestness. 
 The weakness of his health in his closing years preventing such 
 a revisal of his lectures on dogmatic theology as he deemed 
 requisite, he directed that they should not be published. But in 
 his treatise on " The Christian Doctrine of Sin " is involved an 
 exposition of the foundations of theism and of certain other 
 leading topics. The belief in God takes its rise in the conscious- 
 ness of our personality as finite, yet as differing to to genere from 
 the world without, and in the conscious subjection to the law of 
 conscience, which is independent, as to its source, of our wills. 
 This belief is elicited and corroborated by the proof (so called) of 
 God's existence and attributes. 
 
 All theories to account for sin otherwise than through the self- 
 determination of the creature, or to define it as anything but volun- 
 tary selfishness, are confuted. The stages in the development of 
 sin, the nature and degree of freedom consistent with its existence, 
 are pointed out. Miiller is led by his reasonings to assume as the 
 ground and cause of sin a transcendent, non-temporal, voluntary 
 act of each individual of the race, a revival of the hypothesis 
 (in its general character) of Origen. This is an inference from 
 the proposition that our state is, prior to conscious moral choices, 
 culpable, as presupposing a will already determined in the wrong 
 direction, and from the conditions of personal guilt and responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 Carl Immanuel Nitzsch was revered as the Nestor among the 
 Schleiermacherian theologians. He was born in 1789. His Sys- 
 tem of Christian Doctrine is sometimes spoken of as obscure, but 
 its obscurity is owing to no want of precision either of thought or 
 expression, but to the amount of thought which is packed into a 
 small space. It becomes lucid, therefore, to a patient and atten- 
 tive student. Nitzsch sets forth the doctrine of an immanent 
 Trinity. He considers it as the one complete shield against 
 " Atheism, Polytheism, Pantheism, or Dualism." The Jewish and 
 the Mohammedan conception of God, by their barrenness and 
 emptiness (Trockenheit und Leere) have misled into the most 
 
 1 See especially Glaubenslehre, Vol. II. pp. 656-659, with the preceding 
 review of theories.
 
 5 i6 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 crass Pantheism. Through the Trinity, the realization of the attri- 
 butes of God is seen to be possible within His own being, without the 
 necessity of creation, and the Incarnation to be possible with no con- 
 founding of God and man. 1 The world, in its need of redemption, 
 requires such a redemption as shall not only reawaken its religious 
 sensibility and capacity, but shall also impart the power of self- 
 punishment, and of entering, through the death of contrition, into 
 the life of holiness. Here is the need of a Mediator. " The world's 
 unrighteousness spends itself upon the Holy and Righteous One, 
 completes and exhausts itself. He endures it in the glory of His 
 innocence, in order, by His spirit, to punish it upon us. Only 
 as the power and possibility of an actual release of men from sin 
 (JEnts&ndigung) , of our dying with Him, and rising in a new life, 
 does He suffer death in our place, and make Himself an offering 
 to God. Only thus is He a ransom for many. It is in the depth 
 of His sympathy, and in the endeavor for the world's salvation, 
 that He bears the penalty of its sin." According to Nitzsch, the 
 Scripture teaches an eternal damnation of individuals hypotheti- 
 cally. Grace not being coercive, final resistance is possible, and, 
 supposing it to be actual, there is an eternal condemnation. Whether 
 this " hypothesis " will become " thesis," or actuality, is another 
 question. He argues against the doctrine of the annihilation of 
 the wicked. If universal restoration be the fact, or annihilation, or 
 the reduction of the soul to a ruin, bereft of all good as well as 
 evil activity, it is conceivable that the same Apostle who had 
 preached eternal damnation, nevertheless, in his final eschatology 
 (in i Cor. xv.), passes beyond and above this expectation. 
 Neander likewise discerns in Paul a progress in his knowledge of 
 eschatology, and a later teaching (i Cor. xv. 27, 28; Phil. ii. 10. 
 1 1 ; Col. i. 20) of universal restitution. This, he says, would not 
 contradict the doctrine of eternal punishment, as it appears in the 
 Gospels ; " for, although those who are hardened in wickedness, 
 left to the consequences of their conduct, their merited fate, have 
 to expect endless unhappiness, yet a hidden purpose of the divine 
 compassion is not necessarily excluded." 2 
 
 None among the modern German theologians excels in original- 
 ity and, it may be added, in attractions of character Richard 
 Rothe. Large as is the debt which he owes to Schleiermacher, he 
 is not to be classified, without much qualification, with the Schleier- 
 1 System d. Christl. Lehre, p. 188. 2 PI. and Tr. of the Christ. Ch. p. 487.
 
 macherian School. He writes with a faith in theism which, as he 
 tells us, has never been ruffled by a doubt, and with the most 
 decided supernaturalism relative to Christianity, a singular bold- 
 ness in speculation, not coupled in the least with arrogance. 
 Rothe holds that Ethics and Religion are not to be dissevered. 
 In his great work, the Theological Ethics, the two are fused in one 
 system. The starting-point is the Christian's consciousness of God 
 and the idea contained in it. From this religious consciousness 
 Rothe holds that a theology may be deduced by a logical process 
 in which every step implies every other. The process is carried 
 forward independently of the facts of natural and revealed religion. 
 Its results must correspond to these realities, and its freedom from 
 error must be tested by its conformity or dis-conformity to them. 
 Thus he holds to the possibility of a speculative theology, in its foun- 
 dation, independent of metaphysical philosophy. 1 In his posthu- 
 mous Dogmatics, the system of orthodox doctrine is explained, and 
 undergoes at every point a criticism by which it is greatly modi- 
 fied. In his little work serving as an introduction to Dogmatics 
 he states his views of the Bible and its authority. Revelation 
 has two sides. It is Manifestation, the objective acts of God in 
 Providence as it is concerned, in the old Dispensation, with the 
 Hebrew people, and in the new with Christ, and Inspiration, an 
 illumination of the mind for the interpretation of them. Revela- 
 tion is in itself miraculous. Special miracles are not in the least 
 in conflict with a right conception of natural law, which is not 
 a chain upon the Creator. The recorded miracles are historical 
 facts, to be tested, however, like the natural events in the narra- 
 tive, by attention to the evidence in the special cases. Yet belief 
 is not in these days to be exacted of those who for instance, 
 from misconceptions as to science find them incredible. The 
 Scriptures are not free from errors. Yet they contain in them- 
 selves that is, the body of these writings contain when studied, 
 a corrective. Rothe undertakes to explain the inner self-realization 
 of God. An immanent Trinity is excluded. Matter is eternal and 
 necessary, it being the non-ego which God opposes to Himself in 
 the act of self-consciousness. But it does not clash with His per- 
 fection as the Absolute, since by a process of creation He can 
 spiritualize matter, infuse it with spirit, and thus more fully realize 
 
 1 For a criticism of this position, see Flint's Art. "Theology" (Encycl. 
 Brit. Vol. 23, p. 270).
 
 5 i8 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 His idea. When man is created there is in him a duality. He is 
 to take up and carry forward the spiritualizing process. He is to 
 spiritualize his own physical being. But selfishness is the natural 
 and necessary result of his relation to matter and the promptings 
 of his material nature. The historic fall of man and the transmis- 
 sion of sin by heredity or imputation are not admitted. Although 
 Rothe does not exclude the freedom of the will, which is involved 
 in the ethical obligation to develop a spiritual body, yet his idea 
 is a species of gnosticism. The design of God is counteracted 
 by sin, flesh dominates spirit, but redemption comes to our aid 
 and deliverance. Rothe contends that the preexistence of Christ 
 is not asserted by Himself. This doctrine, so far as it appears in 
 Paul and in John, is a subjective inference on their part from His 
 divinity. His miraculous birth is a requisite condition of His 
 freedom from the dominance of the flesh, to which the rest of 
 mankind are subject. He is, however, subject to temptation and 
 reaches mature perfectness through conflict. The Incarnation 
 brings to pass an ethical union of God and man in the person of 
 Christ, which keeps pace in its progress towards absolute unity 
 with his ethical advance. That advance consists or carries in 
 it the conquest over sense, the spiritualizing of the material nature, 
 the progressive origination of a spiritual body. No one, says 
 Rothe, would style this a merely ethical unity, if he understood 
 what ethical unity means and involves. Christ is thus truly 
 divine. The Holy Spirit and the glorified Christ are one and the 
 same. The Spirit is not an hypostasis distinct from the ascended 
 Redeemer whose powers correspond to the offices ascribed to 
 " the Spirit " in the New Testament. Rothe was willing to style 
 himself a theosophist and to own thankfully his obligations to 
 Oetinger. Consistently with his general conception of man's 
 composite being and moral task, he makes our completed salva- 
 tion lie in the absolute conquest by the spirit, the spiritualizing of 
 our whole being. The ultimate consequence of a failure, in 
 whomsoever it may finally occur, to achieve in this way, through 
 the helps of grace, immortality, is the necessary extinction of life 
 and being. 
 
 Rothe's exposition of the Atonement is specially interesting. 
 Redemption must take away the consequence of sin to the trans- 
 gressor, in his relation to God, his being under the wrath of 
 God, or guilt and punishment. This is possible only through for-
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 519 
 
 giveness. And redemption must take away sin itself, and restore 
 in man the dominion of the opposite principle. Both elements 
 mutually condition each other. God, on account of His holiness 
 and righteousness, cannot forgive the sinner unless he is actually 
 freed from sin ; but, on the other hand, this last is impossible if 
 the sinner is not first forgiven, for so long as God repels him, he 
 cannot turn to God, or get rid of sin. Here is an antinomy. 
 Even the holiness and righteousness of God require this to be 
 dissolved and removed ; for these attributes are not content with 
 the mere punishment of sin ; they crave the actual destruction 
 of sin itself, the termination of its control in the hearts of men. 
 So that, in case forgiveness is indispensable to this result, holiness 
 and righteousness call for forgiveness ; only they demand inexorably 
 that pardon shall be granted in such a way as to carry in it, like- 
 wise, the holy reaction of God against sin ; i.e., these very feelings 
 of holiness and righteousness. The solution of the antinomy is 
 the Atonement, or the making of sin forgivable, a modification 
 in the relation between the sinner and God, in virtue of which 
 God, notwithstanding His holiness and righteousness, can forgive 
 the sin which still cleaves to him, and, notwithstanding its pres- 
 ence, can enter into communion with him. There is only one 
 way of effecting this result. If sin is to be forgiven before it is 
 actually removed or destroyed, God must have a guaranty, which 
 is perfect, as inhering in the transaction itself, that sin will in the 
 future be in fact wholly put away from the sinner, provided for- 
 giveness is provisionally imparted to him, so that this preliminary 
 reception of pardon, this pardon by anticipation, shall be itself 
 the actual beginning of a continuous process of purification from 
 sin, which will at length be absolutely complete. If forgiveness 
 can be thus the first step, the indispensable and sure antecedent, 
 of the actual deliverance from sin itself, then, and then only, can 
 the relation of God to the sinner be one in which God does not 
 manifest wrath. Nay it will become a relation in which even His 
 holiness and righteousness require Him to receive the sinner, as 
 reconciled, into communion and favor. Sin is so connected with 
 sin, and man so connected with man, that this new possibility 
 must come in with reference to the race of mankind as a whole. 
 This possibility is created, with regard to the race and to indi- 
 viduals, by the perfecting of the second Adam, as Redeemer. In 
 Him dwells the power sufficient for the actual abolition of sin in
 
 520 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 mankind, as a whole and as individuals ; and He has actually set 
 on foot the historical process which will have this issue, it being 
 presupposed that the anticipatory forgiveness of sin on the side 
 of God takes place. In the case of every individual who by faith 
 enters into fellowship with Christ, there is given to God a guaranty 
 for his future complete emancipation from sin, and for the fact 
 that his pardon is only the initial step of the efficient process 
 which is to remove sin in him, and to separate him wholly from 
 it. By the Saviour, then, a foundation is laid for the reception 
 into the relation of fellowship with God of the old sinful humanity 
 estranged from Him, and for an ethico-religious development 
 which will more and more lead that humanity into the way of 
 righteousness. 
 
 How has the Redeemer atoned for mankind? Rothe answers, 
 By qualifying Himself to be a Redeemer. What was needed was 
 a human being who should be absolutely qualified completely to 
 effect the abolition of sin, or the recovery of men from its influ- 
 ence and control. Christ has developed Himself in an absolutely 
 normal way to the point of perfection as a moral and spiritual 
 being ; and in doing so He has brought Himself into an absolute 
 union, on the one hand with God, and, on the other, with the race 
 of mankind. This is the completed sanctification of the Redeemer, 
 by which He is specially fitted to be, in a perfectly adequate way, 
 the cause and principle of our sanctification. The moral task which 
 Jesus set before Him was that of a complete self-surrender to God, 
 on the one hand, and to man, on the other. He gave all that 
 belonged to Him, including His own sensuous being, His life, as 
 all offering to God, an offering of Himself, and to men as a self- 
 sacrifice, for their best good, and out of love to them. This was 
 a work done in and upon Himself, in the midst of trial, in success- 
 ful combat with the Tempter of souls ; but done for the sake of 
 men. This work culminated in the voluntary endurance of death, 
 which consummated the surrender of everything His own. This 
 submission to death perfected at once His union to God, and His 
 union to men. Love could go no farther. This self-surrender, 
 carried to an exhaustive accomplishment, involved the most stren- 
 uous moral exertion on His part. Being a work undertaken 
 entirely for our sake, it was vicarious : the holy One performed a 
 work in the name of the sinner, which the sinner was incapable of 
 performing for himself. Potentially in Him the old sinful race
 
 521 
 
 were regenerated ; and He was, therefore, the representative of 
 mankind, and of every individual. His suffering has its ground, 
 not in Himself, the sinless One, but only in the sinfulness of 
 the world, in which He had to fulfil the moral task of His life, 
 and for the sake of which He fulfilled it. He shares the world's 
 suffering, and thereby takes it away ; since in overcoming sin, He 
 overcomes evil, or suffering, the consequence of sin, and since, 
 through His fellow-feeling with the sinful world, He felt sympa- 
 thetically the sufferings that befell men, and which are properly 
 not His not His in the character which pertains to them in the 
 mind of the ill-deserving who endure them i.e., as the penalty 
 of sin. Thus He bore the penalties of our sins ; not, however, as 
 His own punishment, but as ours. He put Himself in feeling in 
 our place, though without any confusion of consciousness, or self- 
 accusation. Unlike good men, martyrs, He endured suffering in 
 absolute innocence, and His suffering is the absolute ground and 
 cause of our exemption from it, or of its ultimate removal. So 
 that the suffering of the Redeemer is, in an altogether peculiar 
 way, vicarious. By merit is meant a product of moral exertion, 
 which is of a nature to be an instrument adapted and available to 
 all in the work that devolves on them in life as moral beings. 
 The Redeemer by making Himself what He was, the one suffi- 
 cient instrument of the moral renovation of men, and of their 
 recovery from sin, created this merit this sacrament as it may 
 be called, universal in its efficacy and value. When through Him 
 we receive the forgiveness of our sins, it is by means of His merit 
 being reckoned to us, or imputed : that is to say, our sin is for- 
 given, not because there is in ourselves the real possibility and 
 absolute warranty of a future complete deliverance from sin, but 
 because these inhere in the Redeemer ; and this deliverance is 
 conditioned on our relation to Him. It lies in that which He has 
 produced as the means of our attaining the end of our being. It 
 is a part of Rothe's conception, that the glorification of Christ, 
 and the power which He exerts upon men, as the dispenser of 
 influences from above, is the legitimate fruit of that spiritual per- 
 fection to which He attained in conflict with temptation and 
 through His self- surrender in death. His personal power continues 
 to be exerted in a vastly augmented degree, in this higher develop- 
 ment and sphere of His being. 
 
 No theologian has laid more stress than Rothe upon the retro-
 
 522 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 active bearing of the conflict of Jesus with evil its effect upon 
 Himself. In Rothe this view stands connected with a particular 
 theory of the relation of matter to spirit, and of the spiritualization 
 of matter. But, independently of this speculation, he insists upon a 
 truth which the interpreters of the New Testament, at the present 
 day, more distinctly recognize than it was formerly the habit to 
 do. Sinless as Christ was from the beginning, the events of His 
 career, the victory over temptation, the experience of sorrow and of 
 death, did not leave His character unaffected. It is characteristic 
 of that great religious genius, Jonathan Edwards, that he should 
 have spoken of the increase of the Saviour's holiness in passing 
 through the scenes that preceded and attended the crucifixion. 
 The meaning of His life, as regards Himself, and hence in relation 
 to others, is missed, unless the reality of His temptation, and of 
 all the struggles which the Evangelists record, especially that in 
 the Garden, is fully recognized, and unless His character in the 
 maturity of its perfection is looked upon as the product of His 
 own faithful performance, amid the circumstances in which He 
 was placed, of the work given Him to do. It was of an achieve- 
 ment, as well as of an endurance, that He said : " It is finished ! " 
 
 It will be observed that Rothe, in common with Luther, Camp- 
 bell, Edwards, Schleiermacher, ascribes to Jesus a fellow-feeling 
 with sinful men, which carried Him out of Himself and caused 
 Him, though without the least self-reproach, to take up into His 
 consciousness the penal quality which inheres in the ordinance of 
 death, and thus to have an intimate knowledge of what it is to be 
 punished by God, and to be under His frown. The outward 
 inflictions of punishment were there, and the inward experience, 
 also, as far as an utterly self-devoted sympathy could engender it. 
 
 But Rothe, with Schleiermacher, conceives of guilt as the mere 
 shadow of sin, vanishing as sin vanishes, and makes the energy of 
 the divine love and righteousness concentrate upon the breaking 
 of the control of sin as a principle, that it may be put on the way 
 to an ultimate extinction. The retributive element, the divine 
 resentment, " the wrath of God," demands nothing but a guaranty 
 for the abandonment of sin ; although it should be said, by way of 
 qualification, that God requires the means for working out this 
 result to be originated and gathered by the struggle and sacrifice 
 of the second Adam, on the plane of our human life, subject to all 
 its exposures and penal inflictions.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 523 
 
 Lipsius is the author of a system in the creation of which the 
 philosophy of Kant and the theology of Schleiermacher are 
 equally influential. Like so many of his contemporaries of differ- 
 ent schools, he attributes our knowledge of God to His self-reve- 
 lation ; yet he declines to draw a distinct line between the natural 
 and the supernatural. He does not differ from Ritschl in ascrib- 
 ing the origin of religion in man to a striving against the bondage 
 which the limitations of the outer world would impose upon the 
 freedom and progress of the soul. With Schleiermacher he holds 
 that creation is not one act of God, but the entire development of 
 the world from the point of view of divine agency. It is thus 
 without beginning or end. Sin is pronounced a necessary stage 
 in human development, the desires being at the outset predomi- 
 nant. Natural evils are considered as penal, not because they are 
 so, but because an evil conscience so regards them. Jesus is the 
 one sinless human being. He is the ideal man, in whom God 
 dwells. He is the " God-filled " man, the object of God's love, 
 the founder of the kingdom of souls in fellowship with God. 
 The Church is conscious of having its foundation in Christ, the 
 typical and the creative source of the realization of the Christian 
 idea. 
 
 No sketch, however brief, of the modern theological parties in 
 Germany can omit to refer to the Lutheran Conservatives " Con- 
 fessionalists " they are called in common parlance who have 
 taken their stand upon the historic creeds of their Church. In 
 the religious reaction which followed the deliverance of Germany 
 from bondage to Napoleon, there arose among many a reawakened 
 zeal for the Evangelical doctrine as it had been formulated by 
 Luther and in the Lutheran creeds. The influence of the con- 
 temporary leaders of religious thought, as the event proved, could 
 not be wholly escaped ; yet their more or less startling innovations 
 were rejected. Among the adherents of the Confessions, the 
 "Erlangen School" of theologians has the most prominent 
 place. Luthardt, whose academic career has been mostly at 
 Leipsic, and Philippi, are writers who have departed least from 
 the traditional tenets, and have been unflagging in their zeal to 
 maintain them. Von Hofmann in his Schriftbeweiss^ undertook 
 to deduce the theological system logically from the Christian 
 experience. He begins, not with the idea of God, but with the 
 1 2 ed. (1857-1860).
 
 new birth, and on this basis he essays to construct a speculative 
 system answering to the facts of Christianity. Von Hofmann was 
 vigorously attacked within his school for giving up the doctrine of 
 vicarious Atonement. Thomasius is justly esteemed for his solid 
 ability both as a writer on Dogmatic theology and on the history 
 of doctrine. In his treatise on " Dogmatics," he advocated the 
 theory of Kenosis, or the self-limitation of the Divine Logos, in 
 connection with the Incarnation. 
 
 The "Ritschlian School" is so named from Albert Ritschl (1822- 
 1889), who, although he shows in important points of his teaching 
 the influence of Schleiermacher, so far deviates from him that he 
 is regarded as holding an independent position. Ritschl began 
 as an adherent of the Tubingen School, but he renounced the 
 leadership of Baur, and in the second edition of his book on the 
 Rise of the Old Catholic Church (1857) he traverses Baur's main 
 propositions. It is a work of high merit. Later he assumed an 
 independent position, the characteristics of which are brought out 
 in the copious work on Justification especially, and in other pro- 
 ductions. 1 Religion he traces to the conflict of the soul of man 
 with the opposing, oppressive forces of nature. The sense of 
 weakness leads to the belief in the aid of more exalted spirits. 
 But religion is not exclusively a feeling of dependence. It em- 
 braces, likewise, thought and will. Like Schleiermacher, Ritschl 
 breaks the link between theology and philosophy. He does not, 
 however, utterly discard metaphysics, as he distinctly asserts. 
 Rather is he in concord with Kant in setting aside transcendental 
 reasoning concerning religion, and adopting the ethical postulate 
 of freedom. To Lotze he is here and there indebted. No inter- 
 ference with theology from the side of natural science is possible ; 
 for natural science has nothing to do with the world as a whole, 
 and steps beyond its province when it sets up a theory of materi- 
 
 1 Die Christl. Lehre v. d. Rechtfertigung u. Versohnung (2 ed. 3 vols. 1882). 
 Among the numerous critical discussions of Ritschl's system, two brief essays 
 may be here mentioned; the first entirely favorable, the other, on the whole 
 decidedly adverse : Darstellung d. Theol. Albert Ritschl's, by Julius Thikotter 
 (2 ed. 1887) ; Ritschl's Place in the History of Doctrine, by Charles M. Mead, 
 D.D., 1895. Kattenbusch's Von Schleiermacher zu Ritschl, by a Ritschlian, 
 is clear and interesting, but it quite fails of a just appreciation of the " media- 
 ting" theologians. A critical discussion of The Ritschlian Theology in its 
 different Stages may be found in Nippold's comprehensive Handbuch d. neues- 
 ten Kirchengesch., Vol. III., Abth. I.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY e 2 c 
 
 alism or its opposite. Miracles are defined by Ritschl as strik- 
 ing natural occurrences "with which the special help of God is 
 connected." If supernatural events appear to be recorded in 
 the Bible, there is no religious obligation to consider them to be 
 wrought " contrary to natural laws." Nothing more definite is 
 propounded on the subject. Unlike Schleiermacher, he holds fast 
 to the personality of God, and makes His fundamental attribute 
 to be Love. Respecting the sources of our knowledge of God and 
 of Christianity, Ritschl declares that we are confined to the Script- 
 ures of the Old and New Testaments. The Greek theology, he 
 avers, was made to rest upon a cosmology borrowed from the 
 philosophers. The Schoolmen built likewise upon a substruct- 
 ure the materials of which were drawn from Plato and Aristotle ; 
 and theology since has followed their example. Instead of a 
 " natural theology," independent of revelation, the Scriptures ex- 
 clusively are for the Christian the fountain of religious knowledge. 1 
 They are historical documents bringing to us the knowledge of the 
 revelation made to the prophets and through Christ and the 
 Apostles. The genuineness of the fourth Gospel is not questioned 
 by Ritschl himself. It was defended in his work on the Rise of the 
 Old Catholic Church. But his doctrine respecting Christ is de- 
 duced from the first three Gospels, for the reason, it would seem, 
 that the fourth is thought to be colored by subjective conceptions. 
 The Scriptures give us the record of the manifestations of God's 
 " righteousness," which denotes His consistent purpose and proced- 
 ure in the work of saving His people. " Just " and " righteous," 
 Ritschl contends, are used by Paul, as well as in the Old Testament, 
 not in the judicial, classical sense, but as including an element 
 of benevolence. The " wrath of God " is felt and exerted only 
 towards wilful and inexcusable transgressors. In the Old Testa- 
 ment, it is not for these, but foi offences not thus grievous, that 
 sacrifices avail. The life of Christ, comprising His obedience and 
 His suffering, was in pursuance of a vocation of which He was 
 conscious. He was inwardly cognizant of the divine purpose of 
 saving grace or righteousness, and of Himself as called to carry out 
 this purpose in founding and conducting to its goal the kingdom 
 of the redeemed. There is no penal or expiatory quality in the 
 death of Christ. In it are perfected and evinced His absolute 
 fidelity and His divine calling. How Christ became cognizant of 
 1 Rechtfertigung u. Versohnung, Vol. III. p. 181.
 
 5 26 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 this eternal, divine purpose, and how He became aware of His 
 vocation in relation to it, are questions, it is said, which we are 
 incapable of answering. The preexistence of Christ as it is taught 
 by John, Paul, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, is 
 their subjective conception. The only real preexistence of Christ 
 is in the divine foreknowledge and predestination and as being 
 the object of God's eternal love. As such, He is the type of man- 
 kind as predestined for the kingdom of God. On account of His 
 perfect purity and fidelity, because He overcame the world and 
 made Himself the vehicle in whom God's purpose and the char- 
 acter of God are manifest, He is raised to the right hand of God. 
 He is we cannot divine how entrusted with the government 
 of the world. Therefore, and by reason of His unity with God in 
 love and purpose, He may be called God and is an object of wor- 
 ship. It is not by a coming as an individual into personal relation 
 to Christ that one becomes a partaker of the filial relation to God, 
 but by entering into the kingdom of His followers. Hence the 
 high place accorded to the Church as the fellowship of believers. 
 To believe in Christ is to appropriate the " value of the love of 
 God " revealed in what Christ does for our reconciliation to Him. 
 The expression illustrates the idea of Ritschl in which he was 
 anticipated by Lotze of "value-judgments." In Ritschl it 
 signifies that we can only know what God and things divine are 
 in themselves, so far as we perceive that which is of worth in 
 relation to our salvation. It is one feature of Ritschl's teaching 
 that everything of a " mystical " nature, such as the idea of per- 
 sonal union and communion with Christ, is discarded. The feeling 
 towards " pietism " is nothing short of antipathy. Justification 
 is the reception of the sinner, conscious of his guilt, into fellowship 
 with God. Along with it reconciliation, or the harmony, now be- 
 ginning, of his will with the design of God respecting His kingdom, 
 is the fundamental condition of the Christian life. 1 
 
 Ritschl adopts the general view that redemption presupposes 
 
 1 Ritschl has given this summary statement of his theological " standpoint " : 
 " In strictest recognition of the Revelation of God through Christ, closest 
 use of the Holy Scriptures as the source of knowledge of the Christian 
 religion; taking of Jesus Christ as the source of knowledge for all parts of the 
 system, in harmony with the original documents of the Lutheran Reformation 
 with respect to the peculiarities in which it deviates from the theology of the 
 Middle Ages." (From a letter to Dr. Schaff, in the supplement to SchafTs 
 Encycl., p. 181, note.)
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY c 2 7 
 
 the universality of sin. But sin is no part of the contents of 
 Revelation. It is simply a fact of experience. It is to be under- 
 stood by reference to Jesus and the idea of His kingdom. But 
 the New Testament does not assume that sin is an inheritance. 
 It does not teach the Augustinian doctrine. Sin results from the 
 impulse to exercise freedom without restraint, a native im- 
 pulse, and from the allurements to selfishness. There grows 
 up by the joint action of many, from one generation to another, a 
 kingdom of sin, a power of seduction, but this brings not an abso- 
 lute loss of freedom. The right estimate of sin and of its guilt is 
 possible only in the light of Christ. None are to that degree 
 hardened that they are incapable of repentance. Natural evils 
 are to be counted as punishments no farther than the individual 
 conscience so interprets them. In the religious sense punishment 
 is the deprivation, more or less, of communion with God. Death 
 is neither to be considered the penalty of the first sin nor of one's 
 own personal transgressions. All forgivable sins are to be pro- 
 nounced sins of ignorance. Whether there be men, and who they 
 are, if there be any, who will actually reach the final stage of 
 wilful resistance to God, it is beyond our power to say. 
 
