CHAPTER I.

THE APOSTOLIC AGE.

 

THE fullness of the time was come when Christianity was proclaimed on earth. The way had been prepared for it, not only by that long system of manifest and special training which God had bestowed on his chosen people, but by the labors of Gentile thought, employing the highest powers in the search alter truth, yet unable to satisfy man’s natural cravings by revealing to him with certainty his origin and destiny, or by offering relief from the burdens of his soul. The Jews were looking eagerly for the speedy accomplishment of the promises made to their fathers; even among the Gentiles, vague prophecies and expectations of some great appearance in the East were widely current. The affairs of the world had been ordered for the furtherance of the Gospel; it was aided in its progress by the dispersion of the Jews, and by the vast extent of the Roman dominion. From its birthplace, Jerusalem, it might be carried by pilgrims to the widely scattered settlements in which their race had found a home; and in these Jewish settlements its preachers found an audience to which they might address their first announcements with the reasonable hope of being understood. From Rome, where it early took root, it might be diffused by means of the continual intercourse which all the provinces of the empire maintained with the capital. It might accompany the course of merchandise and the movements of the legions.

We learn from the books of the New Testament, that within a few years from the day of Pentecost the knowledge of the faith was spread, by the preaching, the miracles, and the life of the apostles and their associates, through most of the countries which border on the Mediterranean sea. At Rome, before the city had been visited by any apostle, the number of Christians was already so great as to form several congregations in the different quarters. Clement of Rome states that St. Paul himself, in the last period of his life, visited “the extremity of the West”—an expression which may be more probably interpreted of Spain (in accordance with the intention expressed in the Epistle to the Romans) than of our own island, for which many have wished to claim the honor of a visit from the great teacher of the Gentiles. The early introduction of Christianity into Britain, however, appears more certain than the agency by which it was effected; and the same remark will apply in other cases.

While St. Paul was engaged in the labors which are related in the Acts of the Apostles, his brethren were doubtless active in their several spheres, although no certain record of their exertions has been preserved. St. Peter is said to have founded the church of Antioch, and, after having presided over it for seven years, to have left Enodius as his successor, while he himself penetrated into Parthia and other countries of the East; and it would seem more reasonable to understand the date of Babylon in his First Epistle (v. 13) as meaning the eastern city of that name than as a mystical designation of pagan Rome. Yet notwithstanding this, and although we need not scruple to reject the idea of his having held, as a settled bishop, that see which claims universal supremacy as an inheritance from him, it is not so much a spirit of sound criticism as a religious prejudice which has led some Protestant writers to deny that the apostle was ever at Rome, where all ancient testimony represents him to have suffered, together with St. Paul, in the reign of Nero. St. Bartholomew is said to have preached in India and Arabia; St. Andrew in Scythia; St. Matthew and St. Matthias in Ethiopia. St. Philip (whether the deacon or the apostle is uncertain) is supposed to have settled at Hierapolis in Phrygian. The church of Alexandria traced itself to St. Mark; that of Milan, but with less warranty to St. Barnabas. The church of Edessa is said to have been founded by St. Thaddeus; and this might perhaps be more readily believed if the story were not connected with a manifestly spurious correspondence between our Saviour and Abgarus, king of that region. St. Thomas is reported to have preached in Parthia and in India; the Persian church claimed him for its founder, and the native church of Malabar advances a similar claim. But the name of India was so vaguely used that little can be safely inferred from the ancient notices which connect it with the labors of St. Thomas; and the more probable opinion appears to be that the Christianity of Malabar owes its origin to the Nestorian missionaries of the fifth century, who, by carrying with them from Persia the name of the apostle of that country, laid the foundation of the local tradition. The African church, which afterwards became so prominent in history, has been fabulously traced to St. Peter, and to St. Simon Zelotes; but nothing is known of it with cer­tainty until the last years of the second century, and the Christianity of Africa was most probably derived from Rome by means of teachers whose memory has perished.

There may be too much hardness in rejecting traditions, as well as too great easiness in receiving them. Where is found that a church existed, and that it referred its origin to a certain person, the mere fact that the person in question was as likely as any other to have been the founder, or perhaps more likely than any other, can surely be no good reason for denying the claim. We have before us, on the one hand, remarkable works, and on the other, distinguished names; and although tradition maybe wrong in connecting the names with the works, it is an unreasonable skepticism to insist on separating them without examination and without exception.

AD 64-68. DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

The persecution by Nero is one of the circumstances in our early history which are attested by the independent evidence of heathen writers. It has been supposed that Christianity had once before attracted the notice of the imperial government; for it is inferred from a passage in Suetonius that disturbances among the Roman Jews on the subject of Christ had been the occasion of the edict by which Claudius banished them from Rome. But the persecution under Nero was more distinctly directed against the Christians, on whom the emperor affected to lay the guilt of having set fire to the city. Some were sown up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to be torn by dogs; some were crucified; others were covered with a dress which had been smeared with pitch, and was then set on fire, so that the victims served as torches to illuminate the emperor’s gardens, while he regaled the populace with the exhibition of chariot-races, in which he himself took part. Tacitus, in relating these atrocities states that, although the charge of incendiarism was disbelieved, the Christians were unpopular as followers of an unsocial superstition; but that the infliction of such tortures on them raised a general feeling of pity. As to the extent of this persecution (which has been a subject of dispute) the most probable opinion appears to be that it had no official sanction beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the capital; but the display of Nero’s enmity against the Christian name must doubtless have affected the condition of the obnoxious community throughout the provinces of the empire.

Until the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the capital of God’s ancient people, the birthplace of the church, had naturally been regarded by Christians as a religious center. It was the scene of the apostolic council, held under the presidency of its bishop, St. James the Just. And, as the embracing of the Gospel was not considered to detach converts of Hebrew race from the temple-worship and other Mosaic observances, Jerusalem had continued to be a resort for such converts, including the apostles themselves, at the seasons of the great Jewish festivals. But the destruction of the temple and of the holy city put an end to this connection. It was the final proof that God was no longer with the Israel after the flesh; that the Mosaic system had fulfilled its work, and had passed away. At the approach of the besieging army, the Christian community, seeing in this the accomplishment of their Master’s warning, had withdrawn beyond the Jordan to the mountain town of Pella. The main body of them returned after the siege, and established themselves among the ruins, under Symeon, who had been raised to the bishopric on the martyrdom of St. James, some years before; but the church of Jerusalem no longer stood in its former relation of superiority to other churches.

DOMITIAN-ST. JOHN

Christianity, as it was not the faith of any nation, had not, in the eyes of Roman statesmen, a claim to admission among the religions allowed by law (religiones licita); it must, indeed, have refused such a position, if it were required to exist contentedly and without aggression by the side of systems which it denounced as false and ruinous; and thus its professors were always exposed to the capricious enmity of rulers who might think fit to proceed against them. Thirty years after the time of Nero, a new persecution of the church, wider in its reach, although of less severity than the former, was instituted by Domitian. The banishment of St. John to Patmos, where he saw the visions recorded in the last book of Holy Scripture, has generally been referred to this persecution. Nor does there appear to be any good reason for disbelieving the story that the emperor, having been informed that some descendants of the house of David were living in Judaea, ordered them to be brought before him, as he apprehended a renewal of the attempts at rebellion which had been so frequent among their nation. They were two grandchildren of St. Jude —the “brother” of our Lord, as he is called. They showed their hands, rough and horny from labor, and gave such answers as proved them to be simple country­men, not likely to engage in any plots against the state; whereupon they were dismissed. The persecution did not last long. Domitian, before his assassination, had given orders that it should cease, and that the Christians who had been banished should be permitted to return to their homes; and the reign of his successor, Nerva (AD 96-8), who restored their confiscated property, was a season of rest for the church.

St. John alone of the apostles survived to the reign of Trajan. Of his last years, which were spent in the superintendence of the Ephesian church, some traditions have been preserved, which, if they cannot absolutely demand our belief, have at least a sufficient air of credibility to deserve a respectful consideration. One of these is a pleasing story of his recovering to the way of righteousness a young man who, after having been distinguished by the apostle’s notice and interest, had fallen into vicious courses, and had become captain of a band of robbers. Another tradition relates that, when too feeble to enter the church without assistance, or to utter many words, he continually addressed his flock with the charge—“Little children, love one another”; and that when some of them ventured to ask the reason of a repetition which they found wearisome, he answered, “Because it is the Lord’s commandment, and, if this only be performed, it is enough.” And it is surely a very incomplete view of the apostle’s character which would reject as inconsistent with it the story of his having rushed out of a public bath in horror and indignation on finding it to be polluted by the presence of the heretic Cerinthus.

EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITINGS.

Of the writings ascribed to this age, but which have not been admitted into the canon of the New Testament, the First Epistle of St. Clement is the only one which is generally received as genuine. The author, who was anciently supposed to be the Clement mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Philippians (IV. 3), was bishop of Rome towards the end of the century. His epistle, of which the chief object is to recommend humility and peace, was written in consequence of some dissensions in the Corinthian church, of which no other record is preserved, but which were probably later than Domitian’s persecution. The Second Epistle ascribed to Clement, and two letters “To Virgins”, which exist in a Syriac version, are rejected by most critics; and the other writings with which Clement’s name is connected are undoubtedly spurious. The Epistle which bears the name of St. Barnabas (although it does not claim him for its author), and the Shepherd of Hermas, are probably works of the earlier half of the second century.

Before leaving the apostolic age a few words must be said on the subject of church-government, while some other matters of this time may be better reserved for notice at such points of the later history as may afford us a view of their bearings and consequences.

With respect, then, to the government of the earliest church, the most important consideration appears to be, that the Christian ministry was developed, not from below, but from above. We do not find that the first members of it raised some from among their number to a position higher than the equality on which they had all originally stood; but, on the contrary, that the apostles, having been at first the sole depositaries of their Lord’s commission, with all the powers which it conferred, afterwards delegated to others, as their substitutes, assistants, or successors, such portions of their powers as were capable of being transmitted, and as were necessary for the continuance of the church. In this way were appointed, first, the order of deacons, for the discharge of secular administrations and of the lower spiritual functions; next, that of presbyters, elders, or bishops, for the ordinary care of congregations; and, lastly, the highest powers of ordination and government were in like manner imparted, as the apostles began to find that their own body was, from its smallness, unequal to the local superintendence of the growing church, and as the advance of age warned them to provide for the coming times. An advocate of the episcopal theory of apostolic succession is under no necessity of arguing that there must needs have been three orders in the ministry, or that there need have been more than one. It is enough to say that those to whom the apostles conveyed the full powers of the Christian ministry were not the deacons, nor the presbyters, but (in the later meaning of the word) the bishops; and the existence of the inferior orders, as subject to these, is a simple matter of history.

Resting on the fact that the apostles were, during their lives on earth, the supreme regulating authorities of the church, we may disregard a multitude of questions which have been made to tell against the theories of an episcopal polity, of a triple ministry, or of any ministry whatever as distinguished from the great body of Christians. We need not here inquire at what time and by what steps the title of bishop, which had originally been common to the highest and the second orders, came to be applied exclusively to the former; nor whether functions originally open to all Christian men were afterwards restricted to a particular class; nor in how far the inferior orders of the clergy, or the whole body of the faithful, may have at first shared in the administration of government and discipline; nor whether the commissions given by St. Paul to Timothy and to Titus were per­manent or only occasional; nor at what time the system of fixed diocesan bishops was introduced. We do not refuse to acknowledge that the organization of the church was gradual; we are only concerned to maintain that it was directed by the apostles (probably acting on instructions committed to them by their Master during the interval between his resurrection and his ascension), and that in all essential points it was completed before their departure.

It is evident that the ministers of the church, beginning with St. Matthias, were usually chosen by the body of believers; but it seems equally clear that it was the apostolical ordination which gave them their commission— that commission being derived from the Head of the church, who had bestowed it on the apostles, that they might become the channels for conveying it to others.

Of the universal supremacy of the bishop of Rome it is unnecessary here to speak. In this stage of church-history it is a matter not for the narrator but for the controversialist; if, indeed, the theories as to the “development” of Christianity, which have lately been devised in the interest of the Papacy, may not be regarded as dispensing even the controversial opponents of Rome from the necessity of proving that, in the earliest times of the church, no such supremacy was known or imagined.

 

CHAPTER II.

THE REIGNS OF TRAJAN AND HADRIAN.

AD 98-138

 

Christianity was no longer to be confounded with Judaism. The great majority of the converts were of Gentile race; and the difference of manners and observances between the followers of the two religions was such as could not be overlooked when exhibited in large bodies of persons. But still the newer system was regarded as an offshoot of the older; its adherents were exposed to all the odium of a Jewish sect. Indeed, the Christian religion must have appeared the more objectionable of the two, since it not only was exclusive, but, instead of being merely or chiefly national, it claimed the allegiance of all mankind.

Strange and horrible charges began to be current against the Christians. The secrecy of their meetings for worship was ascribed, not to its true cause, the fear of persecution, but to a consciousness of abominations which could not bear the light. “Thyestean banquets”, promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, and magical rites were popularly imputed to them. The Jews were especially industrious in inventing and propagating such stories, while some of the heretical parties, which now began to vex the church, both brought discredit on the Christian name by their own practices, and were forward to join in the work of slander and persecution against the faithful. And, no doubt, among the orthodox themselves there must have been some by whom the Gospel had been so misconceived that their behavior towards those without the church was repulsive and irritating, so as to give countenance to the prejudices which regarded the faith of Christ as a gloomy and unsocial superstition.

It is a question whether at this time there were any laws of the Roman empire against Christianity. On the one hand, it has been maintained that those of Nero and Domitian had been repealed on the other hand, Tertullian states that, although all the other acts of Nero were abrogated, those against the Christians still remained; and the records of the period convey the idea that the profession of the Gospel was legally punishable. Even if it was no longer condemned by any special statute, it fell under the general law which prohibited all such religions as had not been formally sanctioned by the state. And this law, although it might usually be allowed to slumber, could at any time have been enforced; not to speak of the constant danger from popular tumults, often incited by persons who felt that their calling was at stake—priests, soothsayers, statuaries, players, gladiators, and others who depended for a livelihood on the worship of the heathen gods, or on spectacles which the Christians abhorred.

TRAJAN

Trajan, the successor of Nerva, although not free from serious personal vices, was long regarded by the Romans as the ideal of an excellent prince; centuries after his death, the highest wish that could be framed for the salutation of a new emperor was a prayer that he might be “more fortunate than Augustus, and better than Trajan”. In the history of the church, however, Trajan appears to less advantage. Early in his reign he issued an edict against guilds or clubs, apprehending that they might become dangerous to the state; and it is easy to imagine how this edict might be turned against the Christians—a vast brotherhood, extending through all known countries both within and beyond the empire, bound together by intimate ties, maintaining a lively intercourse and communication with each other, and having much that seemed to be mysterious both in their opinions and in their practice.

In this reign falls the martyrdom of the venerable Symeon, the kinsman of our Lord, brother (or perhaps cousin) of James the Just, and his successor in the see of Jerusalem. It is said that some heretics denounced him to the proconsul Atticus as a Christian and a descendant of David. During several days the aged bishop endured a variety of tortures with a constancy which astonished the beholders; and at last he was crucified at the age of a hundred and twenty.

A curious and interesting contribution to the church-history of the time is furnished by the correspondence of the younger Pliny. Pliny had been sent as proconsul into Pontus and Bithynia, a region of mixed population, partly Asiatic and partly Greek, with a considerable infusion of Jews. That the Gospel had early found an entrance into those countries appears from the address of St. Peter’s First Epistle; and its prevalence there in the second century is confirmed by the testimony of the heathen Lucian. The circumstances of Pliny’s government forced on him the consideration of a subject which had not before engaged his attention. Perhaps, as has been conjectured, the first occasion which brought the new religion under his notice may have been the celebration of Trajan’s Quindecenncilia—the fifteenth anniversary of his adoption as the heir of the empire; for solemnities of this kind were accompanied by pagan rites, in which it was unlawful for Christians to share.

The proconsul was perplexed by the novelty of the circumstances with which he had to deal. He found that the temples of the national religion were almost deserted; that the persons accused of Christianity were very numerous; that they were of every age, of both sexes, of all ranks, and were found not only in the towns, but in villages and country places. Pliny was uncertain as to the state of the laws, and in his difficulty he applied to the emperor for instructions. He states the course which he had pursued : he had questioned the accused repeatedly; of those who persisted in avowing themselves Christians, he had ordered some to be put to death, and had reserved others, who were entitled to the privileges of Roman citizens, with the intention of sending them to the capital. “I had no doubt”, he says, “that, whatever they might confess, willfulness and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished”. Many who were anonymously accused had cleared themselves by invoking the gods, by offering incense to the statues of these and of the emperor, and by cursing the name of Christ. Some, who had at first admitted the charge, afterwards declared that they had abandoned Christianity three, or even twenty, years before; yet the governor was unable to extract from these anything to the discredit of the faith which they professed to have forsaken. They stated that they had been in the habit of meeting before dawn on certain days; that they sang alternately a hymn to Christ as God. Instead of the expected disclosures as to seditious engagements, licentious orgies, and unnatural feasts, Pliny could only find that they bound themselves by an oath to abstain from theft, adultery, and breach of promise or trust; and that at a second meeting, later in the day, they partook in common of a simple and innocent meal (the agape or love-feast, which was connected with the Eucharist). He put two deaconesses to the torture; but even this cruelty failed to draw forth evidence of anything more criminal than a “perverse and immoderate superstition”. In these circumstances Pliny asks the emperor with what penalties Christianity shall be visited; whether it shall be punished as in itself a crime, or only when found in combination with other offences; whether any difference shall be made between the treatment of the young and tender, and that of the more robust culprits; and whether a recantation shall be admitted as a title to pardon. He concludes by stating that the measures already taken had recovered many worshippers for the lately deserted temples, and by expressing the belief that a wise and moderate policy would produce far more numerous reconversions.

Trajan, in his answer, approves of the measures which Pliny had reported to him. He prefers entrusting the governor with a large discretionary power to laying down a rigid and uniform rule for all cases. The Christians, he says, are not to be sought out; if detected and convicted, they are to be punished; but a denial of Christ is to be admitted as clearing the accused, and no anonymous informations are to be received against them.

The policy indicated in these letters has been assailed by the sarcasm of Tertullian, and his words have often been echoed and quoted with approbation by later writers—forgetful that the conduct of Trajan and his minister ought to be estimated, not by the standard either of true religion or of strict and consistent reasoning, but as that of heathen statesmen. We may deplore the insensibility which led these eminent men to set down our faith as a wretched fanaticism, instead of being drawn by the moral beauty of the little which they were able to ascertain into a deeper inquiry, which might have ended in their own conversion. We may dislike the merely political view which, without taking any cognizance of religious truth, regarded religion only as an affair of state, and punished dissent from the legal system as a crime against the civil authority. We may pity the blindness which was unable to discern the inward and spiritual strength of Christianity, and supposed that a judicious mixture of indulgence and severity would in no long time extinguish it. But if we fairly consider the position from which Trajan and Pliny were obliged to regard the question, instead of joining in the apologist’s complaints against the logical inconsistency of their measures, we shall be unable to refuse the praise of wise liberality to the system of conniving at the existence of the new religion, unless when it should be so forced on the notice of the government as to compel the execution of the laws.

SAINT IGNATIUS

Under Trajan took place the martyrdom of Ignatius —one of the most celebrated facts in early church-history, not only on its own account, but because of the interest attached to the epistles which bear the name of the venerable bishop. The birthplace of Ignatius is matter of conjecture, and his early history is unknown. He is described as a hearer of St. John and he was raised to the bishopric of Antioch, as the successor of Enodius, about the year 70. For nearly half a century he had governed that church, seated in the capital of Syria, a city which numbered 200,000 inhabitants; and to the authority of his position was added that of a wise and saintly character.

It is uncertain to which of the visits which Trajan paid to Antioch the fate of Ignatius ought to be referred. The Acts of his martyrdom relate that he “was voluntarily led” before the emperor—an expression which may mean either that he was led as a criminal, without attempting resistance or escape; or that he himself desired to be conducted into Trajan’s presence, with a view of setting forth the case of the Christians, and with the resolution, if his words should fail of success, to sacrifice himself for his faith and for his people. The details of the scene with the emperor are suspicious, as the speeches attributed to Trajan appear to be too much in the vein of a theatrical tyrant; his sentence was, that Ignatius should be carried to Rome, and there exposed to wild beasts. Perhaps the emperor may have hoped to overcome the constancy of the aged bishop by the fatigues of the long journey, and by the terrors of the death which awaited him. At least we may suppose him to have reckoned on striking fear into other Christians, by the spectacle of a man so venerable in character and so eminent in place hurried over sea and land to a dreadful and degrading death—the punishment of the lowest criminals, and especially of persons convicted of those magical practices which were commonly imputed to the Christians. Perhaps he may even have thought that the exemplary punishment of one conspicuous leader would operate as a mercy to the multitude, by deterring them from the forbidden religion; and we find in fact that, while the victim was on his way to Rome, his church, which he had left to the charge of God as its Pastor, was allowed to remain in peace.

Ignatius, who had welcomed his condemnation, and had willingly submitted to be bound, was committed to the charge of ten soldiers, who treated him with great harshness. They conducted him to Seleucia, and thence by sea to Smyrna, where he was received by the bishop, Polycarp—like himself a disciple of St. John, and destined to be a martyr for the Gospel. The report of his sentence and of his intended route had reached the churches of Asia; and from several of these deputations of bishops and clergy had been sent to Smyrna, with the hope of mingling with him in Christian consolation, and perhaps of receiving some spiritual gift from him.0 He charged the bishops of Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles, with letters addressed to their respective churches; and, as some members of the Ephesian church were proceeding to Rome by a more direct way than that which he was himself about to take, he seized the opportunity of writing by them to his brethren in the capital. At Troas he was met by the bishop of Philadelphia; and thence he wrote to that church, as also to the Smyrnaeans, and to their bishop, Polycarp.

The epistles to the churches are in general full of solemn and affectionate exhortation. The venerable writer recalls to the minds of his readers the great truths of the Gospel—dwelling with especial force on the reality of our Lord’s manhood, and of the circumstances of His history, by way of warning against the docetic errors which had begun to infest the Asiatic churches even during the lifetime of St. John. A tendency to Judaism (or rather to heresies of a judaizing character) is also repeatedly denounced. Submission to the episcopal authority is strongly inculcated throughout. Ignatius charges the churches to do nothing without their bishops; he compares the relation of presbyters to bishops with that of the strings to the harp; he exhorts that obedience be given to the bishops as to Christ himself and to the Almighty Father. The frequent occurrence of such ex­hortations, and the terms in which the episcopal office is extolled, have been, in later times, the chief inducements to question the genuineness of the epistles altogether, or to suppose that they have been largely interpolated with the view of serving a hierarchical interest. It must, however, be remembered that the question is not whether a ministry of three orders was by this time organized, but merely whether Ignatius’ estimation of the episcopal dignity were somewhat higher or lower; and it has been truly remarked that the intention of the passages in question is not to exalt the hierarchy, but to persuade to Christian unity, of which the episcopate was the visible keystone.

The Epistle to the Romans is written in a more ardent strain than the others. In it Ignatius bears witness to the faith and the good deeds of the church of Rome. He expresses an eager desire for the crown of martyrdom, and entreats that the Romans will not, through mistaken kindness, attempt to prevent his fate. “I am”, he says, “the wheat of God; let me be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather do you encourage the beasts, that they may become my tomb, and may leave nothing of my body, so that when dead I may not be troublesome to any one”. He declares that he wishes the lions to exercise all their fierceness on him; that if, as in some other cases, they should show any unwillingness, he will himself provoke them to attack him.

It has been asked whether these expressions were agreeable to the spirit of the Gospel. Surely we need not hesitate to answer. The aspirations of a tried and matured saint are not to be classed with that headstrong spirit which at a later time led some persons to provoke persecution and death, so that the church saw fit to restrain it by refusing the honors of martyrdom to those who should suffer in consequence of their own violence. Rather they are to be regarded as a repetition of St. Paul’s “readiness to be offered up of his desire to depart and to be with Christ”. To a man like Ignatius, such a death might reasonably seem as a token of the acceptance of his labors; while it afforded him an opportunity of signally witnessing to the Gospel, and of becoming an offering for his flock.

From Troas he took ship for Neapolis in Macedonia; thence he crossed the continent to Epidamnus, where he again embarked; and, after sailing round the south of Italy, he landed at Portus (Porto), near Ostia. His keepers hurried him towards Rome—fearing lest they should not arrive in time for the games at which it was intended to expose him. On the way he was met by some brethren from the city, whom he entreated, even more earnestly than in his letter, that they would do nothing to avert his death; and, after having prayed in concert with them for the peace of the church, and for the continuance of love among the faithful, he was carried to the amphitheater, where he suffered in the sight of the crowds assembled on the last day of the Sigillaria—a festival annexed to the Saturnalia. It is related that, agreeably to the wish which he had expressed, no part of his body was left, except a few of the larger and harder bones; and that these were collected by his brethren, and reverently conveyed to Antioch, being received with honor by the churches on the way.

HADRIAN

Within a few months after the martyrdom of Ignatius (if the late date of it be correct), Trajan was succeeded by Hadrian. The new emperor—able, energetic, inquisitive and versatile, but capricious, paradoxical, and a slave to a restless vanity—was not likely to appreciate Christianity rightly. It is, however, altogether unjust to class him (as was once usual) among the persecutors of the church; for there is no ground for supposing him to have been personally concerned in the persecutions which took place during the earlier years of his reign, and under him the condition of the Christians was greatly improved.