 Ritschl's doctrines have had numerous defenders and numerous 
 opponents. Among the latter, strenuous for a more conservative 
 theology, are Dieckhoff and Luthardt. 1 They maintain that the 
 theory of "value-judgments" makes the question what God, 
 Christ, the Resurrection, are in themselves, a matter of indif- 
 ference, and attaches importance only to our judgment of their 
 worth to ourselves ; that the basis for denominating Him divine is 
 something shared or to be shared by him with all believers ; that 
 Justification is not an act of God having respect to the individual, 
 but a subjective enrolling of himself in the body to which that act 
 exclusively relates, and that its ground, moreover, is not kid in the 
 atoning work of Christ. 
 
 Discarding as irrelevant in relation to faith the historical evi- 
 dences of Revelation, the Ritschlians attach weight to the corre- 
 spondence between the Christian religion and the needs of the 
 soul. This perceived conviction is corroborated by nature and 
 the history of mankind. How shall we ascertain the contents of 
 the consciousness of Christ ? How shall we discriminate between 
 
 1 See. also, Prof. C. M. Mead, Ritschrs Place in the History of Doctrine 
 (1895).
 
 528 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 that which is verifiable in his own feelings and expressions, and 
 that which is not ? The Ritschlian theologians and critics afford 
 examples of the temptation to fall back upon purely subjective 
 criteria of judgment on these cardinal questions of history and 
 criticism. 
 
 Kaftan is one of the ablest representatives of the Ritschlian 
 tendency. He has presented his system in two connected works, 
 the first on The Nature or Essence of Christianity ', l and the 
 second having for its title The Truth of Christianity? He founds 
 religion upon feeling, but not in the exclusive sense, nor with 
 the inferences, of Schleiermacher. He adopts Ritschl's idea of 
 "values." Religion is a practical matter. It springs, not from 
 observations of the world and theoretical judgments, but from our 
 own position in relation to the world, the attitude which we, 
 with our personal interests, assume. It cannot be forced on any 
 one, like the truths of science. " It is an affair of inward free- 
 dom." 3 This is true of all religions. A religion is true so far, 
 and only so far, as it rests upon revelation. 4 " Our religion is 
 founded on the self-revelation of God in the historical personal 
 life of Jesus Christ." 5 It brings to pass in the believer a life in 
 God through Christ ; but this union to God is ethical, and not the 
 contemplation of the mystic. The kingdom of God is the Christian 
 idea of the highest good. 6 It was the early mistake of theology to 
 leave this idea, and to found itself, through a mixture with Greek 
 philosophy, upon the conception of the Logos. Faith was turned 
 into something theoretic, a stage of knowledge. The rise of 
 dogmas brought with it the reign of authority in matters of belief. 
 The Scholastic theology made dogmas to be of two classes, those 
 springing from natural reason, and those having a supernatural 
 source. Protestantism, notwithstanding its rectified idea of faith, 
 was entangled with the Roman Catholic theory. It took the 
 Scriptures and made them the text- book of supernaturally revealed 
 doctrinal propositions. 
 
 Kant, despite the dualism of his system, is held to have opened 
 a new era by his doctrine of the practical reason. In truth, the 
 idea of the highest good is at the basis of rational speculation. 
 
 1 Das Wesen des Christenthums (2 ed. i{ 
 
 2 Die Wahrheit des Christenthums (1889). 
 
 3 Das Wesen, etc. p. 50. 6 Ibid. p. 2O2. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 197. 6 Die Wahrheit, etc. p. 545.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 Its result corresponds with the teaching of Christianity that the 
 highest good is not to be found in the world, but in the super- 
 terrestrial kingdom of God. 
 
 Kaftan insists that the Scriptures are the documentary sources 
 of historical Christianity. They are the source of the divine reve- 
 lation. But the New Testament writers did not ascribe to their 
 productions the inspiration which they assumed to exist in the case 
 of the Old Testament record of God's revelations. The theologi- 
 cal idea of inspiration works ill to theology, and would require as 
 a supplement an inspired exegesis. Respecting the teaching of 
 Christ Himself, preference is to be given decidedly to the Synoptics. 
 There is no sufficient ground for rejecting the Johannine author- 
 ship of the fourth Gospel. The author has, however, a particular 
 aim and point of view, although what he writes rests upon a his- 
 torical foundation. The essential truth of Christianity is the 
 divinity of Christ, the real indwelling and the complete revelation 
 of God in Him. The beginning of the new life is in the belief in 
 the free, unconditional forgiveness of sins. This is justification, 
 which is followed by reconciliation. The preaching of the king- 
 dom, after the death of Jesus, became in the mouth of the disci- 
 ples the proclamation of the risen and glorified Jesus. The death 
 and resurrection of Christ are the two sides, the negative and posi- 
 tive, of the same transaction. They are the symbol and the power 
 of the death to sin and the resurrection to life in fellowship with 
 the risen Lord. The opinion that other views the forensic view, 
 especially are found in Paul, is avowed by Kaftan, but it is held 
 that as yet we discern no method of connecting them with the 
 fundamental idea just expressed. In general, " we are to turn to 
 account (verwertheri) the Apostolic writings first of all as the testi- 
 monies of the faith and of the religion of their authors, that is, 
 of the Christian religion, in which they are for us normative pat- 
 terns ( Vorbilder) . The key-note ( Grundton) , despite the theo- 
 logical coloring, is in their character as " testimonies of faith to 
 faith." * 
 
 One of the most distinguished representatives of the Ritschlian 
 School is W. Herrmann. The view which we take of the world as 
 a whole, or the world-whole ( Weltanschauung), depends on sub- 
 jective grounds. Its source is in moral and religious feeling. Its 
 root is in the feeling of personal worth which demands that the 
 1 Das IVesen, etc. p. 248. 
 
 2 M
 
 530 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 world-whole shall be suited to it. In this general position he does 
 not differ from Kaftan. Revelation is not by doctrine, but by the 
 direct manifestation of God in the historical Christ, which the soul 
 feels. But Herrmann distinctly indicates the necessity of a ground- 
 work of objective beliefs respecting the person of Christ, and takes 
 a step in advance of the Ritschlian agnosticism. He says that the 
 question how Christ can have such importance for us may be un- 
 avoidable, and that here the Christological determinations of the 
 ancient Church " still always mark out the limits within which such 
 attempts must move." 1 Kaftan shows the same tendency to go 
 back of mere " value-judgments." He says that we must believe 
 in the Godhead of Christ, and that He stands in a connection with 
 God that is perfectly unique and not capable of being repeated. 2 
 
 1 Der Verkehr des Christen mil Gott (1886), p. 46. 
 
 2 Brauchen wir ein neues Dogma ? p. 58. Cf. Orr, The Christian View 
 of God and the World (a work of remarkable ability), p. 449 sq. (1893).
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PANTHEISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY 
 IN GERMANY : FICHTE ; SCHELLING ; HEGEL THE HEGELIAN 
 INTERPRETATION OF CHRISTIANITY THE WRITINGS OF STRAUSS 
 BIEDERMANN THE SYSTEM OF BAUR 
 
 THE theoretical philosophy of Kant bore fruit which he had 
 not expected to spring from it. In the hands of Fichte it was 
 transformed into idealism. Kant had refused to regard the laws 
 of thought as the laws of things. Space and time are " forms " in 
 which perceived phenomena are set by the subject ; the categories 
 by which things are connected are concepts, likewise subjective in 
 their origin ; the ideas which bring into unity the judgments are 
 subjective index-fingers which point to nothing that can be con- 
 sidered real. Nothing external is left but the "thing in itself." 
 Fichte drew this sole object within the subjective sphere. It is 
 rnly a thought. If it be assumed as a cause to account for states 
 of consciousness, the answer is that the principle of causation is 
 purely subjective. Fichte's thesis is that all reality is the product 
 of the activity of the ego, which in its nature is essentially active. 
 The object is simply the limit set to its activity by its own nature. 
 But the finite ego with the object is the product of the impersonal 
 ego, the underlying, absolute source of being. In the room of God 
 there is substituted the moral order of the world. Philosophy begins 
 in the positing of the ego through an act of reflection. Ethics is 
 exalted to the supreme place. Morality and religion are identical. 
 The limit of personal freedom is in the concession of a like equal 
 freedom in others. In the later part of his career, Fichte intro- 
 duced an element of feeling into the notion of religion, but the 
 conception of Deity would appear to have remained unaltered. 
 
 Schelling modified Fichte's conception of the Absolute, the root 
 of all particular existences. It is no more to be called subject
 
 532 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 than object. It is equidistant the point of indifference 
 between the subjective and the objective, for the world and the 
 perceiving ego are identical in essence and origin. Nature is 
 pervaded through and through with rationality. The knowledge of 
 nature is nature attaining to self-consciousness. But how to cog- 
 nize the hypothetical Absolute consistently with its being an object 
 in consciousness and thus, according to Schelling's theory, finite? 
 The answer is the postulate of a mystical faculty of " intellectual 
 intuition," by which the soul, somewhat as in the New Platonic 
 Pantheism, breaks through the bonds of consciousness, and has 
 a direct vision of the indefinable impersonal, of course 
 Supreme. 
 
 Schelling's general idea of the relation of the Absolute to the 
 thinking subject and the object Hegel accepted. Not so did he 
 regard Schelling's mode of bridging the gulf between the finite 
 and the infinite. This had been left in the dark. The conclu- 
 sion of Schelling's as to their relation had been, as it were, " shot 
 out of a pistol." Hegel professed to set forth the process in which 
 the entire universe is evolved, and necessarily evolved. Thought 
 and being are identical. Thoughts are things, and there are no 
 other things than thoughts. The world is a chain of concepts. 
 The universe, including God, nature, self, is resolved into a chain 
 of concepts self- evolved, comprising and exhausting in themselves 
 all reality. Concrete existences take their places as concepts in 
 the all-comprehending series. This is the world as known to the 
 philosopher. But the philosophic view is the last stage in the 
 development of consciousness. It is in the consciousness of 
 the philosopher that the Deity, the Absolute, becomes fully self- 
 conscious. The process is the self-unfolding of the innermost 
 nature of things. The method of this evolution, starting with the 
 highest abstraction, thence moving onward, is that of thesis, of 
 implied antithesis, and necessary synthesis the movement ad- 
 vancing, by a momentum in itself, until all things are brought into 
 the net. 
 
 Hegel and his followers professed to find an equivalent for the 
 objects of Christian faith and the propositions of orthodox theology 
 in the dogmas of their system. Christianity presents in a popular 
 form that which philosophy exhibits in the form of naked truth. 
 The substantial contents of both are averred to be identical. 
 The Trinity is made to designate the triplicity in the notion of the
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY c^ 
 
 Absolute : first, the Absolute in itself ; secondly, as developed in 
 the intelligible world, corresponding to the Son ; and thirdly, in 
 the philosophy in which the Absolute comes back to itself. The 
 sense of estrangement in man is sin, a necessary phase in his spir- 
 itual progress, which gives way to a consciousness of unity with 
 the Absolute. Christ is a man who is conscious of being one with 
 the Infinite Being, and represents in this respect what every man 
 is in idea. That which is predicated of Him specifically is true 
 literally of humanity as a whole. Hegel treated with disdain the 
 "vulgar" rationalism which assailed the truths of Christianity. 
 He professed, no doubt sincerely, to accept them in their real, 
 inner significance. At first, not a few hailed this assumed recon- 
 ciliation of Christianity and philosophy. A portion of the Hegel- 
 ians, forming a " right wing," either by affixing to Hegel's state- 
 ments an interpretation satisfactory to themselves, or by certain 
 modifications of expression, continued to maintain a theistic version 
 of Hegelianism. But when Strauss published his Life of Jesus, it 
 became obvious to discerning Christian believers that the trans- 
 mutation of the truths of the Gospel into Pantheistic equivalents 
 was not anything to rejoice in. Strauss derided the rationalism 
 of the Biblical critics like Paulus, as superficial and jejune. He 
 undertook to show that the narratives of miracles in the New 
 Testament are myths, unconscious embodiments of the idea of 
 the Messiah that was cherished in early communities of disciples 
 cut off from the corrective guidance of the Apostles. Strauss held 
 the great central truth of Christianity to be the doctrine of a union 
 of God and man in Jesus Christ. It is a popular conception of a 
 deep philosophical truth, the truth, namely, that God becomes 
 man in mankind collectively taken. For the indwelling and full 
 expression of the Infinite, all the members of the race are required. 
 Christ is divine so far and in the same sense as every other indi- 
 vidual of the race is God. And God is the impersonal being, of the 
 evolution of whom all men are the transitory products. The later Life 
 of Jesus by Strauss (1864) was designed for cultivated readers gen- 
 erally. Prompted by the criticism of Baur upon his earlier work, 
 he discusses the origin and authorship of the Gospels. Prompted 
 further by Baur's theory of a doctrinal tendency as giving rise to 
 narrative matter in the historical books of the New Testament, he 
 modified essentially his definition of a myth, permitting it to be the 
 product of the imagination of an individual, and made room for
 
 534 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 conscious invention. Strauss and Baur conceded that the imme- 
 diate disciples of Jesus testified to His Resurrection. Strauss falls 
 back upon a kind of Stoicism as a substitute for the consolations 
 of religion, and, in contrast with the previous work, manifests a 
 scornful and bitter spirit, especially towards the clergy. In his 
 treatise on Dogmatic Theology, the negative position respecting 
 the Supernatural is consistently carried out. Strauss's learning 
 was not up to the level of his literary power. Superior in all 
 respects to this work is the treatise on " Dogmatic Theology " by 
 Biedermann, a leader of the " young Hegelian School," who, in his 
 Christian Dogmatics, as in other writings, did what could be done 
 to infuse warmth into a system which rejects the personality of 
 God and personal immortality. In the idea of God as personal, 
 the mind objectifies " His universal, eternal, absolute, true nature 
 (Wesen)." Yet it is held that in the practical religious life the 
 notion of God as personal must be held fast. Sin, although it is a 
 self-determination in which sense and selfish feeling are the source, 
 is a necessary step or stage for a finite being to experience. 
 Neither creeds nor the Bible, nor the " theoretic self-consciousness 
 of Jesus," can be an infallible norm of belief. Biedermann under- 
 takes, and with no small skill and learning, to trace forms of doc- 
 trinal conception in the New Testament to divers historical sources, 
 and to prove them unworthy of a literal acceptance. 
 
 The influence of Hegelianism on theology is most conspicuous 
 in its effect in the province of historical and Biblical criticism. 
 In this province Baur was the master. His theories respecting 
 the rise and development of Christianity and the date and 
 authorship of the New Testament writings conform to the 
 Hegelian law of development. The Gospel is at first Ebionitic, 
 then comes the liberal or Pauline antithesis, then a synthesis in the 
 Acts and certain Epistles, pronounced to be post-apostolic. The 
 fourth Gospel, after the middle of the second century, completes 
 the process of reconciliation, but the evolution of doctrine pro- 
 ceeds in its triple movement until it brings us to the Nicene 
 doctrine. Extensive as were the researches of Baur, original and 
 sincerely held as were his hypotheses, the agency of an a priori 
 philosophy, which excludes the Supernatural in its proper meaning, 
 in the forming of his critical system, cannot be ignored. 
 
 In the writings of Otto Pfleiderer, especially in his work on 
 the Philosophy of Religion, there is presented a theology which
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 535 
 
 attempts to combine the essential principle of Schleiermacher 
 respecting the original source of religion, with Hegel. But, unlike 
 Rothe, Pfleiderer, although he holds to the personality of God and 
 the freedom of His agency, discards miracles, and plants himself on 
 the ground of naturalism.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE LATER ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGY INDIFFERENTISM IN THE 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE FALL OF THE JESUIT ORDER AND 
 ITS REVIVAL LIBERALISM OF LAMENNAIS AND HIS ASSOCIATES 
 PAPAL REIGN OF PIUS IX. THE DOGMA OF THE IMMACULATE 
 CONCEPTION THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE DOGMA OF PAPAL 
 INFALLIBILITY THE INTERPRETATION OF THE DOGMA 
 
 THE Council of Trent was chiefly absorbed in the work of build- 
 ing up barricades against Protestantism. It left undecided the 
 questions between Episcopalism and Curialism: Is the seat of 
 authority in the Council or in the Pope, or is it in both united? 
 It gave no unambiguous verdict on the disputed question of grace 
 and free-will. The question respecting the sinless character of 
 Mary from the moment of conception remained where the Scho- 
 lastic theology had left it, awaiting a dogmatic decision. Time 
 was to decide what would be the fate of the Semi-Pelagian theol- 
 ogy of the Jesuits, and of their loose ethical theory of probabilism. 
 With the fortunes of their society, the modern history of Roman 
 Catholic doctrine is closely connected. 
 
 In the Church of France, under Louis XIV., Jansenism was 
 prostrated, the Jesuit theology got the upper hand, and the Jesuit 
 casuistry made headway, despite the attacks of the Port Royalists. 
 In the eighteenth century, the spread of free-thinking and of 
 religious indifferentism incited and enabled Roman Catholic sov- 
 ereigns to restrict to the utmost the exercise of papal prerogatives 
 within their dominions. The reforms of the Emperor Joseph II., 
 in Austria, were prepared for by the work of Febronius, which 
 advocated the reduction of papal authority to a simple primacy, 
 limited as concerns other bishops to the giving of counsels and 
 admonitions. Innovations like those of Joseph II. were adopted 
 in other states. The " punctation " or programme of German 
 
 536
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 537 
 
 Catholic archbishops who met at Ems in 1 786, proposed, in the 
 interest of German prelates, to subtract from the papacy a large 
 portion of the ecclesiastical prerogatives which it had exercised. 
 Movements of this kind in different lands, among statesmen and 
 churchmen, were broken off by the outbreaking of the French 
 Revolution. The Society of the Jesuits owed its temporary down- 
 fall to its interference with politics, its worldliness and thirst for 
 gain. Its obstinate contests with other orders, and with the popes 
 themselves, in the conduct of Asiatic missions, had weakened its 
 standing. It was its own practical renunciation of the ideals of 
 its founders, however, that, more than any other single cause, led 
 to its overthrow, and to its abolition by Clement XIV. in 1773. 
 The record of the period during which Napoleon I. was supreme 
 in France includes the story of alternate concessions and resist- 
 ance on the part of Pius VII. Of this course of events it is true 
 that, great as was the prostration of papal authority, the result was 
 that imperial domination, with Rome for a real, although incon- 
 stant ally, extinguished the life of liberal Gallicanism, and, on the 
 fall of Napoleon, left the ground clear for the building of ultramon- 
 tanism on its ruins. In France this could be done only by degrees. 
 But, as elsewhere, the reaction in behalf of the throne and the 
 altar had its effect. One of the first measures of Pius VII., on 
 his restoration to Rome, was the issue of a bull, on August 7, 1814, 
 authorizing the revival of the Jesuit order. The Jesuits spared 
 no effort to exalt the cause of absolutism in politics and religion. 
 After the restoration of the Bourbons, an extreme theory of the 
 spiritual authority of the Pope, as the great security of public order, 
 was vindicated by Le Maistre, a scholar and diplomatist. After the 
 accession of Louis Philippe, the same tendency was pursued by 
 Lamennais, Lacordaire, Montalembert, and some others. Their 
 contention was in behalf of liberal opinions in politics, together 
 with an anti-Gallican theory of papal sovereignty in the spiritual 
 sphere. But their teachings were condemned in bulls of Pope 
 Gregory XVI., the first in 1832 and the second in I834. 1 Lamen- 
 nais became alienated from the Church. Lacordaire concentrated 
 his attention upon preaching, and became a great light in the 
 French pulpit. Montalembert kept up an undiminished interest 
 in Church affairs, and retained his liberal opinions to the end of 
 his life. There is not room here to trace the growth of ultramon- 
 1 Extracts in Denziger, pp. 343-346.
 
 538 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 tanism and of Jesuit influence in the different Catholic countries. 
 One of the most influential of all Catholic writers on matters of 
 casuistry was not himself a Jesuit, but very friendly to that order, 
 the founder of the Redemptorists, the Neapolitan priest and saint, 
 Alfonso da Liguori (1696-1787). He was at first a Probabilist, 
 but sought for a middle position in " Equiprobabilism," a posi- 
 tion not far removed from the Jesuit ground. If the law con- 
 cerning an act, he held, is doubtful, if the authorities are evenly 
 balanced, the maxim that right is on the side of the "possessor" 1 
 that is, on the side of liberty to do the act is applicable. A 
 well-nigh boundless deference is paid to the casuistic teaching of 
 Liguori, which, however on the subject of Equivocation, for 
 example would be condemned by Protestant moralists. In 
 Germany there sprung up in the second and third decades of the 
 present century a school of liberal Catholics, eminent alike for 
 their learning and their controversial strength. Its rise is due to 
 the influence of a theologian not less engaging in his manners and 
 captivating as a teacher, than he was brilliant in talents, John 
 Adam Mohler. In his most important work, The Symbolics, he 
 rejects the Episcopal system as it was set forth by the councils of 
 Constance and of Basel the doctrine that " the Pope is subject 
 to a general council lawfully convoked." 2 He calls it " one-sided." 
 His ground is that "the dogmatic decrees of the Episcopate 
 (united with the general head and centre) are infallible ; for it 
 represents the universal Church." 3 One of Mohler's pupils was 
 Hefele, a profound scholar, the author of the History of Councils. 
 Munich became the seat of the liberal school. Its most eminent 
 leader, Dollinger, was the author of learned historical works antag- 
 onistic to Protestantism ; but in later writings, prior to the breaking 
 out of the controversy on the question of infallibility, manifested 
 a highly appreciative view of the greatness of Luther, and a more 
 irenical spirit in relation to the churches of the Reformation. 
 
 Pius IX. assumed the papal office in 1846. He began with a 
 policy directly the reverse of that of his predecessor, Gregory XIX. 
 He showed himself friendly to the liberal Catholics in France. 
 He introduced railways and other modern improvements into the 
 Roman state. He favored civil freedom there and a constitu- 
 
 1 "Melior est conditio possidentis." See the Kir chen- Lexicon (ist ed. 
 Vol. VIII. p. 791; also, 2d ed. Vol. VII. pp. 2036, 2037). 
 ? Eng. Trans/, p. 301 n. 8 Ibid. p. 302.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 tional monarchy. Not able to satisfy the demands of the repub- 
 licans, he was forced, in 1848, to fly from Rome to Gaeta, where 
 he remained until he was restored, in 1850, by means of French 
 bayonets. He came back an altered man in his spirit and aims. 
 Thenceforward in civil and ecclesiastical relations he was an 
 extreme conservative. He took into his service, under his special 
 control, a group of Jesuit writers, by whom the Civilta Cattolica 
 was issued, a journal devoted to the advocacy of an intense ultra- 
 montanism. Enthusiastic from his youth in the homage he paid 
 to the Virgin Mary, he conceived that it was by her special aid 
 that he had escaped with his life in the revolutionary tempest. 
 In 1849, while at Gaeta, in an Encyclical Letter, he called for the 
 opinions of all bishops upon the subject of the immaculate con- 
 ception of the Virgin. A large majority about two-thirds of 
 those who made answer replied as the Pope desired that they 
 should; but others, including German and French bishops, ex- 
 pressed themselves on the other side. To consider the question 
 a commission was appointed, comprising in it leading Jesuit theo- 
 logians, such as Perrone and Passaglia. Its decision was in accord 
 with the Pope's inclination. In 1854, without assembling a council 
 to determine the question, in the presence of about two hundred 
 bishops, forming a part of a great concourse, Pius IX. declared it 
 to be a revealed truth that the Blessed Virgin, from the first instant 
 of her conception, " was preserved free from all stain of Original 
 Sin." The bull affirmed that all "who should think otherwise in 
 their hearts must " have made shipwreck concerning the faith, 
 and fallen away from the unity of the Church. 1 This dogmatic 
 definition contradicts the opinion of Anselm, St. Bernard, Bonaven- 
 tura, Aquinas, and with Aquinas the body of Dominican teachers 
 down to recent times. Yet it is undeniable that it was a goal to 
 which a succession of previous steps naturally led. It sanctioned 
 an opinion which had been gaining strength since the advocacy of 
 it by Duns Scotus. Not later than 1661, Pope Alexander VII. 
 had expressed himself on the doctrine in language almost identical 
 with that used by Pius IX., and only declined to pronounce the 
 opposite opinion heretical. 
 
 On December 8, 1864, Pius IX. sent out an Encyclical Letter 
 containing an extended syllabus of errors. The preface quotes 
 
 1 For the substance of the bull ("Ineffabilis Deus"), see Denziger, p. 356, 
 or Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, Vol. II. p. 211,
 
 540 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 with approval the encyclical of Gregory XVI., of August 13, 
 1832, against Lamennais and the Liberals, in which "insanity" 
 (deliramentuni} is the name given to the doctrine that " liberty of 
 conscience and of worship is the right of every man," and the doc- 
 trine of the liberty of the press. Catholics are exhorted, in the perils 
 of the times, to resort to the Virgin Mary as their " mediatrix " 
 with Christ, and to beseech the intervention of Peter, " the chief 
 of the Apostles," and of Paul. The Syllabus denounces eighty 
 alleged errors, which may be summed up under the heads of 
 Rationalism, Nationalism, and Liberalism, as these were regarded 
 by the eyes of the Pontiff. Among the baneful errors condemned 
 are these : That Roman Pontiffs have exceeded their power in 
 relation to princes, or have erred " in defining matters of faith and 
 morals (23) ; that the Church may not avail itself of force (24) ; 
 that schools may be freed from ecclesiastical authority," govern- 
 ment and interference (47) ; that Church and State ought to be 
 separated (55) ; that there may be a true marriage by a merely 
 civil contract (73). The Syllabus was made up from the contents 
 of previous allocutions, letters, and bulls of Pius IX. It was 
 intended to put into a compact form his manifold protests in 
 opposition to the spirit of the age. An attempt to turn the 
 edge of it was made in France by Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, 
 by affirming that it was aimed not against liberty but the lawless 
 abuses of liberty. 
 
 To an assembly of five hundred bishops, gathered at Rome in 
 honor of the eighteenth centenary of St. Peter's martyrdom, Pius 
 IX. first announced his intention to convoke a General Council. 
 This was on June 26, 1867. On the 2pth of June, 1868, the en- 
 cyclical was issued for its convocation. It was understood to be the 
 purpose of the Council to build up such a wall against the errors 
 of the day as the Council of Trent had erected against Prot- 
 estantism. The Pope always said that it was no part of his pur- 
 pose to bring forward the matter of papal infallibility. The design 
 was to reassert in a positive form the doctrines embraced in the 
 Syllabus, and to attach to them a new sanction. But in an article 
 published in the Civilta Cattolica, on February 6, 1869, the infallibil- 
 ity of the Pope was declared to be one of the points to be decreed. 
 The same thing was proclaimed elsewhere by Archbishop Manning 
 and other infallibilists. Liberal Catholics were aroused. A power- 
 ful and learned attack on the doctrine of papal infallibility was
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY ^41 
 
 published in 1869, "The Pope and the Council," by Janus, the 
 production, it is understood, of Dollinger, Friedrich, and Huber 
 of the University of Munich. Ketteler, Bishop of Mayence, 
 Maret, Dean of the Paris Theological Faculty, and others, pub- 
 lished books on the same side. The Council was opened on Decem- 
 ber 8, 1869. There were present 719 members. Preliminary 
 commissions, appointed by the Pope, had discussed and determined 
 the matter to be submitted for consideration. At the outset, a 
 bull of the Pope laid down the rules of procedure. He was to 
 nominate the officers of the Council. Whatever proposals should 
 be made by bishops were to be submitted to a commission selected 
 by him, and consisting half of Italians. If a proposal were ap- 
 proved by the commission, it must have the sanction of the Pope 
 before it could be discussed. When a decree had been discussed, 
 it went to one of the four special commissions to be corrected, 
 and must then be voted upon without debate. The papal theolo- 
 gians were predominant in all these committees. A new regula- 
 tion (on the 22d of February, 1870) reversed the old rule that 
 required unanimity for a dogmatic decision, and substituted for it 
 a numerical majority. A protest, dated March i, against this un- 
 exampled rule, although signed by more than one hundred prelates, 
 was of no avail. There were strong anti-infallibilists who dis- 
 believed in the proposed doctrine. Such were Hefele, Archbishop 
 Kenrick of St. Louis, and Strossmayer. Others, of whom Dupan- 
 loup was one, opposed the dogmatic definition as inopportune. 
 At the stage of the proceedings when a private vote was taken 
 there were 88 who cast negative votes, 61 a qualified negative, 
 and 91 abstained from voting, although present in Rome. Out- 
 side of Rome there was an intense feeling of grief and indigna- 
 tion among Catholics, hostile, on various grounds, to the projected 
 decree. This feeling finds expression in a private letter of Dr. 
 Newman to his bishop, which afterwards found its way into print. 
 " Why," he says, " should an aggressive, insolent faction be allowed 
 ' to make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made 
 sorrowful? ' " After it was found that no modification of the pro- 
 jected dogma could be obtained, fifty-six bishops in a written pro- 
 test informed the Pope of their resolve to return to their dioceses. 
 On the same evening, together with sixty additional members, they 
 left Rome. On the final vote, all but two of the 535 fathers pres- 
 ent voted " Yea." In the debate, there were not wanting eloquent
 
 542 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 voices, notably those of Strossmayer and Kenrick, from the 
 ranks of the opposition. There is not a little discrepancy in the 
 different reports relative to the proceedings in connection with 
 the Council. It is certain that the influence of the Pope and of 
 his supporters was strenuously exerted to carry their measure and 
 to quell resistance. It is certain that the leaders of the minority 
 earnestly complained that the freedom of debate was crippled by 
 unjust restrictions and unseemly interruptions. It is certain that 
 while everything in favor of the dominant party was sent out from 
 the press at Rome, the writings and speeches of its adversaries, 
 like Hefele's pamphlet on the " Honorius Question," and the long 
 argument which Kenrick was not able to deliver, had to be printed 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The majority in the Council was united and resolute, and had 
 every aid from the surrounding circumstances. The minority were 
 weakened by the fact that so many opposed the decree, not declar- 
 ing it to be false, but merely inopportune. The whole force of the 
 surrounding circumstances at Rome was against them. Owing to 
 the peculiar political situation in Europe, the governments remained 
 inert when, in other conditions, they would have spoken with effect. 
 But the minority was fatally hampered by the previous actual exer- 
 cise of the disputed prerogative of the Pope in the decree of the 
 immaculate conception, which had been received with acquiescence. 
 
 The question is often asked, How could the Council establish 
 the Pope's infallibility, without the assumption in the very act that 
 in the Council supreme authority resides? The answer is, that 
 the decree was not the act of the Council, but the act of the Pon- 
 tiff, the assent of the Council being the destruction of the doctrine 
 of Episcopalism. It was so far an act of suicide on the part of the 
 defenders of the conciliar theory as to the seat of authority. The 
 Vatican decrees do not open with formulas like those of Trent : 
 "The sacred and holy, oecumenical and general" Synod teaches or 
 declares so and so ; but it is "We," that is, Pius IX., "the sacred 
 Council approving, teach and define," etc. The Council abrogates 
 the right accorded to it by liberal Catholicism by sanctioning the 
 Pope's declarations that " the definitions of the Roman Pontiff are 
 irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church." 
 
 The dogmatic decree declares that when the Pope speaks 
 ex cathedra ; that is, when in his character of " pastor and doctor 
 of all Christians," he "defines a doctrine regarding faith and
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 morals," he is possessed of infallibility. How is the dogmatic 
 decree to be interpreted? Of course, it says nothing as to the 
 personal character of pontiffs. It may be good or bad. It does 
 not ascribe inerrancy to the Pope in ordinary conversation on 
 theology and ethics, or to letters or other writings not addressed 
 by him to the entire Church with the explicit intention to define 
 belief, and belief within this restricted circle of topics. But the 
 interpretation of the Vatican decree, even by authorities in the 
 ultramontane party, limits the papal prerogative in a degree quite 
 unexpected, not to say logically untenable. One of these ex- 
 positors of the dogma is Fessler, who was Secretary of the Council. 
 In his book, in reply to Dr. Schultz, a canonist of Prague, a leader 
 in the Old Catholic party, Fessler affirms that what popes have 
 thought, said, done, or ordained is not pertinent to the question 
 as to Catholic dogmas, but only what they have decided ex cathedra 
 to be Catholic doctrine in faith and morals ; that things done by 
 popes are not papal declarations ex cathedra ; that the same is true 
 of their utterances in daily life, books, or ordinary correspond- 
 ence ; that the same is true of their solemn declarations made in 
 the exercise of their jurisdiction as lawgivers in matters of disci- 
 pline, and in pronouncing judicial decisions and sentences ; that re- 
 marks accompanying a really dogmatic declaration which is made 
 ex cathedra are not a part of the declaration itself, and are not 
 infallible. Applying these criteria, Fessler asserts that affirmations 
 of popes in connection with the condemnation of books, declara- 
 tions of Leo X. in the bull excommunicating Luther, etc., do not 
 fall under the head of dogmatic decisions. Still more sweeping 
 is the exclusion from this category of papal declarations relating 
 to the " state, to countries, peoples, and individuals." Only one 
 sentence in the bull, unam sanctam, is conceded to be ex cathedra. 
 We are assured by Fessler that it is not conceded by Catholic 
 theologians that all the sentences in the Syllabus of Pius IX., which 
 are drawn from previous documents, are, according to the decree 
 of the Vatican Council, spoken ex cathedra. He avers that no 
 one is guilty of such theological folly ( Unsinn) as to put a papal 
 declaration on a level with the Gospel. That the Pope's " infalli- 
 ble decisions ex cathedra are inspired of God was neither asserted 
 by the Vatican Council, nor ever taught in the Catholic Church." 
 It is not by this method that the Church is saved from being 
 misled by erroneous teaching emanating from its chief pastor.
 
 544 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 It was unavoidable that the Vatican decree should be consid- 
 ered by many to imperil the foundations of civil authority. Glad- 
 stone maintained this, first in an article in The Contemporary Re- 
 view^ and then in a distinct publication, The Vatican Decrees in 
 their Bearing on Civil Allegiance. Manning made answer, and 
 Newman, also, wrote on the same side. Gladstone dwelt on the 
 all-pervading presence of the obligation of duty in human conduct. 
 He quoted Manning's language that the " spiritual power " in mat- 
 ters of religion and conscience, is supreme, and the proposition 
 that this power " alone can fix the limits of its own jurisdiction, 
 and can thereby fix the limits of all other jurisdictions." That 
 is to say, the Pope alone is authorized to decide what are the 
 bounds within which the province of the State is confined, and 
 when they are transgressed. 
 
 During the sessions of the Council, Dollinger, whom Gladstone 
 pronounced " the most famous and learned theologian of the 
 Roman Communion," wrote that not only must an article of faith 
 be unanimously approved by the bishops united with the Pope, 
 but that the cecumenicity of their acts must be acknowledged and 
 ratified by the whole church. Dollinger and Friedrich, at the 
 head of forty-two Munich professors, publicly protested against 
 the Vatican decree. This began the Old Catholic movement, 
 which spread elsewhere in Germany, in Switzerland, and to some 
 extent in other places. In the assemblies of these dissentients, 
 Dollinger was not willing to unite in the creation of the separate 
 organization which was formed by them. He adhered to his 
 denial of the binding force of the Vatican decrees, and was at 
 length excommunicated. The Old Catholic organization intro- 
 duced several reforms, such as the giving of the cup to the laity, 
 the abolition of the law of celibacy, the use of the vernacular in 
 the service of worship. Dollinger presided over two Old Cath- 
 olic conferences, which included several members from Russia, 
 France, and England, for the promotion of Christian union among 
 the hierarchical churches opposed to papal usurpations. At the 
 first of these meetings, held at Bonn in 1874, fourteen doctrinal 
 articles were agreed upon. At the second, held also at Bonn, the 
 next year, there was an agreement upon six articles relating to the 
 doctrine of the Procession of the Spirit, and to the controversy on 
 this subject between the Eastern and Western churches. 
 1 October, 1874.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CONCLUSION : CERTAIN THEOLOGICAL TENDENCIES IN RECENT TIMES 
 
 THE design of these remarks is to advert to certain drifts in 
 theology which are specially observable in the last few decades. 
 In contrast with what was customary in the last century, we find 
 that emphasis is laid upon the immanence of God. Thus there is 
 recognized in Pantheism a half-truth which, in the combat for 
 the transcendence of the divine Being, in former days, was often 
 overlooked. A measure of reasonableness, moreover, is conceded 
 to the Mysticism which, in past ages, in varied forms, has made 
 much of the inward, living presence of God in the devout soul. 
 The Deistic habit of thought which characterized not only the 
 champions of Deism, but, also, their orthodox opponents, has been 
 supplanted by a deeper conception of the relation of God to the 
 Creation. Accordingly, in Apologetics, the Evidential theology of 
 the last century, which gave the precedence to miracles and to the 
 proofs of them through testimony, has given way to a method which 
 attributes a higher probative value to the internal, spiritual charac- 
 teristics of the Christian Revelation. 
 
 The trend towards a materialistic Pantheism which was often 
 connected with the first proclamation of the law of physical evolu- 
 tion is far less perceptible. Further reflection tends to convince 
 the ablest naturalists of the defects of such a theory of the universe. 
 It is more and more clear that the moral history of mankind 
 cannot be resolved into a natural history. In one of Professor 
 Huxley's lay sermons, 1 the relation of man to the laws of nature, 
 including men and their ways, is likened to a game with an unseen 
 Power, conceived of as inflexible, but righteous, a calm, strong 
 angel, who is playing for love, " and would rather lose than win." 
 Entering thus into the illustration are elements at variance with 
 
 1 Lay Sermons, Addresses, etc. (1871), p. 31. 
 2N 545
 
 546 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 the agnostic philosophy. More significant still is the general 
 tenor of one of the latest productions of the same author, the 
 Romanes Lecture. The moral task of man is depicted as in 
 direct conflict with the " cosmic process." " The practice of what 
 is ethically best," we are assured, what we call goodness or 
 virtue, "involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is 
 opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle 
 for existence." "The ethical progress of society depends, not on 
 imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, 
 but in combating it." 1 It is true that here and there in this 
 lecture, and more distinctly in the added " Prolegomena," this 
 ethical resistance is itself made a part of the " cosmic process " 
 regarded as a whole. But the progress of the author's mind is 
 obviously towards the perception of the free and responsible ele- 
 ment that enters into man's constitution, account for its genesis 
 as we may. Even the gloomy, pessimistic outlook upon the 
 future of the world is so far brightened that the author says : 
 " I see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will, guided 
 by sound principles of investigation, and organized in common 
 effort, may modify the conditions of existence, for a period longer 
 than that now covered by history. And much may be done to 
 change the nature of man himself." 2 It is admitted to be "an 
 apparent paradox," " that ethical nature, while born of cosmic 
 nature, is necessarily at enmity with its parent." 3 
 
 An interesting instance of a complete advance to a religious 
 and even a distinctly Christian view of the world and of man is 
 that of George John Romanes, the gifted expositor of Evolution, 
 who founded the lecture bearing his name a name which Hux- 
 ley cannot record without " deploring his untimely death in the 
 flower of his age." 4 In A Candid Examination of Theism, by 
 Physicus, which Romanes published in 1876, he had arrived at 
 a wholly skeptical conclusion as to the being of God and the 
 freedom of the will. Gradually this position was abandoned for 
 that of Christian Theism. He saw that he had attached too little 
 importance to the needs and intimations of the human spirit to 
 phenomena which it behooves a scientific man not to overlook. 
 He adopted as the most reasonable opinion the doctrine that all 
 causation is volitional, that there is a teleology in nature, and that 
 
 1 See Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays (1894), pp. 81-83. 
 Ibid. p. 85. 8 Ibid. p. viii. * Ibid. p. v.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 the scientific objections to the freedom of the will are not valid. 1 
 "It is no argument," he came to think, "against the divine origin 
 of a thing, event, etc., to prove it due to natural causation." 2 By 
 a path of his own, an able interpreter of the philosophy of Spencer 
 finds his way to Theism and to the truth of personal immortality. 3 
 
 The reaction against a Deistic, as distinguished from a Theistic, 
 position, is manifest in the method of dealing with the antithesis 
 of the natural and the supernatural. The idea that one is the 
 antipode of the other is no longer satisfactory. There is an impa- 
 tience of duality, a search for unity, in the plan of Providence. 
 The vague impression that redemption is somehow an afterthought, 
 a remodelling of the scheme of the world to meet an emergency 
 not at first provided for, is dispelled. There is perceived a ten- 
 dency to follow Augustine and to harmonize the seemingly con- 
 flicting parts of the system by the doctrine that the natural is 
 supernatural that, albeit there are two classes of events, they 
 nevertheless constitute one order of things. Hence theologians 
 cast about for a hypothesis concerning the miracles of Scripture 
 that shall do away with the idea that they are anti-natural, 
 and show that, in the circumstances in which they occur, they 
 have their place in the comprehensive order. On the subject of 
 the Atonement, theology seeks for a point of view where all ap- 
 pearance of arbitrariness in the doctrinal explanations of the New 
 Testament as to the purport and effect of the sufferings and death 
 of Christ, shall disappear where the historic facts shall interpret 
 themselves in accordance with these explanations. 
 
 Among Protestants and Roman Catholics the old question re- 
 specting the seat of authority in religion is once more eagerly 
 disputed. Since Coleridge and Schleiermacher insisted that the 
 primary object of faith is not the Bible, but Christ, there has been 
 a growing tendency to regard the Scriptures less as an authorita- 
 tive manual of revealed tenets in theology and morals, than as the 
 medium of disclosing to us the personal Christ and the import of 
 His mission and teaching. The absolute inerrancy of Scriptural 
 statements, especially in the narrative portions of the Bible, is no 
 
 1 See Romanes, Thoughts on Religion, edited by Canon Gore (2d ed. 1895), 
 
 P-3i- 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 128. 
 
 3 John Fiske, The Destiny of Man viewed in the Light of his Origin 
 (1884) ; The Idea of God as affected by Modern Knowledge (1885).
 
 548 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 longer maintained, in England and America, by numerous theolo- 
 gians who are firmly attached to the principal doctrines of the 
 Evangelical system. An American theological teacher whose 
 early death was generally lamented writes as follows, speaking 
 of American Congregationalists : l " We are coming more clearly 
 to understand the great purpose of the Bible ; namely, to bring 
 the Church and the individual in all ages into vital contact with 
 the historic facts, the divine truth, and the spiritual power of 
 Christianity ; and so to discern what is essential and non-essential 
 for the attainment of that purpose. We are most of us ready to 
 admit that false standards have been set up, that an infallibility in 
 non-essentials has been demanded which the Bible never claims, 
 and which, if it existed, would render it less fitted for its end. We 
 are beginning to see that we may grant that the sacred writers 
 were not scientific historians, not philosophers or men of science, 
 not experts in the methods of scientific exegesis or of literary criti- 
 cism, and yet may rest firm in our conviction that they were so 
 directed by the supernatural influence of God's Spirit as to give 
 us the perfect rule of faith and life." The tendency of opinion 
 to which reference is here made is reinforced at present by 
 whatever is deemed verifiable in the " Higher Criticism." In 
 Germany, one prominent object of investigation of late has been 
 the " consciousness of Christ," and the inquiry has been prose- 
 cuted by means of a scrutiny of the Scriptures, in which the 
 inerrancy of their several parts is far from being assumed or 
 acknowledged. At the same time, Protestant theologians, even of 
 the class referred to, are frequently disposed to admit an authority 
 of the Church, in some substantial meaning of the terms. The 
 Christian experience of the Church at large, the collective " Chris- 
 tian consciousness," is considered a trustworthy witness in regard 
 to the substance of the Gospel. 2 
 
 1 The Present Direction of Theological Thought in the Congregational 
 Churches in the United States, a paper read before the International Congre- 
 gational Council in London (1891), by Lewis F. Stearns. 
 
 2 Professor Charles A. Briggs, a distinguished scholar in the Presbyterian 
 Church, in an Inaugural Address (1891), maintained that there are "three 
 fountains of divine authority"; namely, the Bible, the Reason, and the 
 Church. In subsequent discussions he disavowed the intention to coordinate 
 these.* He alleged in support of his thesis the divine institution of the Church, 
 
 * The Defence before the Presbytery, p. 82 seq.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 549 
 
 The great antithesis between Sacramentalism the doctrine of 
 the inherent efficacy of the Sacraments and the opposite view 
 as to their significance remains. With the exception of the Lu- 
 theran Church in its doctrine of the Eucharist, Sacramentalism 
 has been connected with belief in the continued priestly office of 
 the clergy. A new obstacle in the way of the reunion of the 
 churches and the portions of churches in which Sacramentalism 
 is the creed has been created by the Vatican declaration of Papal 
 infallibility. Yet the attenuated meaning attached to the new 
 dogma lessens the height of the wall of division among Sacerdo- 
 talists, and the toleration of the theory of development, in the 
 room of tradition, as the basis of the Roman system, an allow- 
 ance implied in such an act as the raising of Newman to the 
 cardinalate, removes, in the apprehension of many, a barrier 
 that had kept away from the Church of Rome conscientious 
 historical students. 1 
 
 The reduction of the area of Calvinism, and its partial disinte- 
 gration in communities where it had long been established, is a 
 fact which challenges attention. If we go back to the dawn of 
 the seventeenth century, we find that the Reformed or Calvinistic 
 creed, to say nothing of its prevalence in Bohemia, Hungary, and 
 other regions of less note, was dominant in Switzerland, the Palat- 
 inate, Holland, the Protestant Church of France, of Scotland, and 
 in England, where, to the end of the reign of Elizabeth, the theo- 
 logical influence of Calvin was a controlling power. Arminianism 
 inflicted a severe blow upon the dominion exercised by the Gene- 
 van system, not only in Holland, but, more and more, under the 
 
 the Ministry, and the Sacraments. On the subject of Biblical Infallibility he 
 said : " The Bible has maintained its authority with the best scholars of our 
 time, who with open minds have been willing to recognize any error that might 
 be pointed out by historical criticism ; for these errors are all in the circum- 
 stantials and not in the essentials; they are in the human setting and not in 
 the precious jewel itself; they are found in that section of the Bible that theo- 
 logians commonly account for from the providential superintendence of the 
 mind of the author as distinguished from divine revelation itself." * Oppo- 
 nents of this teaching of Professor Briggs contended for the infallibility of the 
 " original autographs " of the Scriptures. 
 
 1 The difference of the old and the new theory was appreciated by 
 Dr. Pusey: "The Council of Trent does not go, as dear Newman does, on 
 development, but on tradition." Life of Pusey, Vol. III. p. 207. 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 22.
 
 550 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 Stuarts, in England. In the last century, among the agencies 
 which contributed still further to diminish the sway of Calvinism 
 in English-speaking communities, the influence of Bishop Butler, 
 through the method of his Analogy, is an important factor. In 
 that notable work, so valued a defence of the truths of religion, 
 the doctrine of man's probation has a prominent place. It is not, 
 however, the Calvinistic doctrine of the probation of the race, but 
 the doctrine of the probation of the individual, each for himself, 
 on which the author insists. In the decline of interest in the old 
 disputes on questions which Calvinists had debated with their 
 opponents, in the presence of issues more fundamental, the natural 
 tendency of Butler's discussions had a marked effect on the habit 
 of thought. The Wesleyan movement induced a certain reaction, 
 but Calvinism contended against great odds, owing to the rapid 
 growth and diffusion in America, as well as England, of Wesley's 
 reinforcement of an aggressive Arminianism. The dissatisfaction 
 which has appeared, from time to time, with one feature of Cal- 
 vinism, which is denominated "limited atonement," the persist- 
 ence of a strong predilection for the opinion that the salvation 
 of the non-elect is an object of sincere desire in the mind of God, 
 have proved, likewise, a disintegrating force. It is worthy of re- 
 mark that, among Presbyterians in the United States and Great 
 Britain, in efforts, in some cases successful, and in some cases not, 
 to revise the Westminster Confession, a special aim has been to 
 incorporate in the creed, or to annex to it, the opinion just 
 referred to. To one who looks below the surface of conten- 
 tions in theology, it is pretty obvious that it is not the doctrine 
 of predestination the network of teleology in which Calvinism 
 encloses the realms of nature and Providence that more com- 
 monly excites repugnance to this compact and logical system. 
 The theory of determinism, in a more rigid form than any opinion 
 of the Genevan reformer, is not unfrequently expressed by phi- 
 losophers who, on questions of religion, are of the free-thinking 
 class. The real, even when unconscious, motive of this antago- 
 nism is the objection felt to the connected doctrine relative to 
 the outcome of the course of the world to the Calvinistic 
 eschatology. It cannot be denied that, whether justly or unjustly, 
 to a multitude of minds, in modern days, the system of Calvinism 
 wears an aspect of cruelty. The source of this impression, how- 
 ever, is not so much any dogma pertaining to divine and human
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 551 
 
 agency, as the tenet as to the actual issues of the divine govern- 
 ment and of the drama of human life. In a survey of the theo- 
 logical tendencies of the present day, one general cause of the 
 decadence of Calvinism is entitled to a more particular con- 
 sideration, and will now be adverted to. 
 
 It is plain to keen observers that, in the later days, both within 
 and without what may be called the pale of Calvinism, there 
 is a certain relaxing of confidence in the previously accepted 
 solutions of some of the gravest theological problems. This 
 appears among many whose attachment to the core of the essen- 
 tial truths formulated in the past does not wane, whose substantial 
 orthodoxy, as well as piety, is not often, if it be at all, questioned, 
 and who have no sympathy with agnosticism, in the technical sense 
 of the word. The fact is here stated, with no purpose either to 
 applaud or to censure. It is in part an incidental effect of the 
 exegetical method and spirit in which history, as well as philology, 
 is applied, in a manner somewhat new, to the interpretation of the 
 Bible. The exegesis of the past is felt to be in need of a revisal 
 from fresh points of view and of a larger infusion of literary tact. 
 The reduced confidence in traditional solutions is partly owing to 
 a sense of the need of a sharper distinction between the funda- 
 mental truths of the Gospel and the philosophy which has been 
 employed in the formulating of them. This motive may prompt, 
 as is the case with a section of the Ritschlian School in Germany, 
 to an unduly agnostic position respecting the objective reality of 
 the truths themselves, and to the abjuring of philosophy altogether. 
 But such is not the state of mind in the class of orthodox teachers 
 of religion who are here referred to. Even by them the formulas 
 respecting the precise connection of divine agency with human 
 agency, in the composition of the Scriptures, and in regenera- 
 tion and sanctification, the theodicy as concerned with the intro- 
 duction and perpetuation of evil, the process of the Incarnation, 
 the mode in which the Saviour's death affects the mind of God 
 and lays a basis for the proclamation of forgiveness, the ultimate 
 destiny of the impenitent and non-Christian portion of mankind, 
 the formulas on these themes are looked upon with at least a 
 modicum of distrust. A larger space is remanded to the region 
 of mystery. There is a tendency to enlarge the domain of the 
 unrevealed. 
 The purport of the foregoing statements may be better under-
 
 552 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 stood by particular reference to two English theological writers, 
 each of acknowledged worth and eminence, and each a revered 
 leader in his own communion. 
 
 The first of these writers is the late Dean Church, who was 
 affiliated with the Oxford Movement and has best recorded its 
 history. The extracts which follow are from letters in reply to 
 correspondents who brought before him their difficulties in relation 
 to eternal punishment, the limitation of the knowledge of the 
 incarnate Christ, the Atonement. They touch incidentally on the 
 principles of Biblical interpretation. 1 
 
 " Whatever one says of the millions of publicans and sinners, 
 or the 'sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between 
 their right hand and their left,' must rest on other premises. 
 There, it seems to me that we are between the certainties of 
 God's justice, mercy, and love, on the one hand ; and on the 
 other, our own absolute and hopeless ignorance as to how He 
 deals, and will deal, with these millions, both in and out of Chris- 
 tendom, as to whom the first difficulty that presents itself is, 
 why they were born for such inevitable lives, and, apparently, 
 certain moral failure. I say apparently, because none but He 
 who knows, in each concrete case, the light given, and the real 
 movements of the will, can know what the failure really is. 
 Scripture, which tells us the doom not only of deliberate sin, but 
 of sinful trifling and carelessness in those who know, or might 
 have known, is silent about these masses of mankind, who, so far 
 as we can see, are without what we have." 
 
 ******* 
 
 " The common topic against eternal punishment, ' Could any 
 man of ordinary feeling appoint it ? and if not, how could God ? ' 
 is quite as strong about evil. How can we imagine ourselves, sup- 
 posing we had omnipotence or omniscience, enduring to bring 
 into being such unintermitting masses of misery and sin? The 
 difficulty of finally dealing with evil is to me a far less difficulty 
 than that of evil itself. The ordinary language about eternal 
 punishment seems to me simply to forget the fact of the equal 
 difficulty of evil. Two difficulties do not make one solution; 
 but at least they ought to teach patience and guarded lan- 
 guage. 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Dean Church (1894), pp. 315, 318, 319, 328.
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 553 
 
 " On the other hand, Scripture, though awfully plain-spoken 
 and stern, seems to me very general in its language on this 
 matter." 
 