The rescript of Trajan to Pliny had both its favorable and its unfavorable side : while it discouraged anonymous and false informations, it distinctly marked the profession of the Gospel as a crime to be punished on conviction; and very soon a way was found to deprive the Christians of such protection as they might have hoped to derive from the hazardous nature of the informer’s office. They were no longer attacked by individual accusers; but at public festivals the multitudes assembled in the amphitheaters learnt to call for a sacrifice of the Christians, as wretches whose impiety was the cause of floods and earthquakes, of plagues, famines, and defeats; and it was seldom that a governor dared to refuse such a demand.

A visit of Hadrian to Athens, when he was initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis, excited the heathen inhabitants with the hope of gratifying their hatred of the Christians; and the occasion induced two of these— Quadratus, who had been an “evangelist”, or missionary, and Aristides, a converted philosopher— to address the emperor in written arguments for their religion. The “Apologies” appear to have been well received; and they became the first in a series of works which powerfully and effectively set forth the truth of the Gospel, in contrast with the fables and the vices of heathenism.

About the same time a plea for justice and toleration was offered by a heathen magistrate. Serennius Granianus, when about to leave the proconsulship of Asia, represented to Hadrian the atrocities which were committed in compliance with the popular clamors against the Christians; and the emperor, in consequence, addressed letters to Minucius Fundanus, the successor of Granianus, and to other provincial governors. He orders that the Christians should no longer be given up to the outcries of the multitude; if convicted of any offence, they are to be sentenced according to their deserts; but the forms of law must be duly observed, and the authors of unfounded charges are to be severely punished. This rescript was valuable, as affording protection against a new form of persecution; but it was still far from establishing a complete toleration, since it omitted to define whether Christianity were in itself a crime, and thus left the matter to the discretion or caprice of the local magistrates.

The reign of Hadrian was very calamitous for the Jews. In the last years of Trajan there had been Jewish insurrections in Egypt, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, and elsewhere, which had been put down with great severity, and had drawn fresh oppressions on the whole people. By these, and especially by the insult which Hadrian offered to their religion, in settling a Roman colony on the site of the holy city, the Jews of Palestine were excited to a formidable revolt, under a leader who assumed the name of Barcochab, and was believed by his followers to be the Messiah. After a protracted and very bloody war, the revolt was suppressed. Many Jews were put to death, some were sold at the price of horses, others were transported from the land of their fathers; and no Jew was allowed to approach Jerusalem except on one day in the year—the anniversary of the capture by Titus, when, for a heavy payment, they were admitted to mourn over the seat of their fallen greatness. The Roman city of Aelia Capitolina was built on the foundations of Jerusalem; a temple of Jupiter defiled Mount Zion; and it is said that profanations of a like kind were committed in the places hallowed by the birth, the death, and the burial of our Lord.

While the revolt was as yet successful, the Christians of Palestine suffered severely for refusing to acknowledge Barcochab. The measures of Hadrian, after its suppression, led to an important change in the church of Jerusalem. Wishing to disconnect themselves visibly from the Jews, the majority of its members abandoned the Mosaic usages which they had until then retained; they chose for the first time a bishop of Gentile race, and conformed to the practice of Gentile churches. On these conditions they were allowed to reside in Aelia, while such of their brethren as still adhered to the distinctively Jewish Christianity retired to Pella and other places beyond the Jordan, where their fathers had found a refuge during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus.

 

CHAPTER III.

THE REIGN OF THE ANTONINES

AD 138-180.

 

The rescripts of the last two emperors had done much for the protection of the Christians; and their condition was yet further improved during the peaceful reign of the elder Antoninus.

Finding that the provincial governors in general refused to punish the profession of the Gospel as in itself criminal, its enemies now had recourse to charges of atheism —an imputation which seems to have originated in the circumstance that the Christians were without the usual externals of worship— temples and altars, images and sacrifices. The custom of ascribing all public calamities to them, and of calling for their blood as an atonement to the offended gods, still continued; and the magistrates of several cities in Greece requested the emperor’s directions as to the course which should be taken in consequence. Antoninus wrote in reply, confirming the edict of Hadrian, that the Christians should not be punished, unless for crimes against the state. Another document, however, in which he is represented as instructing the council of Asia to put to death all who should molest the Christians on account of their religion, is now generally regarded as spurious.

JUSTIN MARTYR

The cause of the persecuted body was pleaded by Justin, usually styled the Martyr, in an apology addressed to the emperor, his adopted sons, the senate, and the people of Rome. Justin was a native of Flavia Neapolis, a town of Greek population and language, on the site of the ancient Sychem, in Samaria. He has himself, in his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho, related the progress of his religious opinions : how—induced, as it would seem, rather by a desire to discover some solid foundation of belief than by any speculative turn of mind—he tried in succession the most popular forms of Greek philosophy; how in one after another he was disgusted, either by the defectiveness of the doctrine or by the character of the teacher; how, after having taken up the profession of Platonism, he was walking on the sea-shore in deep meditation, when he was accosted by an old man of mild and reverend appearance, who told him that his studies were unpractical and useless, directed him to the Prophets and the New Testament, and exhorted him to pray “that the gates of light might be opened” to him. The convictions which arose in Justin’s mind from the course of reading thus suggested were strengthened by his observation of the constancy with which Christians endured persecution and death for the sake of their faith —a spectacle by which he had even before been persuaded that the popular charges against their morals must be unfounded. With a fullness of belief such as he had never felt in any of the systems through which he had passed, he embraced the Christian faith, and he devoted himself to the defence and propagation of it. He travelled in Egypt, Asia, and elsewhere, retaining the garb of a philosopher, which invested him with an air of authority, and was serviceable in procuring a hearing for his doc­trines; but his usual residence was at Rome, where he established a school of Christian philosophy.

Justin’s First Apology contains a bold remonstrance against the iniquity of persecuting Christians for their religion, while all other parties were allowed to believe and to worship according to their conscience. In this and in the other writings by which he maintained the cause of the Gospel against its various adversaries— heathens, Jews, and heretics—he refutes the usual calumnies, the charges of atheism and immorality, of political disaffection and sedition. He appeals to the evidence of prophecy and miracles, to the purity of the New Testament morality, to the lives of his brethren, their love even for their enemies, their disinterestedness, their firmness in confessing the faith, their patience in suffering for it. “No one”, he says, “had ever believed Socrates in such a manner as to die for his philosophy; but multitudes, even in the lowest ranks, had braved danger and death in the cause of Christ”. He dwells on the chief points of Christian doctrine, and elaborately discusses the resurrection of the body, an article which was especially difficult to the apprehension of the heathens. He vindicates the character and the miracles of our Lord; he rebuts the arguments drawn from the novelty of his religion, and from the depressed condition of its professors, which their enemies regarded as a disproof of their pretensions to the favor of the Almighty; he argues from the progress which the Gospel had already made, although unaided by earthly advantages. Nor is he content with defending his own creed; he attacks the corruptions and absurdities of Paganism, not only in its popular and poetical form, but as it appeared in the more refined interpretations of the philosophers; he exposes the foul abominations of heathen morals, and tells his opponents that the crimes which they slanderously imputed to the Christians might more truly be charged on themselves.

Justin often insists on the analogies which are to be found between the doctrines of Plato and those of Holy Scripture. He derives the wisdom of the Greeks from the Jews, through the medium of Egypt, and ascribes the corruptions of it to demons, who, according to him, had labored by such means to raise a prejudice against the reception of Christian doctrine. He held that the good men of antiquity, such as Socrates and Heraclitus, had been guided by a partial illumination of the Divine Logos, and that, because they strove to live by this light, the demons had raised persecutions against them. Justin therefore urges his heathen readers to embrace that wisdom which had been imperfectly vouchsafed to the sages of their religion, but was now offered in fullness to all men. While, however, he thus referred to heathen philosophy by way of illustration, and represented it as a preparation for Christianity, he was careful not to admit it as supplementary to the Gospel or as an element of adulteration.

Although it is a mistake to suppose that the apologies of the early writers were mere exercises, composed without any intention of presenting them to the princes who are addressed, there is no evidence that Justin’s First Apology produced any effect on Antoninus, or contributed to suggest the emperor’s measures in favor of the Christians. The Roman political view of religion was, indeed, not to be disturbed by argument. All that the magistrate had to care for was a conformity to the established rites— a conformity which was considered to be a duty towards the state, but was not supposed to imply any inward conviction. The refusal of compliance by the Christians, therefore, was an unintelligible scruple, which states­men could only regard, with Pliny, as a criminal obstinacy.

MARCUS AURELIUS

The elder Antoninus was succeeded in 161 by his adopted son Marcus Aurelius. Under this emperor— celebrated as he is for benevolence, justice, intelligence, and philosophic culture— the state of the Christians was worse than in any former reign, except that of Nero; if, indeed, even this exception ought to be made, since Nero’s persecution was probably limited to Rome. The gradual advance towards toleration, which had continued ever since the death of Domitian, is now succeeded by a sudden retrograde movement. The enmity against Christians is no longer peculiar to the populace, but local governors and judges are found to take spontaneously an active part in persecution. Now, for the first time, they seek out the victims, in contravention of the principle laid down by Trajan; instead of discouraging informations, they invite or instigate them; they apply torture with the view of forcing a recantation; in order to obtain evidence, they not only violate the ancient law which forbade the admission of slaves as witnesses against their masters, but even wring out the testimony of reluctant slaves by torture .

In explanation of the contrast between the general character of Marcus and his policy towards the church, it has been suggested that, in his devotion to philosophical studies, he may have neglected to bestow due care on the direction and superintendence of the officers by whom the government of the empire was administered; that he may have shared no further in the persecutions of his reign than by carelessly allowing them to be carried on. But this supposition would appear to be inconsistent with facts; for, although no express law of this date against the Christians is extant, it is almost certain that the persecuting measures were sanctioned by new and severe edicts proceeding from the emperor himself; and we are not without the materials for a more satisfactory solution of the seeming contradiction.

The reign was a period of great public disasters and calamities. A fearful pestilence ravaged the countries from Ethiopia to Gaul; the Tiber rose in flood, destroying among other buildings the public granaries, and causing a famine in the capital; the empire was harassed by long wars on the eastern and northern frontiers, and by the revolt of its most distinguished general in Syria. All such troubles were ascribed to the wrath of the gods, which the Christians were supposed to have provoked. The old tales of atheism and abominable practices, however often refuted, continued to keep their ground in the popular belief; and it appears on investigation that the fiercest renewals of persecution coincided in time with the chief calamities of the reign. The heathen, high as well as low, were terrified into a feeling that the chastisements of Heaven demanded a revival of their sunken religion; they restored its neglected solemnities, they offered sacrifices of unusual costliness, they anxiously endeavored to remove whatever might be supposed offensive to the gods.

The emperor, as a sincerely religious heathen, shared in the general feeling; nor were his private opinions such as to dispose him favorably towards the Christians, whom it would appear that he knew only through the representations of their enemies the philosophers. The form of philosophy to which he was himself addicted —the Stoic— was very opposite in tone to the Gospel. It may be described as aristocratic —a system for the elevated few; it would naturally lead its followers to scorn as vulgar a doc­trine which professed to be for all ranks of society and for every class of minds. The firmness of the Stoic was to be the result of correct reasoning; the emperor himself, in his Meditations, illustrates the true philosophical calmness by saying that it must not be like the demeanor of the Christians in death, which he regards as enthusiastic and theatrical. And the enthusiasm was infectious; the sect extended throughout, and even beyond, the empire; already its advocates began to boast of the wonderful progress of their doctrines; and the circumstances thus alleged in its favor might suggest to the mind of an unfriendly statesman a fear of dangerous combinations and movements. If, too, the prosperity of a nation depended on its gods, the triumph over paganism which the Christians anticipated must, it was thought, imply the ruin of the empire. A “kingdom not of this world” was an idea which the heathen could not understand; nor was their alarm without countenance from the language of many Christians, for not only was the Apocalypse interpreted as foretelling the downfall of pagan Rome, but pretended prophecies, such as the Sibylline verses, spoke of it openly, and in a tone of exultation.

THE THUNDERING LEGION. 

It was long believed that Marcus, in the latter years of his reign, changed his policy towards the Christians, in consequence of a miraculous deliverance which he had experienced in one of his campaigns (AD 174) against the Quadi. His army was hemmed in by the barbarians; the soldiers were exhausted by wounds and fatigue, and parched by the rays of a burning sun. In this distress (it is said) a legion composed of Christians stepped forward and knelt down in prayer; on which the sky was suddenly overspread with clouds, and a copious shower descended for the refreshment of the Romans, who took off their helmets to catch the rain. While they were thus partly unarmed, and intent only on quenching their thirst, the enemy attacked them; but a violent storm of lightning and hail arose, which drove full against the barbarians, and enabled the imperial forces to gain an easy victory. It is added that the interposition of the God of Christians was acknowledged; that the emperor bestowed the name of Fulminatrix on the legion whose prayers had been so effectual; and that he issued an edict in favor of their religion.

In refutation of this story it has been shown that, while the deliverance is attested by heathen as well as Christian writers, by coins, and by a representation on the Antonine column at Rome, it is ascribed by the heathens to Jupiter or Mercury, and is said to have been procured either by the arts of an Egyptian magician or by the prayers of the emperor himself; that the idea of a legion consisting exclusively of Christians is absurd; that the title of Fulminatrix was as old as the time of Augustus; and that the worst persecutions of the reign were later than the date of the supposed edict of toleration. But, although the miracle of “the Thundering Legion” is now generally abandoned, the story may have arisen without any intentional deceit. For the deliverance of the army in the Quadian war is certain; and we may safely assume that there were Christian soldiers in the imperial force, that they prayed in their distress, and that they rightly ascribed their relief to the mercy of God. We have then only to suppose, further, that some Christian, ignorant of military antiquities, connected this event with the name of the Legio Fulminatrix; and the other circumstances are such as might have easily been added to the tale in the course of its transmission.

The most eminent persons who suffered death under Marcus Aurelius were Justin and Polycarp. Early in the reign Justin was induced by the martyrdom of some Christians at Rome to compose a second Apology, in which he expressed an expectation that he himself might soon fall a victim to the arts of his enemies, and espe­cially of one Crescens, a Cynic, who is described as a very vile member of his repulsive sect. The apprehen­sion was speedily verified; and Justin, after having borne himself in his examination with firmness and dig­nity, was beheaded at Rome, and earned the glorious title which usually accompanies his name.

The martyrdom of Justin was followed by that of Polycarp —a man whose connection with the apostolic age invested him with an altogether peculiar title to reverence in the time to which he had survived. He had been a disciple of St. John, who is supposed to have placed him in the see of Smyrna. It was perhaps Polycarp who was addressed as the “angel” of that church in the Apocalypse, and we have already noticed his correspondence with the martyr Ignatius. Towards the end of the reign of Pius, Polycarp had visited Rome, partly, although not exclusively, for the purpose of discussing a question which had arisen between the churches of Asia and those of other countries as to the time of keeping Easter. It had been the practice of the Asiatics to celebrate the paschal supper on the fourteenth day of the first Jewish month —the same day on which the Jews ate the Passover; and three days later, without regard to the day of the week, they kept the feast of the resurrection. Other churches, on the contrary, held it unlawful to interrupt the fast of the holy week, or to celebrate the resurrection on any other day than the first; their Easter, consequently, was always on a Sunday, and their paschal supper was on its eve. The Asiatic or quartodeciman practice was traced to St. John and St. Philip; that of other churches, to St. Peter and St. Paul.

Polycarp was received at Rome by the bishop, Anicetus, with the respect due to his personal character, to his near connection with the apostles, to his advanced age, and to his long tenure of the episcopal office—for Anicetus was the seventh bishop of Rome since his guest had been set over the church of Smyrna. The discussion of the paschal question was carried on with moderation; it was agreed that on such a matter a difference of practice might be allowed; and Anicetus, in token of fellowship and regard, allowed the Asiatic bishop to consecrate the Eucharist in his presence.

During his residence at Rome, Polycarp succeeded in recovering many persons who had been perverted to heresy by Valentinus, Marcion, and Marcellina, a female professor of Gnosticism. It is said also that he had a personal encounter with Marcion, and that when the heresiarch (probably with reference to some former acquaintance in Asia) asked him for a sign of recognition, his answer was, “I know thee for the firstborn of Satan”.

The martyrdom of Polycarp is related in a letter composed in the name of his church. Persecution had begun to rage in Asia, and many of the Smyrnaean Christians had suffered with admirable constancy; but one who had at first been forward in exposing himself was afterwards persuaded to sacrifice, and from his case the writers of the letter take occasion to discourage the practice of voluntarily courting persecution. The multitude was enraged at the sight of the fortitude which the martyrs displayed, and a cry arose, “Away with the atheists! Seek out Polycarp!”. The behavior of the venerable bishop, when thus demanded as a victim, was worthy of his character for Christian prudence and sincerity. At the persuasion of his friends he withdrew to a neighboring village, from which he afterwards removed to another; and, on being discovered in his second retreat, he calmly said, “God’s will be done!”. He ordered food to be set before his captors, and spent in fervent prayer the time which was allowed him before he was carried off to the city. As he entered the arena, he is said to have heard a voice from heaven—“Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man!”, and it is added that many of his brethren also heard it. On his appearance the spectators were greatly excited, and broke out into loud clamors. The proconsul exhorted him to purchase liberty by renouncing his faith; but he replied, “Fourscore and six years have I served Christ, and he hath done me no wrong; how can I now blaspheme my King and Saviour?”; nor could the proconsul shake his resolution either by renewed solicitations, or by threatening him with the beasts and with fire. The multitude pried out for the bishop’s death, and he was condemned to be burnt—a sentence of which he is said to have before received an intimation by a vision of a fiery pillow. A quantity of wood was soon collected, and it is noted by the narrator that the Jews, “as was their custom”, showed themselves especially zealous in the work. In compliance with his own request that he might not be fastened with the usual iron cramps, as he trusted that God would enable him steadfastly to endure the flames, Polycarp was tied to the stake with cords, and in that position he uttered a thanksgiving for the privilege of glorifying God by his death. The pile was then kindled, but the flame, instead of touching him, swept around him “like the sail of a ship filled with wind”, while his body appeared in the midst, “not like flesh that is burnt, but like bread that is baked, or like gold and silver glowing in a furnace”; and a perfume as of frankincense or spices filled the air. As the fire seemingly refused to do its office, one of the executioners stabbed the martyr with a sword, whereupon there issued forth a profusion of blood sufficient to quench the flames. The heathens and the Jews then burnt the body—out of fear, as they said, lest the Christians should worship Polycarp instead of “the Crucified”, —an apprehension by which, as the church of Smyrna remarks, they manifested an utter ignorance of Christian doctrine. The brethren were therefore obliged to content themselves with collecting some of the bones, and bestowing on them an honorable burial. As in the case of Ignatius, the death of the bishop procured a respite for his flock.

MARTYRS OF LYON AND VIENNE

At a later time in the reign of Marcus Aurelius a violent persecution took place in the south of Gaul. The church of Lyons and Vienne was of eastern, and comparatively recent, origin it was still under the care of Pothinus, the head of the mission by which the Gospel had been introduced. In the year 177, when the empire was alarmed by renewed apprehensions of the German war, the Christians of these cities found themselves the objects of outrage; they were insulted and attacked in the streets, their houses were entered and plundered. The eagerness of the authorities to second the popular feeling on this occasion appears in striking contrast with the practice of earlier times. Orders were given to search out the Christians; by the illegal application of torture, some heathen slaves were brought to charge their masters with the abominations of Oedipus and Thyestes; and the victims were then tortured in various ways, and were imprisoned in dungeons where noisoness and privation were fatal to many. The bishop, a man upwards of ninety years old, and infirm both from age and from sickness, was dragged before the governor, who asked him, “Who is the God of Christians?”. “If thou art worthy”, answered Pothinus, “thou shalt know”. He was scourged without mercy by the officers of the court, and was beaten, kicked, and pelted by the crowd; after which he was carried almost lifeless to a prison, where he died within two days. A distinction was made as to the manner of death between persons of different conditions: slaves were crucified, provincials were exposed to beasts, and the emperor, on being consulted as to the manner of dealing with those who claimed the privilege of Roman citizenship, ordered that such of them as adhered to their faith should be beheaded. Yet notwithstanding this, an Asiatic named Attalus, although a citizen of Rome, was tortured and was exposed to beasts. When placed in a heated iron chair, he calmly remarked, as the smell of his burning flesh arose, that his persecutors were guilty of the cannibalism which they falsely imputed to the Christians.

The behavior of the sufferers was throughout marked by composure and sobriety. They succeeded by their prayers and by their arguments in persuading some of their brethren, who had at first yielded to the fear of death, to confess their Lord, and to give themselves for him. A slave, named Blandina, was distinguished above all the other martyrs for the variety of tortures which she endured. Her mistress, a Christian, had feared that the constancy of a slave might give way in time of trial; but Blandina’s character had been formed, not by her condition, but by the faith which she professed. Her patience wearied out the inventive cruelty of her tormentors, and amidst her greatest agonies she found strength and relief in repeating, “I am a Christian, and no wickedness is done among us”.

The malice of the heathen did not end with the death of their victims. They cast their bodies to the dogs; they burnt such fragments as were left uneaten, and threw the ashes into the Rhone, in mockery of the doctrine of a resurrection.

CELSUS

In this reign began the controversial opposition on the side of Paganism. The leader in it, Celsus, a man of a showy but shallow cleverness, who is generally supposed to have been an Epicurean, although in his attack he affected the character of a Platonist, reflected on Christianity for its “barbarous” origin, and charged it with having borrowed from the Egyptians, from Plato, and from other heathen sources. He assailed the scriptural narrative — sometimes confounding Christianity with Judaism, at another time laboring to prove the Old Testament inconsistent with the New, at another introducing a Jew as the mouthpiece for his objections against the Gospel. The lowness of the Savior’s early birth, the poverty of the first disciples, the humble station, the simplicity, the credulity, of Christians in his own day, furnished Celsus with ample matter for merriment, which was sometimes of a very ribald character. He ascribed the miracles of Scripture to magic, and taxed the Christians with addiction to practices of the same kind. He freely censured both the doctrines and the morality of the Gospel, nor was he ashamed even to denounce its professors as neglectful of their duties to society, and as dangerous to the government of the empire. Utterly futile and worthless as the work of Celsus appears to have been, it continued for a century to be regarded as the chief of those written against Christianity. It was at length honored with a full and elaborate confutation by Origen; but in the meantime the Gospel did not want able advocates, who maintained its cause both in apologies and in treatises of other kinds. Among the apologists were Melito, bishop of Sardis; Theophilus, bishop of Antioch; Athenagoras, an Athenian philosopher, who is said to have been converted by a perusal of the Scriptures, which he had undertaken with the view of refuting Christianity; Claudius Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis; Miltiades; and Tatian, an Assyrian by birth, who had been a pupil of Justin Martyr. Tatian afterwards gained a more unhappy celebrity as the founder of the sect of Encratites. His tenets and those of his contemporary Bardesanes of Edessa (whose hymns found their way even into the congregations of the orthodox), need not be further described than by saying that they both belonged to the gnostic family. A sect of a different character—that of Montanus—had also its rise in the reign of Marcus; but a notice of it may be more fitly given at a somewhat later date, and we must now turn back to survey the heresies which had already disturbed the church.  

 

CHAPTER IV.

THE EARLY HERETICS.

 

Hegesippus and Clement of Alexandria have been derided by the greatest of English historians as having stated that the church was not polluted by schism or heresy until the reign of Trajan, or that of Hadrian; and it is added, “We may observe, with much more propriety, that during [the earlier] period the disciples of the Messiah were indulged in a freer latitude, both of faith and practice, than has ever been allowed in succeeding ages”. In reality, however, the fathers who are cited make no such assertion as is here supposed; their words relate, not to the appearance of the first symptoms of error, but to the distinct formation of bodies which at once claimed the Christian name and held doctrines different from those of the church. Nor has the remark which is offered by way of correction any other truth than this,—that the measures of the church for the protection of her members against erroneous teaching were taken only as the development of evil made them necessary. The New Testament itself bears ample witness both to the existence of false doctrine during the lifetime of the apostles, and to the earnestness with which they endeavored to counteract it. Among the persons who are there censured by name, some appear to be taxed with faults of practice only; but of others the opinions are condemned. Thus it is said of Hymenaeus that he had “made shipwreck concerning the faith”; that he had “erred concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is past already”; and Alexander and Philetus are included in the same. charges. In St. Paul’s Epistles, besides those passages which bear a controversial character on their surface, there are many in which a comparison with the language of early heresy may lead us to discern such a character. And the same may be observed of other apostolical writings; those of St. John especially are throughout marked by a reference to prevailing errors, and to the language in which these were clothed. And long before the probable date of any Christian scripture, we meet with him who has always been regarded as the father of heresy—the magician Simon of Samaria.

In reading of the ancient heretics we must remember that the accounts of them come from their enemies; and our own experience will show us how easily misunderstanding or misrepresentation of an opponent may creep in even where there is no unfair intention. We must not be too ready to believe evil; we must beware of confounding the opinions of heresiarchs with those of their followers; and especially we must beware of too easily supposing that the founders of sects were unprincipled or profligate men, since by so doing we should not only, in many cases, be wrong as to the fact, but should forego an important lesson. The “fruits” by which “false prophets” shall be known are not to be sought in their own personal conduct (which may be inconsistent, either for the worse or for the better, with their teaching), but in the results which follow from their principles,—in their developed doctrines and maxims, and in those of their disciples.