 ******* 
 
 " I have no doubt that we have not yet reached the true and 
 complete method of Scripture exegesis, and that a great deal 
 remains to be done by sober and reverential inquiry, in dis- 
 tinguishing between its definite and precise language (' the Word 
 was God ') and its vague or incidental or unqualified language 
 (' hate his father and mother,' ' shall not come out till he has 
 paid the uttermost farthing'). But I shrink much from specu- 
 lating on the human knowledge of our blessed Lord, or the limita- 
 tions and they may have been great which He was pleased 
 to impose on Himself, when he ' emptied Himself,' and became 
 as one of us. I have never been satisfied with the ordinary expla- 
 nations of the text you quote, St. Matt. xxiv. 36. They seem 
 simply to explain it away as much as any Unitarian gloss of St. 
 John i. i. To me it means that He who was to judge the world, 
 who knew what was in man, and, more, who alone knew the 
 Father, was at that time content to have that hour hidden from 
 Him did not choose to be above the angels in knowing it as 
 He was afterwards content to be forsaken of the Father. But the 
 whole is perfectly inconceivable to my mind, and I could not base 
 any general theory of His knowledge on it. I think it is very 
 likely that we do not understand the meaning of much that is 
 said in Scripture ; its sense, and the end and purport for which 
 at the time it was said. But it would perplex me much to think 
 that He was imperfect or ignorant in what He did say, whether 
 we understood Him or not." 
 
 ******* 
 
 " As far as I understand the difficulty it is this : How could our 
 Lord really have sympathized in all human pain, when He could 
 not, by supposition, have known that which gives it its worst sting, 
 its apparent uselessness and its helplessness ? Well, I can only 
 say that I cannot form the faintest conception how, in the actual 
 depths of that Divine suffering nature, all human pain was borne, 
 and shared, and understood. I can only see it from the outside. 
 I see the suffering ; I am told, on His authority, what it means 
 and involves. I can, if I like, and as has often been done, go on 
 and make a theory how He bore our sins, and how He gained
 
 554 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 their forgiveness, and how He took away the sins of the world. 
 But I own that the longer I live the more my mind recoils from 
 such efforts. It seems to me so idle, so, in the very nature of our 
 condition, hopeless, just in proportion as one seems to grasp more 
 really the true nature of all that went on beyond the visible sight 
 of the Cross, all that was in Him who was God and man, whose 
 capacities and inner life human experience cannot reach or reflect. 
 But one of the thoughts which pass sometimes through our minds 
 about the sufferings of the Cross, is, what could be the necessity 
 of such suffering? What was the use of it? How, with infinite 
 power, could not its ends have been otherwise attained? Why 
 need He have suffered? Why could not the Father save Him 
 from that hour ? Did that thought, in the limitations and ' empty- 
 ing ' (Phil. ii. 7) of the Passion, pass through His mind too ? 
 
 " But I suppose that, after all, the real difficulty is not about 
 Him, but ourselves. Why pain at all ? I can only say that the 
 very attempt to give an answer, that the very thought of an answer 
 by us being conceivable, seems to me one which a reasonable 
 being in our circumstances ought not to entertain. It seems to 
 me one of those questions which can only be expressed by such a 
 figure as a fly trying to get through a glass window, or a human 
 being jumping into space ; that is, it is almost impossible to express 
 the futility of it. It is obvious that it is part of a wider subject, 
 that it could not be answered by itself, that we should need to 
 know a great many other things to have the power of answering. 
 And what is the use of asking what we cannot know ? . . . The 
 facts which witness to the goodness and the love of God are clear 
 and undeniable ; they are not got rid of by the presence and cer- 
 tainty of other facts, which seem of an opposite kind ; only the 
 coexistence of the two contraries is perplexing. And then comes 
 the question, which shall have the decisive, governing influence on 
 wills and lives ? You must, by the necessity of your existence, 
 trust one set of appearances ; which will you trust ? Our Lord 
 came among us not to clear up the perplexity, but to show us 
 which side to take." 
 
 The second of the writers is the late Dr. R. W. Dale, the re- 
 spect for whom among the Congregationalists of England, among 
 whom he was an honored leader, was shared by men of the 
 highest worth in the Established Church, and by fellow-Christians
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY ccc 
 
 of his own communion in America. The following extracts are 
 from the discourse of Dr. Dale on the " Evangelical Revival " of 
 the last century. 1 
 
 "When the Reformers undertook the task of constructing a 
 theology for the Reformed Churches, the intellectual revolution 
 which began with the Renaissance was incomplete it is not 
 complete yet and while they made immense and salutary 
 changes in the dogmas of the Church by a constant appeal to the 
 authority of the Holy Scripture, their method was still powerfully 
 influenced by the decaying Scholasticism. There were other causes 
 which gave to their work a provisional character. Indeed all work 
 of this kind is necessarily but for a time ; it has to be done over 
 again whenever any great changes have taken place in the intel- 
 lectual condition of Christendom. Such changes have plainly 
 been going on very rapidly during the last three hundred years, 
 It looks as if we had almost escaped from the philosophical 
 methods which still retained much of their authority in the time 
 of the Reformers. If the intellectual revolution is approaching 
 its term, the process of reconstructing our theological systems will 
 soon have to be gone through again. . . . Among Evangelical 
 Nonconformists the severe and rigid lines of Calvinism have been 
 gradually relaxed. Mr. Spurgeon stands alone among the modern 
 leaders of Evangelical Nonconformists in his fidelity to the older 
 Calvinistic creed. 
 
 "The decay of Calvinism among Evangelical Nonconformists 
 has been largely due to the influence of Methodism. . . . But 
 other influences have been acting on the traditional creed of our 
 churches. . . . 
 
 " That general movement of European thought of which I have 
 spoken is rendering it impossible to retain theological theories 
 which were constructed in the sixteenth century. Men whose 
 whole life is rooted in Christ, to whom He is the Eternal Word of 
 God, ' the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image 
 of His person,' ' the propitiation for the sin of the world,' the 
 Prince, the Saviour, and the Judge of men, are conscious that the 
 rivets which fastened their doctrinal definitions are loosening 
 they hardly know how or why ; that their theological theories, as 
 distinct from their religious faith, are dissolving and melting away. 
 
 1 The Evangelical Revival and Other Sermons (1880), pp. 19, 21-25.
 
 556 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 
 While not relaxing their hold on the Divine revelation which has 
 come to them through Christ, they are asking for some more satis- 
 factory intellectual account of the great facts and truths which are 
 their joy and strength. There is hardly a theological definition 
 which they can accept without qualification; there is hardly a 
 theological phrase which is not colored by speculations which 
 seem to them incredible. They have not lost sight of sun and 
 stars ; they will tell you that with their increasing years the glory 
 of the sun is brighter to them than ever, and that the stars are 
 more mysterious and divine; but they want a new astronomical 
 theory. The sun and stars are God's handiwork; astronomi- 
 cal theories are the provisional human explanations of Divine 
 wonders." 
 
 ******* 
 
 " The work of theological reconstruction must be done. It can 
 only be done effectively when the religious faith and ardor of the 
 Church are intense, and when robust genius and massive learning 
 are united with saintly devotion. A theology which is the creation 
 of a poor and degraded religious life will have neither stability nor 
 grandeur. We must all become better Christians before we can 
 hope to see great theologians. 
 
 " Meanwhile and this, perhaps, is the lesson of the hour 
 all Evangelical Churches should frankly recognize that the Evan- 
 gelical theology not the Evangelical faith is passing through 
 a period of transition. We should not rigorously insist on the 
 acceptance either of the subordinate details of our creed or of the 
 scientific forms in which we are accustomed to state even its regal 
 and central articles. It would be treason to truth to trifle with 
 the immortal substance of the gospel of Christ; it would be 
 treason to charity to refuse to receive as brethren those who may 
 differ from us about the theological forms in which the substance 
 of the Gospel may be best expressed." 
 
 Since the Reformation, in contrast with the more distinctively 
 ecclesiastical ages preceding, the ethical side of the Gospel has 
 been more and more brought into the foreground. The relation 
 of Christianity to political and social reform, to philanthropy in 
 all directions, engages attention. Allied to this spirit is the more 
 absorbing interest in the Life of Jesus, which gives rise to numerous 
 special works of biography, in different languages. Theology con- 
 centrates its inquiries upon Christ with a greater subordination of
 
 MODERN THEOLOGY 
 
 557 
 
 all other topics. It appears to be felt that the outcome, the ripe 
 fruit, of the Old Testament dispensation is to be found in the 
 Woman and the Child in the manger at Bethlehem. The upper- 
 most question is, What think ye of Christ? This question, and 
 the implications of His person and work, form the rubrics of the 
 theological system.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbott, E. A., 452, 459, 463. 
 
 Abelard, Peter, his characteristics, 221 ; 
 his confidence in reason, 222; on in- 
 spiration, id. ; on original sin, ib. ; on 
 the atonement, 223 ; on the Trinity, ib. ; 
 accused and condemned, ib. ; his ser- 
 vice to theology, 224. 
 
 Absolution, 258,280,330,331,466. See 
 " Penance." 
 
 Adam's sin, doctrine of. See " Original 
 Sin." 
 
 Adiaphoristic controversies, the, 295. 
 
 Adoption controversy, the, 205. 
 
 rEthiopic Church, the rise of, 156. 
 
 Aetiusof Antioch, 142. 
 
 Agape, the, in the early Church, 46, 168. 
 
 Agatho, Bishop of Rome, 159. 
 
 Agnosticism, a certain species of in Sir 
 W. Hamilton, 484; also in Mansel, 
 485 ; in Spencer, 487 ; in Huxley, 489. 
 See "Agnostics." 
 
 Agnostics, on the possibility of theology, 
 
 4- 
 
 Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, 203. 
 
 Agricola, John, 294. 
 
 Aix, Synod of, 205. 
 
 Albert the Great, 231, 257, 259. 
 
 Albigenses, 263. 
 
 Alcuin, 203, 205. 
 
 Alexander*VII., Pope, 335. 
 
 Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, 135. 
 
 Alexander of Hales, influence of Aris- 
 totle on, 216, 229 ; on divine and hu- 
 man agency, 249 ; his idea of a treas- 
 ury of merits, 250, 259; on the pre- 
 requisite for absolution, 260. 
 
 Alexandria, theological school at, 39, 94, 
 127, 151 ; synods at, 135, 150, 152. 
 
 Allegorical interpretation, in Palestinian 
 and Alexandrian Judaism, 26, 27; 
 among the Gnostics, 54; among the 
 Apostolic Fathers generally, 76 ; Clem- 
 ent of Alexandria on, 94 ; in Origen, 
 105; in Methodius, 116; in Bernard 
 of Clairvaux, 224 ; in Cocceius, 349. 
 
 Alogi, the, 100. 
 
 Amalric of Bena, 213. 
 
 Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, his writ- 
 ings, 132 ; his influence on Augustine, 
 *77, i?9, 187; on original sin, 187. 
 
 Ames, William, 348. 
 
 Ammonius Saceas, 31, 40. 
 
 Amsdorf, 295, 296. 
 
 Amyraut ( Amyraldus) , his theology, 342, 
 
 345- 
 
 Anabaptists, their rise, and tenets, 318 ; 
 in Switzerland, 319 ; their spread, ib. 
 
 Ancyra, Synod of, 142. 
 
 Andover theologians on continued pro- 
 bation, 444. 
 
 Andreae, 296. 
 
 Andreas, Bishop of Samosata, 153. 
 
 Andrewes, Lancelot, Bishop, his theo- 
 logy, 355- 
 
 Angels, the doctrine of, in Philo, 28 ; in 
 the Gnostic systems, 56; in Justin 
 Martyr, 65 note ; in Pseudo-Dionysius, 
 173 ; the worship of, 124, 172, 198. 
 
 " Anglo-Catholic " party and theology, 
 rise of, 353 sq., 357; revived in the 
 Oxford movement, 455 sq. 
 
 Annihilation of the wicked, doctrine of 
 the, 88, 444, 479, 516. See "Future 
 State," " Immortality." 
 
 Anomceans, 142, 143. 
 
 Anselm, on the relation of faith and 
 knowledge, 6, 213, 216 ; realism and 
 creationism conjoined in, 187 ; on the 
 Lord's Supper, 211 ; the father of Scho- 
 lasticism, 216 ; his writings, 217 ; on the 
 proofs of the being of God, ib.; on 
 original sin, ib. sq. ; his doctrine of sin 
 compared with that of Augustine, 218 ; 
 his doctrine of the atonement, 219; 
 this compared with that of Aquinas, 
 245, 246. 
 
 Antioch, school of, its spirit and teach- 
 ing, 122, 127, 151 ; synods of, 104, 115, 
 140, 142. 
 
 Antiochian symbols, 140, 141. 
 
 Apocalypses, Jewish, influence on early 
 Christian thought, 271. 
 
 SS9
 
 5 6o 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Apocalyptic element in the N. T. con- 
 ception of the kingdom, 24. 
 
 Apocrypha, use of the term by the 
 Fathers, 121 sq. ; in the Creed of 
 Trent, 328. 
 
 Apollinaris, and the Apollinarian doc- 
 trine, 148 sq. 
 
 Apologists, Greek, their conception of 
 Christianity and of its proofs, 61, 62. 
 See under the several names. 
 
 Apostles' Creed, its origin, 70 ; its oldest 
 form, 71 ; its relation to the regulce 
 fidei, ib. ; in the Western church, 206 ; 
 incorporated in the Protestant creeds, 
 283. 
 
 Apostolic succession, in Clement of 
 Rome, 76, 79 ; in Irenaeus, 79 ; Whately 
 on, 450; Thomas Arnold on, 451 ; the 
 Oxford Declaration on, 454 ; Newman's 
 contention for, 455 ; Canon Gore on, 
 468. See " Episcopacy," " Orders." 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, on the relation of faith 
 and knowledge, 7, 231 ; his philo- 
 sophical position, 231 ; his writings, ib. ; 
 on the necessity of revelation, 234; 
 on two classes of truths, ib. ; on mira- 
 cles, 235; on inspiration, ib.; on the 
 being of God, and the proofs of it, ib. ; 
 on the extent of our knowledge of 
 God, 236 ; on the divine attributes, ib. ; 
 on the Trinity, 237; on the incarna- 
 tion, ib. ; on creation, ib., 238 ; on di- 
 vine and human agency in conversion, 
 238, 248 ; on the theodicy and the 
 nature of evil, 239; on the nature of 
 man, 239 ; on immortality, ib. ; on the 
 connection of the race with Adam, 240, 
 242 sq. ; on the atonement, 245 sq. ; on 
 the will, 248 ; on justification, 249 ; on 
 two classes of virtues, 250; on papal 
 infallibility and prerogatives, 252; on 
 the nature, need, and function of the 
 sacraments, 254 sq. ; on the effect of 
 baptism, 256 ; on confirmation, 257 ; 
 on the Lord's Supper (the doctrine of 
 concomitance) , 257 ; on transubstanti- 
 ation, ib. ; on confession, 259; on the 
 doctrine of supererogatory merits, ib.; 
 on purgatory, ib. ; on extreme unction, 
 260 ; on ordination, 261 ; on marriage, 
 ib. ; his relation to Augustine, 262. 
 
 Arianism, rise of, 134 sq. ; in England, 
 yjosq.; in New England, 418 sq. See 
 " Trinity." 
 
 Aristides (the Apologist) , 36. 
 
 Aristotle, his influence on the course of 
 doctrine, after the fourth century, 126; 
 among the Schoolmen, 209, 213, 214, 
 216, 229, 231, 262. 
 
 Arius, his doctrine, 134 sq., 144; the 
 Thalia of, 135 ; his banishment and 
 recall, 139, 140. See "Arianism." 
 
 Aries, Synod of (A.D. 355), 142. 
 
 Armenian Church, the, as a distinct 
 body, 156. 
 
 Arminianism, rise and spread of, 337 ; 
 in the age of the Puritans, 356; of 
 Wesley compared with the Dutch, 
 392 ; in New England, 394. See " Ar- 
 minians," " Arminius." 
 
 Arminians, their creed, 338 ; their sys- 
 tem characterized, 339 ; on original sin, 
 346; on the atonement (the govern- 
 mental theory of Grotius) , 340, 341 ; on 
 the self-origination of the Son, 341 ; 
 on the person of Christ, 342 ; the spirit 
 of their scholars, ib. 
 
 Arminius, James, 337. 
 
 Arnauld, 334, 335. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, his theological point 
 of view, 480 ; on the being of God, 
 ib.; on prayer, 482 ; on the substance 
 of Christianity, ib.; on miracles and 
 the supernatural, 483. 
 
 Arnold, Thomas, his theology, 451, 456. 
 
 Artemon and the Artemonites, 102. 
 
 Assurance, the doctrine of, impossible 
 under the Scholastic system, 250; 
 among the Reformers, 274; in Cal- 
 vin, 299 ; in the Creed of Trent, 329 ; 
 among the Wesleyans, 392. 
 
 Astruc, 497. 
 
 Athanasian Creed, the, 147, 206. 
 
 Athanasius, on the orthodoxy of Diony- 
 sius, 114; conservator of unity, 120; 
 on authoritative Scriptures and Apocry- 
 pha, 121 ; on the hindrance to the per- 
 ception of God, 124; his writings, 129 ; 
 Gibbon on, ib.; at the Council of 
 Nicaea, 136 sq.; the practical motive 
 underlying his doctrine of the Trinity, 
 136 ; on numerical unity of substance, 
 137 sq. ; repeated banishments, 140, 
 143 ; on the Apollinarian heresy, 149 ; 
 on the work of Christ, 162; on the 
 Fall, 164. 
 
 Athenagoras, 64, 75. 
 
 Atonement, doctrine of the, Justin Mar- 
 tyr on, 66 ; the Epistle to Diognet 
 on, 69; Irenaeus on, 86; Tertullian
 
 INDEX 
 
 5 6l 
 
 on, 92; Origen on, in; the Greek 
 Fathers on, 161, 162; Augustine on, 
 180 ; Anselm on, 219, 247 ; Abelard 
 on, 223 ; Bernard on, 225 ; Hugo of 
 St. Victor on, 226; Peter Lombard 
 on, 227 ; Aquinas on, 245 ; Scotus on, 
 247, 248 ; the Mystics of the four- 
 teenth century on, 265; Luther on, 
 276; Zwingli on, 286; Calvin on, 308 ; 
 the Socinians on, 323 ; the Creed of the 
 Arminians on, 338 ; the Dort Creed 
 on, 339 ; the governmental theory (of 
 Grotius), 340; Episcopius on, 341; 
 Amyraut on, 343; the Formula Con- 
 sensus Helvetica on, 345 ; Richard 
 Baxter on, 362; John Owen on, ib. ; 
 Locke on, 375 ; the Quakers on, 379 ; 
 Wesley on, 392 ; Edwards on, 409 ; 
 Bellamy on, 411 ; the younger Edwards 
 on, 412 ; the governmental theory of, 
 characteristic of the New England 
 theology, 413 ; Henry B. Smith on, 
 418; Bushnell on, 441-444; Charles 
 Hodge (and the Princeton theology) 
 on, 445 ; Coleridge on, 449 ; Moz- 
 ley on, 471 ; Maurice on, 473 ; 
 Campbell on, 477 sq. ; Swedenborg 
 on, 494 ; Schleiermacher on, 505, 507 ; 
 Dorner on, 514; Nitzsch on, 516; 
 Rothe on, 518 ; Ritschl on, 525. 
 
 Augsburg, Confession, 272, 274, 280, 281, 
 283, 290, 291, 293 ; Diet of, 272, 287, 
 290; Peace of, 295. 
 
 Augustine, his De Chiitate Dei, 118, 132, 
 182 ; on inspiration, 122 ; on the de- 
 cisions of councils, 123 ; on the proof of 
 the being of God, 124; his mental 
 qualities and writings, 132, 196; elimi- 
 nates subordinationism, 146; his influ- 
 ence, 176; experience and personal 
 traits, ib.; determining factors of his 
 theology, 177 ; on faith and knowledge, 
 ib. ; on the attributes of God, 178 ; on 
 the Trinity, ib. ; on the person of 
 Christ, ib.; on the seat of authority, 
 179 ; on the Church, ib., 193 ; on faith 
 and salvation, 180; on merits, ib.; 
 on the atonement, ib. ; on the incar- 
 nation, ib. ; on the Sacraments, 181, 
 183, 193, 254, 256; on Providence, 181, 
 184; on the relation of God to evil, 
 181 ; on the resurrection and the future 
 state, 182; his point of view compared 
 with Pelagius, 184 ; his theory of the 
 will, ib., 191 ; on Adam's sin and its 
 20 
 
 consequences, ib. sq.; his controversy 
 with Julian, 186; on the origin of 
 souls, 187 sq.; letter to Jerome, ib.; 
 on the nature of character, 190; on 
 baptism, 191 ; on grace, ib. ; his 
 earlier and later views of predestina- 
 tion, 191 sq.; discordant veins of 
 thought in, 193; dissent from, in the 
 West, 195 ; his doctrine of predestina' 
 tion revived by Gottschalk, 206; his 
 doctrine of original sin compared with 
 that of Anselm, 218 ; his relation to 
 Aquinas and the Schoolmen, 262 ; his 
 influence upon Luther, 272; his sys- 
 tem revived by the Jesuits, 332 ; and 
 by Jansenius and the Port Royalists, 
 
 334- 
 
 Augustus, Emperor, 29. 
 
 Authority, the seat of, presuppositions 
 respecting, in the second period, 121 ; 
 Augustine on, 179 ; the mediaeval doc- 
 trine of, 252 ; Wyclif on, 265 ; Luther 
 on, 278 ; Zwingli on, 287 ; Calvin on, 
 298; the Ten Articles (1536) on, 310; 
 the Socinians on, 322 ; the Council of 
 Trent on, 328 ; the Arminians on, 340 ; 
 the Protestant Scholastic view of, 347 ; 
 John Hales on, 364 ; Chillingworth on, 
 ib.; the Quakers on ,378; the Oxford 
 school on, 454, 455; recent discussions 
 on, 547. 
 
 Averroes, 213. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 19, 384. 
 
 Bajus, Michael, 333. 
 
 Balfour, Walter, 437. 
 
 Ball, John, 348, 360. 
 
 Ballou, Hosea, 437. 
 
 Baptism, the Apostolic Fathers on, 44, 
 46 ; earliest formula used, 46 ; Justin 
 Martyr on, 68 ; Irenaeus on, 87 ; Ori- 
 gen on, 112; the Greek Fathers on, 
 167 ; Augustine on, 181 ; the School- 
 men on, 255, 256; Luther on, 271, 
 281 ; the Lutherans on, 281 ; Calvin on, 
 305 ; form of, in vogue among the 
 Anabaptists, 320 ; the Creed of Trent 
 on, 329, 330; the Oxford Tracts on, 
 456. See " Baptism of Infants." 
 
 Baptism of infants, recognition of, in Ire- 
 naeus, 87 ; Calvin on, 305 ; Schwenk- 
 feld on, 318 ; the Anabaptists on, ib. ; 
 Michael Servetus on, 321 ; Dean 
 Stanley on, 474. 
 
 Barclay, Robert, 378.
 
 5 62 
 
 Barnabas, the Epistle of, 35 ; on the per- 
 son of Christ, 45 ; on baptism, 46 ; on 
 the second advent, 47. 
 
 Barneveld, Olden, 338. 
 
 Barry, John, 354. 
 
 Baruch, the Apocalypse of, 27. 
 
 Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, 130; on the 
 Trinity, 143 ; on the character of in- 
 fants, 165. 
 
 Basilides, his system, 57. 
 
 Basiliscus, Emperor, 156. 
 
 Basilius, 202. 
 
 Baumgarten-Crusius, 16, 21 ; on Justin 
 (Apol. I. 6), 65. 
 
 Baur, F. C., his theory of theological 
 development, 14, 534 ; divisions of his 
 doctrinal history, 16 ; his theory of a 
 Pauline-Petrine dissension, 41, 51 ; on 
 the Clementine writings, 51, 55; his 
 classification of the Gnostic systems, 
 55 ; on the Scholastic method, 215 ; his 
 theory of opposing parties in the early 
 Church anticipated by Toland, 375. 
 
 Baxter, Richard, his system, 362. 
 
 Bee, the school of, 210. 
 
 Bede, the Venerable, 203. 
 
 Belgic Confession, the, 337, 339. 
 
 Bellamy, Joseph, 411. 
 
 Bellarmine, Robert, 16, 332, 333, 351. 
 
 Bengel, J. A., 495. 
 
 Bentley, Richard, 376. 
 
 Berengarius, 210. 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop, his philosophy, 285; 
 and Edwards, 403. 
 
 Bernard of Clairvaux, character of his 
 piety, 224, 225 ; opposes Abelard, 225; 
 on faith and knowledge, ib. ; on the 
 atonement, ib. ; precursor of St. Francis 
 and the mendicants, 229 ; on the im- 
 maculate conception, 244. 
 
 Beryl, Bishop of Bostra, 103. 
 
 Beza, 337. 
 
 Biblical criticism, among the Arminian 
 scholars, 342; Louis Cappel's contri- 
 bution to, 343 ; among the Deists, 376, 
 377; among the Unitarians in New 
 England, 423 ; Matthew Arnold's ser- 
 vices to, 480 ; in Germany in the period 
 of " illumination," 497 ; the influence 
 of Hegelianism on, 534. 
 
 Biblical theology in the school of Coc- 
 ceius, 349. 
 
 Biedermann, 534. 
 
 Biel, Gabriel, 233. 
 
 Bigg, Charles, 6, 138. 
 
 Bishops, original, identical with presby- 
 ters, 76 sq. ; the guardians of doctrine, 
 78 ; gradual precedence of the Roman, 
 80, 123 ; their subordination under the 
 papacy, 252; alone may confirm in 
 the Latin Church, 256; Aquinas on 
 their relation to priests, 261 ; Cranmer 
 on, 315 ; the Creed of Trent on, 331 ; 
 Bellarmine on, 332; John Hales on, 
 364 ; the Oxford Tracts on, 455 ; Canon 
 Gore on, 468. See " Episcopacy." 
 
 " Bishop's Book," the, 311. 
 
 Blaurock, 319. 
 
 Blount, Charles, 373. 
 
 Blunt, J. H., 314, 466. 
 
 Boccaccio, 267. 
 
 Boethius, 126, 132, 213. 
 
 Bogomiles, the, 202. 
 
 Bolingbroke, 378. 
 
 Bolsec, Jerome, 337. 
 
 Bonaventura, 230, 244, 249, 257, 260. 
 
 Boniface II., 197; Boniface VIII., 251, 
 252, 253. 
 
 Bonn, Old Catholic Conferences at, 544. 
 
 Bossuet, 16, 336, 380. 
 
 Bostra, Council of (A.D. 244), 103. 
 
 Bound, Dr. Nicholas, 362. 
 
 Boyle, Robert, 376. 
 
 Bradwardine, 250. 
 
 Bretschneider, 500. 
 
 Briggs, Charles A., 548. 
 
 " Broad Church" theology, in England, 
 473-477 ; in Scotland, 477-479. 
 
 Brook Farm Association, 435. 
 
 Brown, James Baldwin, 479. 
 
 Bruce, A. B., 479. 
 
 Bryennios, 35. 
 
 Bucer, Martin, 290, 312, 313. 
 
 Buckminster, Joseph Stevens, 421. 
 
 Buddhism, Matthew Arnold on, 483. 
 
 Bull, Bishop George, 20, 99, 144, 370. 
 
 Burnet, Bishop, on the Latitudinarians, 
 366, 367. 
 
 Bushnell, Horace, on the possibility of 
 theology, 5 ; on Christian nurture, 438 ; 
 on the Trinity, 438-441 ; on the atone- 
 ment, 441-444 ; on annihilation of the 
 wicked, 444. 
 
 Butler, Bishop Joseph, 388, 389, 390 ; in- 
 direct anti-Calvinistic influence, 557. 
 
 Cassarius, Bishop of Aries, 197. 
 Cainites, the, 57. 
 Cajetan, 243. 
 Calixtus, George, 379.
 
 INDEX 
 
 563 
 
 Callistus, Bishop of Rome, 82, 102. 
 
 Calvin, John, his doctrine on assurance, 
 274; his influence on Melanchthon, 
 291; on the Lord's Supper, 291, 306; 
 his relation to Zwingli and Luther, 298- 
 309 et passim ; his intellectual qualities, 
 ib.; his religious experience, ib.; his 
 Institutes, ib.; on the testimony of the 
 Spirit to the divinity and truth of the 
 Bible, 299 ; on the nature of faith and 
 assurance, ib.; on predestination, ib. ; 
 was he a supralapsarian, 301 ; on 
 original sin, ib., 302 ; on two wills in 
 God, 302 ; on the Church visible and 
 invisible, 304; on the nature of the Sac- 
 raments, 305 ; on baptism, ib. ; of in- 
 fants, ib. ; on the Trinity, 307 ; on the 
 Athanasian Creed, ib.; on the incar- 
 nation, 308; on the atonement, ib.; on 
 the descent of Christ into Hades, 309 ; 
 Hooker on, 316 ; his defences of pre- 
 destination, 337; on the Lord's Day, 
 361. See "Calvinism." 
 
 Calvinism, its spread resisted by Luther- 
 ans, 292; how differentiated from 
 Lutheranism, 300; influence of, in 
 Elizabeth's reign, 316; the Arminian 
 revolt against, 337 sq. ; in the Canons 
 of Dort, 339 ; in the school of Saumur, 
 342; of Pajon, 346; defended by the 
 Puritans, 356; in the Westminster 
 Confession, 359; in the Church of 
 England in the eighteenth century, 
 393; in New England, 394 sq. ; as 
 defended by Jonathan Edwards, 400; 
 in the Presbyterian Church, 444 ; par- 
 tial disintegration of, 549 sq. 
 
 Campbell, John McLeod, his treatise on 
 the atonement, 477 sq. 
 
 " Cambridge Platform," the, 394. 
 
 Cameron, John, 342. 
 
 Canon of the New Testament, the, its 
 origin, 72 sq.; the antilegomena, 74; 
 tests for admission of books into, 75 ; 
 discussion of, in the post-Nicene pe- 
 riod, 121 ; Luther on, 279; Zwingli on, 
 287 ; Calvin on, 299 ; Dr. Arnold on, 
 
 451- 
 
 Canonization, condemned by Wyclif, 
 
 266. 
 
 Cappel, Louis, 343, 345. 
 Carlstadt, 280, 288. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 434. 
 Carthage, Council at, (A.D. 397) 122; 
 
 the second, 195. 
 
 Cassian, John, his doctrine, 196. 
 
 Cassiodorus, 133. 
 
 Castellio, 337. 
 
 Catechumens, school for, at Alexandria, 
 39- 
 
 Catharinus, 350. 
 
 Catharists, the, 263. . 
 
 Catholic Church, the old, the term 'Catho- 
 lic,' 70 ; rise of, in the second century. 
 70-81 ; recent organization under this 
 name, 544. 
 
 Celibacy of the clergy, rule of Second 
 Trullan Council concerning, 200; de- 
 prives them of a sacrament, 261; 
 Wyclif on the, 266 ; Zwingli on, 287 ; 
 the Six Articles on, 312. 
 
 Celsus, 40, 104. 
 
 Cerinthus, 56, 100. 
 
 Chalcedon, Council and Creed of, 155, 
 156. 
 
 Channing, William Ellery, on different 
 types of Unitarians, 420 ; his Baltimore 
 sermon, ib.; personal qualities and 
 preaching gifts, 421 sq.; his mental 
 history, 425 ; his doctrine of disinter- 
 estedness, 428 ; of sin, 429 ; of the 
 Fatherhood of God, 430 ; of the person 
 and work of Christ, 430, 431 ; his atti- 
 tude toward the intuitional philosophy, 
 
 435- 
 
 Charenton, Synod of, 343. 
 
 Charles the Bald, theology in the time 
 of, 203 ; Ratramnus's letter to, on the 
 Lord's Supper, 207 ; V., Emperor, 326, 
 
 327- 
 
 Chartres, school at, 210. 
 
 Chaucer, 267. 
 
 Cheetham, on the function of bishops of 
 the first century, 81. 
 
 Chemnitz, 296. 
 
 Chiazza, the Bishop of, 328. 
 
 Chiersy, second Council of, 206; first 
 Synod of, ib. 
 
 Chiliasm. See " Millennial reign of 
 Christ." 
 
 Chillingworth, William, 364. 
 
 Christ, the person of, in the Pauline epis- 
 tles, 25; in the Johannine teaching, 
 26; the Apostolic Fathers on, 44, 45; 
 the Ebionites on, 48, 49 ; in the Pseudo- 
 Clementines, 50 ; the Gnostics on, 54, 
 56 ; the Ophites on, 57 ; Marcion on, 
 59; Justin Martyr on, 63, 65; in the 
 Epistle to Diognet, 68 ; Irenaeus on, 
 85 ; Melito on, 89 ; Tertulhan on, 92 ;
 
 INDEX 
 
 Clement of Alexandria on, 95; the 
 adoptionist and modalistic views of, 
 98 sg.; the Sabellian views of, 103; 
 Paul of Samosata on, 104 ; Origen on, 
 107-109, 148; Novatian on, 113; the 
 doctrine of, introduced into baptismal 
 creeds in the East, 116; the Alexan- 
 drian and Antiochian schools on, com- 
 pared, 127 ; the Arian doctrine of, 134, 
 136, 148 ; Marcellus on, 140 ; Photinus 
 on, 141 ; the Apollinarian doctrine of, 
 148 ; Athanasius on, 149 ; the Gregories 
 on, 150; the Antiochians on, 151 ; Nes- 
 torius on, 152 ; Cyril of Alexandria on, 
 ib. ; Eutyches on, 154 ; the Chalcedon 
 Creed on, 155 ; the Monophysite doc- 
 trine of, 156 sq. ; the Monothelite view 
 of, 158; John of Damascus on, 159; 
 Augustine on, 178 ; the Adoptionists 
 on, 205 ; the German Reformers on, 
 281; the Zwinglians on, 289; the So- 
 cinian doctrine of, 322 ; the Arminian 
 doctrine of, 342 ; Watts on, 393 ; Chan- 
 ning on different Unitarian views of, 
 420; Channing on, 430; Bushnell on, 
 439 ; Liddon on, 468 ; Canon Gore on, 
 ib. ; Baron Holbach on, 493 ; Sweden- 
 borg on, 494 ; the Moravians on, 495 ; 
 Kant on, 499 ; Schleiermacher on, 504 ; 
 the Mediating School (of Germany) 
 on, 513; Rothe on, 518; Lipsius on, 
 523 ; Ritschl on, 526 ; Kaftan on, 529 ; 
 Herrmann on, 530; Hegel on, 533; 
 Strauss on, ib. 
 
 Christ, the Second Coming of, in the 
 Synoptists, 24; the Apostolic Fathers 
 on, 47; the Ebionites on, 49; Justin 
 Martyr on, 67; the Montanists' ex- 
 pectation of, 82; Schleiermacher on, 
 
 59- 
 
 Christ, the work of, the Ebionites on, 
 49; in the Clementine writings, 50; 
 Justin Martyr on, 62 ; Irenaeus on, 86 ; 
 Clement of Alexandria, 95; Origen on, 
 in ; the Antiochians on, 151 ; Gregory 
 of Nazianzum on, 161 ; the Greek 
 Fathers on, 162 ; Athanasius on, Ib. ; 
 Edwards on, 408 ; Channing on, 431 ; 
 Schleiermacher on, 504 sq.; Nitzsch 
 on, 516; Ritschl on, 525. See the two 
 preceding titles and "Jesus." 
 
 Christianity, its distinction from other 
 systems, i ; capable of doctrinal defi- 
 nition, ib.; the essential truth in, 3 ; an 
 historical religion, 7 ; requires theo- 
 
 logical interpretation, 8 ; influence of 
 Jewish thought and methods on, 26; 
 tendencies of the age preceding, 29; 
 influence of Greek philosophy on, 29 
 sg. ; conception of, in the Pseudo-Cle- 
 mentine writings, 50; peril of, from 
 Gnosticism, 51, 60; Marcion's view of, 
 59 ; as conceived by the Greek Apolo- 
 gists, 60 sg.; attacked by Julian, 117; 
 defended by Cyril, 118; modified by 
 pagan customs, 171 sg.; Abelard on, 
 222; the Socinian view of, 322; Mat- 
 thew Arnold on, 482; Hegelian inter- 
 pretation of, 532. See " Christ, the 
 person of," " Christ, the work of." 
 
 Chrysippus, 31. 
 
 Chrysostom, his writings, 131 ; on origi- 
 nal sin, 164, 165 ; on faith and works, 
 166 ; on the Lord's Supper, 169, 170. 
 
 Church, Dean, 275, 452, 458 ; on difficul- 
 ties in the formulas of theology, 552 sg. 
 
 Church, the, of the first three centuries 
 characterized, 119 ; its unity threatened, 
 120; the scene of internal controversy 
 in the Nicene and post-Nicene period, 
 125 ; in the East, ritualism in, 200 ; the 
 division of East and West in, 201 ; the 
 hierarchical form of, in the Middle 
 Ages, 251. 
 
 Church, the doctrine of, Justin Mar- 
 tyr on, 67; the Nicene and the post- 
 Nicene Fathers on, 123 ; Augustine on, 
 179, 193 ; Gregory I. on, 198 ; Luther at 
 the disputation at Leipsic on, 270; the 
 Lutheran reformers on, 281 ; Luther 
 on its authority in doctrine, 283 ; Cal- 
 vin on, 304; the Thirty-nine Articles 
 on, 315 ; the Anabaptist view of, 318 ; 
 Coleridge on, 449; Whately on, 450; 
 Thomas Arnold on, 451 ; Kant on, 
 499; Schleiermacher on, 509. See 
 " Bishops," " Episcopacy," " Church 
 and State." 
 
 Church and State, after Constantine, 125 ; 
 Wyclif on, 266; the Anabaptists on, 
 318 sg. ; the Arminians on, 338 ; the 
 Anglo-Catholics on, 357; the West- 
 minster Confession on, 360; Hobbes 
 on, 372; Blount on, 374; Coleridge 
 on, 449; Whately on, 450; Thomas 
 Arnold on, 451 ; Stanley on, 475. See 
 " Church, the doctrine ot" 
 
 Church union, Constantine and Athana- 
 sius conservators of, 120 ; gradual inter- 
 ference of the State for the preservation
 
 INDEX 
 
 565 
 
 of, 125 ; Cranmer's effort toward, 315 ; 
 John Hales on, 363 ; efforts toward, in 
 the seventeenth century : Calixtus, 379 ; 
 Erasmus on, ib. ; Hugo Grotius's pro- 
 posal for, 380 ; Spinola a promoter of, 
 ib. ; Leibnitz and Bossuet's correspond- 
 ence concerning, ib. 
 
 Clarke, Samuel, 371, 376. 
 
 Claude, 345, 346. 
 
 Claudius Apollinaris, Bishop of Hiera- 
 polis, 36. 
 
 Clement VIII., 333. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, on faith and 
 knowledge, 6 ; his personal qualities 
 and career, 39 ; his writings, 39, 40 ; on 
 justification, 42 ; his tendency toward 
 legalism, ib.; on the person of Christ, 
 44; on the division of the Christian 
 books, 73 ; on bishops and presbyters, 
 76 ; on the mission of the Christian 
 theologian, 94 ; on the sources of Chris- 
 tian knowledge, id. ; on Greek philoso- 
 phy, 94, 95 ; on the being of God, 95 ; 
 on the Logos, ib.; on the Father and 
 Son, ib.; on the Holy Spirit, ib. ; on 
 the work of Christ, ib. ; on the freedom 
 of the will, 96 ; on Adam's sin, ib. ; on 
 the doctrine of reserve, ib.; on the 
 Lord's Supper, ib.; on the future state, 
 ib.; on Christ's preaching in Hades, 
 ib. ; on the resurrection, 97. 
 
 Clement of Rome, on justification, 42; 
 on the person of Christ, 44; on the 
 Holy Spirit, 46; on the Episcopate, 
 76 ; the Epistle of, 34, 75, 77 ; the sec- 
 ond epistle ascribed to him, 34. 
 
 Clementine writings, the Pseudo-, doc- 
 trinal contents of, 50 ; origin of, 51. 
 
 Cocceius, on the doctrine of the Cove- 
 nants, 348. 
 
 Coelestine I., Roman bishop, 152. 
 
 Ccelestius, 183, 190, 194, 195. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, his influence 
 in New England, 437 ; on the distinc- 
 tion between reason and understand- 
 ing, 447 ; on the distinction between 
 Nature and Spirit, ib.; on ideas de- 
 rived from conscience, ib.; on the 
 source of belief in God, 447 ; on inspi- 
 ration, 448 ; on original sin, ib. ; on 
 the atonement, 449; on regeneration, 
 ib.; on the Church, ib. 
 
 Colet, John, 268. 
 
 Collins, Anthony, 376. 
 
 Colossae, heresy in the Church at, 50. 
 
 Colossians, Epistle to, the traces of Gnos- 
 ticism in, 55. 
 
 Comte, Auguste, 4, 486. 
 
 Conceptualism, 214. 
 
 Concomitance, the doctrine of, 257. 
 
 Condillac, 492. 
 
 Confession, an element of the sacrament 
 of penance, 258 ; the office of priest 
 in relation thereto, ib.; Innocent 
 III.'s prescription concerning, 259; 
 Aquinas on, ib. ; Wyclif on, 266 ; Lu- 
 ther on, 271 ; Zwingli on, 287 ; the 
 Six Articles on, 312; the Creed of 
 Trent on, 330, 331. 
 
 " Confessionalists," the, of Germany, 523. 
 
 Confirmation, the Schoolmen on, 255, 
 256; Wyclif on, 266; the Creed of 
 Trent on, 330. 
 
 Constans, 140-142 ; II., 158. 
 
 Constantine, guardian of church unity, 
 120 ; his effort to quell the Arian con- 
 troversy, 135 ; convokes the Council of 
 Nicaea, 136; recalls Arius, 139; his 
 pretended ' Donation,' 268. 
 
 Constantine, the Paulician, 202. 
 
 Constantinople, councils and synods at, 
 141, 145, 146, 150, 157, 159, 171, 201 ; 
 the Creed of, its origin and contents, 
 145, 146. 
 
 Constantius, 140 sq. 
 
 Contarini, 326. 
 
 Coptic Church, rise of the, 156. 
 
 Cordova, the University at, 209. 
 
 Corinth, the Church of, the Epistle of 
 Clement to, 34 ; organization of, 468. 
 
 Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, 83, 113. 
 
 Councils, significance of in the Nicene 
 and post-Nicene period, 123. 
 
 Cousin, Victor, 485. 
 
 Covenants, the doctrine of, 347, 348,351. 
 See " Federal Theology." 
 
 Cranmer, 310 sq. ; his Catechism, 312; 
 on the Lord's Supper, 313; on Epis- 
 copacy, 315. 
 
 Creation, the Gnostics on, 56; Justin 
 Martyr on, 66; Irenaeus on, 85; Ori- 
 gen on, 107 ; the Nicene and post- 
 Nicene Fathers on, 124 ; Augustine on, 
 178 ; the Schoolmen on, 237 ; Edwards 
 on, 406; Lipsius on, 523. 
 
 Creationism, 163, 187 sq., 239, 350. 
 
 Cudworth, Ralph, 366, 368. 
 
 Cumberland, Richard, 368. 
 
 Cyprian, his writings, 39 ; on sacerdotal 
 function of bishops, 79, 80 ; on disci-
 
 566 
 
 INDEX 
 
 pline, 82, 83; on the Lord's Supper, 
 168. 
 
 Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, 130 ; his re- 
 lation to the Creed of Constantinople, 
 145; on freedom from original sin, 
 165 ; on faith and works, 166 ; on bap- 
 tism, 167, 169. 
 
 Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, refutes 
 Julian, 117; his writings, 130; on the 
 person of Christ, 152; organizes the 
 Council of Ephesus, 153; deposed, 
 ib.; is restored, 154, 155; on baptism, 
 167 ; on the Lord's Supper, 169, 170. 
 
 Dale, R. W., his treatise on the atone- 
 ment, 479; on the loosening of the 
 rivets of doctrinal definitions, 555 sg. 
 
 D'Alembert, 493. 
 
 Daniel, the book of, Porphyry on, 119; 
 Anthony Collins on, 376. 
 
 Dante, 260, 267. 
 
 Darwinism and theology, 488. See also 
 " Evolution." 
 
 David of Dinanto, 273. 
 
 Davidis, Francis, 323. 
 
 Deism, English, influence leading 10,371 ; 
 its leading representatives and tenets, 
 372 sq. ; answered by the Latitudina- 
 rians, 374; the Anglo-French, 492 sq. 
 See the names of the several writers. 
 
 De Maistre, 14. 
 
 Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, 40. 
 
 Descartes, 19, 381. 
 
 Determinism, not strictly held by Augus- 
 tine, 184 ; in Aquinas, 238, 248 ; in 
 Hobbes, 372; in Locke, 374; in Leib- 
 nitz, 383 ; in Collins, 376 ; in Jonathan 
 Edwards, 401. See " Will." 
 
 " Diatessaron," the, 37. 
 
 Didactic, the, analysis and date of, 35 ; 
 baptismal formula in, 46; on the 
 Second Advent, 47 ; on the authorita- 
 tive source of Christian knowledge, 
 70; its evidence respecting Episco- 
 pacy, 77, 80. 
 
 Diderot, 493. 
 
 Didymus, 129, 171. 
 
 Diodorus, 170. 
 
 Diognet, the Epistle to, 37, 68, 69. 
 
 Dionysius of Alexandria, 114, 115. 
 
 Dionysius of Rome, 115. 
 
 Dioscurus, oppresses the Nestorians, 
 154; convenes the Robber Synod, 
 155; deposed, ib. 
 
 Diospolis, the Synod of, 194. 
 
 Doctrine, various Biblical types of, 8; 
 leadership in the development of, 10 , 
 factors in the formulation of, ib. ; de- 
 velopment of, in relation to nations, 
 13 ; influence of Greek philosophy on, 
 29 sq. ; Vincent of Lerins on the test 
 of Catholic, 123, 196; converted into 
 dogmas in the second period, 125 ; re- 
 lation of the patristic to the mediaeval 
 period of, 199. See " Theology." 
 
 Doddridge, Philip, 393. 
 
 Dogma, defined, 2 ; the term in Biblical 
 and classical usage, ib. ; history of, de- 
 fined, ib. 
 
 Dollinger, 538, 544. 
 
 Dominic, 229. 
 
 Dominicans, 214, 252, 328. 
 
 Donation of Constantine, 268. 
 
 Dorner, 21 ; on Gnosticism, 53 ; on the 
 relation of Calvin to Luther and 
 Zwingli, 278; his system, 514. 
 
 Dort, the Synod and Creed of, 338, 339, 
 361. 
 
 Dositheus, 56. 
 
 Drummond, on the Logos in Philo, 28. 
 
 Dualism, in Alexandrian Judaism 
 (Philo), 27 ; in New Platonism, 31 ; in 
 Gnosticism, 55 ; in Manichaeism, 127 ; 
 among the Paulicians, 202 ; among the 
 Catharists, 263. 
 
 Dupanloup, 540, 541. 
 
 Durandus, 233, 255. 
 
 Dwight, Timothy, his doctrines, 414, 
 
 Ebionites, their origin, 48 ; principal 
 types of, 48 sq. ; Justin Martyr on, 
 48, 49 ; their predecessors in the Apos- 
 tolic age, 49 ; the Essenian, 50 ; their 
 menace to Christianity, 51, 60. 
 
 Eckart, Master, 264. 
 
 Eclectic School, the French, 485. 
 
 Edessa, the school at, 154. 
 
 Edward VI. of England, 312. 
 
 " Edwardeans," the, 410 sq. ; their influ- 
 ence in Great Britain, 418 ; in Con- 
 necticut, 423. See " New England 
 Theology." 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, originator of the 
 " New England theology," 395 ; Dugald 
 Stewart quoted on, ib. ; mental char- 
 acteristics, ib. ; his earliest writings, 
 396; how influenced by Locke, 397; 
 his treatise on the will, 397 sg. ; how- 
 differing from Calvinism, 401 ; on
 
 INDEX 
 
 567 
 
 original sin, 402 ; had he read Berke- 
 ley? 403 ; on the nature of virtue, 403 
 sq. ; on God's chief end in creation, 
 406; on the work of redemption, 408 ; 
 on " Religious Affections," ib. ; ser- 
 mons on justification, 409 ; on the 
 atonement, ib. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, Jr., his doctrines, 
 412. 
 
 Eichhorn, 497. 
 
 Elipandus, Bishop of Toledo, 205. 
 
 Elkesaites, 50, 51. 
 
 Elvira, Council of, 171. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 433. 
 
 Emmons, Nathaniel, his doctrines, 413. 
 
 Encratites, the, 37. 
 
 " Encyclopaedists," the, 493. 
 
 England, eighth-century culture in, 203 ; 
 the Renaissance in, 268 ; the Reforma- 
 tion in, 310 sq.; its relation to the Ger- 
 man Reformation, 311 ; theology in, 
 in the I7th to the middle of the i8th 
 century, 389 sq. ; theology in the igth 
 century in, 446-491. 
 
 England, the Church of, its sympathy 
 with the " Reformed " division of Prot- 
 estantism, 310; the Articles of, ib.; its 
 relation to foreign Protestant bodies, 
 315 ; rise of the Anglo-Catholic party 
 in, 353 ; the Westminster Assembly for 
 the reconstruction of, 358; Calvinism 
 in, in the i8th century, 393 ; the Evan- 
 gelical School in, 446 sq.; the Early 
 Oriel School in, 450 ; the Oxford Move- 
 ment in, 451 sg. ; the Broad Church 
 party in, 473 sq. See, also, " Episco- 
 pacy." 
 
 Enoch, the Book of, 27. 
 
 Ephesus, Council of, 195. 
 
 Ephraim of Edessa, 37. 
 
 Ephraim Syrus, 131. 
 
 Epictetus, 31. 
 
 Epicureanism, 30. 
 
 Epigonus, 102. 
 
 Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, 19, 101, 
 130, 145, 171, 172. 
 
 Episcopacy, in the Ignatian epistles, 36; 
 rise of, 76 sq. ; its governmental func- 
 tion, 77 ; the Didache on, ib. ; acquires 
 sacerdotal functions, 79 ; in England 
 in the first age of the Reformation, 315, 
 316; Cranmer on, 315; in relation to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles, ib.; Whitgift 
 On, 353 ; advance of the jure divino 
 theory of, in England, 355; Bishop 
 
 Andrews on, ib. ; Thorndike on, 356; 
 in conflict with Puritanism, 357 ; abol- 
 ished, ib. ; first avowal in England of 
 the jure divino theory of, ib. ; Bishop 
 Hall on, ib. ; Laud on, 358 ; effect of 
 the solemn League and Covenant on, 
 359 ; Falkland on, 363 ; Jeremy Taylor 
 on, 365; Stillingfleet on, ib.; Coleridge 
 on, 449 ; Whately on, 450 ; Dr. Arnold 
 on, 451 ; Gore on, 468 ; Stanley on, 475. 
 See " Bishops." 
 
 Episcopius, 338, 340, 341. 
 
 Erasmus, position and services of, 268 ; 
 his controversy with Luther, 272; on 
 church unity, 379. 
 
 Erskine, Thomas, 477. 
 
 Essenes, the, 48. 
 
 Eucharist, the term, 47. See " Lord's 
 Supper." 
 
 Euchites, the, 202. 
 
 Eugene III., Pope, 226. 
 
 Eulogius, Bishop of Caesarea, 194. 
 
 Eunomius of Cyzicus, 130, 142. 
 
 Eusebians, the, 139, 140, 142. 
 
 Eusebius of Csesarea, 118, 119, 130, 135, 
 138, 141, 168, 170, 172. 
 
 Eusebius of Dorylaeum, 155. 
 
 Eusebius of Emisa, 130. 
 
 Eusebius of Nicomedia, 135, 139. 
 
 Eutyches, 154, 155, 156. 
 
 Evangelical School, the, of the English 
 Established Church, 446 sq., 453. 
 
 Evagrius, 131. 
 
 Evolution, referred to in Paley, 389; as 
 held by Spencer, 487 ; by Darwin, 488 ; 
 consistent with Theism, 488, 545 sq. 
 
 Excommunication, 82, 266. 
 
 Extreme unction, the Schoolmen on, 255, 
 256, 260 ; Wyclif on, 266. 
 
 Ezra, the Fourth Book of, 27. 
 
 Fairbairn, A. M., 16, 22. 
 
 Faith, the Apostolic Fathers on, 43; 
 Aquinas on, 249 ; explicit and implicit, 
 ib. ; according to Luther, 273 sq. ; Cal- 
 vin on the nature of, 299; Arminian 
 view of its relation to justification, 340 ; 
 its function, according to J. Edwards, 
 409 ; see " Faith and Knowledge." 
 
 Faith and knowledge, Clement of Alex- 
 andria on, 6; the Schoolmen on, ib. ; 
 Lessing and Hegel on, 7 ; true view 
 of, ib. ; Augustine on, 177 ; John Sco- 
 tus on, 204 ; Anselm on, 216 ; Abelard 
 on, 221 ; Bernard on, 225 ; Hugo of
 
 568 
 
 INDEX 
 
 St. Victor on, 226 ; William of Occam 
 on, 233. 
 
 Falkland, Lord, 363. 
 
 Fall, the. See " Original Sin." 
 
 Fathers, the Apostolic, the term, 34; their 
 place and value in the history of doc- 
 trine, 41 ; Baur respecting, ib. ; their 
 relation to the Canon, 41, 42; their 
 doctrine of justification compared with 
 the Pauline, 42, 43 ; traces of ascetic 
 drift in, 44 ; on marriage, ib. ; on the 
 person of Christ, ib. ; on baptism, 46 ; 
 on the Lord's Supper, ib.; on the 
 Second Advent, 47 ; on inspiration, 
 75 ; their method of interpretation, 76. 
 
 Fathers, the Greek, their practical mo- 
 tive, 129, 161 ; on the atonement, 161, 
 162; on the origin of the soul, 163; 
 on the freedom of the will, 164; on 
 Adam's sin, id.; on the image and 
 similitude of God, ib.; on regenera- 
 tion, 165 ; on predestination, ib. ; on 
 faith and works, 166; on baptism, 167 ; 
 on the Lord's Supper, 168. 
 
 Faustus, Bishop of Rhegium, 197. 
 
 Febronius, 536. 
 
 Federal theology, the, its doctrine of 
 the Covenants, 347 ; effect of on the 
 doctrine of original sin, 349 ; antici- 
 pated at the Council of Trent, 350; 
 attacked by Jansenius, 351; set forth 
 in the Westminster Confession, 359. 
 
 Felicissimus, 83. 
 
 Felix, Bishop of Urgellis, 205. 
 
 F^nelon, 336. 
 
 Fessler, 543. 
 
 Fichte, 407, 531. 
 
 " Filioque," inserted in the Nicene Creed, 
 147, 205. 
 
 Finney, Charles G., 417. 
 
 Fiske, John, 547. 
 
 Flacius, 295, 296. 
 
 Flavianus, 155. 
 
 Flint, Robert, 491. 
 
 Florence, Council of, 201, 255. 
 
 Florinus, letter of Irenaeus to, 38. 
 
 Fonseca, 333. 
 
 Forbes, Bishop of Brechin, 465. 
 
 Forbes, John, of Corse, 20. 
 
 Form of Concord, 283 ; its origin and 
 contents, 296. 
 