But, on the other hand, if the ancients, and those who have implicitly followed them in treating such subjects, must be read with caution, it is no less necessary to be on our guard against the theories and statements of some moderns, who are ready to sympathize with every reputed heretic, to represent him as only too far elevated by genius and piety above the church of his own day, and conjecturally to fill up the gaps of his system, to explain away its absurdities, and to harmonize its contradictions. A writer who endeavors to enter into the mind of a heresiarch, and to trace the course of his ideas, is, indeed, more likely to help us towards an understanding of the matter than one who sets out with the presumption that the man’s deliberate purpose was to vent detestable blasphemies, and to ruin the souls of his followers; and we may often draw instruction or warning from Beausobre or Neander, where the orthodox vehemence of Epiphanius or Baronius would only tempt us to question whether opinions so extravagant as those which are imputed to heretical parties could ever have been really held by any one. Yet we must not assume that things cannot have been because the idea of them appears monstrous; we must remember that even the most ingenious conjecture may be mistaken and, if the conclusions of a system as to faith or morals are abominable, we may not speak of such a system with admiration or indulgence on account of any poetical beauty or philosophical depth which may appear to be mixed up with its errors.

GNOSTICISM

The systems of the earliest heretical teachers were for the most part of the class called Gnostic, —a name which implies pretensions to more than ordinary knowledge. It is disputed whether St. Paul intended to refer to this sense of the word in his warning against “knowledge falsely so called”; but although it seems most likely that the peculiar use of the term did not begin until later, the thing itself certainly existed in the time of the apostles. The Gnostics were for the most part so remote in their tenets from the Christian belief that they would now be classed rather with utter aliens from the Gospel than with heretics; but in early times the title of heretic was given to all who in any way whatever introduced the name of Christ into their systems, so that, as has been remarked, “if Mahomet had appeared in the second century, Justin Martyr or Irenaeus would have spoken of him as an heretic”. On looking at the strange opinions which are thus brought before us, we may wonder how they could ever have been adopted by any to whom the Christian faith had been made known. But a consideration of the circumstances will lessen our surprise; Gnosticism is in truth not to be regarded as a corruption of Christianity, but as an adoption of some Christian elements into a system of different origin.

At the time when the Gospel appeared, a remarkable mixture had taken place in the existing systems of religion and philosophy. The Jews had during their captivity become acquainted with the Chaldaean and Persian doctrines : many of them had remained in the east, and a constant communication was kept up between the descendants of these and their brethren of the Holy Land. Thus the belief of the later Jews had been much tinged with oriental ideas, especially as to angels and spiritual beings. The prevailing form of Greek philosophy —the Platonic— had, from the first, contained elements of eastern origin; and in later days the intercourse of nations had led to a large adoption of foreign additions. The great city of Alexandria, in particular, which was afterwards to be the cradle of Gnosticism, became a center of philosophical speculations. In its schools were represented the doctrines of Egypt, of Greece, of Palestine, and indirectly those of Persia and Chaldaea —themselves affected by the systems of India and the further east. The prevailing tone of mind was eclectic; all religions were regarded as having in them something divine, while no one was supposed to possess a full and sufficient revelation. Hence ideas were borrowed from one to fill up the deficiency of another. Hence systems became so intermingled, and were so modified by each other, that learned men have differed as to the origin of Gnosticism —some referring it chiefly to Platonism, while others trace it to oriental sources. Hence, too, we can understand how Christianity came to be combined with notions so strangely unlike itself. The same eclectic principle which had produced the fusion of other systems, led speculative minds to adopt something from the Gospel; they took only so much as was suitable for their purpose, and they interpreted this at will. The substance of each system is Platonic, or oriental, or derived from the later Judaism; the Scriptural terms which are introduced are used in senses altogether different from that which they bear in Christian theology.

The especial characteristic of the Gnostics was (as has been stated) a pretension to superior knowledge. By this the more elevated spirits were to be distinguished from the vulgar, for whom faith and traditional opinion were said to be sufficient; the Gnostics sometimes complained of it as an injustice that they were excluded from the communion of the church, whereas they were willing to leave the multitude in possession of the common creed, and only claimed for themselves the privilege of understanding doctrine in an inner and more refined sense. On such a principle the Old Testament had been interpreted by Philo of Alexandria, the type of a Platonizing Jew; and now the principle was applied to the New Testament, from which texts were produced by way of sanction for it. As for the older Scriptures, the Gnostics either rejected them altogether, or perverted them by an unlimited license of allegorical explanation.

We find, as common to all the Gnostic systems, a belief in one supreme God, dwelling from eternity in the pleroma, or fullness of light. From him proceed forth successive generations of aeons, or spiritual beings, the chief of which appear from their names to be impersonated attributes of the Deity; and in proportion as these emanations are more remote from the primal source, the likeness of his perfections in them becomes continually fainter. Matter is regarded as eternal, and as essentially evil. Out of it the world was formed, not by the supreme God, but by the Demiurge—a being who is represented by some heresiarchs as merely a subordinate and unconscious instrument of the divine will, but by others as positively malignant, and hostile to the Supreme. This Demiurge (or creator) was the national God of the Jews —the God of the Old Testament; according, therefore, as he is viewed in each system, the Mosaic economy is either acknowledged as preparatory to a higher dispensation or rejected as evil. Christ was sent into the world to deliver man from the tyranny of the Demiurge. But the Christ of Gnosticism was neither very God nor very man; his spiritual nature, as being an emanation from the supreme God, was necessarily inferior to its original; and, on the other hand, an emanation from God could not dwell in a material, and consequently evil, body. Either, therefore, Jesus was a mere man, on whom the aeon Christ descended at his baptism, to forsake him again before his crucifixion; or the body with which Christ seemed to be clothed was a phantom, and all his actions were only in appearance.

Since matter was evil, the Gnostic was required to overcome it; but here arose an important practical difference among the sectaries; for while some of them sought the victory by a high ascetic abstraction from the things of sense, the baser kind professed to show their knowledge by wallowing in impurity and excess. The same view as to the evil nature of matter led to a denial of the resurrection of the body. The Gnostic could admit no other than a spiritual resurrection; the object of his philosophy was to emancipate the spirit from its gross and material prison; at death, the soul of the perfect Gnostic, having already risen in baptism, was to be gathered into the bosom of God, while such souls as yet lacked their full perfection were to work it out in a course of transmigrations. The contest of good with evil (it was taught) is to end in the victory of good. Every spark of life which originally came from God will be purified and restored, will return to its source, and will dwell with him forever in the pleroma.

After this general sketch of the Gnostic doctrines, we may proceed to notice in detail a few of the most prominent among the early heretical systems.

SIMON MAGUS

First among the precursors of Gnosticism stands Simon, usually styled Magus or the Sorcerer, a native of the Samaritan village of Gittum, as to whom our information is partly derived from Scripture itself. He is supposed to have studied at Alexandria and, on returning to his native country, he advanced high spiritual pretensions, “giving out that himself was some great one”, and being generally acknowledged by the Samaritans as “the great power of God”. Simon belonged to a class of adventurers not uncommon in his day, who addressed themselves especially to that desire of intercourse with a higher world which was then widely felt. Their doctrines were a medley of Jewish, Greek, and Oriental notions; they affected mysteries and revelations; they practiced the arts of conjuration and divination; and it would seem that in many of them there was a mixture of conscious imposture with self-delusion and superstitious credulity. Simon’s reception of baptism, and his attempt to buy the privilege of conferring the Holy Ghost, may be interpreted as tokens of a belief that the apostles, through a knowledge of higher secrets or a connection with superior intelligences, possessed in a greater degree the same theurgic power to which he himself pretended. The feeling of awe with which he was struck by St. Peter's reproof and exhortation would seem to have been of very short continuance.

It is said that he afterwards roved through various countries, choosing especially those which the Gospel had not yet reached, and endeavouring to preoccupy the ground by his own system, into which the name of Christ was now introduced; that he bought at Tyre a beautiful prostitute, named Helena, who became the companion of his wanderings; that in the reign of Claudius he went to Rome, where he acquired great celebrity, and was honored with a statue in the island of the Tiber; that he there disputed with St. Peter and St. Paul (a circumstance which, if true, must be referred to a later visit, in the reign of Nero); that he attempted to fly in the air, and was borne up by his familiar demons, until at the prayer of St. Peter he fell to the earth; and that he died soon after, partly of the hurt which he had received, and partly of vexation at his discomfiture. Fabulous as parts of this story evidently are, it is yet possible that they may have had some foundation. There is no apparent reason for denying that Simon may have visited Rome, and may there have had contests with the two great apostles; and even the story of his flying may have arisen from an attempt which was really made by a Greek adventurer in the reign of Nero.

Simon is said to have taught that God existed from eternity in the depth of inaccessible light; that from him proceeded the Thought or Conception of his mind (Ennoia); that from God and the Ennoia emanated by successive generations pairs of male and female aeons. The Ennoia, issuing forth from the pleroma, produced a host of angels, by whom the world was made; and these angels, being ignorant of God and unwilling to acknowledge any author of their being, rose against their female parent, subjected her to various indignities, and imprisoned her in a succession of material bodies. Thus at one time she had animated the form of the beautiful wife of Menelaus; and at last she had taken up her abode in that of the Tyrian Helena, the companion of Simon. The Ennoia herself remained throughout a pure spiritual essence as at the first; the pollutions and degradations of the persons in whom she had dwelt attached only to their material bodies, and were a part of the oppressions inflicted on the divine aeon.

There are various statements as to the character which Simon claimed for himself. It has been said that he professed to be the supreme God, who (according to Simon) had revealed himself to the Samaritans as the Father, to the Jews as the Son, and to the Gentiles as the Holy Ghost; but it would seem rather that by professing to be the “great power of God” he meant to identify himself with the chief male aeon of his system.

He taught that man was held in subjection by the angels who created the world; that not only were the Mosaic dispensation and the Old Testament prophecies to be referred to these, but the received distinctions of right and wrong were invented by them for the purpose of enslaving mankind; and consequently that those who should trust in Simon and Helena need not concern themselves with the observance of any moral rules, since they were to be saved, not by works of righteousness, but by grace. Simon professed that he himself had descended from the highest heaven for the purpose of rescuing the Ennoia —“the lost sheep”, as he termed her— from the defilement of her fleshly prison, of revealing himself to men, and delivering them from the yoke of the angels. In passing through the spheres, he had in each assumed a suitable form; and thus on earth he appeared as a man. He was the same aeon who had been known as Jesus, the Messiah. The history of our Lord’s life and death he explained on the docetic principle. The resurrection of the body was denied; but as the soul, when set free, must pass through several spheres on its way to the pleroma, and as the angels of those spheres had the power of impeding its flight, it was necessary to propitiate them, evil as they were in themselves, by sacrifices.

According to St. Epiphanius, Simon said that Helena was the Holy Spirits. As, then, that Person of the God­head was held by him to have enlightened the Gentiles— (not, however, in the Christian sense, but by means of the Greek philosophy)—Helena was thus identified with the Greek goddess of wisdom, and was represented and worshipped in the character of Minerva, while Simon received like honours under the form of Jupiter.

The followers of Simon were divided into various sects, which are said to have been addicted to necromancy and other magical arts, and to have carried out in practice his doctrine of the indifference of actions. Justin Martyr states that in his day (about AD 140) Simon was worshipped as the chief God by almost all the Samaritans, and had adherents in other countries; but the heresy declined so rapidly that Origen, about a century later, questions whether it had in the whole world so many as thirty adherents.

CERINTHUS

Passing over Menander, (whose doctrines were not so unlike those of his master, Simon, as to require a separate detail), and the Nicolaitans (as to whom nothing is known with certainty, beyond the denunciation of them in the Apocalypse), the next considerable name which we meet with is that of Cerinthus, who rose into notoriety in the reign of Domitian.

Cerinthus was a native of Judaea, and, after having studied at Alexandria, established himself as a teacher in his own country; but at a later time he removed to Ephesus, as being a more favorable scene for the diffusion of his opinions. St. John, who had been confronted with the father of heresy in the earliest days of the Gospel, was reserved for a contest with Cerinthus in the church over which he had long presided; both in his Gospel and in his Epistles a reference to the errors of this heresiarch appears to be strongly marked.

Unlike his predecessors, Cerinthus was content to be a teacher, without claiming for himself any place in his scheme. This was a link between the opposite systems of Judaism and Gnosticism, and would seem to have been in itself inconsistent, although we have no means of judging how the inventor attempted to reconcile its elements.

He taught that the world was made by an angel, remote from the supreme God, limited in capacity and in knowledge, ignorant of the Supreme, and yet unconsciously serving him. To this angel, and others of the same order, Cerinthus referred the Law and the Prophets; the Old Testament, therefore, was not in the Cerinthian system regarded as evil, but as imperfect and subordinate. The nature of the Demiurge fixed a level above which the mass of the Jewish people could not rise; but the elect among them had attained to a higher knowledge Jesus was represented as a real man, born in the usual way of Joseph and Mary, and chosen by God to be the Messiah on account of his eminent righteousness; the aeon Christ descended on him at his baptism, revealing the Most High to him, and enduing him with the power of miracles, to be exercised for the confirmation of his doctrine. The Demiurge, jealous of finding his power thus invaded, stirred up the Jewish rulers to persecute Jesus; but before the crucifixion the aeon Christ returned to the pleroma. By some it is said that Cerinthus admitted the resurrection of Jesus; by others, that he expected it to take place at the commencement of the millennium, when the human body was to be reunited with the Christ from heaven. As it appears certain that Cerinthus allowed the resurrection of the body, he cannot have shared in the Gnostic views as to the inherently evil nature of matter.

Although Christ had revealed the true spiritual Judaism, it was said that the outward preparatory system was to be retained in part during the present imperfect state of things; Cerinthus, therefore, required the observance of such Jewish usages as Jesus had sanctioned by Himself submitting to them. The only part of the New Testament which he received was a mutilated Gospel of St. Matthew.

The doctrine of an earthly reign of Christ with his saints for a thousand years has been referred to Cerinthus as its author; and it has been said that his conceptions of the millennial happiness were grossly sensual. These assertions, however (which rest on the authority of Caius, a Roman presbyter, who wrote about the year 210), have been much questioned. It seems clear that the millennarian opinions which soon after prevailed in the church were not derived from Cerinthus, and that it was a controversial artifice to throw odium on them by tracing them to so discreditable a source. Nor, even if the morality of Cerinthus were as bad as his opponents represent it, can we well suppose him to have connected the notion of licentious indulgence with a state of bliss which was to have Christ for its sovereign.

EBIONISM

While the Gnostics, imbued with the ideas of vastness and complexity which are characteristic of oriental religions, looked down on Christianity as too simple, it had also to contend with enemies of an opposite kind. We very early find traces of a Judaizing tendency; and although the middle course adopted by the council of Jerusalem, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, was calculated to allay the differences which had arisen as to the obligation of the Mosaic law on those who had embraced the faith of Christ, oppositions on the side of Judaism often recur in the books of the New Testament.

This Judaism at length issued in the formation of distinct sects. The name of Nazarenes, which had originally been applied to all Christians, became appropriated to the party which maintained that the law was binding on Christians of Jewish race, but did not wish to enforce it on Gentiles; while those who insisted on its obligation as universal were styled Ebionites. The Nazarenes are generally supposed to have been orthodox, and to have been acknowledged as such by the church; the Ebionites were unquestionably heretical.

The name of the latter party has been variously derived —from that of a supposed founder, and from a Hebrew word which signifies poor. The existence of Ebion is now generally disbelieved; but there remains the question how the title of poor came to be attached to the sect,— whether it was given by opponents, with a reference to the meagreness and beggarly character of their doctrines; or whether it was assumed by themselves, as significant of their voluntary poverty, and with an allusion to the beatitude of the “poor in spirit”. The formation of the sect, as such, is dated by some in the reign of Domitian, or earlier. By others it is supposed that the separation of both Ebionites and Nazarenes from the church took place as late as AD 136-8, and that it was caused by the adoption of Gentile usages in the church of Jerusalem; while a third view connects the schism of the Ebionites with the statement of Hegesippus, that one Thebuthis, having been disappointed in aspiring to the bishopric of Jerusalem, began to corrupt the church—a supposition by which the origin of Ebionism would be fixed about the year 107.

In opposition to the Gnostics, the Ebionites held that the world was the work of God himself. As to the person of Christ, although some of them are said to have admitted his miraculous birth, while they denied his Godhead and his pre-existence, they for the most part supposed him to be a mere man, the offspring of Joseph and Mary, and chosen to be the Messiah and Son of God because he alone of men had fulfilled the law. They believed that this high destination was unknown to him, until at his baptism it was revealed by Elijah, in the person of John the Baptist and that he then received a heavenly influence, which forsook him again before his cruci­fixion.

It would seem that the Ebionites were divided as to their view of the Old Testament. Some of them supposed Christianity to differ from the law only by the addition of certain features; while the adepts regarded it as a restoration of the genuine Mosaic system, which they supposed to have been corrupted in the Hebrew Scriptures. These more advanced members of the sect considered Moses to be the only true prophet; they rejected, not only the later Jewish traditions, but the whole of the Old Testament except the Pentateuch; and even it they did not admit as the work of Moses himself, but, by ascribing it to reporters, who were supposed to have willfully or ignorantly corrupted his words, they found a pretext for rejecting so much of it as did not fall in with their principles. Of the New Testament they admitted no part, except a Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew, in which the account of our Lord’s birth was omitted. They relied much on apocryphal scriptures, and were especially hostile to St. Paul.

Although some corruptions of morals are attributed to the later Ebionites, the practice of the sect in its earlier days was undoubtedly strict. Some parties among them renounced all property, and abstained not only from the flesh of animals, but from their produce, such as eggs and milk. In their worship and polity they affected Jewish usages and terms; they practiced circumcision and ceremonial ablutions; they rigidly observed the Jewish Sabbath; they had synagogues, rulers, and the like. They celebrated the Eucharist with unleavened bread, and used only water in the cup. Like the Cerinthians, they held the doctrine of an earthly reign of Christ, who was to make Jerusalem the seat of his power, to subdue all enemies, and to raise the Jewish kingdom to a splendor before unknown.

Ebionism continued to exist in Syria and Peraea as late as the end of the fourth century.

SATURNINUS

Menander, who has been mentioned as the successor of Simon Magus, is said to have been the master of two noted heretics, who may be considered as the founders respectively of the Syrian and of the Alexandrian Gnosticism —Saturninus and Basilides.

Saturninus, who was born at Antioch, and there established his school, taught that the supreme God, or “Unknown Father”, produced a multitude of spiritual beings; that in the lowest gradation of the spiritual world, close on the borders which separate the realm of light from the chaos of matter, were seven angels, the rulers of the planets; and that these angels took a portion from the material mass and shaped it into a world, the regions of which they divided among themselves —the God of the Jews being their chief. A bright shape, let down for a moment from the distant source of light, and then withdrawn, excited new desires and projects in them : unable as they were to seize and to fix the dazzling image, they endeavored to frame a man after its likeness; but their creature was only able to grovel on the earth like a worm, until the Father in pity sent down to it a spark of his own divine life. But in opposition to the elect race, Satan, the lord of Matter, with whom the angels carried on an unceasing warfare, produced an unholy race, and the elect, while they sojourn in this world, are exposed to assaults from him and from his agents, both human and spiritual. The Old Testament was in part given by the seven angels, especially by the God of the Jews, and in part by Satan. In order to deliver the elect from their enemies, and also from their subjection to the God of the Jews and the other planetary angels, who aimed at establishing an independent kingdom, the Father sent down the aeon Nous (Mind), or Christ, clothed with a phantastic body. At the consummation of all things, according to Saturninus, the bodies of the elect were to be resolved into their elements, while the soul was to re-enter into the bosom of the unknown Father, from whom it had been derived.

The precepts of Saturninus were strictly ascetic; he forbade marriage and the propagation of mankind; but it would seem that the more rigid observances were required only of the highest grade among his followers. The sect did not extend beyond Syria, and soon came to an end.

BASILIDES

Basilides, who became conspicuous about the year 125, is said to have been, like Saturninus, a Syrian; but it was at Alexandria that he fixed himself, and the leading character of his system was Egyptian. He taught that from the Supreme God were evolved by successive generation seven intelligences (which were, in fact, personified attributes)—Understanding, Word, Thought, Wisdom, Power, Righteousness, and Peace. These gave birth to a second order of spirits; the second to a third; and the course of emanations continued until there were three hundred and sixty-five orders, each consisting of seven spirits, and each with a heaven of its own; while every heaven, with its inhabitants, was an inferior antitype of that immediately above it. The number of the heavens was expressed in the Greek notation by the letters of the word Abraxas or Abrasax, which the most approved interpretations derive from the Coptic, and explain as meaning new word or sacred word. The same name was used also to denote the providence which directs the universe—not the supreme God as he is in himself (since he is represented as “not to be named”), but God in so far as he is manifested, or the collective hierarchy of emanations.

The angels of the lowest heaven (which is that which is visible from earth) formed the world and its inhabitants after a pattern shown to them by the aeon Sophia or Wisdom. The chief angel of this order, who is called the Archon, or Ruler, was the God of the Jews, while the other regions of the world were divided by lot among his brother angels; and, in consequence of the Archon’s desire to exalt his own people above the rest of mankind, the other angels had stirred up the Gentiles to enmity against the Jews. The Pentateuch was given by the Archon: the prophecies came from the other angels.

Man received from the creative angels a soul which is the seat of the senses and of the passions; and in addition to this the supreme God bestowed on him a rational and higher soul, which the inferior soul is continually endeavoring to weaken. Although Basilides cannot rightly be described as a dualist, he held that throughout all nature there had been an encroachment of evil on good, “like rust on steel”, and that the object of the present state was to enable the souls of men (which, as they had come from God, could never perish, but must return to him) to disengage themselves from the entanglements of evil. The knowledge of God had become faint among men; the Archon himself, although he had served as an instrument of the Supreme in giving the Law, was yet ignorant of its true character—of its spiritual significancy and its preparatory office—which the spiritual among the Jews had alone been able to discern. In order, then, to enlighten mankind, to deliver them from the limited system of the Archon, and enable them to rise towards the Supreme, the first-begotten aeon, Nous or Understanding, descended on Jesus, the holiest of men, at his baptism; and by this manifestation the Archon learnt for the first time his own real place in the scale of the universe. The later Basilidians represented him as exasperated by the discovery, so that he instigated the Jews to persecute Jesus; but it is a question whether the founder of the sect shared in this view, or whether he supposed the Archon to have reverently acquiesced in the knowledge of his inferior position.

The doctrine of an atonement was inconsistent with the principles of Basilides. He allowed no other justification than that of advancement in sanctification, and laid it down that everyone suffers for his own sins. God, he said, forgives no sins but such as are done unwillingly or in ignorance; all other sins must be expiated, and, until the expiation be complete, the soul must pass, under the guidance of its guardian angels, through one body after another,—not only human bodies, but also those of the lower creatures. And thus such suffering as cannot be traced to any visible cause is to be regarded as the purgation of sin committed in some former existence, while the death of the innocent may be the punishment of germs of evil which would have grown up if life had been continued. On this principle Basilides even accounted for the sufferings of the man Jesus himself; and by such theories he intended to justify the providential government of the world, as to which he is reported to have declared that he would “rather say anything than find fault with Providence”.

While the Gnostics in general spoke of faith and knowledge as opposites, Basilides taught that faith must run through the whole spiritual progress, and that the degrees of knowledge increase in proportion as faith becomes fitted to receive them. He divided his disciples into several grades; in order to admission among the highest adepts, a silence of five years was required. The authorities on which Basilides chiefly relied were some prophecies which bore the names of Ham, Parchor, Barcobas, and Barcoph, with an esoteric tradition which he professed to derive from St. Matthias, and from Glaucias, an interpreter of St. Peter. He dealt with the New Testament in an arbitrary way; he did not reject St. Paul, but placed him below St. Peter, and declared some of the epistles ascribed to him to be spurious.

This system became more popular than any that had preceded it, and St. Jerome informs us that even in the fifth century Basilidianism continued to exist. The doctrines of the sect, however, were much corrupted in the course of time. The view of Judaism was altered, so that the Archon came to be regarded as opposed to the supreme God; and consequently the Gnostic was at liberty to trample on all that had proceeded from the inferior power, to disregard all the laws of morality. Instead of the doctrine which Basilides held in common with some other sectaries, that the aeon who descended on Jesus at baptism forsook him before his crucifixion, a strange docetic fancy was introduced —that his body was phantastical, and that he transferred his own form to Simon of Cyrene, who suffered in his stead on the cross, while Jesus in the form of Simon stood by and derided the executioners. The Gnostic, therefore, was not to confess the crucifixion, but those who should own it were still under bondage to the Archon. The later Basilidians made no scruple of eating idol sacrifices, or of taking part in heathen rites and festivities; they denied their faith in time of persecution, and mocked at martyrdom as a folly, inasmuch as the person for whose sake it was borne was, according to their doctrine, merely the crucified Simon. They were also addicted to magic; he, it was said, who should master the whole system, who should know the names and origin of all the angels, would become superior, invisible, and incomprehensible to them. Most of the gems which are found inscribed with the mystical Abraxas are supposed to have been used by the sect as amulets or talismans, although it is certain that some of these symbols were purely heathen.

VALENTINUS

Of all the Gnostic leaders Valentinus was the most eminent for ability; his system was distinguished beyond the rest for its complex and elaborate character, and it surpassed them all in popularity.

Valentinus is supposed to have been of Jewish descent; but was a native of Egypt, and studied at Alexandria. He appears to have been brought up as a Christian, or at least to have professed Christianity in early life; and hence his doctrine, with all its wildness, had a greater infusion of scriptural language and ideas than those of the older Gnostic teachers. Tertullian asserts that he became a heresiarch on being disappointed of a bishopric; but it does not appear in what stage of his career the disappointment occurred, and the truth of the story has been altogether questioned. It was about the year 140 that he visited Rome, where Irenaeus states that he remained from the pontificate of Hyginus to that of Anicetus. At Rome, where the church, in its simple and severe orthodoxy, was less tolerant of novelties than that from which Valentinus had come, he was twice excommunicated; and on his final exclusion he retired to Cyprus, where he wrought out and published his system. His death is supposed to have taken place about 160, whether in Cyprus or at Rome is uncertain.

In his doctrines Valentinus appears to have borrowed from the religions of Egypt and of Persia, from the Cabala, from Plato, Pythagoras, and the Hesiodic theogony. He supposed a first principle, self-existent and perfect, to whom he gave the name of Bythos (i.e. unfathomable depth). This being, who from eternity had existed in repose, at length resolved to manifest himself; from him and the Ennoia or Conception of his mind, who was also named Charis (Grace), or Sige (Silence), were produced a pair of aeons, the male styled Nous (Understanding), or Monogenes (Only-begotten); the female, Aletheia (Truth). From these, by successive generations, emanated two other pairs,—Logos (the Word, or Reason) and Zoe (Life); Anthropos (Man) and Ecclesia (the Church). Thus was composed the first grade of beings—the ogdoad, or octave. Next, from Logos and Zoe were produced five pairs of aeons,—the decad; and then, from Anthropos and Ecclesia, six pairs, —the dodecad; making up in all the number of thirty. In addition to these there was an unwedded aeon, named Horos (Boundary), or Stauros (the Cross), the offspring of Bythos and Sige, whose office it was to enforce the principle of limitation, and keep every existence in its proper place.

The first-begotten, Nous, alone was capable of comprehending the supreme Father. The other aeons envied his knowledge, and in proportion to their remoteness from the source was the vehemence of their desire to fathom it. Sophia (Wisdom), the last of the thirty, filled with an uncontrollable eagerness, issued forth from the pleroma, with the intention of soaring up to the original of her being; but she was in danger of being absorbed into the infinity of his nature, or of being lost in the boundless void without, when Horos led her back to the sphere which she had so rashly forsaken. Nous now, by the providence of Bythos, produced a new pair of aeons —Christ and the Holy Spirits Christ taught the elder aeons that Bythos was incomprehensible— that they could only know him through the Only-begotten, and that the happiness of every being was to rest content with such measure of light as had been allotted to it; the Spirit established equality among them, and taught them to unite in glorifying the Supreme. Harmony was restored, and all the aeons combined to produce Jesus (or Savior), the flower of the pleroma, endowed by each with the most precious gift which he could contribute. With him were also produced a host of attendant angels.

But while Sophia was on her flight beyond the pleroma, her longings had, without the co-operation of her partner Theletos (Will), given birth to an abortive, shapeless, and imperfect being called by the name of Achamoth. This being remained shut out from the pleroma, and in utter darkness; when Christ, taking pity on her, bestowed on her a form, and showed her a momentary glimpse of the celestial brightness. Achamoth endeavored to approach the light, but was repelled by Horos. On this she was seized with violent agitations; sometimes she smiled at the remembrance of the glorious vision; sometimes she wept at her exclusion. Her emotions acted on the inert and formless mass of matter; from her turning towards the source of light was produced psychic existence; from her grief at being left in darkness and vacuity, from her fear lest life should be withdrawn from her, as the light had been, was produced material existence. Among the material productions were Satan and his angels; among the psychic was the Demiurge. Achamoth turns in supplication to the Christ, who sends down to her the aeon Jesus, attended by his angels, and equipped with the power of the whole pleroma. Jesus enlightens her and calms her agitation; from the brightness of his angels she conceives, and gives birth to pneumatic or spiritual existence. The Demiurge sets to work on the surrounding chaos, separates the psychic from the material elements, and out of the former builds seven heavens, of which the highest is his own sphere, while each of the others is committed to a superintendent angel. He then makes man, bestowing on him a psychic soul and body; but Achamoth, without the knowledge of the Demiurge, implants in the new creature a spark of spiritual nature; and the creator and his angels stand amazed on discovering that their workmanship has in it the element of something higher than themselves.

The Demiurge becomes jealous of man. He places him under a narrow and oppressive law; and, when man breaks this, he thrusts him down from the third heaven, or paradise, to earth, and envelopes his psychic body in a “coat of skin”—a fleshly prison, subjecting the man to the bonds of matter (for thus Valentinus explained Genesis III. 21). All this, however, happened through the providence of the Supreme, whose design it was that, by entering into the world of matter, the spiritual element should become the means of its destructions

The Demiurge knew of nothing superior to himself; he had acted as the instrument of Bythos, but unconsciously, and, supposing himself to be the original of the universe, he instructed the Jewish prophets to proclaim him as the only God. In the writings of the prophets, accordingly, Valentinus professed to distinguish between the things which they had uttered by the inspiration of the limited Demiurge, and those which, without being themselves aware of it, they had derived from a higher source. The Demiurge taught the prophets to promise a Messiah according to his own conceptions; he framed this Messiah of a psychic soul with a psychic and immaterial body, capable of performing human actions, yet exempt from human feelings; and to these elements, without the knowledge of his maker, was added a pneumatic soul from the world above. This “nether Christ” was born of the Virgin Mary—passing through her “as water through a tube”, without taking anything of her substance; he ate and drank, but derived no nourishment from his earthly food. For thirty years—a period which had reference to the number of inhabitants in the pleroma—he lived as a pattern of ascetic righteousness, until at his baptism the aeon Jesus descended on him, with the design of fulfilling the most exalted meaning of prophecy, which the Demiurge had not understood; and then the Demiurge became aware of the higher spiritual world, and gladly yielded himself as an instrument for the advancement of the Messiah’s kingdom.

Valentinus divided men into three classes, represented by Cain, Abel, and Seth respectively —the material, who could not attain to knowledge, or be saved; the spiritual, who could not be lost; and the psychic, who might be saved or lost, according to their works. Heathenism was said to be material, Judaism and the Christianity of the church to be psychic, and Gnosticism to be spiritual; but it was not denied that individuals might be either above or below the level of the systems which they professed. Among the Jews, in particular, Valentinus held that there had always been a class of lofty spiritual natures, which rose above the limits of the old dispensation. The Demiurge had discerned the superior virtue of these, and had rewarded them by making them prophets and kings, while he ignorantly imagined that their goodness was derived from himself.

The pure truth was for the first time revealed to man­kind by the coming of Christ. To the spiritual his mission was for the purpose of enlightenment; their nature is akin to the pleroma, and they are to enter into it through knowledge, which unites them with Christ. But for the psychic a different redemption was necessary; and this was wrought out by the suffering of the psychic Messiah, who before his crucifixion was abandoned, not only by the aeon Jesus, but by his own spiritual soul. Valentinus, therefore, differed from Basilides and others by allowing a kind of atonement; but his doctrine on this point was very unlike that of the church, inasmuch as he did not truly acknowledge either the divinity or the humanity of the Savior.

Christ, it was held, enters into connection with all natures, in order that each may rise to a bliss suitable to its capacity. At baptism the psychic class obtain the forgiveness of their sins, with knowledge and power to master the material elements which cleave to them; while the spiritual are set free from the dominion of the Demiurge, are incorporated into the pleroma, and each enters into fellowship with a corresponding angelic being in the world above. The courses of the two classes were to be throughout distinct. For the psychics, faith was necessary, and, in order to produce it, miracles were requisite; but the spiritual were above the need of such assistances : they were to be saved, not by faith but by knowledge —a doctrine which among the later Valentinians became the warrant for all manner of licentiousness. The literal sense of Scripture was for the psychics, who were unable to penetrate beyond it; but the spiritual were admitted to the understanding of a higher meaning—“the wisdom of the perfect”.

At the final consummation, when the spiritual shall all have been perfected in knowledge—when all the seeds of divine life among mankind shall have been delivered from the bondage of matter—Achamoth, whose place is now in a middle region, between the pleroma and the highest heaven of the Demiurge, will enter into the pleroma, and be united with the heavenly bridegroom Jesus. The matured spiritual natures, shaking off all that is lower, and restoring their psychic souls to the Demiurge who gave them, will follow into the pleroma—each to be united with its angelic partner. The Demiurge will rise from his own heaven to the middle region, where he will reign over the psychic righteous. Then the fire which is now latent in the frame of the world mil burst forth, and will annihilate all that is material.

The Valentinian system was plausible in the eyes of Christians, inasmuch as it not only used a language which was in great part scriptural, but professed to receive all the books of Scripture, while it was able to set their meaning aside by the most violent misinterpretations. The Gospel of St. John was regarded by the sect as the highest in authority; but the key to the true doctrine was said to be derived by secret tradition from St. Matthias, and from one Theodas, who was described as a disciple of St. Paul. The initiation into the mysteries of the sect was gradual; Irenaeus tells us that they were disclosed to such persons only as would pay largely, and Tertullian describes with sarcastic humour the manner in which the sectaries baffled the curiosity of any who attempted to penetrate beyond the degree of knowledge with which it was considered that they might safely be entrusted. After the death of their founder the Valentinians underwent the usual processes of division and corruption; Epiphanius states that there were as many as ten varieties of them. A remnant of the sect survived in the beginning of the fifth century.

MARCION

While the system of Valentinus was the most imaginative form of Gnosticism, that of his contemporary Marcion was the most prosaic and practical; and whereas in the other systems knowledge was all in all, the tendency of Marcionism was mainly religious. The chief principle which its author had in common with other Gnostics was the idea of an opposition between Christianity and Judaism; and this he carried to an extreme.

Marcion was born at Sinope, on the Euxine, about the beginning of the second century. His father was eventually bishop of that city; and there is no apparent reason for doubting that Marcion himself was trained as a Christian from infancy. He rose to be a presbyter in the church of Sinope, and professed an ascetic life until (according to a very doubtful story, which rests on the authority of Epiphanius) he was excommunicated by his father for the seduction of a virgin. After having sought in vain to be restored, he left Asia, and arrived at Rome while the see was vacant through the death of Hyginus. He applied for admission into the communion of the Roman church, but was told by the presbyters that the principle of unity in faith and discipline forbade it unless with the consent of the bishop by whom he had been excommunicated. Before leaving his own country Marcion had become notorious for peculiar opinions, which indeed were probably the real cause of his excommunication; and he began to vent these at Rome by asking the presbyters to explain our Lord’s declaration that old bottles are unfit to receive new wine. He disputed the correctness of their answer; and, although his own interpretation of the words is not reported, it would seem, from what is known of his doctrines, that he supposed the “old bottles” to mean the Law, and the “new wine” to be the Gospel.

Having failed in his attempts to gain readmittance into the church, Marcion attached himself to Cerdon, a Syrian, who had for some years sojourned at Rome, alternately making proselytes in secret, and seeking reconciliation with the church by a profession of penitence. The fame of the master was soon lost in that of the disciple, so that it is impossible to distinguish their respective shares in the formation of their system. Marcion is said to have travelled in Egypt and the East for the purpose of spreading his heresy, and is supposed to have died at Rome in the episcopate of Eleutherius (i.e. between 177 and 190). Tertullian states that he had been repeatedly excluded from the church; that on the last occasion the bishop of Rome restored to him a large sum of money which he had offered “in the first ardor of his faith”; that he obtained a promise of being once more received into communion, on condition of bringing back those whom he had perverted, but that death overtook him before he could fulfill the task.

Unlike the other Gnostics, Marcion professed to be purely Christian in his doctrines; he borrowed nothing from Greece, Egypt, or Persia, and acknowledged no other source of truth but the Holy Scriptures. He was an enemy to allegorical interpretation; while he rejected the tradition of the church, he did not pretend to have any secret tradition of his own; and he denied the opposition between faith and knowledge. But with Scripture itself he dealt very violently. He rejected the whole Old Testament; of the New, he acknowledged only the Gospel of St. Luke and ten of St. Paul’s Epistles, and from these he expunged all that disagreed with his own theories. He did not question the authorship of the other books, but supposed that the writers were themselves blinded by Judaism, and, moreover, that their works had been corrupted in the course of time.

Marcion held the existence of three principles—the supreme God, perfectly good; the devil, or lord of matter, eternal and evil; and between these the Demiurge, a being of limited power and knowledge, whose chief characteristic was a justice unmixed with love or mercy. It is not certain whether the Demiurge was supposed to be an independent existence, or (as in most gnostic systems) an emanation from the supreme God; but the latter opinion is the more probable. It was taught that the creation of the Supreme was immaterial and invisible; that the Demiurge formed this world and its inhabitants out of substance which he had taken from the material chaos without the consent or knowledge of its ruler. The soul of man was not (as in other systems) supposed to be implanted by the supreme God, but to be the work of the Demiurge, and of a quality corresponding to the limited nature of its author; it had no power to withstand the attacks of the material principle, which was represented as always striving to reclaim the portion abstracted from its own domain. Man fell through disobedience to the laws of the Demiurge, and his original nature was changed for the worse. The Demiurge chose for himself one nation—the Jews; to these he gave a law which was not in itself evil, but was fitted only for lower natures, being imperfect in its morality, and destitute of inward spirit. His system was rigorously just; the disobedient he made over to torments, while he rewarded the righteous with rest in “Abraham’s bosom”

The Demiurge promised a Messiah, his son, and of a nature like his own, who was to come, not for the purpose of mediation and forgiveness, but in order to destroy heathenism and to establish the empire of the Jews. But the supreme God, in pity for mankind, of whom the vast majority, without any fault of their own, were excluded from all knowledge of the Demiurge, and were liable to his condemnation, resolved to send down a higher Messiah, his own son. The world had not been prepared for this by any previous revelations; for no such preparation was necessary, as the Messiah’s works were of themselves sufficient evidence of his mission. He appeared suddenly in the synagogue of Capernaum, “in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar”; but in order to obtain a hearing from the Jews, he accommodated himself to their notions, and professed to be that Messiah whom the Demiurge’s prophets had taught them to expect. Then, for the first time, the true God was revealed, and forgiveness of sins was bestowed on men, with endowments of knowledge and strength which might enable them to overcome the enmity of matter.

The Demiurge, ignorant of the Messiah’s real nature, but jealous of a power superior to his own, stirred up the Jews against him; the God of matter urged on the Gentiles to join in the persecution, and the Savior was crucified. Yet, according to Marcion’s view, his body could not really suffer, inasmuch as it was spiritual and ethereal; his submission to the cross was meant to teach that the sufferings of the worthless body are not to be avoided as evils.

Marcion admitted the Savior’s descent into hell, and with this doctrine was connected one of his strangest fancies—that the heathens, and the reprobates of the Old Testament (such as Cain, Esau, and the men of Sodom), suffering from the vengeance of the Demiurge, gladly hailed the offer of salvation, and were delivered; while the Old Testament saints, being satisfied with the happiness of Abraham’s bosom, and suspecting the Savior’s call as a temptation, refused to listen to him, and were left as before. This, however, was not to be their final condition. The Demiurge’s Messiah was after all to come; he was to gather the dispersed of Israel out of all lands, to establish an universal empire of the Jews, and to bless the adherents of his father with an earthly happiness; while such of the heathen and of the disobedient as had not been exempted from his power by laying hold on the higher salvation were to be consigned to torments. For the people of the supreme God, it was taught that the soul will be released from the flesh, and will rise to dwell with him in a spiritual body.

The fundamental difficulty with Marcion was the supposed impossibility of reconciling love with punitive justice; hence his distinction between the supreme God, all love, and the Demiurge, all severity. In order to carry out this view he wrote a book called Antitheses in which, with the intention of showing an essential difference between the Old and New Testament, he insisted on all such principles and narratives in the older Scriptures as appeared to be inconsistent with the character of love, and made the most of all the instances in which our Lord had (as Marcion supposed) declared himself against the Jewish system.

Marcion is described as a man of grave disposition and manners. The character of his sect was ascetic; he allowed no animal food except fish; he forbade marriage, and required a profession of continence as a condition of baptism. Baptism, however, might be deferred; the catechumens were (contrary to the practice of the church) admitted to witness the celebration of the highest mysteries; and if a person died in the state of a catechumen, there was a vicarious baptism for the dead. It is said that Marcion allowed baptism to be administered thrice, in the belief that at each repetition the sins committed since the preceding baptism were remitted; that he celebrated the Eucharist with water; and that, as a mark of opposition to Judaism, he enjoined the observance of the seventh day of the week (or Sabbath) as a fast.

The bold rejection of all Jewish and heathen elements, the arbitrary treatment of Holy Scripture, and the apparent severity of the sect, drew many converts. Marcion affected to address his followers as “companions in hatred and tribulation”; they rather courted than shunned persecution; many of them suffered with great constancy for the name of Christ, and the sect boasted of its martyrs. Marcionism is described by Epiphanius as prevailing widely in his own time (about AD 400), nor did it become extinct until the sixth century.

Strange and essentially unchristian as Gnosticism was, we must yet not overlook the benefits which Christianity eventually derived from it. Like other heresies, it did good service by engaging the champions of orthodoxy in the investigation and defence of the doctrines which it assailed; but this was not all. In the various forms of Gnosticism, the chief ideas and influences of earlier religions and philosophies were brought into contact with the Gospel —pressing, as it were, for entrance into the Christian system. Thus the church was forced to consider how much in those older systems was true, and how much was false; and, while steadfastly rejecting the falsehood, to appropriate the truth, to hallow it by a combination with the Christian principle, and so to rescue all that was precious from the wreck of a world which was passing away. “It was”, says a late writer, “through the Gnostics that studies, literature, and art were introduced into the church”; and when Gnosticism had accomplished its task of thus influencing the church, its various forms either ceased to exist, or lingered only as the obsolete creeds of an obscure and diminishing remnant.

 

CHAPTER V.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF COMMODUS TO THE DEATH OF ELAGABALUS.

A.D. 180-222.

 

Although the writings of the apologists had failed to obtain a legal toleration for the church, they were not without effect. The cause which could find men of ability and learning to advocate it with their pens, took by degrees a new position. The old vulgar calumnies died away : the more enlightened of the heathen began to feel that, if their religion were to withstand the Gospel, it must be reformed, not only in practice, but in doctrine. Hence we find in this period attempts, on the part of the philosophers, to claim for their own system some truths to which Christianity had first given prominence, approximations to the Gospel in various ways, and endeavors after a combination of doctrines.

Of the princes who occupied the imperial throne, some reigned but a short time, and have left no traces in the history of the church. Commodus, the unworthy son of Marcus Aurelius, is said to have been influenced by his favorite concubine, Marcia, to spare the Christians, and to recall many of them from banishment. But although this reign was generally a time of repose for the church, it produced one remarkable martyrdom—that of Apollonius, a Roman senator who was accused of being a Christian by one of his slaves. The informer was put to death by having his legs broken; Apollonius, after having read a defence of his faith before the senate, was beheaded; and the case is celebrated as illustrating the supposed condition of the Christians —legally liable to the punishment of death for their belief, yet protected by a law which appointed the same penalty for their accusers. It labors, however, under several difficulties : even if the circumstances be admitted as true, there remains a question whether the informer was punished for molesting a Christian, or for violating the duty of slave to master.

SEVERUS.

Severus, in the beginning of his reign, favored the church, and shielded its members against the fury of the populace—in consequence, it is said, of a cure which he himself had experienced from having been anointed with oil by a Christian named Proculus Torpacion : he kept his deliverer near him, and allowed some persons of rank and authority to profess the Gospel. But the laws were still in an unsatisfactory state; the treatment of the Christians still depended on the will of individual governors, and even those governors who were favorably disposed found it impossible to protect them when accused. Before any new edict had appeared, severe persecutions were carried on in various parts of the empire. The rescript of Trajan, which forbade inquiry to be made after the Christians, was neglected; the mob still called for their blood in the amphitheaters; many were tortured to make them avow their faith; some were burnt; some condemned to the mines or to banishment; even the graves of the dead were violated. In these times a custom of purchasing toleration arose. It was sanctioned by many bishops, who alleged the scriptural example of Jason; and the money was paid, not only by way of occasional bribes to accusers or soldiers, but as a rent or tax, like that levied on the followers of some disreputable callings for license to carry on their business. The effect was, on the whole, unfavorable to the quiet of the church, as unscrupulous governors soon learnt the expedient of putting to death a few of the poorer Christians within their jurisdictions, by way of alarming the richer brethren and extorting money from them. The severe Marcionites and the enthusiastic Montanists disdained the compromise to which believers in general submitted; they classed together the practice of paying for safety, and that of flight in persecution, as alike unworthy of their profession.

In the year 202, Severus issued an edict, forbidding, under heavy penalties, that any of his subjects should embrace Judaism or Christianity. Perhaps the extravagances of Montanism may have contributed to provoke this edict, as well as the cause which is more commonly assigned for it—the refusal of the Christians to share in the rejoicings which welcomed the emperor’s triumphant return to Rome. That refusal was really grounded, not on any political disaffection, but on a religious objection to the heathen rites and indecencies which were mixed with such celebrations; for, whatever might have been the private feelings of Christians during the late contest for the empire, they had abstained from taking part with any of the competitors, nor is it recorded that there were any Christians among those adherents of Niger and Albinus who suffered from the vengeance of Severus.

Although the new edict did not expressly forbid Christians to exercise their religion, but only to increase their numbers by proselytism, it had the effect of stimulating their enemies to persecution, which was carried on with great severity in Egypt and proconsular Africa, although it does not appear to have extended to other provinces.

Of the African martyrs, the most celebrated are Perpetua and her companions, whose sufferings are related in a narrative partly written by Perpetua herself. She was a catechumen, noble and wealthy, of the age of twenty-two, married or lately left a widow, and with an infant at her breast. After her arrest she was visited by her father, a heathen, who urged her to disavow her faith. She asked him whether a vessel which stood near could be called by any other than its proper name; and on his answering that it could not, “Neither”, said she, “can I call myself other than what I am—a Christian”. The father was violently enraged, and it seemed as if he would have done her some bodily harm; he departed, however, and did not return for some days.

During the interval Perpetua was baptized, with her companions Revocatus, Felicitas, Saturninus, and Secundinus; the Spirit, she says, moved her to pray at her baptism for the power of endurance. They were then removed to a place of stricter confinement than that to which they had at first been committed; and Perpetua suffered from the heat, the darkness, the crowd, and the insults of the soldiers, but most of all from anxiety for her infant. Two deacons, by giving money to the gaolers, procured leave for the Christians to spend some hours of each day in a more open part of the prison. There Perpetua’s child was brought to her by her mother and brother, and after a time she was able to keep him wholly with her; whereupon she felt herself relieved from all uneasiness, so that, she says, “the prison all at once became like a palace to me, and I would rather have been there than anywhere else”.

Her brother, a catechumen, now told her that she might venture to pray for a vision, in the hope of ascertaining how the imprisonment was to end. She prayed accordingly, and saw a ladder of gold, reaching up to heaven, and so narrow that only one person at a time could ascend its steps. Around it were swords, lances, and hooks, ready to pierce and tear the flesh of such as should attempt to climb without due caution; while a great dragon lay at the foot, endeavoring to deter from the ascent. Saturus—an eminent Christian, who afterwards surrendered himself, and became the companion of the sufferers—was seen as the first to go up the ladder, and, on reaching the top, invited Perpetua to follow. By the name of Christ she quelled the dragon, and when she had put her foot on the first step of the ladder, she trod on the monster’s head. Above, she found herself in a spacious garden, where she saw a shepherd, with white hair, milking his ewes, with thousands of forms in white garments around him. He welcomed her, and gave her a morsel of cheese, which she received with joined hands and ate, while the white-robed company said Amen. At this sound she awoke, but a sweet taste still remained in her mouth. The vision was interpreted as a warning that the prisoners must no longer have hope in this world.

Hearing that they were about to be examined, Perpetua’s father again visited her. Instead of daughter he called her lady; he kissed her hands, threw himself at her feet, and implored her—by the remembrance of his long care for her, and of the preference which he had shown her above his other children, by the grief of her family, by pity for her child, who could not live without her—to spare him and all her kindred the sorrow and shame which would follow from her persisting in her profession. But Perpetua, although she was deeply affected by the old man’s agitation, could only reply that all was in God’s hands.

On the day of trial, the prisoners were conveyed to the forum, and, as Perpetua was brought forward, her father appeared immediately below her, with her infant in his arms, beseeching her to have compassion on the child. The procurator endeavored to move her by consideration for her offspring, and for her parent’s grey hairs; but she steadfastly refused to sacrifice. The procurator then ordered her father (who probably disturbed the proceedings by his importunities) to be dislodged from the place where he stood and to be beaten with rods; and while this order was carried into effect, Perpetua declared that she felt the blows as if they had been inflicted on herself. The trial ended in the condemnation of the accused to the beasts, but, undaunted by the sentence, they returned to their prison rejoicing.

A few days later, as Perpetua was praying, she found herself naming her brother Dinocrates, who had died at the age of seven; and as she had not thought of him, she felt this as a Divine intimation that she should pray for him. The boy appeared as if coming forth from a dark place,—pale, dirty, showing in his face the cancer which had caused his death, thirsty, but unable to reach some water which he wished to drink. His sister persevered in prayer for him, and at length was comforted by a vision in which the place around him was light, his person and flesh clean, the sore in his face healed into a scar, and the water within his reach. He drank and went away as if to play; “then”, says Perpetua, “I understood that he was translated from punishment”.

The narrative goes on to relate another visit of the agonized father, and visions of triumph by which Perpetua was animated for the endurance of her sufferings. Saturus also had a vision of the heavenly glory, molded on the representations of the Apocalypse; and this was made the means of conveying some admonitions to the bishop, Optatus.