 Formula Consensus Helvetica, 345. 
 
 Forty-two Articles, the, reduced to thirty- 
 nine, 313. 
 
 Fox, George, 378. 
 
 Francis of Assisi, 229, 230. 
 
 Franciscans, the order of, rise and char- 
 acteristics of, 229, 230, 244, 263, 328. 
 
 Frankfort, Synod of, 205. 
 
 Fraser, A. C., on the relation of J. 
 Edwards to Berkeley, 403. 
 
 Frebonius, 536. 
 
 Frederick III., the Elector Palatine, 
 292. 
 
 Freedom of the will. See " Will." 
 
 Freeman, James, 419. 
 
 Friedrich, Johann, 544. 
 
 Froude, Hurrell, 452, 458. 
 
 Fulbert, Bishop, 210. 
 
 Fulgentius of Numidia, 197. 
 
 Future state, the, Justin Martyr on, 67 ; 
 the Epistle to Diognet on, 69 ; Irenasus 
 on, 88 ; Clement of Alexandria on, 96 ; 
 Origen on, 112, 170 ; Augustine on, 180 ; 
 the Socinians on, 324; Whately on, 
 450 ; Maurice on, 474 ; Henry B. Wil- 
 son on, 476 ; Thomas Erskine on, 477 ; 
 views of recent English theologians on, 
 479; Swedenborg on, 494; Schleier- 
 macher on, 510; the German Mediat- 
 ing School on, 513; C. I. Nitzsch on, 
 516. See, also, "Annihilation of the 
 Wicked," " Restorationism," and " Im- 
 mortality." 
 
 Gale, Theophilus, 368. 
 
 Galen, 101. 
 
 Gallicanism, as defined in 1682, 336. 
 
 Gardiner, Thomas, 311, 312. 
 
 Garrisolius, 343. 
 
 Gaunilo, 217. 
 
 Gerbert, 209. 
 
 Geulincx, 382. 
 
 Gibbon, on Athanasius, 129, 140. 
 
 Gieseler, his History of Doctrine, 21 ; on 
 the origin of the Clementine writings, 
 51 ; his classification of the Gnostic 
 systems, 55. 
 
 Gilbert, Bishop of Poictiers, 226. 
 
 Gladstone, William E., 544. 
 
 " Gnesio-Lutherans," the, 295. 
 
 Gnosticism, its menace to Christianity, 
 51, 60 ; general character and spirit of, 
 51 ; historical conditions leading to, 
 52 ; sources of, ib. ; main doctrinal in- 
 terests of, and tenets, 53 ; allegorical 
 method of, 54 ; traces of, in the New 
 Testament, 55 ; classification of its sys- 
 tems, ib. ; various types of, 56 sq. ; its 
 effect on doctrinal development, 60.
 
 INDEX 
 
 569 
 
 God, the attributes of, Philo on, 28 ; in 
 later Stoicism, 31 ; Justin Martyr on, 
 62; Origen on, 106; Augustine on, 
 178 ; the Schoolmen on, 236 ; Spinoza 
 on, 382 ; Jonathan Edwards on, 406 ; 
 Channing on, 430 ; Schleiermacher on, 
 503 ; Ritschl on, 525. 
 
 God, the being of, Plato on, 30; the 
 New Platonists on, 31 ; Irenaeus on, 
 84; Clement of Alexandria on, 95; 
 Monarchian view of, 98 ; Sabellius on, 
 103 ; Pseudo-Dionysiuson, 173 ; Scotus 
 on, 204, 236; Thomas Aquinas on, 235 ; 
 the Mystics of the fourteenth century 
 on, 264 ; the Socinian view of, 322 ; 
 Matthew Arnold on, 480 ; Swedenborg 
 on, 494; the Mediating School on, 
 513; Ritschl on, 525 ; Biedermann on, 
 
 534- 
 
 God, proofs of His being, Tertullian on, 
 90; the post-Nicene Fathers on, 124; 
 Anselm on, 217 ; Aquinas on, 233, 235 ; 
 Scotus on, 236 ; S. Clarke on, 371 ; 
 Locke on, 374; Descartes on, 381; 
 Hume's criticism of, 386; Coleridge 
 on, 447 ; Sir W. Hamilton on, 484 ; 
 Mansel on, 485; J. S. Mill on, 486; 
 Spencer on, 487; Huxley on, 490; Kant 
 on, 498 ; J. Miiller on, 515. 
 
 God, His relation to the world, Philo on, 
 27, 28 ; the New Platonists on, 31 ; 
 the Gnostics on, 53, 56-58 ; Marcion 
 on, 58 ; Justin Martyr on, 63 ; Au- 
 gustine on, 181, 184 ; Pelagius on, ib. 
 See the three preceding titles. 
 
 Gomarus, 338. 
 
 Gore, Charles, 45, 78, 468. 
 
 Gorham case, the, 467. 
 
 Gottschalk, his career and doctrines, 
 206. 
 
 Gratian, 252. 
 
 Gray, Asa, 488, 
 
 " Great Awakening," the, 395. 
 
 Grebel, 319. 
 
 Gregory I., Bishop of Rome, 133, 168, 
 174, 198; II., 174; VII. (Hildebrand), 
 209, 210; IX., 229; XVI., 537. 
 
 Gregory, Bishop of Tours, 133. 
 
 Gregory of Nazianzum, his writings, 130 ; 
 on the Trinity, 143 ; on the Holy Spirit, 
 144 ; instated at Constantinople, 145 ; 
 on the person of Christ, 150; impor- 
 tance of the atonement in, 161 ; on 
 the idea of a ransom to Satan, 163 ; 
 170, 171. 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa, his writings, 130 ; on 
 the Trinity, 143 sq. ; on the person of 
 Christ, 150 ; on the idea of ransom to 
 Satan, 163 ; on the Lord's Supper, 169, 
 170; a restorationist, 170, 171. 
 
 Grotius, Hugo, his theory (the govern- 
 mental) of the atonement, 340; his 
 efforts at reunion of the churches, 379. 
 
 Guitmund von Aversa, 211. 
 
 Guyon, Madame, 336. 
 
 Gwatkin, H. M., 134, 135. 
 
 Hades, the doctrine of, Irenaeus on, 87; 
 Tertullian on, 93 ; Clement of Alexan- 
 dria on, 96 ; the Greek Fathers on, 170 ; 
 descent of Christ into, Marcion on, 59 ; 
 Irenaeus on, 87; Tertullian on, 93; 
 Clement of Alexandria on, 96 ; Calvin 
 on, 309. See " Future State." 
 
 Hadrian, the Abbot, 203. 
 
 Hagenbach, 21. 
 
 Haggada, the, 26. 
 
 Hales, John, 363. 
 
 Hall, Bishop Joseph, 357. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, on the philosophy 
 of religion, 4, 484 sq. 
 
 Hampden, Bishop, 137, 138, 456. 
 
 Hare, Julius Charles, 473. 
 
 Harnack, A., on the function and course 
 of doctrinal history, 2 ; on the Mystic, 
 13; his divisions of doctrinal history, 
 17 ; on the influence of Greek culture 
 on theology, 32 ; on the origin of the 
 Didache, 35 ; on the date of the Igna- 
 tian epistles, 36; on the Clementine 
 writings, 51 ; on the polity of the early 
 Church, 78 ; on Hippolytus's interpre- 
 tation of Theodotus, 101 ; on the gen- 
 eration of the Son, 109; on the work 
 of Christ, in the Fathers, 128 ; on the 
 Constantinopolitan Creed, 145 ; on 
 the writings of Augustine, 180; on 
 Socinianism, 325 ; et passim. 
 
 Harris, Samuel, 491. 
 
 Hatch, Edwin, on the influence of Greek 
 culture on the clergy, 33 ; on the polity 
 of the early Church, 78. 
 
 Hebrews, the Epistle to the, 121, 122, 
 279, 328. 
 
 Hefele, 124, 538. 
 
 Hegel, on faith and knowledge, 7 ; his re- 
 lation to the Tubingen critical school, 
 14, 534 ; philosophy of, 532 sq. 
 
 Hegesippus, 42, 76, 79. 
 
 Heidelberg Catechism, 292, 339,
 
 570 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hell, Tertullian on, 94 ; the Schoolmen 
 on, 259. See " Future State." 
 
 Helvetius, 492. 
 
 Henry VIII., 310, 311. 
 
 Heraclitus, 31. 
 
 Heraclius, 158. 
 
 Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 372. 
 
 Herder, 500. 
 
 Heresy, defined, 9 ; its relation to schism, 
 il>.; distinguished from defective 
 knowledge and tentative hypotheses, 
 10 ; its place in doctrinal history, ib. 
 
 Hermas, the " Shepherd " of, 34 ; ascetic 
 drift of, 44 ; on marriage, ib. ; on the 
 person of Christ, 45 ; on the Second 
 Advent, 47. 
 
 Herrmann, W., 529. 
 
 Hilary, Bishop of Aries, 196. 
 
 Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, 131, 145, 157. 
 
 Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours, 211. 
 
 Hildebrand. See " Gregory VII." 
 
 Hincmar, 203, 206. 
 
 Hippo, Council of (A.D. 393), 122. 
 
 Hippolytus, 19, 38, 82, 100-102. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 372, 373. 
 
 Hodge, Charles, 345, 444. 
 
 Hofmann, von, 523. 
 
 Holbach, Baron, 493. 
 
 Holy Spirit, the, in the formulation of 
 doctrine, n ; the Apostolic Fathers 
 on, 45 ; Justin Martyr on, 64 ; Irenseus 
 on, 85 ; Clement of Alexandria on, 95 ; 
 Origen on, 109; post-Nicene writers 
 on, 144 sq. ; the Constantinopolitan 
 Creed on, 146 ; the Council of Toledo 
 on, 147 ; Alcuin on, 205 ; Carlstadt 
 and the radical reformers on the rela- 
 tion of, to the Word, 280 ; Calvin on 
 the testimony of, to the divinity of the 
 Bible, 299; the Socinian doctrine of, 
 323; the Creed of the Arminians on, 
 338 ; the Dort Creed on, 339 ; John 
 Cameron on, 342; Pajon on, 346; 
 the Quakers on, 378 ; Wesley on, 392; 
 Rothe on, 518. See " Trinity." 
 
 Homoeousians, 139. See " Trinity." 
 
 Honorius, the Emperor, 195. 
 
 Honorius, Bishop of Rome, 158, 200. 
 
 Hooker, Richard, 316, 353, 354, 361, 
 
 455- 
 Hopkins, Samuel, and the Hopkinsians, 
 
 411 sq., 419. 
 Hosius, 135, 136. 
 Howe, John, 371. 
 Hubmaier, 319. 
 
 Hugo of St. Victor, on faith and knowl- 
 edge, 226 ; on the atonement, ib. ; on 
 the number of the Sacraments, 254. 
 
 Humanism, the influence of, upon theo- 
 logical thought, 267 sq. See, also, 
 " Revival of Learning." 
 
 Humbert, Cardinal, 210. 
 
 Hume, 4, 386, 486. 
 
 Huss, John, 267. 
 
 Hutcheson, Francis, 389. 
 
 Hutton, R. H., on Newman, 460, 462. 
 
 Huxley, T. H., his philosophical opin- 
 ions, 488, 489 sq. ; his partial recogni- 
 tion of ethical freedom, 545 sq. 
 
 laldabaoth, deity of the Ophites, 57. 
 
 Ibas, 151. 
 
 Iconoclastic controversy, the, 173 sq. 
 
 Iconodulists, the, 174. 
 
 Ignatius of Antioch, on the person of 
 Christ, 45 ; on the Holy Spirit, 46 ; on 
 baptism, ib. ; on the Lord's Supper, 
 47 ; the term ' Catholic ' in, 70. 
 
 Ignatius, the Epistles of, 35, 77. 
 
 Ignatius, Patriarch of Constantinople, 
 201. 
 
 Illuminism, the period of, in Germany, 
 
 494 sq- 
 
 Immaculate conception, doctrine of, 49, 
 56, 244, 518 ; made a dogma, 539. 
 
 Immortality, in the later Stoics, 31 ; 
 Justin Martyr on, 67; Origen on, 164; 
 Aquinas on, 239 ; Scotus on, ib. ; the 
 Socinians on, 324 ; Channing on, 431 ; 
 Theodore Parker on, 434; Whately 
 on, 450 ; views of recent English writ- 
 ers on, 479; Herder on, 501 ; Schleier- 
 macher on, 509. See " Future Life." 
 
 Imputation, Calvin on, 302; Placaeus 
 on, 343; Stapfer on, 344; Jonathan 
 Edwards on, ib.; the Formula Consensus 
 Helvetica on, 345 ; in the Federal the- 
 ology, 349; in the Roman Catholic 
 theology, 350; in the Westminster 
 Confession, 359; discarded from the 
 New England theology, 412 ; Henry 
 B. Smith on, 418 ; in the " Princeton 
 theology," 444. See " Original Sin." 
 
 Incarnation, the, in Philo, 28 ; the Epistle 
 to Diognet on, 69; Irenseus on, 85; 
 Origen on, 109; Novatian on, 113; 
 Marcellus on, 141 ; Apollinaris on, 
 149; Gregory of Nyssa on, 150; Peter 
 Lombard on, 228; Aquinas on, 237; 
 Luther on, 278 ; Calvin on, 308 ; Canon
 
 INDEX 
 
 571 
 
 Gore on, 468 ; the Kenosis theory, and 
 other recent discussions on, 514 sq. 
 
 Indulgences, origin of, 208 ; in relation 
 to the doctrine of merits, 250, 259 ; in 
 relation to purgatory, 260 ; Wyclif on, 
 266 ; Zwingli preaches against, 286 ; 
 the Creed of Trent on, 331. 
 
 Infallibility of the Pope, William of Oc- 
 cam on, ,233; Aquinas on, 252; Wyc- 
 lif on, 266 ; Bellarmine on, 332, 333 ; 
 Arnauld on, 335 ; the French clergy 
 in the assembly of 1682 on, 336 ; made 
 a dogma, 540 sq. 
 
 Innocent II., 223; III., 258, 259, 335. 
 
 Inspiration, the Apostolic Fathers on, 
 75 ; Nicene and post-Nicene views of, 
 122; Augustine on, 179; Agobard on, 
 203 ; Abelard on, 222 ; Aquinas on, 
 235; Luther on, 279 sq.; Calvin on, 
 299 ; Cappel on, 343 ; the Formula 
 Consensus Helvetica on, 345 ; the Pro- 
 testant Scholastic view of, 347 ; Richard 
 Baxter on, 362 ; Coleridge on, 448 ; Dr. 
 Arnold on, 451 ; Canon Gore on, 468 ; 
 Dr. Temple on, 476 ; Jowett on, ib. ; 
 Herder on, 501 ; the Mediating School 
 of Germany on, 513; Rothe on, 517; 
 Kaftan on, 529. 
 
 Irenaeus, an authority in doctrinal his- 
 tory, 19 ; his career, 37 ; his character 
 and writings, 38 ; on inspiration, 75 ; 
 on bishops, 79 ; on the primacy of the 
 Roman Church, 80; his theological 
 spirit, 84 ; on the being of God, ib. ; 
 on creation, 85 ; on sin, ib. ; on the 
 person of Christ, ib. ; on the Holy 
 Spirit, ib.; on the incarnation, ib.; on 
 the work of Christ, 86; on baptism, 
 87; on the Lord's Supper, ib.; on 
 Hades, 87 ; on the millennium, ib.; on 
 the future state, 88 ; his ethical con- 
 ception of the gospel, 88 ; two phases 
 of doctrine in, ib.; his practical aim, 
 89. 
 
 Isidore of Seville, 20, 203. 
 
 Jacobi, 501. 
 
 Jacobite Church, the, rise of, 156. 
 
 James I. of England, 356. 
 
 James, the Epistle of, received as canon- 
 ical, 121 ; Luther on, 279. 
 
 Jansenius and Jansenism, 334 sq., 351. 
 
 Jerome, on the Ebionites, 49 ; on the 
 identity of bishop and presbyter, 77 ; 
 his career and writings, 131; the trans- 
 
 lator of the Vulgate, 132 ; renounces 
 allegiance to Origen, 171, 172; Augus- 
 tine's letter to, on the origin of souls, 
 187; attacks the Pelagian doctrine, 
 194 ; his disagreement with Augustine, 
 196. 
 
 Jesuits, their theology and ethics, 332 sq.; 
 their decline and revival, 537. 
 
 Jesus, the synoptists' view of, 24; in 
 Alexandrian Gnosticism, 57; in Mar- 
 cion, 59. See " Christ." 
 
 Jewish commentaries, 26. 
 
 Joachim of Floris, 227. 
 
 John, the apostle, his abode at Ephesus, 
 25 ; his authorship of the fourth gos- 
 pel, 25 sq.; the incarnation in the 
 teaching of, 26. 
 
 John, the Epistles of, the genuineness of, 
 25; conception of Christ in, 26; trace 
 of Gnosticism in, 55 ; received as 
 canonical, 121. 
 
 John, the Gospel of, its genuineness, 25 ; 
 conception of Christ in, 26; Justin's 
 acquaintance with, 63 ; the Monarchi- 
 ans on, 100, 101 ; Luther on, 279; 
 Matthew Arnold on, 484 ; Ritschl on, 
 525 ; Kaftan on, 529 ; Baur on, 534. 
 
 John a Lasco, 313. 
 
 John, Bishop of Antioch, 153, 154. 
 
 John the Baptist, 23, 24. 
 
 John of Damascus, 19; on the person 
 of Christ, 159; on the Trinity, 160; 
 on the Lord's Supper, 169; summary 
 of his doctrines, 174. 
 
 John of Fidanza. See " Bonaventura." 
 
 John Philoponus, 133. 
 
 John of Salisbury, 228. 
 
 John Scotus. See " Scotus." 
 
 Joseph II., Emperor, 536. 
 
 Jouffroy, 485. 
 
 Jowett, Benjamin, 476. 
 
 Judaism, Alexandrian, spirit and tenets 
 of, 27 sq. ; its relation to Gnosticism, 52. 
 
 Judaism within and without Palestine, 
 26 sq. 
 
 Jude, the Epistle of, traces of Gnosti- 
 cism in, 55 ; received as canonical, 
 121. 
 
 Julian, the Apostate, 117. 
 
 Julian, Bishop of Eclanam, 183, 186, 
 
 191, 195- 
 
 " Julianists," the, 157. 
 Julius, Bishop of Rome (A.D. 337-352), 
 
 140, 141 ; III., 326. 
 Jurieu, 347.
 
 5/2 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Justification, the Apostolic Fathers on, 
 42 sq.; patristic compared with the 
 Pauline view of, 43 ; Aquinas and the 
 Schoolmen on, 249, 250, 256; Luther 
 on, 273; the Ten Articles (1536) on, 
 310; the Creed of Trent on, 329; the 
 Arminians on, 340 ; Edwards on, 409 ; 
 Emmons on, 414; Swedenborg on, 
 493 ; Schleiermacher on, 508 ; the Me- 
 diating School on, 513; Ritschl on, 
 526 ; Kaftan on, 529. 
 
 Justin I., 156. 
 
 Justin Martyr, his training and writings, 
 37 ; on the Ebionites, 48, 49 ; his con- 
 ception of Christianity, 61 ; on the 
 heathen philosophers, 62; on the 
 work of Christ, ib. ; his twofold con- 
 ception of God, ib.; on the Logos, 
 ib. ; on the person of Christ, 63, 65 ; 
 on the Holy Spirit, 64; on the place 
 of angels, 65 ; on creation, 66 ; on the 
 freedom of the will, ib. ; on the atone- 
 ment, ib.; on the Second Advent, 67 ; 
 on immortality and the future state, 
 ib.; on the Church, ib.; on regenera- 
 tion, 68; on baptism, ib.; on the 
 Lord's Supper, ib. 
 
 Justinian, the Emperor, 156, 157, 171. 
 
 Kaftan, his system, 528, 529. 
 
 Kant, his system and influence, 4, 497 sq., 
 
 528. 
 
 Kattenbusch, 71, 524. 
 Keble, John, 452. 
 Knowledge and faith. See " Faith," 
 
 " Faith and Knowledge." 
 
 Lacordaire, 537. 
 
 Lambert, Francis, 312. 
 
 Lambeth Articles, 315. 
 
 Lamennais, 537. 
 
 Lanfranc, 210. 
 
 Laodicea, Council of, 72, 121, 124. 
 
 Laodiceans, Epistle to the, 202. 
 
 La Place (Placaeus), 343. 
 
 Lardner, Nathaniel, 376, 389. 
 
 Lateran Council, the Fourth, 227, 257, 
 259 ; the Fifth, 240, 268. 
 
 Latitudinarians, their rise, 366; Bishop 
 Burnet on their leading representa- 
 tives, ib. ; their distinctive traits, 368 ; 
 Tulloch on their defects, ib.; their 
 work, 369. 
 
 Laud, Archbishop, 357, 358. 
 
 Laurentius Valla, 268. 
 
 Law, William, 390. 
 
 Leibnitz, 380, 383. 
 
 Leipsic, disputation at, vjo. 
 
 Leipsic Interim, the, 295. 
 
 Lenfant, 347. 
 
 Leo I., Pope, 124, 132, 155 ; II., 158 ; IX., 
 
 2OI, 2IO, 240. 
 
 Leo III., Emperor, 174; V., 174; VI., 
 202. 
 
 Leontius of Byzantium, 157. 
 
 Lessing, his opinions, 7, 495. 
 
 Liberal Evangelical School, the, of Ger- 
 many, 512 sq. See " Mediating the- 
 ology." 
 
 Liberius, Roman Bishop, 143. 
 
 Liddon, Canon, 452, 467. 
 
 Lightfoot, Bishop J. B., on the date of 
 the Ignatian Epistles, 36; on author- 
 ship among the Fathers, 41 ; on the 
 theory of dissenting parties in the 
 Apostolic age, 42 ; on the identity of 
 bishop and presbyter in the church 
 at Philippi, 77 ; on the precedence of 
 the prophetic order in the first cen- 
 tury, 80. 
 
 Liguori, Alfonso da, 538. 
 
 Limborch, 340. 
 
 Limbus infantum, 259 ; patrum, ib. 
 
 Lipsius, 523. 
 
 Locke, John, 374, 384, 397 sq., 403. 
 
 Logos, the doctrine of, in the prologue 
 of the fourth gospel, 26 ; Philo on, 28 ; 
 the Stoics on, 31 ; Justin Martyr on, 
 63 sq. : Tatian on, 64 ; Theophilus on, 
 ib. ; Irenaeus on, 85 ; Tertullian on, 91 ; 
 Clement of Alexandria on, 94, 95 ; Paul 
 of Samosata on, 104; Origen on, 107; 
 Methodius on, 116; the Arians on, 
 134, 148 ; Marcellus on, 140 ; Photinus 
 on, 141 ; Apollinaris on, 149. See 
 " Christ" 
 
 Lombard, Peter, on the atonement, 227 ; 
 on the incarnation, 228 ; on the image 
 and similitude of God, 240 ; on Adam's 
 sin, 241 ; on the nature and number 
 of sacraments, 254; on the effect of 
 baptism, 256; on the Lord's Supper, 
 257 ; on ordination, 261. 
 
 Lombards, the, 200. 
 
 Langland, 267. 
 
 Long Parliament, 357, 358. 
 
 Loofs, 21 ; et passim. 
 
 Lord's Day, the, the early Fathers on, 
 361 ; the Reformers on, ib.; the Synod 
 of Dort on, ib. ; Andrews and Hooker
 
 INDEX 
 
 573 
 
 on, ib. ; the Puritan opinions on, 361 
 sq. ; Whately on, 450. 
 Lord's Supper, its connection with the 
 Agape, 46 ; the Apostolic Fathers on, 
 ib. ; Justin Martyr on, 68 ; Irenasus 
 on, 87 ; Clement of Alexandria on, 96 ; 
 Origen on, 112; the Greek Fathers on, 
 168 sq. ; Augustine on, 181 ; Gregory 
 I. on, 198; Radbert on, 207; Ratram- 
 nus on, id. ; Berengarius on, 210 ; 
 Lanfranc on, id.; Anselm on, 211; 
 Guitmund von Aversa on, ib. ; the 
 Schoolmen generally on, 255, 257 ; 
 Pope Innocent III. 's proscription con- 
 cerning, 258 ; Luther on, 271 ; the 
 Lutherans on, 281, 288 ; Zwingli on, 
 286, 289 ; Carlstadt and the radical 
 Reformers on, 288 ; the Marburg Arti- 
 cles on, 289 ; Calvin on, 291, 306, 316 ; 
 Cranmer on, 313; Schwenkfeld on, 
 318 ; the Council of Trent on, 330 ; 
 Hooker on, 354; Bishop Andrews 
 on, 355 ; Thorndike on, 356 ; Arch- 
 bishop Laud on, 358; R. W. Emer- 
 son on, 433 ; the Oxford School on, 
 454, 458, 463-467; Dean Stanley on, 
 
 474- 
 
 Louis XIV., 536. 
 
 Louis of Bavaria, 233. 
 
 Lucian, 134. 
 
 Lucidus, 197. 
 
 Luthardt, 523, 527. 
 
 Luther, Martin, his gradual perception 
 of the freedom of forgiveness, 269; 
 the doctrine of his theses, 270; his 
 disputation at Leipsic, ib.; his three 
 treatises of 1520, 270, 271 ; on the priest- 
 hood of all believers, 270; on orders 
 and ordination, 270, 271 ; on the Lord's 
 Supper, 271, 281, 283, 288 ; on bap- 
 tism, 271, 281 ; on confession, 271 ; on 
 justification, 271, 273 sq. ; his contro- 
 versy with Erasmus, 272; the author 
 of the Smalcald Articles, 273 ; two de- 
 fining characteristics of his theology, 
 ib. ; his definition of justifying faith, 
 ib. ; his doctrine of assurance, 274 ; on 
 the relation of faith and works, 275 ; 
 his doctrine of justification forensic, 
 ib. ; on the atonement, 276 sq. ; on the 
 incarnation, 278 ; on the authority of 
 the Scriptures, ib.; on the Canon and 
 inspiration, 279^.; on the " Word of 
 God," 280; on the relation of the 
 Word to the Spirit, ib. ; his conserva- 
 
 tism, 283 ; on the Church as an author- 
 ity in doctrine, ib. ; on predestination, 
 284, 292; compared with Zwingli, 2815, 
 286; in the Eucharistic controversy, 
 288 ; points of Melanchthon's dissent 
 from, 291 ; Calvin's relation to, 298- 
 309- 
 
 Lutheran Reformers, two characteristics 
 of their theology, 273 ; on the doctrine 
 of assurance, 274 ; on the relation of 
 faith and works, ib. ; on the Sacra- 
 ments, 280; on the person of Christ, 
 281; on the Church, ib.; on the min- 
 istry as related to the Word and Sacra- 
 ments, 282 ; on original sin, ib. ; their 
 system differentiated from Calvinism, 
 300. See " Luther, Martin." 
 
 Macedonians, the, 145. 
 
 Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople, 
 
 145- 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 373. 
 
 " Magdeburg Centuries," the, 20. 
 
 Magistracy, the civil, the Westminster 
 Confession on, 360 ; the Reformers on, 
 ib. See " Church and State." 
 
 Mahan, Asa, 417. 
 
 Maimonides, Moses, 213. 
 
 Major, George, and the Majoristic con- 
 troversy, 294, 295. 
 
 Malebranche, 382. 
 
 Mandaeans, 127. 
 
 Mani, 127. 
 
 Manichseism, its rise, doctrines, and 
 spread, 127. 
 