The martyrs were kept for the birthday of Geta, who had been associated by his father as a colleague in the empire, and in the meantime Secundulus died in prison. Felicitas, a married woman of servile condition, was in the eighth month of her pregnancy, and both she and her companions feared that her death might be deferred on this account. They therefore joined in prayer; and three days before the festival Felicitas gave birth to a child. The cries which she uttered in the pangs of travail induced an attendant of the prison to ask her, “If you cannot bear this, what will you do when exposed to the beasts?”. “It is I”, she answered, “that bear my present sufferings; but then there will be One within me to suffer for me, because I too shall suffer for him”. The child was adopted by a Christian woman.

The gaoler, Pudens, was converted by the behavior of his prisoners. On the eve of their suffering they were regaled according to custom with the “free supper” —a meal at which condemned persons were allowed to behave with all manner of license; but, instead of indulging in the usual disorders, they converted it into the likeness of a Christian love-feast. Saturus sternly rebuked the people who pressed to look at them: “Mark our faces well”, he said, “that you may know us again in the day of judgment”.

When led forth into the amphitheater, the martyrs wore a joyful look. According to a custom which seems to have been peculiar to Carthage, and derived from the times when human sacrifices were offered under its old Phoenician religion, the men were required to put on scarlet dresses, like the priests of Saturn, and the women yellow, like the priestesses of Ceres; but they refused to submit, saying that they suffered in order to be exempt from such compliances, and the justice of the objection was admitted. Perpetua sang psalms; Saturus and others denounced God’s vengeance on the procurator and the crowd.

The male victims were exposed to lions, bears, and leopards; the women were tossed by a furious cow. Perpetua appeared as if in a trance, insensible to the pain; on recovering her consciousness, she asked when the beasts would come, and could hardly be convinced that that part of her sufferings was over. Instead of allowing the victims to be privately dispatched, as was usual, the spectators demanded that they should be led forth to death; they bade farewell to each other with the kiss of peace, and walked into the midst of the amphitheater, where their earthly trials were soon ended. The gladiator who was to kill Perpetua was an inexperienced youth, and misdirected his sword, on which, observing his agitation, she with her own hand guided it to a mortal part. “Perhaps”, says the writer of the Acts of the Martyrdom, “so great a woman—one who was feared by the unclean spirit—could not have been put to death except by her own will”.

The document which has been here abridged bears throughout the stamp of circumstantial truth. Grounds have been found, both in the incidents and in the tone of the narrative, for an opinion that the martyrs and their historian were Montanists; while the reception of the Acts by the ancient church tells strongly on the other side. We may therefore either suppose that the Montanistic opinions had not produced a formal rupture in the church of Carthage at the time when the Acts were written; or we may refer the peculiarities of the story, not to Montanistic principles, but to that natural temperament which rendered Africa a soil especially favorable for the reception of Montanism.

The Roman writers are concerned to maintain the catholicity of Perpetua and Felicitas because they are commemorated in the canon of the mass.

Under Caracalla and Elagabalus, the Christians were exempt from persecution. It is said that Elagabalus, in his desire to make all the old national religions subservient to the Syrian worship of which he had been priest, intended to combine the symbols of Judaism and Christianity (which he probably regarded the more favorably on account of their eastern origin) with the gods of Greece and Rome, in the temple which he erected to the sun; but his career of insane depravity was cut short before he could attempt to carry out this design.

PASCHAL QUESTION

The first subject to be noticed in the internal history of the church is a violent dispute which arose from a revival of the paschal question. The difference of observance as to the time of Easter between the churches of Asia Minor and those of other countries has already been mentioned, as also the compromise which was agreed on between Polycarp, as representative of the Asiatics, and Anicetus, bishop of Rome. It would seem that, for some time after that agreement, Asiatics sojourning at Rome were allowed to follow the usage of their own country, until Soter, who held the see from 168 to 176, required them to conform to the local custom, but without considering quartodecimanism as a bar to communion with other churches. His second successor, Victor, adopted a different policy. One Blastus, an Asiatic, who had repaired to Rome, insisted on the observance of the quartodeciman practice; and about the same time it became suspicious as a token of Montanism, with which, indeed, Blastus appears to have been infected. These circumstances might very reasonably have induced Victor to use his influence for the establishment of uniformity throughout the whole church; but he erred grievously in the manner of his attempt. Coun­cils were held, apparently by his desire, in countries widely distant from each other—in Palestine, Pontus, Osrhoene, Greece, and Gaul: all these gave evidence that the custom of their own churches agreed with that of the Roman, and were favorable to the wishes of Victor. The Asiatics, however, in their council, refused to depart from their traditional rule. Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, a man of eminent place and high personal authority, wrote to Victor in behalf of his brethren : he refers to the apostles St. Philip and St. John, with other venerable personages who had adorned the church of Asia, as having sanctioned the quartodeciman usage; and he declares himself resolved to abide by it, as being apostolical in its origin, and nowhere condemned in Scripture, without fearing Victor’s threats of breaking off communion with him. Victor then, in an imperious letter, cut off the Asiatics from the communion of Rome; and he endeavored to procure a like condemnation of them from the other branches of the church. In this, however, he was disappointed. The idea of excluding so large a body from Christian communion shocked the general feeling; many bishops sharply remonstrated with Victor, and exhorted him to desist.

Of those who attempted to mediate in the dispute, the most prominent was Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons. Irenaeus was a native of Asia Minor, and in his youth had known the revered St. Polycarp, of whom in one of his writings he has preserved some interesting recollections. Having joined the missionary church of Lyons, he was chosen by the martyrs under Marcus Aurelius to be the bearer of a letter to the bishop of Rome, in which they endeavored to allay the heats of the Montanistic controversy; and it appears that during his absence he was elected bishop in the room of Pothinus. During the early years of his episcopate, his reputation for learning and ability had been established by the great work which is our chief source of information as to the gnostic heresies; and, connected as he was with both the east and the west,—a quartodeciman by early association, but a follower of the Roman usage in his own church—he was well qualified to exert himself with effect in the character of a peace­maker. The bishop of Lyons wrote in the name of his church, exhorting Victor to moderation, referring to the example of Anicetus and his predecessors in the see of Rome, and urging that such a question ought not to be made a ground for a breach of communion, inasmuch as a diversity of usages had always been allowed, and such variations in indifferent things served to confirm the argument which might be drawn from the agreement of all churches as to the essentials of the faith.

Through the mediation of Irenaeus and others, peace was at length restored. The Asiatics, in a circular letter, cleared themselves from all suspicion of heretical tendencies; and they were allowed to retain their usage until the time of the council of Nicaea.

It is hardly necessary to observe that the attempt to press this affair into the service of the later papal claims is singularly unfortunate. Victor’s behavior, indeed, may be considered as foreshadowing that of his successors in the fullness of their pride; but his pretensions were far short of theirs; the assembling of the councils, although it took place at his request, was the free act of the local bishops; he was unceremoniously rebuked for his measures, there is no token of deference to him as a superior, and his designs were utterly foiled.

MONTANISM

On proceeding to examine the heresies of the period, we find them different in character from those which we have hitherto met with. The fundamental question of Gnosticism was that as to the origin of evil, and the error of the sectaries consisted in attempting to solve this by theories which were chiefly derived from some other source than the Christian revelation. But the newer heresies come more within the sphere of Christian ideas. On the one hand, there is the practical, ascetic, enthusiastic sect of Montanus; on the other hand, speculation takes the form of an endeavor to investigate and define the scriptural doctrines as to the Saviour and the God­head.

The origin of Montanism was earlier than the time at which we have arrived. By Epiphanius it is in one place dated as far back as the year 126, while in another passage he refers it to the year 157; by Eusebius, in 173; by others, about 15o. The founder, a native of Mysia, had been a heathen, and probably a priest of Cybele. Soon after his conversion to Christianity, he began to fall into fits of ecstasy, and to utter ravings which were dignified with the name of prophecy; and his enthusiasm speedily infected two women of wealth and station—Maximilla and Priscilla—who forsook their hus­bands, and became prophetesses in connection with him. The utterances of Montanus and his companions aimed at the introduction of a more rigid system than that which had before prevailed in the church. They added to the established fasts both in number and in severity; they classed second marriages as equal in guilt with adultery; they proscribed military service and secular life in general; they denounced alike profane learning, the vanities of female dress, and amusements of every kind; they laid down rigorous precepts as to penance—declaring that the church had no power to remit sin after baptism, although they claimed such power for the Montanistic prophets; and that some sins must exclude forever from the communion of the saints on earth, although it was not denied that the mercy of God might possibly be extended to them hereafter.

The progress of the sect did not depend on the character or abilities of its founder, who seems to have been a man of weak and disordered mind. In the region of its birth it was congenial to the character of the people, as appears from the prevalence of the wild worship of Bacchus and Cybele among the Phrygians in earlier times. Persecution tended to stimulate the imagination of the prophets, to exasperate them to fierceness, and to win a ready reception for their oracles. And on penetrating into other countries, Montanism found multitudes already prepared for it by their tempers of mind, so that its work was nothing more than to draw these out into exercise. It held out attractions to the more rigid feelings by setting forth the idea of a life stricter than that of ordinary Christians; to weakness, by offering the guidance of precise rules where the gospel had contented itself with laying down general principles; to enthusiasm and the love of excitement, by its pretensions to prophetical gifts; to pride, by professing to realize the pure and spotless mystical church in an exactly defined visible communion, and by encouraging its proselytes to regard themselves as spiritual, and to despise or abhor all other Christians as carnal and “psychic”.

Montanus has been charged with styling himself the Paraclete, and even with claiming to be the Almighty Father The latter charge is a mistake, founded on the circumstance that he delivered his oracles in the name of the Father, whereas he did not in reality pretend to be more than his organ. Nor did he really assert himself to be the Holy Ghost, or Paraclete; but he taught that the promise of the Comforter was not limited to the apostles, and that, having been imperfectly performed in them, it was now more entirely fulfilled in himself and his associates. The progress of revelation was illustrated by the development of man; it was said that Judaism had been as infancy; the dispensation of the New Testament as youth; and that the dispensation of the Paraclete was maturity. The new revelation, however, was limited to the advancement of institutions and discipline; it did not interfere with the traditional faith of Christians, but confirmed it.

The Montanists held that the mind, under the prophetic influence, was to be merely passive, while the Spirit swept over it “as the plectrum over the lyre”. This comparison had been applied by Justin Martyr to the inspiration of the Hebrew prophets; but the idea, when taken up by the Montanists, was combated by the opponents of their system, some of whom maintained that the prophets of Scripture not only retained their human consciousness, but clearly understood the fulfillment of what they foretold. Soon after the origin of the sect, some bishops wished to try the effect of exorcism on the prophetesses; but the Montanists would not allow the experiment.

On his ejection from the church, Montanus organized a body of preachers, who were maintained by the oblations of his followers, and, notwithstanding the professed austerity of the sect, are broadly charged by its opponents with hypocrisy, covetousness, and luxury. The order of bishops was only the third in the Montanistic hierarchy— patriarchs and cenones being superior to it. The patriarch resided at Pepuza, a small town or village in Phrygia, to which the sectaries gave the mystical name of Jerusalem, as believing that it would be the seat of the millennial kingdom, which was a chief subject of their hopes. Hence they derived the names of Pepuzians and Cataphrygians.

It is said, although not without doubt, by one ancient writer, that both Montanus and Maximilla ended their lives by hanging themselves, about forty years after the origin of their sect; a story which, if it were true, would rather prove that they were the victims of a diseased melancholy than warrant the conclusions against their morality which have been drawn from it. Maximilla had declared that no prophetess would arise after her, but that the end of all things would immediately come; yet we find that other women of excitable temperament pretended to the prophetic character among the Montanists. The case of one, who is spoken of by Tertullian as falling into trances, in which she was consulted for revelations as to the unseen world and for medical prescriptions, bears a remarkable likeness to some narratives of our own day.

In the west, Montanism was at first well received. It engaged the attention of the Lyonese martyrs during their imprisonment, and they wrote both to the Asiatic churches, and to Eleutherius, bishop of Rome,—not sanctioning the pretensions of the sect, but advising that it should be gently dealt with. It benefited by the extravagance of some opponents, who in their zeal to oppose the inferences drawn from St. John’s writings, both as to the promise of the Comforter and as to the millennial kingdom, denied the authority of those writings, and ascribed them to the heretic Cerinthus; and the circumstance that the Asiatic church, at the very time when it was embroiled with the Roman church as to the paschal controversy, condemned the Montanists, was regarded in the west as a token of their orthodoxy. Victor was on the point of formally acknowledging them, when an Asiatic named Praxeas, armed with the authority which was attached to the character of a confessor, arrived at Rome, and, by his reports as to the nature of the party, induced the bishop to change his opinion, and to excommunicate them.

The Montanists loudly complained of it as a wrong that they were excluded from the church while they wished to remain in communion with it. This complaint, however, is only an instance of the usual inability of partisans to view their own case fairly. By the rigor of its discipline, by the contempt with which its professors looked down on the great body of Christians, by enforcing its peculiarities under the sanction of a pretended revelation, Montanism had before virtually excommunicated the church; and we cannot doubt that, if tolerated, it would not have been content with anything short of supremacy. Moreover, its spirit was strongly opposed to the regular authority of the church. The ordinary offices it disparaged as merely psychic : bishops were declared to be inferior to prophets; and prophets were distinguished, not by outward ordination, but by spiritual gifts and graces, so that they might belong to any class. Nor can we wonder if the attitude which the Montanists assumed towards the state had a share in inducing the more peaceable Christians to disconnect themselves from them; for their prophecies in great part consisted of matter which by the Roman law amounted to treason, —denunciations of calamity, and exultation over the approaching downfall of the persecuting empire.

The stern spirit of the sect animated its members to court persecution. Their zeal for martyrdom was nourished by the doctrine that the souls of martyrs would enter at once into the enjoyment of their full blessedness, whereas those of other righteous men would not receive their con­summation until the end of the world. The Montanists were, however, preserved by their rigid views on the subject of penance from admitting the abuses which arose elsewhere as to the privilege of martyrs in granting indulgences.

Although the sect and its subdivisions continued to flourish for a time, and some remains of it existed in the sixth century, or even later, the chief success of Montanism was gained in a different way—by infusing much of its character into the church. It is probably to its congeniality with the spirit which afterwards became dominant in the west that Montanism owes the privilege which it alone, of the early heresies, possesses—that of being allowed to descend to us in the unmutilated representations of one of its own champions.

TERTULIAN

Tertullian was perhaps the most eminent man whom the church had seen since the days of the apostles. Of his character we have a full and distinct impression from his works; but the facts of his life are very obscure. He was a native of Carthage, the son of a centurion, and is supposed to have been born about the year 16o. We learn from himself that he was originally a heathen, and that as such he partook in the prevailing vices of his countrymen. That he had followed the profession of an advocate appears probable, no less from his style of argument than from his acquaintance with law, and from his use of forensic terms. In addition to his legal learning, he shows a knowledge of physic and of natural philosophy, with extensive reading in poetry and general literature; and he was a master of the Greek language to such a degree as to compose treatises in it.

After his conversion he became a presbyter of the church, and in that character resided both at Carthage and at Rome. His lapse into Montanism, which took place in middle life, is ascribed by St. Jerome to the jealousy and slights which he met with at the hands of the Roman clergy; but, although it is very possible that Tertullian may have been treated by these in a manner which exasperated his impatient temper, the assigned motive has been generally discredited, and is indeed needless in order to account for his hawing joined a party whose opinions and practice accorded so well with his natural bent. We must be prepared to see frequently in the course of our history men of high gifts forsake the orthodox communion—led astray either by a restless spirit of speculation, or by a desire to realize the vision of a faultless church in a manner which Holy Scripture appears to represent as unattainable.

Not only are the dates of the events in Tertullian’s life and of his writings uncertain, but it is impossible to decide whether certain of his treatises were written before or after his defection. On the one hand, the subject of a work belonging to his Montanistic period may be such as to allow no room for displaying the peculiarities of his sect: on the other hand, a severity of tone, which seems like a token of Montanism, may be merely the result of the writer’s temperament, or characteristic of the more rigid party within the church. The genius of Tertullian is gloomy and saturnine; the spirit of the gospel appears in him strongly tinged by the nature of the man. He has a remarkable power of forcible argument and condensed expression; subtlety, acuteness, and depth; a wit alike pungent and delicate; an ardor which carries him over all obstacles, and almost hurries the reader along with him; but his mind is merely that of an advocate, and is wholly wanting in calmness, solidity, and the power of dispassionate judgment. His language is rude and uncouth, obscured by antiquated and newly-coined words, by harsh constructions and perplexing allusions; his style, both of thought and of expression, is marked by exaggeration. In another respect Tertullian’s diction is very remarkable and important, as being the earliest specimen of ecclesiastical Latin. Hitherto the language of the western churches, not only in the Greek colonies of Gaul, but at Rome itself, had been Greek—the general medium of communication, and the tongue in which the oracles of Christianity were written. If Minucius Felix was (as some have supposed) older than Tertullian, the subject of his treatise was not such as to require the use of any especially theological terms; it is therefore to the great African writer that the creation of a technical Christian Latinity is to be ascribed.

Tertullian’s Apology was almost certainly composed before his lapse, and is the masterpiece of the class to which it belongs. In it he urges with his characteristic force, and with all the freshness of novelty, most of the topics which had been advanced by the earlier apologists; he adds many new arguments, both in favor of the gospel and in refutation of paganism; and he supplies to readers of later times much curious information as to the history and circumstances of the church. He felt himself entitled to insist on the progress of Christianity as an argument in its favor :—“We are a people of yesterday” he says, “and yet we have filled every place belonging to you—cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camp, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum. We leave you your temples only. We can count your armies; our numbers in a single province will be greater”. The manner in which he meets the charges of disloyalty against his brethren is especially remarkable; he appeals to the fact (already noticed) that no Christians had been found among the partisans of the emperor’s defeated rivals; and he states as a reason why Christians were bound to pray for the continuance of the empire, a belief that it was the obstacle which St. Paul had spoken of as “letting the appearance of Antichrist”. In a later apologetic writing, the Address to Scapula, Tertullian again insists on the loyalty of Christians; but he declares that the blood of the saints cannot be shed without drawing down vengeance. His tone is full of scorn and defiance; he exults in the calamities and portents of the time, as signs and foretastes of the ruin which was about to fall on the persecutors.

On joining the Montanists, Tertullian embraced their doctrine in its full rigor. The contempt of a spiritalis for the psychic church is uttered with all the vehemence of his character, and with all his power of expression. Although he himself was, or had been, married, he is violent against matrimony; to marry two wives in succession he regards as no less an offence than marriage with two at once; he would exclude bigamists from the church, without hope of reconciliation, although he does not deny that God may possibly accept their sincere repentance. His views as to penance are of the severest kind; he denies that the church can remit deadly sin after baptism, but asserts the power of absolution for the prophets of his own sect. He altogether condemns military service, as inconsistent with Christian duty, and inseparably mixed up with heathen observances. One of his treatises was written in justification of a soldier who had been put to death for refusing to wear a garland on the occasion of a donative distributed in honor of the emperor. Tertullian argues that such use of flowers is a sinful vanity, inasmuch as it is not only heathenish, but contrary to nature. In the tract De Spectaculis, he proscribes all attendance at public amusements, and fortifies his denunciations with tales of judgments inflicted on persons who had been present at them. He regards flight in time of danger as a sin worse than the abjuration of Christ in the midst of tortures, and thinks that a Christian ought even to provoke persecution.

Bitter as Tertullian became in his tone towards the communion which he had forsaken, he yet did not, like too many in similar circumstances, devote himself exclusively to the work of injuring it. He continued to be the champion of the gospel against paganism and Judaism; in treatises against Marcion, Valentinus, Hermogenes, Praxeas, and other heretics, he maintained the common cause of his sect and of the church. St. Augustine states that in his last years he became the head of a distinct party of “Tertullianists”, the remnant of which was recovered to the church in Augustine’s own time, and probably through his exertions.

Hermogenes was a painter by profession, and a countryman of Tertullian, who was excited to wrath against him, no less by the practical opposition of Hermogenes to the Montanistic rigor in the exercise of his art (which included the representation of heathen subjects), and in marrying twice or oftener, than by the heterodoxy of his opinions. Like the Gnostics, he referred the origin of evil to matter. God, he argued, must have made the world either of Himself, of nothing, or of something: the first supposition was impossible, because by it the world would have been a part of Himself, and therefore would not have been made at all; the second, because, as God both wills to make what is good, and knows how to make it, the existence of evil would be unexplained. He must, therefore, have made the world, including the souls as well as the bodies of men, out of matter; and the defects in creation arise, not from his will, but from the nature of matter. It would seem that Hermogenes did not found a sect, and “died in the communion of the church”; and, since Tertullian does not charge him with any other errors than those which have been mentioned, some other early writers may perhaps be mistaken in saying that he believed our Lord to have left his body in the sun. St. Augustine, however, describes him as a Sabellian. A passage in Tertullian’s tract against him is famous as seeming to deny the eternity of God the Son.

DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE

A dislike of the theories which have lately been vented in connection with the term development must not be allowed to prejudice us against admitting that the doctrine of the church on the highest subjects has undergone a process for which perhaps no more appropriate name could be found. This development was rendered necessary by the circumstances of the case; its effect was to bring out into a distinct and scientific form truths which had before been not the less really held, although the minds of men had not been exercised in precisely defining them. Thus we can imagine, for example, that the cardinal verities of our Blessed Lord’s Godhead and manhood may have been believed by Christians from the beginning, but that it may have been the work of a later time to attain to the full consciousness of such a belief, to investigate what is the proper meaning of Godhead and what of manhood, and what are the conditions of their union in the one person of the Savior. Where principles of truth have been given, it is a legitimate task for the mind enlightened and sanctified by the promised gifts of the Comforter to draw the proper inferences from them. When an opinion new in expression was proposed, it was for Christians to ask themselves more distinctly than before what their belief on the subject had been—whether it agreed or disagreed with that which was now presented to them; to compare their impressions with those of their brethren; and in concert with these either to admit the doctrine as sound, or to reject it as contrary to the faith in which they had been trained.

Thus it was that truth was drawn forth in its fullness by the assaults of error; that that which had been a feeling and a conviction came by degrees to be stated in exact and formal dogmas. Hence we can understand that the early Christian writers might use much loose and imperfect language on the highest points; that they might even have a defective apprehension as to the details of doctrine; that they might employ terms which the church afterwards condemned, and might scruple at terms which the church afterwards sanctioned; and yet that their belief was sound in itself, faithfully preserving the tradition of the apostles, and identical with the creed of the later church. Nor is it any real disparagement to the believers nearest the apostolic age to say that on such matters they were less informed than those who came after them. Their work was not to investigate, but to act. Their worship and their whole Christian life implied the true faith; their writings are penetrated by the conviction of it: but as the men who had known the apostles or their immediate disciples passed away, a necessity arose of relying less on apostolic tradition, and having recourse in a greater degree to the apostolic writings. By the help of these the faith was now to be tested, confirmed, and systematized.

MONARCHIAN HERESIES.

In the last years of the second century the difficulty of reconciling the fundamental doctrine of the Divine unity (monarchia) with that of the threefold Name gave rise to two different forms of heresy. In the one, the unity was rescued by denying the Godhead of the second and third Persons; in the other, the names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were explained as merely denoting three different manifestations or aspects of one and the same Divine Person.

The leader in the former error was Theodotus, a native of Byzantium, who, although by trade a currier, is described as a man of learning and accomplishment. After having denied Christ in a time of persecution, when the brethren who had been arrested with him suffered martyrdom, he repaired to Rome, where at first he was well received; and when the history of his lapse became known, he excused himself by saying that he had denied not God, but man. Thus he was led into his heresy, which seems to have admitted the miraculous conception of our Lord, but regarded him as nothing more than a man guided by a Divine influence. Similar opinions were soon after professed by Artemon, who appears to have been unconnected with Theodotus, but was popularly classed with him. Artemon pretended that his doctrine was not only scriptural but primitive—that it had been held in the church of Rome until the time of Zephyrinus, whose episcopate began in the year 202; but it was not difficult to refute such a pretense by a reference to Scripture, to the hymns and liturgical forms of the church, to the writings of the earlier fathers, and to the fact that on account of a like doctrine Theodotus had been excommunicated by Victor. The Artemonites are described as students of mathematics and of the Aristotelian philosophy rather than of the Scriptures, which they treated in a very arbitrary way, each of their more noted teachers having a copy peculiar to himself.

The other tendency which has been mentioned—that which regarded the names of the three Divine Persons as merely designating various aspects or operations of the one Deity—would appear to have existed as early as the days of Justin Martyr; but it now for the first time found a distinct utterance in Praxeas. This man was an Asiatic, and, unlike Theodotus, had acquired by his constancy in persecution a degree of credit which was perhaps beyond his deserts, and was dangerous to the balance of his mind. We have already seen that he arrived at Rome when Victor or some other bishop was on the point of acknowledging the Montanists, and that by the information which his experience in Asia enabled him to give, backed by his influence as a confessor, he persuaded the bishop to reject them. But this good service to the faith was soon followed by the publication of his heresy, which he professed to ground on a few texts —compelling the rest of Holy Scripture to bend to theses The sequel of his story is somewhat indistinct: it would seem that, after having been refuted at Rome, he passed over to Carthage, and it is said that he was there drawn into a recantation; but perhaps this may have been no more than a disavowal of some tenets or inferences which were wrongly imputed to him. He afterwards again maintained his heresy; when Tertullian, who is supposed to have been its chief opponent in the earlier stages, wrote the work against him which is our principal source of information on the subject.

NOETUS.—SABELLIUS.