 Manning, Cardinal, 467. 
 
 Mansel, H. L., 5, 485. 
 
 Marburg, Conference of, 289. 
 
 Marcellus of Ancyra, 140, 141. 
 
 Marcianus, 155. 
 
 Marcion, his temper and doctrines, 58 ; 
 his canon, 59, 74 ; spread of his sys- 
 tem, 59. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, 31. 
 
 Marius Mercator, 195. 
 
 Maronites, the, 159. 
 
 Marriage, pronounced a sacrament by 
 the Schoolmen, 255, 261 ; Aquinas on, 
 261 ; the Creed of Trent on, 331. See, 
 also, " Celibacy of the Clergy." 
 
 Marsilius Ficinus, 235. 
 
 Martin I., Bishop of Rome, 158. 
 
 Martineau, James, 491. 
 
 Martyr, Peter, 312. 
 
 Martyrs, veneration of, 172.
 
 574 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mary, the mother of Jesus, 150, 152, 155, 
 159 ; the worship of, 172, 244, 263, 486, 
 54. 
 
 Mather, Cotton, 419. 
 
 Maurice, Duke of Saxony, 295. 
 
 Maurice, Frederick Denison, 473. 
 
 Maxentius, 157. 
 
 Maximilla, 82. 
 
 Maximus, 158, 159. 
 
 Maximus, the Confessor, 173, 204. 
 
 Mayhew, Jonathan, 419. 
 
 Mead, Charles M., 524, 527. 
 
 " Mediating Theology," the, of Germany, 
 512 sq. 
 
 Meier, 138. 
 
 Melanchthon, his works, 272; presents 
 the Augsburg Confession, 273 ; on the 
 relation of faith and works, 274 ; on the 
 Church, 282 ; on original sin, ib. ; points 
 of dissent from Luther, 291 ; his change 
 of opinion on the Lord's Supper, ib. ; 
 personal traits, 292, 294 ; his adoption 
 of Synergism, 293; on the necessity 
 of good works, ib. ; at the colloquy of 
 Ratisbon, 326 ; on the civil magistracy, 
 360; on the Lord's Day, 361. 
 
 Melchisedekians, the, 101. 
 
 Meletius of Antioch, 143-146. 
 
 Melito, Bishop of Sardis, 36; materials 
 for doctrinal history in, 89. 
 
 Memnon, 153, 154. 
 
 Menander, 56. 
 
 Mennas, epistle to, 171. 
 
 Menno Simons and the Mennonites,3i9. 
 
 Merit, the doctrine of, Augustine on, 
 180 ; Alexander of Hales on, 250 ; the 
 Schoolmen on, 259 ; Wyclif on, 266. 
 
 Messiah, prevalent Jewish conception of, 
 27. 
 
 Mestrezat, 345. 
 
 Methodist revival, 390 ; its relation to the 
 Evangelical School of the Established 
 Church, 446. 
 
 Methodius, Bishop of Patara, his teach- 
 ings in opposition to Origen, 115, 170; 
 on sin, 164. 
 
 Michael Caerularius, 201. 
 
 Milan, Synod of, 142. 
 
 Mill, J. S., his philosophy, 6, 486. 
 
 Millennial reign of Christ, the doctrine 
 of, in Irenaeus, 84, 87 ; in Tertullian, 
 93; rejected by Clement of Alexan- 
 dria, 97; in Origen, 112; introduced 
 among the Anabaptists, 319. 
 
 Miltiades, the rhetorician, 36, 75. 
 
 Minucius Felix, 37. 
 
 Miracles, Aquinas on, 235 ; prominence 
 of the proof from, in the Arminian 
 system, 340 ; Woolston on, 373, 377 ; 
 Hume on, 387 ; Parker on, 434 ; 
 Channing on, 435 ; Matthew Arnold 
 on, 483 ; Huxley on, 490; Lessing on, 
 496 ; Kant on, 499 ; Wegscheider on, 
 500 ; Schleiermacher on, 508 ; the Ger- 
 man Mediating School on, 513 ; Rothe 
 on, 517 ; Ritschl on, 525 ; Strauss on, 
 
 533- 
 
 Mitchell, A. F., 348, 360. 
 
 " Medalists," the, 99, 102, 103. 
 
 Mohler, 14, 538. 
 
 Molina and the Molinists, 333. 
 
 Molinos, 336. 
 
 Moller, W., 135, 159, 327. 
 
 Monarchianism, on the being of God, 
 98 ; two types of, ib. ; vanquished by 
 Origen, 104. 
 
 Monasticism, 172. 
 
 Monophysites, the, and the Monophysite 
 controversy, 156 sq. 
 
 Monothelite controversy, the, 158. 
 
 Montalembert, 537. 
 
 Montanism, its rise, 81 ; its teachings and 
 practices, 82; its spread and influ- 
 ence, ib, 
 
 Montanus, 81. 
 
 Montauban, the school of, 343, 345. 
 
 " Moralism," in the Apostolic Fathers, 
 42, 43 ; in the Apologists, 61 ; in Ire- 
 nseus, 88 ; in Tertullian, 92 ; in Pelagius, 
 183; in the Schoolmen, 251; in Ar- 
 minianism, 340. 
 
 Moravians, the, 495. 
 
 More, Hannah, 446. 
 
 More, Henry, 368, 374. 
 
 More, Thomas, 268. 
 
 Morgan, Thomas, 377. 
 
 Mosheim, 20. 
 
 Mozarabic Liturgy, the, 205. 
 
 Mozley, J. B., on Newman, 16, 459; on 
 the Lord's Supper, 466 ; his career and 
 writings, 469; on mysterious truths, 
 470; on the progressive character of 
 Old Testament revelation, 471 ; on the 
 atonement, ib. 
 
 Miiller, Julius, 21 ; on the origin of the 
 belief in God, 515 ; on the ground and 
 cause of sin, ib. 
 
 Miinscher, 16, 20. 
 
 Miinzer, Thomas, 318. 
 
 Muratorian Fragment, the, 74.
 
 INDEX 
 
 575 
 
 Murray, John, 436. 
 
 Mysteries, the Greek, their influence on 
 Christian usages, 32, 166, 172. 
 
 Mysticism, the nature of, n ; kinds of, 
 ib. ; point of similarity to rationalism, 
 13 ; revived and systematized by the 
 Schoolmen, 230 ; in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, 264 ; in the wake of the Reforma- 
 tion, 317 ; its development in the form 
 of Quietism, 336; in Thomas More, 
 368 ; in the Quakers, 378. 
 
 Mystics, the, of the fourteenth century, 
 their theology, 264. 
 
 Naassenes, the, 57. 
 
 Nazarenes, 48. See " Ebionites." 
 
 Neander, 16, 17, 21 ; his classification of 
 the Gnostic systems, 55 ; on Justin's 
 idea of the Holy Ghost, 65 ; on Augus- 
 tine's Realism, 185 ; on the eschatology 
 of Paul, 516. 
 
 Nestorians, the, their separation from 
 the Greek Church, 154. 
 
 Nestorius and the Nestorian contro- 
 versy, 151 sq. 
 
 " New England theology," 410-418 ; in- 
 fluence of, in England, 418 ; in the 
 United States, ib., 445. 
 
 New Platonism, 31, 173, 177, 204. 
 
 Newman, J. H., his theory of develop- 
 ment, 14 sq., 459 ; on the term ' consub- 
 stantial,' 32 ; his program of doctrine 
 for the Oxford School, 454 ; on Apos- 
 tolic succession, 455 ; his influence on 
 the Oxford Movement, 457; his tract 
 on the Thirty-nine Articles, ib,; his 
 conversion and its effect, 458 sq. ; ex- 
 planation of his career, 460 sq. 
 
 Nicaea, Council of, convoked, 136; parties 
 represented at, 138 ; its doctrinal work, 
 139 ; the Second Council of, 174, 200. 
 
 Nicene Creed, its formation, 138 sq. ; 
 how changed in the Constantinopoli- 
 tan, 146 ; addition of "filioque" to, 147 ; 
 adopted in Lutheran creeds, 283. See 
 " Nicsea, Council of." 
 
 Nicholas I., Pope, 201. 
 
 Nicholas von Amsdorf, 294. 
 
 Nicole, 334. 
 
 Niedner, his classification of the Gnostic 
 systems, 55. 
 
 Nitzsch, Carl Immanuel, 12, 515. 
 
 Nitzsch, Friedrich, 17, 21. 
 
 Noetus, 102, 103. 
 
 Nominalism, 213, 214, 216, 233, 262. 
 
 Norris, T onn , 368. 
 Norton, Andrews, 420, 421. 
 Novatian and the Novatians, 83, 113. 
 
 " Oberlin Theology," the, 417. 
 
 Occam, William of, 5, 257, 262. 
 
 " Occasionalists," the, 382. 
 
 Ochino Bernardino, 312. 
 
 Octavius, 37. 
 
 CEcolampadius, 291. 
 
 " Old Catholic " Movement, the, 544. 
 
 " Old School " Presbyterians, the, 418. 
 
 Olevianus, 292. 
 
 Ophites, the, 57. 
 
 Optatus of Milevis, 180. 
 
 Orange, Council and Creed of, 197. 
 
 Orders and ordination, the Schoolmen 
 on, 255, 261; Wyclif on, 266; Luther 
 on, 270, 271 ; Hooker on, 316, 354 ; the 
 Creed of Trent on, 330, 331 ; the 
 Quakers on, 379. 
 
 Oriel School, the Early, its representa- 
 tives and theology, 450, 451. 
 
 Origen, his training and career, 40 ; his 
 writings, ib., 104 ; on inspiration, 75 ; 
 his spirit and aim, 105 ; a scriptural 
 theologian, ib, ; his allegorical method, 
 ib. ; his doctrine of reserve, 106 ; on 
 the attributes of God, ib, ; on the free- 
 dom of the will, 107, 116 ; on creation, 
 107 ; on the Logos, 107, 148 ; on the 
 relation of the Son to the Father, 107 ; 
 on the person of Christ, 107, 109, 148 ; 
 on the Incarnation, 109; on the Holy 
 Spirit, ib. ; on the preexistence and 
 fall of men, 109, 163 ; on the design of 
 the world, no; on divine justice, ib.; 
 on Providence, in; on the work of 
 Christ, ib. ; on the future state, 112, 
 170; on baptism, 112; on the Lord's 
 Supper, 112, 168; on the Resurrection, 
 112; his teaching and influence, 113, 
 116, 119; dissent from, in the East, 
 115, 128, 170; the crusade against, and 
 its issue, 171. 
 
 Original sin, the doctrine of, Clement 
 of Alexandria on, 96 ; the Greek 
 Fathers on, 164 ; Augustine on, 184 sq. ; 
 Ambrose on, 187; Pelagius on, 190; 
 John Cassian on, 196; Anselm on. 
 217 sq. ; Abelard on, 222 ; Aquinas on, 
 240, 242 sq. ; Scotus on, 241; Peter 
 Lombard on, ib. ; the Lutheran Re- 
 formers on, 282; the Form of Concord 
 on, 283 ; Zwingli on, 288 ; Flavius on,
 
 576 
 
 INDEX 
 
 296; Calvin 00,301,302; the Socin- 
 ians on, 325 ; the Creed of Trent on, 
 328 ; the Dort Creed on, 339 ; the Ar- 
 minians on, 340 ; Placaeus on, 343 ; 
 the Federal theology on, 349 ; the Fed- I 
 eral theory of, anticipated by Catha- 
 rinus, 350 ; Dominicus Soto on, 351 ; 
 Bellarmine on, ib. ; Jansenius on, 352 ; 
 Hooker on, 354; the Westminster 
 Confession on, 359; Richard Baxter 
 on, 362 ; Locke on, 374 ; the Quakers 
 n . 379: tne Wesleyan doctrine of, 
 392; Jonathan Edwards on, 402 ; Bel- 
 lamy on, 411; Hopkins on, ib.; im- 
 putation discarded from, in the New 
 England theology, 412 ; Jonathan Ed- 
 wards, Jr., on, ib. ; Emmons on, 413 ; 
 President Dwight on, 414; Taylor on, 
 415; Park on, 417; Henry B. Smith 
 on, 418 ; Charles Hodge (the Prince- 
 ton theology) on, 444; Coleridge on, 
 448 ; Mozley on, 470 ; Schleiermacher 
 on, 504; Dorner on, 514; Rothe on, 
 518 ; Ritschl on, 527. 
 
 Orosius, 194. 
 
 Orr, James, 479, 530. 
 
 Osiander, Andrew, and the Osiandrian 
 controversy, 295. 
 
 Otto, 99. 
 
 Owen, John, 350, 362, 371. 
 
 Oxford Movement, the, 452-472 ; sources 
 of information concerning, and leaders, 
 451, 452; contrasted with the Wes- 
 leyan movement, 452 ; occasion of its 
 rise, ib.; its general character and 
 principles, 453 sq. ; on the doctrine of 
 the Sacraments, 454, 456, 463-467 ; its 
 particular aim, 455 ; its propaganda 
 through the Tracts, ib. ; the Hampden 
 controversy, 456 ; the Library of the 
 Fathers projected, ib. ; progress of, 
 457; the secession of Newman, 458 sq.; 
 Pusey assumes leadership of, 462. 
 
 Pachomius, 171. 
 
 Pajon, Claude, and Pajonism, 346. 
 
 Paley, William, 388, 389. 
 
 Pallivicini, 327. 
 
 Palmer, William, 452. 
 
 Pamphilus, 170. 
 
 Pantaenus, 39. 
 
 Pantheism, has roots in Plato's theory of 
 ideas, 30; in John Scotus, 204; com- 
 bated by the Schoolmen, 213 ; of Spi- 
 noza, 382; of Matthew Arnold, 480; 
 
 of Schleiermacher, 510 ; modern Ger- 
 man schools of, 513 sq. ; seen to be a 
 half-truth, 546. 
 
 Papacy, the, its growth, 251 sq. ; its pre- 
 rogatives in the Middle Ages, 252; 
 so-called " Reformers " before the Ref- 
 ormation concerning, 263 sq. ; Luther 
 on, 270 sq. ; Erasmus on, 272 ; Me- 
 lanchthon on, 282; Calvin on, 304; 
 Servetus on, 321; and the Council of 
 Trent, 326-332 ; how regarded by the 
 Jesuits, 332; Bishop Andrews on, 
 355 ; in the eighteenth century, 536 jy.; 
 and the Vatican Council, 539 sq. 
 
 Papias, 27, 36, 47. 
 
 Park, Edwards A., 417. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 422, 433 sq. 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, 335. 
 
 Paschasius Radbert, 203, 207, 208. 
 
 Patripassianism, 99, 102. 
 
 Paul, the Apostle, his training, 8 ; his 
 epistles on the person of Christ, 25 ; 
 relation to Peter, 41 ; compared with 
 the Apostolic Fathers on justification, 
 43 ; attitude of the Ebionites towards, 
 49, 50; quoted to defend Gnosticism, 
 54; his eschatology, 516. 
 
 Paul, III., Pope, 326; IV., 327, 333. 
 
 Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch, 
 103 sq., 115. 
 
 Paulicians, their origin and doctrines, 
 202. 
 
 Paulinus, 146. 
 
 Paulus, 158, 500. 
 
 Pelagian controversy, the, 183 sq. ; in 
 the East, 194. 
 
 Pelagius, his career and personal quali- 
 ties, 183, 194; his point of view com- 
 pared with Augustine, 183; on the 
 relation of God to the world, 184 ; on 
 human freedom, ib.; on Adam's sin, 
 190; his writings, ib.,note ; his concep- 
 tion of the nature of character, ib. ; 
 on the privileges of the baptized, 191 ; 
 on grace, ib. ; attacked in the East, and 
 condemned, 194, 195. See " Pelagian 
 controversy." 
 
 Penance, Gregory I. on, 198 ; rise and 
 growth of the system of, in the West- 
 ern Church, 208; recognized as a 
 sacrament by the Schoolmen, 255, 256 ; 
 modification of, in the Middle Ages, 
 258; three elements of, and the rela- 
 tion of the priest thereto, ib. ; Luther's 
 thesis on, 270; Zwingli on, 287; the
 
 INDEX 
 
 577 
 
 Creed of Trent on. 330, 331 ; the Jesuits 
 on, 333 ; Hooker on, 354 ; Pusey's de- 
 fence of, 466. 
 
 Penn, William, 378. 
 
 Pentateuch, the, the rise of the modern 
 criticism of, 497. 
 
 Peratae, the, 57. 
 
 Percival, Henry R., 465. 
 
 Perfection, the Wesleyan doctrine of, 
 392; Oberlin view of, 417. 
 
 Perseverance, Augustine on, 192; Cal- 
 vin's doctrine of, 302 ; Arminian doc- 
 trine of, 338 ; doctrine of the Synod of 
 Dort on, 339 ; the Council of Trent on, 
 330. 
 
 Peshito, the, 74. 
 
 Petavius, 20, 138. 
 
 Peter, the Apostle, his relations with 
 Paul, 41 ; the episcopal precedence of, 
 80 ; the Schoolmen on the primacy of, 
 252 ; the Epistles of, received as canon- 
 ical, 121 ; Luther on, 279; apocryphal 
 Gospel of, 74. 
 
 Peter, Archbishop of Alexandria, 116. 
 
 Peter, Abbot of Cluny, 223. 
 
 Petrarch, 267. 
 
 Pfleiderer, Otto, 534. 
 
 Philippi, 523. 
 
 Philippians, the, Polycarp's Epistle to, 
 36. 
 
 Philippists, the, 295. 
 
 Philippopolis, Council of, 141. 
 
 Philo, the sources of his system, 27 ; 
 dualism in, ib.; his doctrines, 28 sy. ; 
 forerunner of New Platonism, 31. 
 
 Philosophy, contrasted with Christianity, 
 i ; relation of, to theology, 7, 213 ; set 
 free from subjection to the Church, 19, 
 381 ; influence of Greek, on doctrine, 
 295^.; after Plato and Aristotle, 30; 
 in the second period, 126 ; in the Scho- 
 lastic period, 213. See Table of Con- 
 tents. 
 
 Photinus of Sirmium, 140, 142. 
 
 Photius, 201, 202. 
 
 Pictures and images in the churches, 171, 
 172, 174, 200, 203, 263, 287, 310, 331. 
 See, also, " Iconoclastic Controversy." 
 
 Pietism, 494. 
 
 Pighius, Albert, 337. 
 
 Pilgrim Fathers, the, 394. 
 
 Pius IV., 332; V., 332, 333; VII., 537; 
 IX., 538 sq. 
 
 Placaeus (La Place), his doctrine of im- 
 putation, 343. 
 2 P 
 
 Plato, his doctrine of ideas, 30; on the 
 being of God, ib. ; on the soul and re- 
 demption, ib. ; his influence on Justin 
 Martyr, 63; on the Schoolmen, 213, 
 214 ; on the Latitudinarians, 366. 
 
 Plotinus, 31. 
 
 Plutarch, 29. 
 
 " Pneumatomachians," the, 145. 
 
 Polycarp, 36, 37, 41, 45 ; the martyrdom 
 of, 37- 
 
 Porphyry, 118, 214. 
 
 Port Royalists, the, 334. 
 
 Positivism, 486. 
 
 Possessor, 197. 
 
 Pothinus, 37. 
 
 Powell, Baden, 476. 
 
 Praxeas, 102, 103. 
 
 Prayer-book, the, of Edward VI., 314. 
 
 Predestination, Origen on, i n ; the Greek 
 Fathers on, 165 ; earlier and later views 
 of Augustine on, 191 sq.; JohnCassian 
 on, 196; the Gottschalk controversy 
 on, 206 ; John Scotus on the term, ib.; 
 Luther on, 284, 292 ; Zwingli on, 287 ; 
 Calvin on, 299 sq. ; the Thirty-nine 
 Articles on, 314; the Creed of Trent 
 on, 330; the scientia media theory of 
 Molina concerning, 333; the Armin- 
 ians on, 337, 338 ; the Dort Creed on, 
 339 ; Amyraut on, 343 ; J. Wesley on, 
 391 ; in Protestant Scholasticism, 347 ; 
 Hooker on, 354; the Westminster 
 Confession on, 359; Richard Baxter 
 on, 362 ; Edwards on, 401 ; Canon 
 Mozley on, 470. 
 
 Presbyterians, the English, influence of 
 their jure divino claim on Episcopacy, 
 316, 355; in the Westminster Assem- 
 bly, 358. 
 
 Price, Richard, 389. 
 
 Princeton theology, 444. 
 
 Prisca, 82. 
 
 Probabilism, the doctrine of, held by the 
 Jesuits, 334, 538. 
 
 Prosper of Aquitaine, 132, 196. 
 
 Providence, Origen on, in; Augustine 
 on, 181 ; the Thomists and Scotists on, 
 238. See, also, " God, relation of to 
 the world." 
 
 Prudentius, 207. 
 
 Pseudo-Clementine writings, the. See 
 " Clementine Writings." 
 
 Pseudo-Dionysius, 126, 167, 173, 204, 
 213. 
 
 Pseudo-Isidorian decretals, 251.
 
 578 
 
 INDEX 
 
 I'ulleyn, Robert, 227. 
 
 Purgatory, Augustine on, 183; Gregory 
 I. on, 198 ; Scholastic doctrines of, 
 259 ; relation of indulgences to, 260 ; 
 Luther's thesis on, 270; Zwingli on, 
 287; the Ten Articles (1536) on, 310; 
 the Creed of Trent on, 331. 
 
 Puritans, rise of the, 356 ; their aim, 356, 
 357 ; their view of the Lord's Day, 361. 
 
 Pusey, Edward B., on the seat of author- 
 ity, 454 ; becomes leader of the Ox- 
 ford Movement, 462 : his personal 
 traits, 463; on the Eucharist, ib. ; his 
 doctrine of the Eucharist, compared 
 with the Lutheran and Calvinistic, 464. 
 
 Quadratus, 36. 
 Quakers, the tenets of, 378. 
 Quesnel, 335. 
 
 Quietism in the Roman Catholic Church, 
 336. 
 
 Rabanus Maurus, 203, 206, 207. 
 
 Rabulas, 154. 
 
 Racovian Catechism, the, 321. 
 
 " Rational Theology " in England, 362. 
 
 Rationalism, and the Scriptures, 12 ; 
 general spirit of, 12, 13, 19 ; in Abelard, 
 222; of the Socinians, 322; in Ger- 
 many, 494 sq. 
 
 Ratisbon, Colloquy at, 326. 
 
 Ratramnus, 203, 207. 
 
 Realism, in Augustine, 185 ; its later 
 prevalence, ib. ; conjoined with crea- 
 tionism in early theologians, 187; two 
 main forms of, 214 ; of Anselm, 217 ; 
 of Scotus, 232 ; opposed by Durandus, 
 233 ; 216, 224. 
 
 Reason, in the formulation of doctrine, 
 ii ; Clement of Alexandria on, 94; 
 Bernard of Clairvaux on, 225 ; the 
 Schoolmen on, 212 ; Abelard on, 221 ; 
 the Socinians on, 322 ; place of, in the 
 "Rational Theology," 363,366; Falk- 
 land on, 363; John Toland on, 375; 
 Anthony Collins on, 376; Coleridge 
 on, 447 ; Lessing on, 495 ; Kant's 
 definition of, 497; Herder on, 500; 
 Jacob! on, 501. 
 
 Recared, King of Spain, 147. 
 
 Redemption, central truth of Christianity, 
 4; Plato on, 30; the Gnostics on, 57, 
 58, 60 ; Marcion on, 59 ; Justin Martyr 
 on, 62; Irenaeus on, 86; Clement of 
 Alexandria on, 95; in Manichaeism, 
 
 127; Athanasius on, 136; the Antio- 
 chians on, 151. See " Christ," et pas- 
 sim. 
 
 Reformed Church, 292, 347, 350. 
 
 Regeneration, Justin Martyr on, 68; 
 Irenasus on, 87; Tertullian on, 93: 
 Clement of Alexandria on, 96 ; the 
 Greek Fathers generally on, 165; the 
 Mystics of the fourteenth century on, 
 265 ; Pajonistic view of, 346 ; Wesley 
 on, 392; the younger Edwards's defi- 
 nition of, 412; President Dwight on, 
 414 ; Henry B. Smith on, 418 ; Cole- 
 ridge on, 449 ; the Oxford Tracts on, 
 456 ; Schleiermacher on, 508. 
 
 Regensburg, Synod of, 205. 
 
 Regula fidei, 71, 72, 76. 
 
 Reid, Thomas, 385, 387. 
 
 Reimarus, 496. 
 
 Reinhard, 500. 
 
 Remigius, 207. 
 
 Renaissance. See " Revival of Learn- 
 ing." 
 
 Renan, 21. 
 
 Reserve, the doctrine of, in Clement ot 
 Alexandria, 96; in Origen, 106; tract 
 of Isaac Williams on, 457. 
 
 Restorationism, Origen on, 112 ; rejec- 
 tion of his opinion, 170; as held by 
 American Universalists, 437 ; held by 
 Thomas Erskine, 477 ; held by Schleier- 
 macher, 510; position of the Mediat- 
 ing School respecting, 516. 
 
 Resurrection, Justin Martyr on, 67; 
 Clement of Alexandria on, 97 ; Origen 
 on, 112; Augustine on, 182. 
 
 Reuchlin, John, 268. 
 
 Reuter, 193. 
 
 Revelation, the Nicene and post-Nicene 
 writers on, 124 ; Thomas Aquinas on, 
 234; Jeremy Taylor on, 365; the 
 Deists' method of treating, 373; the 
 Latitudinarians on, 374; Locke on 
 the need of, 375 ; the attitude of Ra- 
 tionalism toward, 494; Lessing on, 
 495; Rothe on, 517; Herrman on, 530. 
 
 Revelation, the Book of, traces of Gnosti- 
 cism in, 55 ; concerning its canonicity, 
 121 : Dionysius of Alexandria on, 114 ; 
 Zwingli on, 287. 
 
 Revival of Learning, the, effect of, on 
 theological thought, 18 sq., 267 sq. 
 
 Rheims, school at, 210 ; Council of, 226. 
 
 Rice, W. N., on the theological opinion 
 of men of science, 489.
 
 INDEX 
 
 579 
 
 Richard of St. Victor, 226, 230. 
 
 Ridgley, 393. 
 
 Ridley, Bp., 312, 313. 
 
 Rimini, Council of, 143. 
 
 Ripley, George, 433. 
 
 Ritschl, A., 13, 17, 21 ; his system, 524- 
 
 527- 
 
 Ritschlian School, the, 527-530. 
 
 Robber Synod, the, 155. 
 
 Rohr, 500. 
 
 Roman Catechism, the, 332. 
 
 Roman Catholic theology, the later, 
 536 sq. 
 
 Romaine, William, 446. 
 
 Romanes, G. J., his advance from skep- 
 ticism to Christian Theism, 546. 
 
 Rome, see of, 80, 120, 126, 128 ; Synod 
 at, 140, 210. 
 
 Roscellin, 217. 
 
 Rothe, Richard, his system, 516-522. 
 
 Rousseau, 493. 
 
 Royer -Collard, 485. 
 
 Rufinus, 132, 171. 
 
 Ruysbroek, 264. 
 
 Sabellianism, 99; its conception of the 
 Trinity, 103, 137. 
 
 Sabellius, 102, 103. 
 
 Sacramentalism, characteristic of the Ox- 
 ford Movement, 454 sq. ; and its oppo- 
 site in recent times, 549. 
 