It now appears that two other teachers of the same kind, who have usually been placed somewhat later, belong to the period embraced in this chapter—Noetus and Sabellius. The common account of Noetus hardly extends beyond the statements that he was of Ephesus or Smyrna; that, on venting his doctrines, he was questioned and excommunicated by the clergy of some Asiatic city; and that he died shortly after. Of Sabellius, personally, nothing was known except that he was a presbyter of the Libyan Pentapolis. But the book which has been published as Origen’s Philosophumena and which appears to be really the work of St. Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, at the mouth of the Tiber, makes important additions to our information. It is there stated that Epigonus, a disciple of Noetus, repaired to Rome, and made a proselyte of one Cleomenes, who opened a school of Noetianism; that Cleomenes won over Callistus, who had great influence with the bishop, Zephyrinus (AD 202-218); that the bishop, an “illiterate man and greedy of filthy lucre”, was bribed into licensing Cleomenes as a teacher, and at length himself became his convert; that Callistus endeavored, by a crafty policy, to hold the balance between the heretics and the orthodox; that, after succeeding Zephyrinus in the see (AD 218), he cast off and excommunicated Sabellius, whom he had before misled; and that he founded a new party of “Callistians”, which combined laxity of discipline and morals with heretical doctrine. According to this account, then, it appears that both Sabellius and some followers of Noetus were teaching at Rome in the early years of the third century.

The kind of error which was common to Praxeas, Noetus, and Sabellius, was capable of various forms. Thus, it might be held that the one Godhead dwelt in the man Jesus in such a way as to justify the name Patripassian, given to Praxeas by his opponents, who argued that, if there were no distinction of persons, the Father must be the same who suffered on the cross; or that the names of the three Persons denote so many energies, emanating from the one Monad, and again to be absorbed into him after the fulfillment of their work. Noetus was more refined than Praxeas, and Sabellius than Noetus. Sabellius maintained that God is in himself the Monad; that when revealed, he is “extended” into the Trinity. He acknowledged three “persons”, but used the word in a sense which may be termed merely dramatic—as meaning characters, assumed or represented. He illustrated his idea by comparison with the three elements of man—body, soul, and spirit; and with the threefold combination in the sun, of shape or substance, light, and heat.

It does not appear that Praxeas was able to found a sect. Theodoret mentions Callistus as the successor of Noetus; and this teacher, of whose earlier life a very discreditable account is given in the Philosophumena, is now, by means of that work, identified with a canonized bishop of Rome. But although the heresy, thus supported, flourished for a time, the Noetians or Callistians soon became extinct. The sect of Sabellians is said to have lasted into the fifth century. It was, however, never numerous; and the significance of Sabellius’ name is not as the founder of a separate body, but as indicating one of the tendencies into which speculation has run when exercised on the mystery of the Godhead.

ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL.

In this period we find that Christianity and heathen philosophy, in preparing for a continuation of their struggle, adopt something of each other’s armor; and Alexandria—a city of which the intellectual character has been already sketched in connection with the origin of Gnosticism—becomes the chief seat, both of philosophical Christianity and of the reformed paganism. If the gospel were to make its way on such ground, it was necessary that it should be presented in a shape attractive to men of learning and cultivation. The catechetical school of Alexandria is said by some writers to have existed even from the time of St. Mark; if so, it was probably at first nothing more than an institution for the teaching of catechumens—the name given to proselytes who were preparing for baptism. But about the middle of the second century it assumed a different character, and became a seminary for the training of clergy, and for completing the instruction of the most highly educated converts. The mastership was held by a succession of eminent men, of whom the first that can be named with certainty was Pantaenus, a convert from the stoic philosophy. Pantaenus is described by his pupil Clement as superior to all his contemporaries; St. Jerome tells us that he composed many commentaries on Scripture, but did still greater service to the church by his oral teaching. He is also celebrated as having undertaken a missionary journey into India—a name which has in this case been variously interpreted as meaning Hindostan, Arabia, and Ethiopia or Abyssinia. Although the order of events in his life is uncertain, it has been generally supposed that Pantaenus presided over the catechetical school before this expedition, and that he resumed the mastership on his return.

His successor was Clement—usually styled after the place of his residence, although he was probably a native of Athens. Clement had been converted to the faith after reaching manhood, and had then travelled through various countries in search of wisdom, until at length he found satisfaction in the teaching of Pantaenus. After having presided over the school for some years, he was driven from his post by the persecution of Severus. Of his afterlife it is only known that he sojourned in Cappadocia and at Jerusalem; but he is supposed to have returned to Alexandria, and to have died there about the year 22o.

By these men a new system of thought was introduced into the church. The earlier Christians, for the most part, had viewed all heathen philosophy through the medium of the dislike occasioned by its opposition to the gospel; a large party of them had referred its origin to the devil, or to the angels who fell through their love for the “daughters of men”. Clement, however, claims for philosophy a far different source. It is, he says, “the gift of God”, “a work of Divine providence”; it had been given to the Greeks, even as the law was to the Jews, and for like purposes; it had been necessary for their justification before Christ came, and was still to be regarded as a preparative for the gospel; and, if rightly understood, was compatible with it. And by philosophy, he declares, was not here meant the system of any sect in particular, but “the eclectic, which embodies whatsoever is well said by each of the sects in teaching righteousness and religious knowledge”; while he would distinguish the truth thus conveyed from the human reasonings with which it is adulterated. He maintains that all learning may be sanctified and turned to good; that the cultivation of it is necessary in order to confute the sophistries of false philosophy. He labors to vindicate the claim of the “barbarians” to philosophical knowledge, to identify the doctrines of philosophy with those of Scripture, and to derive the wisdom of the Greeks from the sacred oracles of the Hebrews.

In these opinions there was much that savored of Gnosticism; but the more orthodox Alexandrian school differed from the Gnostics by denying the alleged opposition between faith and knowledge, and maintaining that faith must lie under all Christian knowledge, in every stage of the spiritual and intellectual progress. They held that the work of Christian philosophy was to unfold to knowledge the meaning of the truths which had been embraced by faith : that while faith receives its doctrines from tradition, knowledge must be able to prove them from Scripture. The term gnostic was adopted by the Alexandrians to denote the highest Christian character. Of Clement’s three chief extant works, which form a series rising one above another, while the first (the Exhortation to the Gentiles) is addressed to persons without the church, and the second (the Pedagogue) contains moral instruction for converts, the third, which from its miscellaneous character has the title of Stromata (Tapestry-work), is intended to portray the character of the perfect gnostic, and, by supplying instruction which might satisfy the highest desires of the intellect, to preserve from the “knowledge falsely so called” of such teachers as Basilides and Valentinus.

The combination of philosophy with the gospel led, however, to some very questionable results. In Clement’s own hands — especially if we may trust the accounts which are given of a lost work entitled Hypotyposes —it appears to have sometimes gone beyond the bounds of orthodoxy; and, when taken up by Origen and others, it became yet more decidedly dangerous.

ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION.

The most lasting of the evils which this school introduced into the church was its license of figurative interpretation in explaining Holy Scripture. For this Alexandria was a congenial soil; there it had been employed on the Old Testament to an immoderate extent by the Jew Philo: and the epistle which is ascribed to St. Barnabas, and in which this method is perhaps carried as far as in any Christian writing, was probably the work of an Alexandrian convert from Judaism. But whereas the figurative interpretation had hitherto been an unregulated practice, it was now reduced to method. Scripture, it was said, has three senses—the historical, the moral, and the mystical; and the first of these was treated as if it were merely subservient to the others. There was something in the system attractive at once to ingenuity of speculation and to a pious feeling of the depth of God’s word; but the effect too commonly was that, instead of seeking for the real meaning of each passage, men set themselves to discover some fanciful analogy to ideas which they had derived from other parts of Scripture, or from altogether different sources. The historical sense was left out of sight, or even denied; the moral sense was often perverted; nor can an unprejudiced reader open any work in which this kind of interpretation is followed without feeling how utterly unlike it is, in its general character, to those scriptural instances of figurative interpretation which its advocates allege as precedents for it. The facilities which it afforded for pretending to prove anything whatever from Scripture must no doubt have contributed to render it popular, both in the church and among sectaries. In our own time, while an unhappy attempt has been made to revive it in the English church, it has been turned to a very different account by the German school which would resolve the Scripture narrative into a series of fables. These writers claim Origen and his brother allegorists as their own forerunners; for why (they ask) should such violence have been done to Scripture in the way of allegorical interpretation, but that the fathers felt its literal sense to be absurd, incredible, and revolting?

In common with some heathen sects, with the school of Philo, and with the Gnostics, the Alexandrians professed to possess a higher and more mysterious knowledge of religious things, derived from tradition, and hidden from those who were not worthy to receive it. By the system which in later times has been styled the “discipline of the secret” was not meant that concealment of the higher doctrines and rites which was practiced towards the heathen, and was in part continued towards the converts who were in training for baptism; but, as appears from the hints given by Clement, the matters which it held in reserve were philosophical explanations of Christian doctrine, and precepts for the formation of the perfect Gnostic. He compares the discipline to withholding a knife from children out of fear lest they should cut themselves. This method is supposed to have originated not long before the time of Clement, and it was impossible that it should last. While we admit a legitimate use of discretion in communicating religious knowledge, we cannot but see that in this kind of reserve there were great dangers; and in the hands of the Alexandrians it undoubtedly led to a system of equivocation towards the uninitiated which was injurious to truth and to morality.

The opposition on the side of heathen philosophy which has been mentioned was carried on by the Neoplatonic school—founded at Alexandria in the reign of Severus, by Ammonius, who, from having been a porter in early life, was styled Saccas, or the Sack-carrier. Although his doctrine professed to be a continuation of Platonism, it was not only mixed with tenets from other Grecian systems, but also contained a strong Egyptian element; and it was especially remarkable for the new views which it opened on the subject of heathen religion. Hitherto Platonists had been content to maintain the popular system outwardly, while they taught a more refined doctrine to their disciples; but now paganism was to be itself reformed; it was to be explained as a scheme of purer and deeper character, so that either the way might be paved for a combination with the gospel, or a position might be gained for effectively resisting its advances. The Neoplatonists admitted that Christianity contained great truths, but asserted that in it these were obscured by barbarism, and that the old traditionary religion, if freed from popular corruptions and rightly understood, would be found to exhibit them in a purer form. Christ himself was classed with sages of the first rank; it was said that his object had been to reform religion; that his own views had agreed with those of the Neoplatonists, but that his followers had corrupted his system by spurious additions—among which were the doctrines of his Godhead and mediation, and the prohibition of worshipping the gods. Neoplatonism had much in common with some forms of Gnosticism; it aimed at uniting the wisdom of all ages and of all nations in one comprehensive scheme; and in order to effect the union it had recourse to many strange evasions and forced constructions. It laid down the doctrine of one supreme God, and acknowledged the Platonic Trinity, consisting of the One, his Intelligence, and his Soul. In subordination to these, it held the existence of many inferior gods and demons, the ministers of the Supreme; and it represented the vulgar polytheism as a corruption of this truth. With the loftier doctrines of the sect were combined much fanciful superstition and a devotion to theurgical practices. Its practical precepts were severe; an ascetic life was required in order to emancipation from the bonds of sense, to the acquisition of power over spirits, and to union with the Deity.

Ammonius was originally a Christian, and it has been maintained by some that, notwithstanding the character of his oral and secret teaching, he remained to the end in outward communion with the church. It is, however, more commonly believed that he openly lapsed into heathenism. Among his pupils were both Christians and pagans; of the former, Origen was the most eminent; from among the latter he may be said to have founded a dynasty of teachers, which included Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus. It may be easily understood that a system so comprehensive as Neoplatonism had strong attractions for persons perplexed by the controversies of Christians with pagans, of orthodox with heterodox, and of philosophical sects with each other. It soon almost superseded every other form of heathen philosophy; it lasted until the sixth century; and in it the gospel found the most subtle and the most formidable of its adversaries.

But the very refinement of the system unfitted it for obtaining a hold on the mass of mankind; and the living conviction of the truth of the old religions was gone forever.

 

CHAPTER VI.

FROM ALEXANDER SEVERUS TO VALERIAN

A.D. 222-260.

 

Elagabalus was succeeded in 222 by his cousin Alexander Severus, a boy of sixteen. The young emperor was inclined to favor the Christians, partly through the influence of his mother, Mammaea, who, notwithstanding her acknowledged vices of avarice and ambition, is described both by heathen writers and by Eusebius as a “very devout woman”. Alexander had many Christians in his household. In appointing to civil offices he adopted a rule observed by the church in ordinations—that the names of candidates should be publicly exhibited, and that an opportunity of objecting to them should be allowed. He frequently used the evangelical maxim of “doing to others as we would that they should do to us”, and caused it to be inscribed on the walls of his palace, and of other public buildings. When a piece of land, which had been regarded as common, was taken by a Christian congregation as a site for a church, and the company of victuallers at Rome set up a rival claim, he adjudged it to the Christians, on the ground that any kind of religious use would be better than the conversion of it into a tavern. Nay, it is said that he thought of enrolling Christ among the gods, and erecting a temple to him.

It is, however, a mistake to suppose either the emperor or his mother to have been a Christian. Mammaea’s interest in the gospel appears to have really not extended beyond a slight inquiry into its doctrines and a favorable opinion of its professors. Alexander’s religion was eclectic : he had in his oratory images, not only of Roman gods, including such of his predecessors as had been deified, but of Isis and Serapis, of Orpheus, Abraham, and Apollonius of Tyana; and with these was associated the image of the Savior. It is evident, therefore, that the emperor did not regard Christianity as the one true religion, but as one of many forms, all acceptable to the Deity, all containing somewhat of truth, and differing only in outward circumstances; that he revered its Founder, not as Divine, but as one worthy to be ranked among the chief of the sages who have enlightened and benefited mankind. Nor, although the Christians were, on the whole, practically tolerated in this reign, was anything done towards the establishment of a formal and legal toleration; indeed there were some instances of persecution and martyrdom, and it was probably under Alexander that the celebrated lawyer Ulpian, in his book On the duties of a Proconsul, made an elaborate digest of the laws against the profession of the gospel.

The estimable but somewhat weak Alexander was murdered in 235; and the Christians suffered at the hands of his successor, Maximin the Thracian, for the favor which they had lately enjoyed. The barbarian emperor’s motives for persecution were wholly independent of religion; for of that, in any form, he was utterly regardless—melting down for his own use the gold and silver ornaments of heathen temples, and even the images of the gods. His rage was directed against such Christians only as had been connected with the court, among whom Origen was especially noted. But about the same time earthquakes in several provinces afforded a pretext for popular risings; and in these tumultuary outbreaks churches were burnt and many Christians were put to death.

The reign of Gordian (AD 238-244) and that of Philip the Arabian (AD 244-249) were friendly to the church. Origen, writing under the latter, says that God had given the Christians the free exercise of their religion, and anticipates the conversion of the empire;—a new idea, remarkably opposed to the tone of the earlier Christian writers, who had always regarded the Roman power as incurably hostile and persecuting,—as an oppression from which there could be no hope of deliverance except through the coming of the end. Under Philip, Rome completed the thousandth year from its foundation (AD 248); and it has been dwelt on by many writers as a remarkable circumstance, that this event took place under an emperor whom they supposed to have been a Christian. The games and rites with which it was celebrated, however, were purely heathen in character; and, although it seems to be true that both Philip and his wife received letters from the great Christian teacher Origen, there is little reason for supposing that the emperor’s guilty life was combined with a belief in the gospel. Towards the end of the reign there was a persecution at Alexandria.

DECIUS.

Decius is memorable as the first emperor who attempted to extirpate the Christian religion by a general persecution of its professors. His edicts are lost; but the records of the time exhibit a departure from the system which had been usually observed by enemies of the church since the days of Trajan. The authorities now sought out Christians; the legal order as to accusations was neglected; accusers ran no risk; and popular clamor was admitted instead of formal information.

The long enjoyment of peace had told unfavorably on the church. Cyprian in the west and Origen in the east speak of the secular spirit which had crept in among its members—of the pride, the luxury, the covetousness of the higher clergy; of the careless and irreligious lives of the peoples. And when, as Origen had foretold, a new season of trial came, the effects of the general relaxation were sadly displayed. On being summoned, in obedience to the emperor’s edict, to appear and offer sacrifice, multitudes of Christians in every city rushed to the forum —some induced by fear of confiscation, some by a wish to retain offices in the public service, some by dread of tortures, some by the entreaties of friends and kindred : it seemed, says St. Cyprian, as if they had long been eager to find an opportunity for disowning their faith. The persecution was especially directed against the bishops and clergy. Among its victims were Fabian of Rome, Babylas of Antioch, and Alexander of Jerusalem; while in the lives of other eminent men (as Cyprian, Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Dionysius of Alexandria) the period is marked by exile or other sufferings. The chief object, however, was not to inflict death on the Christians, but to force them to recantation. With this view they were subjected to tortures, imprisonment, and want of food; and under such trials the constancy of many gave way. Many withdrew into voluntary banishment; among these was Paul, a young man of Alexandria, who took up his abode in the desert of the Thebaid, and is celebrated as the first Christian hermit. The violence of the persecution did not last above a year, for in the end of 251 Decius was killed in battle with the Goths, and the short reign of Gallus passed away without injury to the Christians, except that in some provinces they suffered from the outrages of the populace, who charged them with having caused a plague which for fifteen years afflicted the empire.

Valerian, the successor of Gallus, is described by Dionysius of Alexandria as having for a time been more favorable to the church than those among his predecessors who had been reputed Christians—words which are supposed to designate Alexander, and either Philip or Mammaea. But in his fifth year the emperor changed his policy, at the instigation of Macrianus, his chief adviser, who is said to have been connected with Egyptian magicians. At first it was thought that the gospel might be suppressed by removing the teachers of the church, and forbidding its members to hold assemblies for worship, or to resort to the cemeteries. Finding, however, that these measures had no decided effect, Valerian issued a second edict, by which it was ordered that the clergy should be put to death; that senators and knights should be deprived of their dignities and property, and, if they persisted in the faith, should be capitally punished; that women of rank should suffer confiscation of property and be sent into banishment. But even this edict did not enact any penalty against persons of inferior condition, so that the great mass of Christians would seem to have been unmolested by its operation. Valerian’s attempt to check the progress of the gospel was utterly ineffectual. The church had been purified and strengthened by her late calamities, so that there were now few instances of apostasy such as those which had been so common under Decius. The faith and patience of the martyrs animated their surviving brethren, and impressed many of the heathen; bishops, when driven from their flocks, were followed by multitudes of believers; and in the places of their exile they found opportunities for spreading the doctrine of Christ among people to whom it was before unknown.

Dionysius applies to Valerian the Apocalyptic descrip­tion of the beast to whom was given “a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies”, with “power to continue forty and two months. After having lasted three years and a half the persecution was ended by the capture and death of the emperor in Persia (AD 260)— a calamity and disgrace without example in the Roman annals. Among the martyrs under Valerian were Xystus, bishop of Rome, with his deacon, Laurence; and Cyprian, bishop of Carthage.

ORIGEN

Of the eminent men of this period, those who most especially claim our notice are Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria, and Cyprian.

Origen was born at Alexandria about the year 185, and from his childhood was carefully trained, both in literature and in religion, by his father, Leonides, who was a Christian, and by profession a teacher of rhetoric. He daily learnt by heart a portion of the Scriptures, and thus laid the foundation of his extraordinary biblical knowledge, and also of that reverence for the sacred writings which controlled him in all the wanderings of his speculations. The tendency of his mind was early shown by the questions which he put to his father as to the meaning of Scripture—endeavoring to discover a sense beyond that which lay on the surface. Leonides, although him­self no enemy to the deeper system of interpretation, discouraged such inquiries as unsuitable to his son’s years; but his heart was filled with joy and thankfulness on account of the rare gifts which appeared in the boy. While his father was yet alive, Origen studied at the cate­chetical school, under the mastership of Clement, and there formed a friendship with Alexander, afterwards bishop of Jerusalem, which had an important influence on his later career.

The persecution of Severus was especially violent at Alexandria, and Leonides was one of the victims. Origen was eager for martyrdom, and was saved only through the care of his mother, who, after having vainly endeavored to dissuade him from exposing himself to danger, compelled him to remain at home by hiding his clothes. Being thus prevented from sharing his father’s sufferings, the youth displayed his zeal by a fervent letter to Leonides while in prison, exhorting him not to be shaken in his constancy by a regard for those whom he was to leave behind him. As the death of Leonides was accompanied by the seizure of his property, the widow with her seven children fell into deep distress. Origen, who was the eldest of the seven, was compassionately received into the house of a wealthy Christian lady; but in this asylum he was annoyed by the presence of a gnostic teacher, Paul of Antioch, whom his benefactress had adopted and intended to make her heir. The eloquence of Paul was such as even to attract many of the orthodox to his teaching; but Origen, although he could not altogether avoid intercourse with him, steadily refused to attend any of his lectures.

The catechetical school had been broken up by the persecution. Clement, as we have seen, had left Alexandria—not out of any unworthy regard for his personal safety, but in compliance with his view of Christian duty. In these circumstances, Origen, whose extraordinary abilities and precocious learning were already noted, received applications from some educated heathens who wished to be instructed in Christian doctrine; and having thus, at the age of eighteen, found himself drawn into assuming the office of a public teacher, he was soon after formally appointed by the bishop, Demetrius, to the mastership of the catechetical school. Among his earliest pupils were two brothers, Heraclas, eventually bishop of Alexandria, and Plutarch. The persecution was renewed with increased violence on the arrival of a new governor, and Plutarch and others of Origen’s scholars were martyred. Their master stood by them to encourage them in their sufferings; nor did he himself escape without having been severely treated by the populace.

Wishing to be exempt from the necessity of taking any payment for his lessons, in obedience (as he supposed) to the text, “Freely ye have received, freely give”, Origen sold a valuable collection of manuscripts for an allowance of four oboli a-day, and on this scanty income he contrived to live. He endeavored to realize to the letter the gospel precepts of poverty. He had but one coat, which was too thin to protect him against the cold of winter; he walked barefoot; he contented himself with such food as was absolutely necessary, abstaining from flesh and wine; he spent the greater part of the night in study; and when he slept, it was on the bare floor. By these austerities were sown the seeds of ailments which afflicted him throughout his life.

Among those who resorted to his lectures were many young women. The intercourse with such pupils exposed him both to temptations and to the risk of slander; and from a wish to avoid these evils he acted literally on our Lord’s words, that some “have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”. Although he endeavored to conceal the act, it came to the knowledge of Demetrius; and the bishop, at the time, far from showing any disapproval of it, commended his zeal, and encouraged him to continue his labors in the catechetical school. His fame as a teacher increased. In addition to his theological instructions, he lectured in “grammar”—a term which then included most of the branches of general literature; his school was frequented by Jews, heathens, and gnostics, and many of these were led through the pursuit of secular learning to embrace the faith of the gospel. The requirements of his position induced him to seek after a fuller acquaintance with heathen philosophy than that which he had gained from Clement; and for this purpose he became a hearer of Ammonius Saccas. It has been inferred, from the circumstances which have been mentioned as to Origen’s conduct in early life, that he was then addicted to an extremely literal interpretation of the Scriptures—a system very opposite to that which he pursued in maturer years; and the supposed change has been ascribed to the influence of Ammonius. But the truth would rather appear to be, that both in his earlier and in his later phases he was animated by the same spirit. The actions which his judgment afterwards condemned as carnal were prompted by a desire to eman­cipate himself from the flesh; and that which he really derived from Ammonius was not a reversal of his former principles, but a development and enlargement of his views.

The peace which the Christians enjoyed during the reign of Caracalla induced Origen to visit Rome (AD 211), where the church was then under the government of Zephyrinus. After a short stay in the imperial city he returned to Alexandria, and resumed his catechetical office, devolving the instruction of the less advanced students on Heraclas, while he reserved his own labors for those who were to be led into the full depths of his system of interpretation. It appears to have been about this time that he entered on the study of Hebrew—a language then commonly neglected by the learned men of the Alexandrian school, but attractive to Origen, not only as being generally useful towards the understanding of the Old Testament, but especially on account of the mysteries involved in scriptural names.

A massacre which took place at Alexandria under Caracalla, (AD 215) although unconnected with any question of Religion, drove Origen for a time from the city. He visited the Holy Land, where he was received with honor by his old fellow-student, Alexander, bishop

of Jerusalem, and by Theoctistus, bishop of Cesarea; and, although a layman, he was desired by them to preach in their churches. On hearing of this, Demetrius of Alexandria remonstrated, but Theoctistus and Alexander justified themselves by precedents which showed that lay­men had been permitted to preach in the presence of bishops, and with their sanction. Demetrius, however, was offended; he summoned Origen to return to his duties in the catechetical school, and the deacons who conveyed the letter were charged to conduct him back.

THE HEXAPLA.

Among Origen’s chief friends and admirers was a man of fortune named Ambrose, who had been converted by him from some form of gnostic heresy, and afterwards became a deacon. Ambrose urged his teacher to engage in the illustration of Scripture, and supplied him with the funds necessary for forming a collection of manuscripts, and employing a large body of amanuenses and transcribers. Among the results of this munificence were the first regular commentaries on the sacred books (for the earlier expositions had been confined to particular texts or sections); and besides these, a work which entitles Origen to rank as the father of biblical criticism. The original object of this great undertaking was controversial,—to ascertain the true text of the Septuagint, and to vindicate that version against the Jews, who, since the adoption and general use of it by Christians, had made it their policy to disparage it as inferior to later translations. For this purpose Origen exhibited in parallel columns,— (1) the original Hebrew text; (2) the same in Greek letters; (3) the version by Aquila; (4) the version of Symmachus; (5) the Septuagint, edited from an elaborate collection of MSS.; and (6) the version of Theodotion. From its six columns the whole work was called Hexapla, and, from the addition of two imperfect versions in certain parts, it had also the name of Octapla. This gigantic labour appears to have been begun at Alexandria; it extended over eight-and-twenty years, and was completed only a short time before Origen’s death. The original manuscript, which was preserved at Caesarea, is supposed to have perished at the destruction of the Caesarean library by the Arabs, in the year 653. It had never been transcribed as a whole; but separate copies of the various columns had been made, and that of the Septuagint became a standard text of that version.