 Sacraments, the, Irenaeus on, 87 ; Origen 
 on, 112; the Latin view of, 166; influ- 
 ence of the heathen mysteries on, 167 ; 
 Pseudo-Dionysius's list of, ib.; the 
 doctrine of the Greek Fathers on, ib. ; 
 Augustine on, 181, 183, 193 ; Gregory 
 I. on, 198 ; Hugo of St. Victor on, 254 ; 
 Peter Lombard on, ib.; Abelard on, 
 ib. ; Aquinas on the nature and need 
 of, ib. ; on the number and function of, 
 255; Aquinas on the indelible char- 
 acter of three of, ib.; Duns Scotus on, 
 ib. ; Durandus on, ib. ; Aquinas on the 
 ex opere operate effect of, ib. ; the Mys- 
 tics of the fourteenth century on, 264 ; 
 Wyclif's view of, 266; Luther on, 
 271 ; the Augsburg Confession on, 280 ; 
 Zwingli on, 288, 289 ; Calvin on, 305 ; 
 the Ten Articles (1536) on, 311; the 
 " Bishop's Book " on, ib. ; the Creed 
 of Trent on, 330; Hooker on, 354; the 
 Quakers on, 379 ; the Oxford Declara- 
 tion on, 454 ; the Tracts on, 456. See, 
 also, the several Sacraments. 
 
 Sardica, Council of, 141. 
 
 Sarpi, Father Paul, 327, 350. 
 
 Satan, the Gnostic conception of, 56, 57, 
 59; in Manichaeism, 127; Christ a 
 ransom to, Origen on, in ; the Greek 
 Fathers on, 162, 163; Augustine on, 
 180; Abelard on, 223 ; Bernard of 
 Clairvaux on, 225 ; Peter Lombard on, 
 227. 
 
 Saturninus, his system, 56. 
 
 Saumur, the school of, 342 sq. 
 
 Savonarola, 265. 
 
 Savonieres, Synod of, 207. 
 
 Savoy Confession, the, 394. 
 
 Schelling, his philosophy, 531. 
 
 Schleiermacher, Frederic, his influence 
 on New England Unitarianism, 432 sq. ; 
 on Bushnell, 439 ; his personal quali- 
 ties, 502 ; on the principle and scope 
 of dogmatic theology, ib. sq. ; on the, 
 attributes of God, 503 ; on sin, 504; on 
 the person and work of Christ, ib. sq. ; 
 on the atonement, 507 ; on the regen- 
 erate life, 508; on miracles, ib.; on the 
 Second Advent, 509; on the Church, 
 ib. ; on prayer, ib. ; his eschatological 
 views, ib. ; on the divine government, 
 510; on the Trinity, ib.; his system 
 characterized, ib. ; his influence, 512. 
 
 Scholasticism, characteristics and maxim 
 of, 212; rival tendencies in, 213; its 
 principal philosophical problem, ib.; 
 in the universities, 214 ; method of, 215 ; 
 divisions of the era of, 216; promi- 
 nence of Mysticism in, 230; influence 
 of Scotus on, 232; influence of the 
 Revival of Learning on, 267 ; in later 
 Protestant theology, 347. 
 
 Schoolmen, the, on faith and knowledge, 
 6, 212; defects in their method, 212; 
 influence of Plato and Aristotle among, 
 213; Nominalists and Realists, ib.; 
 Dominicans and Franciscans, 214; 
 Baur on, 215 ; subjects and methods of 
 their speculation, ib.; Mysticism in, 
 230; their apologetics, 235; on the 
 attributes of God, 236; on creation, 
 237; on the origin of the soul, 239 ; on 
 the image and similitude of God, 240 ; 
 on Adam's sin, 240 sq.; on the im- 
 maculate conception, 244 ; on divine 
 and human agency in conversion, 
 248; on justification, 249, 250; on 
 explicit and implicit faith, 249; on 
 papal infallibility and prerogatives,
 
 $8o 
 
 252 ; on the nature, number, and func- 
 tion of Sacraments, 254^.; on bap- 
 tism, 256; on confirmation, id.; on the 
 Lord's Supper, ib. ; on penance, 258 ; 
 on the five abodes of the invisible 
 world, 259; on extreme unction, 260; 
 on ordination, 261 ; on marriage, ib. ; 
 relation of, to Augustine, 262. See 
 " Scholasticism." 
 
 Schwane, 254. 
 
 Schwenkfeld, Caspar, and the Schwenk- 
 feldians, 317. 
 
 Scotists, the, 233, et passim. 
 
 Scott, Thomas, 393, 446. 
 
 Scott, Walter, 455. 
 
 Scotus, John Duns, his characteristics 
 and his influence upon Scholasticism, 
 232 ; on the proof of the being of God, 
 236; on the extent of our knowledge 
 of God, ib. ; on immortality, 239; on 
 the image and similitude of God, 240 ; 
 on the fall, 241 ; on the atonement, 
 247 ; on divine and human agency in 
 conversion, 249; on the Sacraments, 
 255 ; on the Lord's Supper, 257 ; on 
 the prerequisite for absolution, 260; 
 his point of view, 262. 
 
 Scotus, John " Erigena," his career and 
 system, 203 sq., 206. 
 
 Scriptures, the Sacred, source of doc- 
 trine, ii ; attitude of the Traditionalist, 
 the Mystic, and the Rationalist toward, 
 ii, 12; their authority, the basis of 
 Protestant creeds, 18 ; rise of a scien- 
 tific scrutiny of, 19 ; the method of the 
 Fathers in the interpretation of, 76; 
 Irenaeus on, 84 ; Origen on, 105 ; Ni- 
 cene and post-Nicene writers on, 122; 
 Augustine on, 179; Luther on, 278; 
 Calvin on, 299; the reading of, in the 
 vernacular restricted by the Roman 
 Catechism, 332 ; Louis Cappel on, 343 ; 
 the Protestant Scholastic view of, 347 ; 
 the Westminster Confession on, 359; 
 Matthew Arnold on, 480 ; other recent 
 views on, 493, 500, 513, 517, 525, 529. 
 See " Inspiration," " Canon," " Biblical 
 Criticism." 
 
 Sect, import of the term, 9. 
 
 Seleucia, Council of, 143. 
 
 Semi-Pelagianism, relation of John Cas- 
 sian to, 196 ; revival of the contro- 
 versy on, 197 ; opposed by Gottschalk, 
 206 ; conception of sin in, 218 ; its doc- 
 trine of divine and human agency set 
 
 forth by Duns Scotus, 249 ; defended 
 by Melanchthon, 272 ; held by the 
 Franciscans, 328; in the Creed of 
 Trent, 328 sq. ; espoused by the Jesu- 
 its, 332. 333- 
 
 Semler, 20, 497. 
 
 Sends, in the Frankish Church, 208. 
 
 Seneca, 31. 
 
 Sens, Council of, 223. 
 
 Sentences, the books of, 227, 228. 
 
 Septuagint, legend respecting it, 75, 122. 
 
 Sergius I., Pope, 201. 
 
 Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, 158. 
 
 Servatus, Lupus, 207. 
 
 Servetus, Michael, his system, 320. 
 
 Severians, 156. 
 
 Shaftesbury, his Characteristics, 378. 
 
 Shedd, W. G. T., 16, 21; his realistic 
 hypothesis, 445. 
 
 " Shepherd," the, of Hermas, 34, 75. 
 
 Sherlock, Bishop, 370, 377. 
 
 Sibylline Oracles, the, 27. 
 
 Simeon, Charles, 446. 
 
 Simon Magus, 50, 56. 
 
 Sin, Irenaeus on, 85; Tertullian on, 93; 
 Origen on, no, in ; the Greek Fathers 
 generally on, 161, 164; Augustine on, 
 185, 218 ; Pelagius on, 190 ; Peter 
 Lombard on, 241; Leibnitz on, 383; 
 the New England theologians on, 
 411-418, passim; Channing on, 429; 
 Schleiermacher on, 504; Dorner on, 
 514; J. Miiller on, 515; Lipsius on, 
 523; Ritschl on, 527; Biedermann 
 on, 534. See " Original sin." 
 
 Sirmian creeds, the, 142, 143. 
 
 Six Articles, the, 312. 
 
 Smalcald Articles, the, 273. 
 
 Smith, Henry B., his theology, 418. 
 
 Smith, John, of Cambridge, 368. 
 
 Smyth, Professor E. C., on Jonathan 
 Edwards's relation to Berkeley, 403. 
 
 Smyth, Rev. John, 320. 
 
 Socinianism, its origin and leading rep- 
 resentatives, 320, 321 ; characteristics 
 of the system, 322; its creed, ib. ; its 
 attack on the Anselmic theory of the 
 atonement, 323 ; its effect, 325 ; in 
 England, 370. See, also, " Unitarian- 
 ism." 
 
 Socinus, Faustus, 320, 321. 
 
 Socinus, Lselius, 321. 
 
 Socrates, gives ethical character to phi- 
 losophy, 29. 
 
 Socrates, a continuator of Eusebius, 131.
 
 INDEX 
 
 5 8l 
 
 Soissons, Councils of, 217, 223. 
 
 Solemn League and Covenant, the, 
 adopted, 359. 
 
 Sophronius, 158. 
 
 Soto, Dominicus, 351. 
 
 Soul, the doctrine respecting, in Philo, 
 28 ; in Plato, 30; in Tertullian, 90, 93 ; 
 in the Greek Fathers, 163 ; in Augus- 
 tine, 187 ; in Aquinas, 239. 
 
 South, Robert, 370. 
 
 Sozomen, 131. 
 
 Spanish Arabian schools, 209. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, his agnostic theory, 
 
 4, 487. 
 
 Spinola, 380. 
 
 Spinoza, 382, 432. 
 
 Stanley, A. P., 474 sq. 
 
 Stapfer, 344. 
 
 Stearns, Lewis F., 548. 
 
 Stiles, Ezra, 423. 
 
 Stillingfleet, Edward, 365, 367, 371. 
 
 Stoicism, 31, 90, 96. 
 
 Storr, 500. 
 
 Strauss, D. F., 533. 
 
 Strigel, Victorin, 296. 
 
 Stuart, Moses, 420. 
 
 St. Victor, the School of, 226. 
 
 Subordinationism, in Tertullian, 91; in 
 Origen, 109 ; in Dionysius of Alexan- 
 dria, 115; in Gregory of Nyssa, 144; 
 eliminated in the West, 146. See 
 " Trinity." 
 
 Supralapsarianism. See "Arminianism," 
 " Calvin," " Will." 
 
 Suso, Henry, 264, 265. 
 
 Swedenborg, Emanuel, his system, 493. 
 
 Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemsis, 126. 
 
 Systems, theological, relaxing of adher- 
 ence to, 551. 
 
 Tait, Archbishop, 460. 
 
 Tatian, his writings, 37; his conception 
 of Christianity as a philosophy, 61 ; on 
 the Logos, 64, 66. 
 
 Tauler, John, 264, 269, 317. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 364. 
 
 Taylor, Nathaniel W., his theology, 414. 
 
 " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." See 
 " Didache." 
 
 Temple, Bishop, 476. 
 
 Ten Articles (of 1536), the tenets and 
 sources of, 310. 
 
 Tertullian, materials for doctrinal his- 
 tory in, 19 ; his training and personal 
 qualities, 38 ; on the philosophers, id., 
 
 90 ; his writings, 39 ; a Montanist, 82 ; 
 on the power of binding and loosing, 
 ib.; on tradition, 90; on the soul, ib.; 
 on the proof of the being of God, it. ; 
 on the Trinity, 91 ; on the Logos, 
 ib.; on the person of Christ, 92; on the 
 atonement, ib.; legalism in, ib. ; on 
 human freedom and sin, 93 ; on regen- 
 eration, ib.; on the millennium, ib.; on 
 the Monarchians, 99. 
 
 Theodore I., Bishop of Rome, 158. 
 
 Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 208. 
 
 Theodore of Mopsuestia, 122, 131, 151, 
 J S4t J57- See "Antioch, School of." 
 
 Theodore of Tarsus, 203. 
 
 Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, 131, 153, 
 I5S. 157- 
 
 Theodosius the Great establishes the 
 Nicene orthodoxy, 145; II., 153, 154. 
 
 Theodotus, the Currier, his humanitarian 
 doctrine, 101. 
 
 Theodotus, the Money Changer, 101. 
 
 Theognis of Nicaea, 139. 
 
 Theology, the possibility of, 4 sq. ; its 
 relation to faith, 6 ; its relation to phi- 
 losophy, 7 ; reasons for the science of, 
 8 ; progressive character of, ib. ; incen- 
 tives to the development of, 9 ; Baur's 
 theory of the development of, 14 ; New- 
 man's theory of the development of, 
 ib.; influence of the Renaissance on, 
 18 sq.; authentic sources of, 23; influ- 
 ence of Greek philosophy on, 29 sq.; 
 at Alexandria, 39 ; earliest treatises on, 
 40; in the Greek Apologists, 61 ; course 
 of, in the East after the fourth century, 
 128 sq. ; ruling ideas of the Greek 
 Fathers, 161 sq. ; mediaeval compila- 
 tions in, 203; the Roman Catholics 
 restated in the Creed of Trent, 326 sq. ; 
 as affected by modern philosophy, 381- 
 393 ; Schleiermacher on the principle 
 and scope of, 502; recent tendencies 
 of, 546 sq. See, also, " Doctrine." 
 
 Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, 37, 64, 
 
 75- 
 
 Theophrastus, 101. 
 
 Thirlwall, Bishop, 460, 462. 
 
 Thirty-nine Articles, the, the groundwork 
 of, 311; reduced from the forty-two 
 Articles, 313; on the Lord's Supper, 
 ib.; is Article XVII. (on predestina- 
 tion) Calvinistic ? 314 ; on the Church, 
 315 ; the Westminster Assembly's par-
 
 582 
 
 INDEX 
 
 tial revision of, 359; Newman on (in 
 Tract XC.), 457- 
 
 Thomas d. Kempis, 264. 
 
 Thomasius, 17, 21, 65, 524. 
 
 Thomists, the, 233, et passim. 
 
 Thorndike, Prebendary, 356. 
 
 " Three Chapters," the, 157. 
 
 Timothy, the Epistles to, traces of Gnos- 
 ticism in, 55. 
 
 Tindal, Matthew, 377. 
 
 Toland, John, 375, 376. 
 
 Toledo, Council of, 147. 
 
 Toplady, Augustus, 393. 
 
 Toucy, Synod of, 207. 
 
 Tours, the school at, 210. 
 
 " Tractarians," the, 455. See "Oxford 
 Movement." 
 
 Tradition, how viewed by the early Fa- 
 thers, 7<3S$. ; Tertullian on, 90 ; its place 
 in the Nicene and post-Nicene writers, 
 123 ; its authority in the Middle Ages, 
 213 ; in the Creed of Trent, 328 ; in 
 the Oxford School, 454 ; vs. Develop- 
 ment, 549. 
 
 Traditionalism, n. 
 
 Traducianism, in Tertullian, 93 ; Augus- 
 tine's attitude toward, 187 sq. 
 
 Traheran, on Cranmer's change of be- 
 lief, 313. 
 
 " Transcendental " School in New Eng- 
 land, the, 433. 
 
 Transubstantiation, the doctrine of Pas- 
 chasius Radbert on, 207 ; Berengarius 
 on, 210; Lanfranc on, id.; modified 
 by Guitmund, 211 ; first use of the 
 term, ib. ; Anselm on, ib. ; William of 
 Occam on, 233; the term authorita- 
 tively sanctioned, 257 ; the Schoolmen 
 on, ib. ; rejected by Wyclif, 266 ; Luther 
 on, 271 ; the Six Articles on, 312 ; the 
 Creed of Trent on, 330; Bishop An- 
 drews on, 356 ; Tract XC. of Newman 
 on, 458. See " Lord's Supper." 
 
 Trent, the Council of, its organization, 
 326; Papal control of, 327; difficul- 
 ties confronting, ib.; on the sources 
 of doctrine, 328 ; on the Vulgate, ib. ; 
 on the test of orthodoxy, ib. ; on origi- 
 nal sin, ib. ; on justification and assur- 
 ance, 329 ; on perseverance, 330 ; on 
 predestination, ib.; on penance, ib.; 
 on the Sacraments, ib. ; its service, 
 331. 
 
 Trinitarian controversy in New England, 
 418 sq. 
 
 Trinity, the doctrine of, the era of con- 
 troversy upon, 17; first use of the 
 term, 91; Tertullian on, ib.; Clement 
 of Alexandria on, 95 ; the Monarchian 
 controversy upon, 98 sq. ; the Sabellian 
 view of, 103; Paul of Samosata on, 
 104; Origen on, 107 sq. ; Novatian on, 
 113 ; Dionysius of Alexandria on, 114 ; 
 Dionysius of Rome on, ib. ; Methodius 
 on, 116; the younger Nicaeans on, 
 143; John of Damascus on, 160; 
 Augustine on, 178 ; Roscellin on, 217 ; 
 Abelard on, 223 ; Gilbert of Poictiers 
 on, 226; Aquinas on, 237; Calvin on, 
 307; Michael Servetus on, 320; the 
 Socinian doctrine of, 322; Bishop 
 Sherlock on, 370 ; controversy in New 
 England on, 418 sq.; Professor Moses 
 Stuart on, 420 ; Bushnell on, 438-441 ; 
 Stanley on, 475 ; Swedenborg on, 494 ; 
 Schleiermacher on, 510; C. I. Nitzsch 
 on, 515; Rothe on, 517; Hegel on, 
 532. See "Arianism," "Christ, the 
 person of." 
 
 Tronchin, Louis, 345. 
 
 Trullan Council, the First, 159; the Sec- 
 ond, 200. 
 
 Trypho, Justin's dialogue with, 27, 37, 
 67. 
 
 Tubingen School, the, 14, 41, 51, 534. 
 See " Baur. F. C." 
 
 Tulloch, John, on the Latitudinarians, 
 368. 
 
 Turretine, Francis, 345, 346, note. 
 
 Turretine, Alphonso, 345. 
 
 Tyler, Bennet, 416. 
 
 Tyndall, 488. 
 
 Tyre, Synod at, 140. 
 
 Ultramontanism, 537, 539. 
 
 Unitarianism, rise of, 320; in Poland, 
 321 ; in New England, its rise, 418 sq. ; 
 Channing on the various types of, 420 ; 
 its chief representatives, 421 ; confined 
 chiefly to Eastern New England, 422 ; 
 its cultivation of Biblical criticism and 
 belles lettres, 423; Theodore Parker 
 on, 424; its promotion of philan- 
 thropy, 425 ; its theology as taught by 
 Channing, 427-432 ; radical develop- 
 ment in the intuitional theory, 432 ; 
 the Transcendental School, 433 ; Par- 
 kerism, 433 sq. ; gradual prevalence of 
 the progressive school in, 436. See, 
 also, " Socinianism."
 
 INDEX 
 
 583 
 
 Universalism, in America, 436. See 
 
 " Restorationism." 
 Urban IV., 258 ; VIII., 334. 
 Ursinus, 292. 
 
 Ussher, Archbishop, 358, 359. 
 Uytenbogaert, 338. 
 
 Valentinus, 58. 
 
 Vatican Council, the, 158, 540 sq. 
 
 Venn, Henry, 446. 
 
 Vercelli, Synod of, 210. 
 
 Victor, Bishop of Rome, 38. 
 
 Vigilantius, 172. 
 
 Vincent of Lerins, 123, 196. 
 
 Voetius, 349. 
 
 Voltaire, 492. 
 
 Vulgate, the, 131, 328. 
 
 Waldensians, the, 263. 
 
 Walter of St. Victor, 227. 
 
 Ware, Henry (Sr.), 420. 
 
 Ware, Henry (Jr.), 421. 
 
 Waterland, Daniel, 371, 377. 
 
 Watts, Isaac, 393. 
 
 Wegscheider, 500. 
 
 Weissmann, 348. 
 
 Wesel, John, 265, 285. 
 
 Wesley, John, his theology, 390 sq., 452. 
 
 Wesleyanism, 342. 
 
 Wessel, John, 265. 
 
 Westminster Assembly, 358 ; Confession, 
 
 274, 359 *9- 
 
 Westphal, Joachim, 292. 
 
 Whately, Richard, his theology, 450. 
 
 Whichcote, Benjamin, 366, 367. 
 
 Whiston, William, 376. 
 
 White, Edward, 479. 
 
 Whitefield, George, 390, 391, 395, 446. 
 
 Wilberforce, Bishop, 446. 
 
 Will, the, the Stoics on, 31 ; Justin Mar- 
 tyr on, 66 ; Tertullian on, 93 ; Clement 
 of Alexandria on, 96 ; Origen on, 107, 
 no; the Antiochian School on, 151; 
 the Greek Fathers on, 164; Augustine 
 on, 184, 191 ; Pelagius on, 184; Aqui- 
 
 nas on, 238 ; Luther on, 284, 292; the 
 Augsburg Confession on, 293; Me- 
 lanchthon's change of view on, ib.; the 
 Philippists on, 295 ; the Form of Con- 
 cord on, 296; S. Clarke on, 376; 
 Spinoza on, 383; Locke on, 397 sq. ; 
 Edwards on, 397 sy. ; Taylor on, 415 ; 
 Professor Park on, 417; Rothe on, 
 518. See, also, " Determinism." 
 
 William of Occam, 233, 249-257, 262. 
 
 William of Champeaux, 214, 226. 
 
 Williams, Isaac, 457. 
 
 Williams, Rowland, 476. 
 
 Wilson, Henry B., 476. 
 
 Winchester, Elhanan, 437. 
 
 Wisdom of Solomon, the, 27. 
 
 Wittenberg Concord, the, 290. 
 
 Wolzogenius, 321. 
 
 Woods, Leonard, 416. 
 
 Woolston, Thomas, 377. 
 
 Worcester, Noah, 420. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, 455. 
 
 Wyclif, John, his theology, 265 sg. 
 
 Zahn, on the date of the Didache and 
 " Shepherd," 35 ; on the Apostle's 
 Creed, 71, 100, 141. 
 
 Zeno, the philosopher, 31. 
 
 Zeno, the emperor, 156. 
 
 Zephyrinus, Bishop of Rome, 102, 103. 
 
 Zinzendorf, 495. 
 
 Zosimus, Bishop of Rome, 194, 195. 
 
 Zwingli, his intellectual qualities and 
 religious experience, 285 ; compared 
 with Luther, ib., 286; the starting- 
 point of his theology, 286; a social 
 reformer, ib.; his disputations and 
 articles of belief, ib.; his theological 
 works, 287 ; on the Canon, ib. ; on 
 predestination, ib. ; on original sin, 
 288; his controversy with Luther on 
 the Lord's Supper, ib. sq.; efforts at 
 reconciliation, 289 sq.; relation of 
 Calvin to, 298-309, passim. 
 
 Zwinglians, 272.
 
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 TURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 APOLOGETICS. 
 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 
 
 A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE 
 APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR. 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTA- 
 MENT. 
 
 THE ANCIENT CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTA- 
 
 MENT. 
 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SALVATION. 
 
 Detailed on following pages. 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 Vol. I. IN GERMANY. 
 
 Vol. II. IN LANDS BEYOND GERMAN*. 
 CANON AND TEXT OF THE NEW 
 
 TESTAMENT. 
 
 THE GREEK AND EASTERN CHURCHES. 
 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF GOD. 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERA- 
 TURE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 HISTORY OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 Vol. I. CHINA, JAPAN, EGYPT, BABY- 
 LONIA, ASSYRIA, INDIA, PERSIA, 
 GREECE, ROME. 
 
 THEOLOGICAL SYMBOLICS. 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 
 THE LATIN CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE 
 AGES. 
 
 All Prospectuses of the Series issued prior to December 31, 1915, 
 are hereby cancelled. 
 
 " ' The International Theological Library,' to which 
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 most recent in the historical, literary, and linguistic 
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 Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street, 
 
 JANUARY 1, 1916,
 
 Ninth Edition, thoroughly Revised. Post 8vo (610 pp.), price 10s. 6d. net, 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO 
 THE LITERATURE OF 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 BY SAMUEL ROLLES DRIVER, D.D., 
 
 LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD. 
 
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 THE THEOLOGY OF 
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 NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH. 
 
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 THE THEOLOGY OF 
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 YALK UNIVERSITY, U.S.A. 
 
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 CANON AND TEXT OF 
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 LATE PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW. 
 
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 OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY 
 
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 A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY 
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 BY ARTHUR CUSHMAN McGIFFERT, PH.D., D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 
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 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS 
 
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 APOLOGETICS 
 
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 CHRISTIANITY DEFENSIVELY STATED 
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 FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW. 
 
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 HISTORY OF 
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 BY 
 
 GEORGE PARK FISHER, D.D., LL.D., 
 
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 CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
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 NEWMAN SMYTH, D.D., 
 
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 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
 OF SALVATION 
 
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 THE GREEK AND EASTERN 
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 FORMERLY PRINCIPAL OF LANCASHIRE COLLBOB. 
 
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 THE ANCIENT CATHOLIC 
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 FROM THE ACCESSION OF TRAJAN TO THE 
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 BY EGBERT KAINY, D.D., 
 
 SOMETIME PRINCIPAL OK THE NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH. 
 
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 AN INTRODUCTION TO 
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 THE NEW TESTAMENT 
 
 BY JAMES MOFFATT, D.D., D.Lirr., 
 
 PROFESSOR IN THE UNITED FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASOOW. 
 
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 THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST 
 
 BY H. R. MACKINTOSH, D.PHIL., D.D., 
 
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 THEOLOGICAL SYMBOLICS 
 
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 UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK. 
 
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 Volume I., in post 8vo (652 pp.), price 10s. 6d. net, 
 
 HISTORY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 Vol. I. China, Japan, Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, India, Persia, 
 Greece, Rome. 
 
 By GEORGE F. MOORE, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
 
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 THE LATIN CHURCH IN THE 
 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 BY ANDRE LAGARDE. 
 
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 HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 
 
 BY CHARLES HENRY ROBINSON, D.D., 
 
 HON. CANON OK RII'ON CATHEDRAL, AND EDITORIAL SECRETARY OK THE SOCIETY 
 KOR THE PROPAGATION OK TUB GOSPEL IN FOREIGN PARTS. 
 
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 32285 
 
 THE INTERNATIONAL 
 THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY 
 
 For detailed list of the volumes ready, see previous pages. 
 The following Volumes are in course of preparation : 
 
 THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA 
 
 By C. A. BRIGGS, D.D., D.Litt., 
 
 LATE PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA AND SYMBOLICS, 
 UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMIMARY, NEW YORK. 
 
 CANON AND TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 By Principal JOHN SKINNER, D.D., and 
 PROF. OWEN C. WHITEHOUSE, D.D., 
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 By FRANCIS BROWN, D.D., D.Litt., 
 
 PRESIDENT AND PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AND COGNATE LANGUAGES, 
 UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK. 
 
 THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 By WILLIAM SANDAY, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 LADY MARGARET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD. 
 
 CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF THE 
 NEW TESTAMENT 
 
 By FRANK C. PORTER, Ph.D., D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR IN YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN, CONN. 
 
 BIBLICAL ARCH/EOLOQY 
 
 By G. BUCHANAN GRAY, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, MANSFIELD COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 HISTORY OF RELIGIONS, VOL. II. 
 
 Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism. 
 By GEORGE F. MOORE, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY IN THE LATIN COUNTRIES 
 SINCE THE COUNCIL OF TRENT 
 
 By PAUL SABATIER, D.Litt. 
 
 DOCTRINE OF MAN 
 
 By WILLIAM P. PATERSON, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 
 
 By W. ADAMS BROWN, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER 
 
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 PRINCIPAL OF NEW COLLEGE, LONDON. 
 
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