In consequence of the reputation which Origen had attained, applications for instruction and advice were made to him from distant quarters. Thus, before his first visit to Palestine, he had been invited by a person of authority in Arabia—most probably a Roman gover­nor, although some writers suppose him to have been the head of a native tribe—to teach his people the Christian faith, and had complied with the invitation. At a later time Mammaea, the mother of Alexander Severus, summoned him to Antioch, and conferred with him on religious subjects. In like manner he was requested, in the year 228, to visit Greece, for the confutation of some heresies which were disturbing the church of that coun­try. He set out, bearing with him letters of commenda­tion from his bishop, according to the practice of the time, and took his way through Palestine, where, at the age of forty-three, he was ordained presbyter by his friends Theoctistus and Alexander. In explanation of this it has been supposed that the bishops wished him to address their flocks, as on his former visit; that Origen reminded them of the objections then made by Deme­trius that, by way of guarding against further complaints, they offered to ordain him; and that he accepted the offer, in the belief that Demetrius, although determined not to raise him to the presbyterate like his predecessors Pantaenus and Clement, would allow him to rank among the Alexandrian presbyters, if the order were conferred on him elsewhere by bishops of eminent station and character. After having successfully accomplished his business in Greece, Origen returned to Alexandria in 230; but in the meantime his ordination had given rise to much dispute. Demetrius, on being informed of it, vehemently expostulated with Alexander and Theoctistus, apprising them of the rash act of Origen’s youthful zeal, which, by one of the canons which claim the title of Apostolical, is pronounced a bar to ordination. This information was new to the bishops; for Origen had said nothing of the impediment. If the canon existed at so early a time, it is yet possible that he may have been unacquainted with it; or he may have reasonably supposed himself to be exempt from its operation, since the object of it unquestionably was to check the fanatical spirit which prompted such acts, whereas he had long passed through the stage at which he had anything in common with that spirit. But, although the proceedings of Demetrius have been attributed by St. Jerome to envy of Origen’s genius and fame, and although his con­duct was certainly marked by an unjustifiable violence and harshness, it is not impossible that he may have acted from sincerely conscientious motives. He had been glad to retain Origen’s services as a teacher, but refused to acknowledge him as a presbyter.

In addition to the irregularity of his ordination, Origen had given offence by some of his speculations. Finding his position at Alexandria uneasy, he withdrew to Caesarea, and after his departure Demetrius assembled two synods, by which Origen was deprived of his office in the catechetical school, his orders were annulled, and he was excommunicated as a heretic (AD 231). The result of these synods was made generally known to the bishops of other countries. By the rules of catholic communion, the decisions of one church in such matters were usually received by the rest, without inquiry into the merits of the case: and thus the sentence against Origen was ratified at Rome and elsewhere, while it was disregarded in those countries which had especially felt his personal influence,—in Palestine, Phoenicia, Arabia, and Achaia. Demetrius died soon after, and was succeeded in the see by Heraclas : but it is remarkable that no attempt was made by the new bishop to rescind the condemnation of his former teacher and colleague.

At Caesarea, under the patronage of Theoctistus and Alexander, Origen found not only a refuge, but the opportunity for active and conspicuous labor. As there was no institution like the Alexandrian school, he took the position of an independent philosophical teacher, and his instructions were sought, not only by Christians, but by many heathens. Among these the most celebrated were two brothers, natives of Pontus, named Theodore and Athenodore, who, having been led to visit Palestine by family circumstances, became hearers of Origen in philosophy and literature, and were gradually guided by him to the Christian faith. Both eventually became bishops. It is said that Theodore, who at his baptism had taken the name of Gregory, at entering on his diocese of Neocaesarea, in Pontus, found in it only seventeen Christians, and that at his death he left in it only seventeen heathens—a statement which may be taken as expressing in an exaggerated form a really signal course of successful labor. He afterwards became the subject of many marvelous tales, from which he received the name of Thaumaturgus, or miracle-worker.

After a residence of five or six years at Caesarea, Origen was compelled by the persecution of Maximin (AD 236-238) to take refuge at the Cappadocian city of the same name, under the protection of the bishop, Firmilian, who had been one of his pupils; and when the persecution reached Cappadocia, he was shel­tered in the house of Juliana, a wealthy Christian virgin, where he discovered an important addition to his mate­rials for the Hexapla—his protectress having inherited the library of Symmachus, an Ebionite translator of the Old Testament. On the death of Maximin he returned to Caesarea in Palestine. It was probably after this that he was invited to be present at a synod held in Arabia on account of Beryllus, bishop of Bostra, who, although seemingly unconnected with the schools of Praxeas and Noetus, had arrived at a doctrine similar to theirs—that in the unity of the Godhead there is no distinction of Persons; that the Son had no personality before his incarnation. The synod condemned the doctrine, but could not convince Beryllus; Origen, however, succeeded in proving to him the unsoundness of his view, and received the thanks of both parties. On another occasion he was summoned to combat the opinion of an Arabian sect, which held that the soul as well as the body is dissolved at death, and will be restored to being at the resurrection.

In the persecution under Decius, Origen lost his steadfast friend Alexander of Jerusalem. He was himself imprisoned and cruelly tortured; and the effect of this treatment on a frame worn out by age, study, and sickness, hastened his death, which took place at Tyre about the year 255.

The great object of this eminent teacher was to harmonize Christianity with philosophy. He sought to combine in a Christian scheme the fragmentary truths scattered throughout other systems; to establish the gospel in a form which should not present obstacles to the conversion of Jews, of Gnostics, and of cultivated heathens; and his errors arose from a too eager pursuit of this idea.

ORIGEN’S PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETING THE SCRIPTURE

Origen’s principles of interpreting Scripture have been already mentioned by anticipation. It was from him that the Alexandrian method received its completion. He distinguished in Scripture a threefold sense—the literal, the moral, and the mystical—answering respectively to the body, soul, and spirit in man. As at the marriage of Cana some waterpots contained two firkins and some three, so (he taught) Scripture in “every jot and tittle” has the moral and the mystical senses, and in most parts it has the literal sense also. The Holy Spirit, it was said, made use of the literal history where it was suitable for conveying the mystical sense; where this was not the case, He invented the story with a view to that purpose; and in the Law, while He laid down some things to be literally observed, other precepts were in their letter impossible or absurd. By this principle much of the letter of Scripture was rejected; but such passages, both in the Old and in the New Testament, were, according to Origen, set by the Holy Spirit as stumbling-blocks in the way, that the discerning reader, by seeing the insufficiency of the letter, might be incited to seek after the understanding of the spiritual meaning. Such portions of Scripture were not the less Divine for their “mean and despicable” form; it was the fault of human weakness if men would not penetrate through this veil to the treasure which was hidden below. As, therefore, Origen denounced the gnostic impiety of supposing the various parts of the Bible to have come from different sources, so he held it no less necessary to guard against the error of many Christians, who while they acknowledged the same God in the Old and in the New Testament, yet ascribed to Him actions unworthy of the most cruel and unjust of men. It was (he said) through a carnal understanding of the letter that the Jews were led to crucify our Lord, and still to continue in their unbelief. Those who would insist on the letter were like the Philistines who filled up with earth the wells which Abraham’s servants had digged; the mystical interpreter was, like Isaac, to open the wells. In justice to Origen, we must remember that the literal system of interpretation, as understood in his day, was something very different from the grammatical and historical exposition of modern times. It made no attempt to overcome difficulties or to harmonize seeming discrepancies; and when applied to the explanation of prophecy, it embarrassed the advocates of orthodox Christianity and gave great advantages to their opponents. To get rid of it was, therefore, desirable with a view to the controversies with the Jews and Montanists.

Whereas (it was said) the heathen philosophers addressed themselves exclusively to the more educated, Holy Scripture condescends to persons of every kind, according to their capacities; its narrative was “most wisely ordained”, with a view both to the mass of simpler believers, and to the comparatively small number who should be desirous or able to inquire more deeply with understanding. The letter, therefore, was allowed to be sufficient for the unlearned; but, although in this opinion Origen resembled some of the Gnostic teachers, he was utterly opposed to their contempt for the less instructed brethren, and to their representation of whole classes of men as hopelessly shut out from the higher grades of understanding. Every one, he held, was bound to advance according to his means and opportunities. The literal sense might be understood by any attentive reader; the moral required higher intelligence; the mystical was to be apprehended only through the grace of the Holy Spirit, which was to be obtained by prayer; nor did Origen himself pretend to possess this grace in such a degree as would entitle him to claim any authority for his comments. Whereas Clement had spoken with fear of divulging his mystical interpretations, and had given them as traditional, Origen’s are offered merely as the offspring of his own mind, and his only fear is lest they should be wrong. Of the mystical sense, he held that there were two kinds—the allegorical, where the Old Testament prefigured the history of Christ and his church; and the anagogical, where the narrative typified the things of a higher world. For, as St. Paul speaks of a “Jerusalem which is above”, Origen held the existence of a spiritual world in which everything of this earth has its antitype. And thus passages of Scripture, which in their letter he supposed to be fictitious, were to be regarded as shadowing forth realities of the higher world which earthly things could not sufficiently typify.

These principles of exposition were not laid down without cautions and safeguards as to their application; and in Origen himself they were controlled by a faithful, devout, and dutiful spirit. But it is evident that they tend to no less an evil than the subversion of all belief in the historical truth of Scripture.

There is a difficulty in ascertaining Origen’s opinions on many points—not only from the obscurity of the subjects which he treats, but also because his remaining writings are in great part preserved only in translations which are known to be unfaithful. Even in his own lifetime he had to complain of falsifications by heretics, and of misrepresentation by indiscreet admirers, while he was conscious that prejudiced readers might be likely to misapprehend him as heretical. His soundness as to the highest of Christian doctrines had been much questioned; indeed, the Arians claimed him as a fore­runner of their heresy. But St. Athanasius spoke of him with respect, explained his language, and vindicated him from misconstruction. Bishop Bull, too, defends his orthodoxy; but even after the somewhat large postulate that he may be judged only by his treatise against Celsus —as being the most matured offspring of his mind, and the only one of his works which is not probably corrupted— our great theologian finds much exercise for his learning and ingenuity in drawing forth a catholic sense from passages of questionable appearance.

To Origen is due the invention of a term which, as happily expressing the traditional belief, has been adopted into the language of the church—the “eternal generation” of God the Son. He illustrated the mode of this by a comparison with the emission of brightness from light. It was not, he said, a thing which had taken place once for all, but is ever continued in the “everlasting now” of the Divine existence.

His doctrines as to the creation were very singular. Rejecting the gnostic view, which supposed matter independent of God, he maintained that, as God is omnipotent and Lord, he must always have had something over which to exercise his power and dominion; and consequently that the work of creation from nothing must have been eternal. The object of this theory was to reconcile the Mosaic narrative with the Platonic notion that the world had eternally emanated from God. There had (he taught) been multitudes of worlds before the present, and there would yet be multitudes after its end —the nearness of which he supposed to be indicated by the fact of our Lord’s having already appeared in the flesh. The number of souls originally created was final; there had been no additions to it, but the same souls continually reappeared in an endless variety of forms. All were at first perfect, and were endued with freedom of will. By abuse of this they contracted a guilt which required purgation; hence the worlds were created that the beings who had sinned might be awakened to a sense of their estrangement from God and to a craving after blessedness—that they might be purified through conflict for restoration to their first estate. The disobedient souls were treated according to the measure of their offence. Those which had least sinned became angels, living in the planets, and occupied in works of ministry for men; the worst of all became devils; while, for such as were confined in bodies of flesh, the whole complication of their being and circumstances was arranged in proportion as they had sinned more or less grievously. Some, however, were plunged deeper than the degree of their guilt had deserved, in order that they might help in the instruction and deliver­ance of their fellows; and thus Origen supposes that the death of a righteous man may have a redeeming effect for others. He divided mankind into carnal, psychical, and spiritual, but instead of supposing, like the Gnostics, that each man was immovably fixed in a particular class, he maintained that all were originally alike, that the differences between them arose from the exercise of their free will, and that none were unchangeably good or bad. He allowed Adam to be a historical person— the first of the sinful spirits who was embodied in flesh; but, like Philo, he regarded the history of the fall as an allegory. One soul only there was which had not sinned. This, by continual contemplation of the Divine Logos, had adhered to him or been absorbed in him; and thus it had made the way for that union of Godhead with a material body which but for such a medium would have been impossible. As the gospel was adapted to men of every kind, so Origen, in accordance (as he professed) with tradition, supposed that our Lord’s appearance while on earth varied according to the characters of those who beheld him.

Origen’s views as to the mediatorial work of the Savior are difficult to understand, and no less so to reconcile with orthodox belief. He considers the death on the cross as representing something which is spiritually repeated in the higher world, and which has its effect towards the deliverance of the angels. He allows that, in order to become or to remain good, grace is necessary as well as free-will; but he appears to have erred in allowing too much to the ordinary powers with which he supposed our nature to be endowed.

All punishment, he holds, is merely corrective and remedial, being ordained in order that all creatures may be restored to their original perfection. At the resurrection all mankind will have to pass through a fire : the purged spirits will enter into paradise, a place of training for the consummation; the wicked will remain in the fire, which, however, is not described as material, but as a mental and spiritual misery. The matter and food of it, he says, are our sins, which, when swollen to the height, are inflamed to become our punishment; and the “outer darkness” is the darkness of ignorance. But the condition of these spirits is not without hope, although thousands of years may elapse before their suffering shall have wrought its due effect on them. On the other hand, those who are admitted into paradise may abuse their free-will, as in the beginning, and may consequently be doomed to a renewal of their sojourn in the flesh. Every reasonable creature— even Satan himself— may be turned from evil to good, so as not to be excluded from salvation. At the final consummation the soul will dwell in a glorified organ, of which the germ is in the present body. Its pleasures will be purely spiritual; the saints will understand all the mysteries of the Divine providence and of the ordinances given by God to Israel. Love, which “never faileth”, will preserve the whole creation from the possibility of any further fall; and “God will be all in all”.

The reputation of Origen has had vehement assailants and no less zealous defenders. Certain propositions ascribed to him were condemned, and an anathema was attached to his name, by a synod held at Constantinople in the sixth century; and it may perhaps be thought that the mischief of any particular errors in doctrine is far exceeded by that of the perverse method of interpreting Scripture which owed to him its completeness and much of its popularity. But, with whatever abatements on the ground of his errors—however strong may be our sense of the evil which his system produced, or was fitted to produce, in the hands of others—we must think of Origen himself as a man who not only devoted all the energies of his mind during a long life to what he conceived to be the truth, but believed his views of truth to be consistent with the traditional faith of the church. His peculiar opinions arose (as has been already said) from a wish to overcome the supposed incompatibility of philosophy with the gospel; he desired in all things to hold fast the foundation of essential Christian doctrine; he proposed his own speculations with modesty, and claimed for them no higher character than that of probable conjectures.

His piety is as unquestioned as the greatness of his genius and the depth of his learning; he suffered much for the gospel, and may, indeed, almost be reckoned as a martyr. While he lived he was the chief opponent of heresy in all its varieties; the multitude of converts whom he brought over to the church from heathenism, Judaism, and corrupted forms of Christianity, is a noble testimony to his earnestness and love no less than to his controversial ability. We may, therefore, well say with the candid Tillemont, that, although such a man might hold heretical opinions, he could not be a heretic, since he was utterly free from that spirit which constitutes the guilt of heresy.

DIONISYUS OF ALEXANDRIA

Among the most distinguished of Origen’s pupils was Dionysius, who succeeded Heraclas, first in the catechetical school (a.d. 232), and afterwards in the see of Alexandria (AD 248). This eminent man, after having been brought up as a heathen, was led to embrace Christianity by a perusal of St. Paul’s epistles. As he continued after his ordination to read the works of heathens and heretics, a presbyter remonstrated with him on the dangerous nature of such studies, and Dionysius was impressed by the remonstrance; but he was reassured by a vision or dream, in which he heard a voice saying to him, “Read whatsoever may fall into thy hands; for thou art able to read with discernment, and to reject what is worthless, since even thus it was that thou wert first brought to the faith”.

Dionysius was not more admirable for his learning than for his wisdom and moderation. His name will repeatedly come before us in connection with the affairs of the church; but two controversies in which he took part may be here particularly mentioned.

(1.) About the year 257, the Libyan Pentapolis, the native country of Sabellius, was greatly disturbed by his heresy, and the matter came under the official notice of the Egyptian primate. Dionysius combated the Sabellian errors both in conference and by writing; but unhappily he used some expressions which gave a pretext for charging him with opinions resembling those afterwards broached by Arius, as if he had denied the eternal Sonship. His language was reported to the bishop of Rome as heretical—not that any jurisdiction over Alexandria was supposed to belong to Rome, but because the matter was one of common concern; because, in proportion to the eminence of a bishop’s see, it was his duty to investigate and to act in such cases; and because the first of bishops was the person to whom complaints against the second were most naturally carried. On this the bishop of Rome, who was also named Dionysius, held a council, and requested an explanation; and Dionysius of Alexandria, disregarding for the sake of peace and unity all that might have excited his jealousy in such an interference, replied by a satisfactory vindication of his orthodoxy.

 (2.) The doctrine of Chiliasm or Millennarianism is styled in the first Articles of the reformed English church “a Jewish dotage”; but, although no doubt derived from Judaism, it must not be considered as indicative of a Jewish tendency. There was, indeed, in common with Judaism, the belief that the Messiah would reign personally on earth, that his kingdom would have Jerusalem for its seat, and that it would last a thousand years; but (besides other important differences,—as that the Jewish millennium was expected to follow immediately on the Messiah’s first appearance, whereas the Christians looked to his second coming) the Christian chiliasm showed no favor to the fleshly Israel, nor even to its holy city; for the new Jerusalem was to come down from heaven, and to take the place of the earthly, which was to perish.

The chiliastic opinions were very early professed. Among their advocates is said to have been Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, who is commonly described as a hearer of the apostle St. John; and by the end of the second century they appear to have become general in the church, recommended as they were by their offering a ground of opposition to pagan Rome, and affording a near consolation to the faithful in persecutions and trials. The doctrine was embraced by the Montanists with great ardor; but the very circumstance that it became a characteristic of this enthusiastic sect tended to bring it into discredit with the orthodox, and other causes contributed to its decline. The idealizing and spiritualizing tendencies of the Alexandrian school, which came into vigor about the same time, were strongly opposed to the literalism on which the chiliastic opinions rested; and, moreover, the doctrine was found a hindrance to the conversion of Greeks and Romans, as being offensive to their national feelings. For such reasons it had for many years been sinking until the persecution of Decius may have tended to revive its popularity among those who felt the approach of suffering for the faith.

Nepos, an Egyptian bishop, had written a chiliastic book entitled a Refutation of the Allegorists and about the year 255—Nepos himself being then dead— it was reported that his opinions had found many converts in the district of Arsinoe. Dionysius, on hearing of the matter, behaved with his characteristic prudence; he went to the spot, requested a conference with the millennarian party, and spent three days in discussing with them the book of Nepos, of whom he was careful to speak with great respect and affection. The result was, that, whereas a less considerate course of dealing with them might have driven the followers of Nepos into schism, Dionysius succeeded in convincing them, and was warmly thanked by their leader, Coracion; and from this time chiliasm, although it still had adherents, and in the next century found a champion in Apollinarius of Laodicea, was little heard of in the eastern church.

CYPRIAN, A.D. 200-251. BISHOP OF CARTHAGE

As the name of Origen is famous in the history of doctrine, that of his contemporary Cyprian is no less so in connection with the government and discipline of the church.

Thascius Cyprianus was born at Carthage or in its neighbourhood about the year 2oo, and, after having been distinguished as a teacher of rhetoric, he embraced Christianity in mature age. His earlier life had not been free from the usual impurities of heathen morals, although perhaps the abhorrence with which he spoke of it, when viewing it by the light of the gospel, may give an exaggerated idea of the degree in which he had been stained by them. On his conversion, and probably while yet a catechumen, he displayed his zeal by selling a villa and gardens which he possessed near Carthage, and devoting the price, with a large portion of his other property, to the relief of the poor. His deacon and biographer, Pontius, however, tells us that these gardens were afterwards restored to Cyprian “by the indulgence of God”,—most probably through the instrumentality of friends who combined to repurchase them and present them to him. At his baptism, Cyprian added to his old name, Thascius, that of Caecilius, in remembrance of a presbyter who had influenced his conversion. He was rapidly promoted to the offices of deacon and presbyter; and on a vacancy in the see of Carthage, within three years after his conversion, he was elected bishop by the general desire of the people—his signal merit being regarded as a warrant for dispensing with the apostolical warning against the promotion of recent con­verts, as well as for overruling his own unwillingness to undertake the responsibility of such a charge. Five presbyters, however, were opposed to his election; and, notwithstanding his attempts to conciliate them, they continued to regard him with an implacable feeling of enmity.

Cyprian entered on his episcopate with an earnest resolution to correct the abuses and disorders which he found prevailing among his flock, but after two years his labors for this purpose were interrupted by the persecution under Decius. At Carthage, as elsewhere in that persecution, the bishop was especially aimed at; the heathen populace clamored that he should be thrown to the lions; and Cyprian—not from fear, but in consequence (as he states) of a heavenly warning, and from a conviction that such a course was most for the benefit of his church—withdrew to a retreat at no great distance, where he remained about fourteen months. His property was confiscated on his disappearance.

The unworthy behavior of Christians in this persecution has been already mentioned. Besides those who actually sacrificed to the heathen gods, multitudes, by a payment to the magistrates, obtained certificates of having obeyed the emperor’s commands; and many of these, who were called libellatics, persuaded themselves, by an ignorant sort of casuistry, that they had done nothing wrong. The troubles of the Carthaginian church were increased by a practice which originated in the high regard entertained for martyrs and confessors. From a natural feeling of respect for those who shed their blood for the faith, martyrs had been allowed, perhaps as early as the middle of the second century, to recommend for favorable consideration the cases of persons who were under ecclesiastical censure. This was originally the extent of their privilege, and it had been customary that the deacons should visit the martyrs in prison, for the purpose of suggesting caution in the distribution of their favors. But abuses had grown up in the course of years, and some daring novelties of this kind were now introduced at Carthage. One Lucian, inflated by the reputation which he had gained as a confessor, professed that a martyr named Paul had, in right of his martyrdom, bequeathed to him the power of granting readmission to the communion of the church. Tickets were made out in such a form as to be available, not only for the person named in them, but for an indefinite number of others; indulgences of this kind were distributed without limit, and even became a matter of traffic. The holders noisily insisted on immediate restoration to full communion; some bishops yielded to their importunity; and Lucian, in the name of all the confessors, wrote an insolent letter to Cyprian, announcing that they had granted recon­ciliation to all the lapsed, and desiring the bishop to convey the information to his episcopal brethren.

Cyprian from his retreat kept up a constant communication with his church, and endeavored to check these disorders, while at the same time he showed an anxious desire to avoid interference with such privileges as might reasonably be supposed to belong to martyrs and confessors. He allowed that those among the lapsed who had received letters from the sufferers for the faith might be admitted to reconciliation, if in danger of death; but he directed that the rest should be reserved for an examination of their cases after his return to Carthage, and that in the meantime they should be exhorted to patience.

A short time after Easter 251, the bishop returned to his city, and held a council for the consideration of the questions as to the lapsed. It was agreed that such libellatics as had manifested repentance for their weakness should be forthwith admitted to communion, and that those who had sacrificed should be allowed to hope for admission after a longer period of penance. The latter class received a further indulgence in the following year, when, in the prospect of a renewed persecution, a synod under Cyprian resolved to grant immediate reconciliation to all who had shown themselves duly penitent.

Fresh commotions were excited at Carthage by a presbyter named Novatus. It is uncertain whether this man was one of the five presbyters who had objected to Cyprian’s promotion; but he had become noted for his insubordination and irregularities. Cyprian tells us that he had robbed widows and orphans, and had embezzled the funds of the church; that he had kicked his wife while pregnant, so as to cause the death of the child; that he had allowed his father to starve in the street, and had refused even to bury him; and that for these and other offences he was about to be brought to trial, when the outbreak of persecution under Decius put a stop to the proceedings. Novatus entered into a connection with Felicissimus, a man of wealth, but of indifferent character, and, either by usurping the episcopal power of ordination, or (as is more likely) by procuring the ministration of some bishop, advanced him to the order of deacon. These two, with others of the clergy, engaged in a course of strong opposition to Cyprian; they incited the lapsed against him; they disputed with his commissioners as to the distribution of the church funds and at length, about a year after the bishop’s return, Felicissimus proceeded to set up one of the malcontent presbyters, Fortunatus, as a rival in the see of Carthage— the consecration being performed by five bishops, who had all been deprived for heresy or lapse. Novatus, the founder of the schism, had in the meantime crossed the Mediterranean to Rome.

NOVATIAN.

Fabian, bishop of Rome, was martyred in January, 250, and the see remained vacant until June in the following year, when Cornelius was elected. During this interval some letters were exchanged between Cyprian and the Roman clergy, who had been led by reports to think unfavorably of his withdrawal from his city, but afterwards came to understand him better, and agreed with him as to the course which should be pursued towards the lapsed. Among these clergy Novatian was eminent for eloquence and learning. He had received a philosophical education, although it is perhaps a mistake to infer from some of Cyprian’s expressions that he was ever professedly a stoic. His temper was morose and gloomy; he had at one time been vexed by a devil—for so the early Christians accounted for appearances which were probably like those of diseased melancholy. After this he had received clinical baptism, and on his recovery had neglected to seek the completion of the baptismal gift by imposition of the bishop’s hands; yet, notwithstanding these irregularities, Fabian, from a wish to secure for the church the services of so able a man, had admitted him to the priesthood—having with difficulty overcome the reluctance which was shown by all the clergy and by a large portion of the laity; for both clergy and people had then a voice in the selection of persons to be ordained. In the time of the persecution, when urged to take a share in ministering to his suffering brethren, Novatian is said to have answered that he “had no mind to be any longer a presbyter, and was attached to a different philosophy —words which seem to indicate that he preferred a recluse ascetic life to the active labors of his office.

During the vacancy of the see Novatian had great influence at Rome. Cyprian states that he was the writer of a letter in which the Roman clergy allowed that the lapsed might be reconciled to the church, if in danger of death; but after the election of Cornelius he became the leader of a schismatical party on principles incompatible with any such concession. He held that, although the penitent lapsed might be admitted to the Divine mercy, and therefore ought to be exhorted to repentance, yet the church had no power to grant them absolution, and must forever exclude them from communion; that a church which communicated with such offenders forfeited its Christian character and privileges. Novatian had before protested that he did not desire the bishopric of Rome, and we need not suppose his protest insincere, as his severe and unsocial temperament inclined him to a life of seclusion. When, however, the schism was formed, he allowed himself to be set up as its head, and was consecrated by three bishops of obscure sees, who had been drawn to Rome under false pretences, and laid their hands on him in the evening, after a meal. The moving spirit in these proceedings was the Carthaginian Novatus. Possibly he may have disagreed with his old ally Felicissimus as to the treatment of the lapsed; or he may have taken the part of laxity at Carthage, and that of severity at Rome, from no better motive than a wish by either means to oppose the authority of the regular bishops.

Novatian sent notice of his consecration to the great churches of Alexandria, Antioch, and Carthage. Fabius of Antioch was inclined to acknowledge him, but died soon after, without having taken any decided measures. The letter to Dionysius of Alexandria appears to have been apologetic, representing that Novatian had been forced into the course which he had taken; to which Dionysius replied that, if it were so, he ought to show his sincerity by withdrawing from his rivalry to Cornelius, and endeavoring to heal the breach in the Roman church. At Carthage the schismatical envoys were repelled by a council which was sitting at the time of their arrival. One Maximus was afterwards set up as Novatianist bishop of Carthage, and intruders of the same kind were planted in other African dioceses.

A large number of the Roman confessors had at first been engaged in the schism. These soon discovered their error; they formally acknowledged Cornelius as bishop, and returned to the unity of the church, while Novatian endeavored to secure the allegiance of his followers by requiring them, at the reception of the Eucharist, to swear that they would never forsake him or join Cornelius.

Novatianism found many proselytes in the west, and its principles became even more rigid than at first. The sentence of lifelong exclusion from communion, which had originally been applied to those only who had denied the faith, was afterwards extended to all who, after baptism, committed the greater sins. The Novatianists assumed the name of Cathari, or Puritans. They rebaptized proselytes from the church, considering its communion to be impure, and its ministrations to be consequently void. Some of them condemned digamy (or second marriage) as equally sinful with adultery. As to the chief doctrines of the gospel, however, the Novatianists were and continued steadily orthodox, and many of them suffered, even to death, for the faith. The council of Nicaea (AD 325) attempted to herald the schism by conciliatory measures; but the Novatianists still regarded the laxity of the church’s discipline as a bar to a reunion with it, although they were drawn into more friendly relations with the catholics by a community of danger during the ascendency of Arianism. The sect long continued to exist. In Phrygia, it combined with the remnant of the Montanists; and at Alexandria, a patriarch found occasion to write against it so late as the end of the sixth century.

The opposite movement at Carthage was altogether a failure. It was in vain that Felicissimus endeavored to get his bishop acknowledged at Rome. Most of the lapsed, who had adhered to him in the hope of gaining easy readmission in a body to the church, were shocked at the establishment of a formal schism, and sued for reconciliation on Cyprian’s terms; after which we hear nothing further of Felicissimus.

AD 252-253. PLAGUE AT CARTHAGE

The great plague which has been already mentioned drew forth a signal display of Cyprian’s charity and practical energy, and of those fruits of Christian zeal and love, which, wherever they appeared, were found perhaps the most effective popular evidence in behalf of the faith which prompted them. While the heathen population of Carthage left their sick untended, and cast out the bodies of the dead into the streets—while all seemed to be hardened in selfishness, and wretches even invaded the houses of the dying for the purpose of plunder—and while the multitude reviled the Christians as having drawn down the visitation by their impiety towards the gods— Cyprian called his flock together, exhorted them by precepts and examples from Scripture, and appointed to each his special work. The rich gave their money and the poor gave their labor towards the common object; the dead bodies which tainted the air were buried; and the sick, whether Christian or pagan, were nursed at the expense and by the care of the Christians.

A fresh controversy soon arose to engage the attention of Cyprian. Cornelius died or was martyred in September, 252; and, after the Roman see had been held for less than eight months by Lucius, Stephen was chosen to fill it. Stephen, a man of violent and arrogant character, speedily embroiled himself with some Asiatic bishops on a question as to the manner of admitting converts from heresy and schism into the church. The question was one which had not practically occurred in the apostolic age and, having been consequently left open by Scripture, it had been variously determined by different churches. At Rome, proselytes were admitted by imposition of hands; in Asia, rebaptism had been practiced; and for each method apostolical authority was pretended —in other words, each could plead immemorial local usage. Synods held at Iconium and at Synnada, apparently in the reign of Alexander Severus, had established the rule of rebaptism throughout most churches of Asia Minor. In Africa the same practice had been sanctioned by a synod held under Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage, early in the third century; but—chiefly perhaps because conversions from sectarianism were rare—it seems to have fallen into disuse in the interval between Agrippinus and Cyprian.

CYPRIAN AND STEPHEN.

The origin of the disagreement between Stephen and the Asiatics is unknown, but it may possibly have been that some orientals, residing at Rome, wished to introduce there the practice of their native churches. Neither is it exactly known what Stephen’s own opinion was; whether his words—that converts “from whatsoever heresy” should be received by imposition of hands— are to be understood absolutely, or whether (as seems more probable) they ought to be interpreted with limitations agreeable to the church’s later judgment. It seems, however, to be certain that he was engaged in controversy with the Asiatics before the difference with Cyprian arose. He wrote to them on the subject of their practice, and they refused to abandon it.

Cyprian was drawn into the controversy by a question of some Numidian and Mauritanian bishops, who had probably been led to suspect the propriety of rebaptism by seeing that the Novatianists used it in the case of proselytes from the church. He replied that converts must be baptized, unless they had received the regular baptism of the church before falling into heresy or schism, in which case imposition of hands would suffice. He argued that there could be only one church, one faith, one baptism; that, as at baptism itself there is required a profession of belief in life everlasting, and the forgiveness of sins through the holy church, there can be no forgiveness unless within the church; that the water cannot be sanctified unto cleansing by one who is himself unclean; and—since the claim of prescription could not be advanced for this view in Africa, as it was in the east—he maintained that reason ought to prevail over custom. The principle of rebaptism was affirmed by three Carthaginian councils, the last of which was held in September, 256; but, although they disclaimed all intention of laying down a rule for other churches, Stephen took violent offence at their proceedings; he refused to see the envoys who had been sent to him after the second council, charged his flock to withhold all hospitality from them, denounced Cyprian in outrageous language, as a “false Christ, false apostle, and deceitful worker”, and broke off communion with the Africans, as he had before done with the Asiatics. Such a proceeding, however, on the part of a bishop of Rome in the third century, did not, like the excommunications of popes in later times, imply a claim of authority to separate from the body of Christ, or to deprive of the means of grace; it was merely an exercise of the power which every bishop had to suspend religious intercourse with communities or persons whom he supposed to be in error.

Finding himself thus cut off from communion with the great church of the west, Cyprian resolved to open a correspondence with the Asiatics who were in the same conditions. He therefore sent a letter with a report of his proceedings to Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea, in Cappadocia (who has already been mentioned as a friend of Origen). Firmilian in his answer deals very freely with Stephen’s character and conduct—so much so, that the first editors to whom the epistle became known suppressed it on account of its bearing against the later pretensions of Rome, and that other Romanists have since justified the suppression, and have regretted that, through the imprudent candor of less politic editors, such a document had been allowed to see the lights.

The sequel is not distinctly recorded. The death of Stephen, early in the year 257, contributed towards a peaceful settlement of the dispute. Dionysius of Alexandria, whose own opinions probably inclined to the Roman view, exerted himself as a mediator by writing both to Stephen and to his successor, Xystus or Sixtus; and from the terms in which Cyprian’s contemporary biographer speaks of Xystus, as a “good and peace­making priest”, it is inferred that the controversy was laid to rest for the time by an understanding that every church should be left to its own judgment. The question of rebaptism was afterwards decided against Cyprian’s views, and also against the extreme opinion on the opposite side, by the eighth canon of the council of Arles, which ordered that, if the schismatical baptism had been administered in the name of the Trinity, converts should be admitted to the church by imposition of hands.

When the persecution under Valerian reached Africa, (AD 257) Cyprian was carried before the proconsul, Paternus. In answer to interrogations, he avowed himself a Christian and a bishop; he added that Christians served only one God, and that they prayed daily for themselves, for all mankind, and for the safety of the emperors. On being questioned as to the names of his clergy, he said that the laws of the state condemned informers; that ecclesiastical discipline forbade the clergy to offer themselves for punishment; but that, if sought for, they might be found in their places. As he steadfastly refused to sacrifice, he was banished to Curubis, a town about forty miles from Carthage, which his deacon Pontius, who accompanied him, describes as a pleasant abode. On the night after his arrival there, a vision announced to him that he was to be put to death next day; the event, however, proved that the delay of a day was to be interpreted as signify­ing a year. The bishop’s residence at Curubis was cheered by frequent visits from his friends. By the means which were at his disposal, he was enabled to send relief to many of his brethren who had been carried away to labor in the mines of Mauritania and Numidia, and were treated with great barbarity; and with these and other confessors he exchanged letters of sympathy and encouragement.

On the arrival of a new proconsul, Galerius, Cyprian was recalled from banishment, and was ordered to remain at his gardens near Carthage. Valerian’s second and more severe edict had now been issued, and the bishop was resolved to endure for his faith the worst that man could inflict on him. Fearing, however, during a temporary absence of the proconsul at Utica, lest he should be carried to that city, instead of being sacrificed in the sight of his own people, he concealed himself for a time; but, on the return of Galerius to Carthage, he reappeared at his gardens, and withstood all the entreaties of his friends, who urged him to save himself by flight. On the 13th of September 258, he was carried to a place where the proconsul was staying for the recovery of his health, about four miles from Carthage. Here the bishop was treated with great respect, and was allowed to enjoy the society of his friends at supper, while the streets around the proconsular house, in which he was lodged, were thronged by Christians anxious for their pastor’s safety. These had flocked from the capital on the news of his arrest; many of them spent the night in the open air, and a vast multitude crowded the place of judgment when on the following day—the anniversary of the death of Cornelius of Rome —Cyprian was led forth for trial. As he arrived, heated with the walk from the proconsul’s house, a soldier of the guard, who had formerly been a Christian, offered him some change of dress; but he declined the offer, saying that it was useless to remedy evils which would probably forthwith come to an end. On being required by the proconsul, in the name of the emperors, to offer sacrifice, Cyprian answered by a refusal. The magistrate desired him to consider his safety. “Do as thou art commanded”, was the reply; “in so righteous a cause, there is no room for consideration”. It was with reluctance and difficulty that Galerius, after a short consultation with his advisers, pronounced the inevitable sentence,—that Thascius Cyprian, as having long been a ringleader in impiety against the gods of Rome, and having resisted the attempts made by the emperors to reclaim him, should be beheaded with the sword, in punishment of his offences, and as a warning to his followers. The bishop received his doom with an expression of thankfulness to God; and a cry arose from the Christians who were present, “Let us go and be beheaded with him!”. Cyprian was without delay conducted to the scene of execution—a level space surrounded by thick trees, the branches of which were soon filled by members of his flock, who eagerly climbed up, “like Zacchaeus”, that they might witness their bishop’s triumph over death. After having knelt for a short time in prayer, he bound his eyes with his own hands, and, having directed that a present should be given to the executioner, submitted himself to the sword. His body was deposited in a neighboring spot, “because of the curiosity of the heathen”, but was afterwards removed by torchlight with great solemnity, and laid in an honorable sepulcher; while his blood, which had been carefully caught in cloths and handkerchiefs as it fell, was treasured up as a precious relic.

It is said that Cyprian daily read some portion of Tertullian’s works, and that he was accustomed to ask for the book by saying to his secretary, “Give me my master”. The influence of his great countryman on his mind is abundantly evident in his writings; perhaps Tertullian’s Montanism may have shared, as well as the African temperament, in producing Cyprian’s tendency to a belief in frequent supernatural visitations. But if Cyprian was inferior to the earlier writer in originality and genius, he was free from his exaggeration and irregularity, and possessed talents for practical life of which Tertullian gives no indication. The master was carried into schism; the scholar’s great and ruling idea was that of unity in the visible church, and it was on this that his controversies turned. In his treatise on the subject he ransacks Scripture for types and arguments; he concludes that he who has not the church for his mother, Cannot have God for his Father; that the church is as the ark of Noah, without which there was no deliverance from destruction; that for those who are separate from the visible church neither miracles nor martyrdom can avail as evidences of faith or as grounds of hope

ST. CYPRIAN ON THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH

While we may agree in his principles generally, it can hardly be doubted that he carries them out with a reasoning too precise for the nature of the subject; that he does not sufficiently consider the share which the character and circumstances of each individual, as well as his outward position or profession, have in determining his state before God; or the indications afforded by Scripture, that, besides the main broad system of the Divine government, there is also with the Almighty a merciful regard to exceptions and peculiarities,—a regard of which man indeed may not presume to forestall the effect, but which we are yet bound reverently, charitably, and thankfully to keep in mind1

It would, however, be an utter misunderstanding of Cyprian to suppose that in his views of unity he was influenced either by want of charity towards those whose schism he condemned, or by a wish to secure for himself, as bishop, a tyrannical domination over the minds of men. It was the tendency of the age to elevate the episcopate, as a power conducive to strength, to union, regularity, and peace; but if Cyprian bore a part in promoting the exaltation of his order, it was the natural effect of his great character, not the object or the result of his ambition. Now that Christianity had long been professed by multitudes as a religion derived by inheritance, not embraced from special conviction —now that time and freedom from persecution had produced a general deterioration in the community, so that the bishop could not reckon on unanimous support in his measures for the regulation of the church— it was necessary for the public good that he should sometimes act by his own authority in a greater degree than the bishops of earlier times. Yet Cyprian was far from any attempt at establishing an autocracy; it was his practice, as well as his desire, to take no important step except in conjunction with his clergy and his people.

On the other hand, the unity which Cyprian contemplated was utterly unlike that of later Rome. In his dealings with the Roman bishops he appears on terms of perfect equality with them. He writes to them and of them as merely his “brethren and colleagues”. Far from acknowledging a superiority in them, he remonstrates with Cornelius for lowering the dignity common to all members of the episcopate. He admonishes Stephen when negligent of his duty in one case; he declares his judgment null, and sets it aside, in another; he treats the idea of a “bishop of bishops” as monstrous —far as Stephen’s understanding of such a title fall short of the more recent Roman pretensions. Even supposing all the passages in which he magnifies the Roman church to be genuine—(and where words of this sort are wanting in some manuscripts there is an almost certain presumption against them, inasmuch as in the times to which the manuscripts belong there was no temptation to omit, but a strong inducement to insert such words —still the dignity which he assigns to that church, to its supposed apostolic founder and his successors, is only that of precedence among equals; it is rather purely symbolical than in any way practical. He regards St. Peter as the type of apostleship, and the Roman church as the representative of unity; he interprets the promise of the keys of the kingdom of heaven as given to the apostle for the whole episcopal order; his language and his actions are alike inconsistent with any idea of subjection to Rome as a higher authority entitled to interfere with other churches or to overrule their determinations.  

 

CHAPTER VII.

FROM THE ACCESSION OF GALLIENUS TO THE GRANT OF TOLERATION BY CONSTANTINE.

A.D. 261-313.

 

Gallienus, when left sole emperor by the captivity of his father and colleague, put a stop to the persecution which Valerian had commenced, and issued edicts by which the exiles were recalled, the cemeteries were restored to the Christians, and a free exercise of religion was granted. Thus was Christianity for the first time acknowledged as a lawful religion; a benefit which, in so far as the frivolous and worthless prince was concerned, it probably owed to his indifference rather than to any better motive.

In this reign began a contest as to the see of Antioch, which lasted several years. Paul, a native of Samosata, had been appointed bishop about the year 260. He enjoyed the protection of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, and was generally admired for his eloquence; but both his opinions and his manners gave scandal to many of the neighboring clergy, and to the more discerning portion of his flock. Through the favor of Zenobia, as is supposed, he obtained a considerable civil office; and he chose to be addressed by the title of ducenary rather than by that of bishop. In his public appearances Paul affected the state and pomp of a Roman magistrate; he even introduced much of this display into his ecclesiastical functions. He erected a tribunal, and railed off a secretum in his church; in preaching he used the gestures of secular orators, while he expected the hearers to receive his words with clapping of hands and waving of handkerchiefs, as if in a theatre; he discarded the old grave music of the church, and introduced female singers into his choir; nay, it is said that he substituted hymns in celebration of himself for those which had been sung in honor of the Savior, and that he caused himself to be extolled by the preachers of his party as an angel from heaven. He is charged with having enriched him­self by taking bribes, not only in the character of ducenary, but in his episcopal capacity of arbiter between the brethren. And he is further accused of luxurious living, and of indecent familiarity with young women— two of whom were his constant companions.

It has been supposed that Paul’s system of doctrine was framed with a view to the favor of his patroness, who is said by St. Athanasius to have been attached to Judaism. His adversaries describe it as akin to that of Artemon. He maintained that there is no distinction of Persons in the Godhead; that the Logos and the Holy Ghost are in the Father in the same manner as the reason and the spirit are in man; that when the Logos is said to have been from everlasting, nothing more than an ideal existence in the Divine foreknowledge is meant; that His “generation” means only a going forth to act; that Jesus was a mere man (although it was perhaps admitted that his birth was supernatural); that he is called Son of God, as having in a certain sense become such through the influence of the Divine Logos, which dwelt in him, but without any personal union.

In order to the consideration of the charges against Paul, a synod of bishops and clergy from Syria, Asia, and Arabia, assembled at Antioch in 264. Among the members were Firmilian, Gregory of Neocaesarea, and his brother Athenodore; and the venerable Dionysius of Alexandria, although compelled by age and infirmity to excuse himself from attendance, addressed to the assembly a letter in strong condemnation of Paul’s opinions. The accused, however, succeeded in throwing a veil over his unsoundness; he satisfied his brethren by expressing himself in plausible terms, and by promising to abstain from everything that could give offence. The promise was not kept. Two more councils were held; and at the second of these the subtleties which had imposed on less expert theologians were detected by a presbyter named Malchion, who, having formerly been a distinguished sophist or rhetorician, was skilled in the intricacies of such disputation. The bishop was deposed, and Domnus, son of his predecessor, was appointed to succeed him.

PAUL OF SAMOSATA

Paul still persisted in keeping his position. Relying on the protection of Zenobia, and probably supported by a large party among the Christians of Antioch, he retained the episcopal house, with the church which adjoined it; and the dispute as to the possession of these was referred to the emperor Aurelian, soon after his victory (AD 273-4) over Zenobia. Aurelian wisely abstained from intermeddling in a question of Christian doctrines and usages. He decided that the buildings should belong to that party which the bishops of Rome and of Italy should acknowledge as being in communion with themselves; and their judgment, pronounced in favor of Domnus, was enforced by the civil power. From this time the followers of Paul became a heretical sect, whose baptism, although administered in the name of the Trinity, was disallowed by the church, on the ground that the orthodox words of administration were used by them in a heterodox meaning.

Aurelian’s impartial decision in the case of Paul was not, however, prompted by any favorable disposition towards the gospel. The emperor was deeply devoted to the pagan system, and most especially to the worship of the sun, of which his mother had been a priestess. He regarded the Christians with contempt; and, notwithstanding the restraints imposed on him by the measures of Gallienus, he had issued an order for a persecution, in token of gratitude to the gods for his success in war, when, before the document could be generally circulated, he was assassinated in his camp.

MANES

It appears to have been during the reign of Aurelian, and probably about the year 270, that Manes began to publish his opinions in Persia. As to the history of this earlier Mahomet, the Greek and the oriental accounts differ widely from each other. The Greeks trace the heresy to a Saracen merchant named Scythian, who, after having become rich by trading to India, is said to have settled at Alexandria, and to have devised a philosophical system of his own. At his death, which took place in Palestine, his manuscripts, with the rest of his property, fell to his servant Terebinth, who, in order to obtain a more favorable field for the propagation of his doctrines, went into Persia, where he assumed the name of Buddas. He was, however, beaten in disputation by the priests of the national religion; and while engaged in incantations on the roof of his house, he was thrown headlong and killed by an angel or a demon. On this, a widow with whom he had lodged, and who had been his only convert, buried the body and took possession of his wealth; she bought a boy seven years old, named Cubricus, or Corbicius, liberated him, bestowed on him a learned education, and, dying when he had reached the age of twelve, left him heir to all that she possessed. Cubricus assumed the name of Manes, and, after an interval of nearly half century, as to which no details are given, appeared at the Persian court, carrying with him the books of Scythian, which he had interpolated with “anile fables”, and claimed as his own productions. He undertook to cure a son of king Sapor of a dangerous sickness, and, having failed in the attempt, was cast into prison. While he was in confinement, two of his disciples, whom he had sent out on missions, returned, and reported that they had found Christians the most impracticable class of all with whom they had argued. On this Manes procured the Christian Scriptures, and adopted much from them into his system, styling himself the apostle of Christ, and the Paraclete. He escaped from prison, and opened a communication with Marcellus, an eminent and pious Christian of Cascara, whose influence he was anxious to secure for the recommendation of his doctrine. The bishop of the place, Archelaus, however, won over his envoy, Tyrbo, and from him and others discovered the doctrines of the sect, with the history of its origin. Archelaus vanquished the heresiarch in conferences at Cascara and Diodoris; and Manes soon after again fell into the hands of the Persian king, by whose order he was flayed alive.

According to the oriental statements, on the other hand, Mani was a Persian, of the magian or sacerdotal caste, and possessed an extraordinary variety of accomplishments. He embraced Christianity, and is said by one authority to have been a presbyter in the church before he formed his peculiar scheme of doctrine. Having been imprisoned by Sapor on account of his opinions, he escaped, travelled in India and China, and at length retired into a cave in Turkestan, telling his disciples that he was about to ascend into heaven, and that at the end of a year he would meet them again at a certain place. The interval was employed in elaborating his system, and on his reappearance, he produced the book of a new revelation, adorned with symbolical pictures by his own hand. After the death of Sapor he returned (AD 272) to the Persian court where he was well received by Hormisdas, and made a convert of him; but within less than two years he lost his royal patron. The next king, Varanes, at first treated him with favor, but was soon gained over by his enemies; he invited him dispute with the magians, and on their declaring Mani a heretic, caused him to be put to death—whether by flaying, crucifixion, or sawing asunder, is uncertain.

Although Manichaeism in many points resembled some of the gnostic systems, the likeness did not arise from any direct connection, but from the Persian element which it had in common with Gnosticism. Manes was not influenced either by Jewish traditions or by Greek philosophy; but, in addition to the Zoroastrian and the Christian sources from which his scheme was partly derived, it has been supposed that in the completion of it he drew largely from the doctrines of Buddhism, with which (it the account of his eastern travels be rejected) it appears that he might have become acquainted in his native country.

MANICHEISM

The deliverance of Persia from the Parthian yoke by Artaxerxes had been followed by a reformation of the national religion. The belief in one supreme being, anterior to the opposite powers of light and darkness or of good and evil, had been established, and a persecution had been carried on against those who maintained the original and independent existence of Ormuzd and Ahriman. This system of pure dualism, however, was taken up by Manes. He held that there were two principles, eternally opposed to each other, and presiding respectively over the realms of light and darkness. To the former the name of God properly belonged; the latter, although the Manichees admitted that in some sense he too might be styled God (as St. Paul speaks of “the God of this world”), was more rightly named Demon or Matter. These powers were independent of each other; but God was the superior. God consisted of pure light, infinitely more subtle than that of our world, and without any definite bodily shape; the demon had a gross material body. Each realm was composed of five elements, which were peopled by beings of kindred natures; and, while the inhabitants of the world of light lived in perfect love and harmony, those of the world of darkness were continually at strife among themselves. In one of their wars, the defeated party fled to the lofty mountains which bounded the two worlds; thence they descried the realm of light, whose existence had before been unknown to them; and forthwith all the powers of darkness, laying aside their internal discords, united to invade the newly-discovered region. God then produced from himself a being called Mother of Life, and from her one named Primal Man, whom he armed with the five good elements, and sent forth to combat against the powers of evil. The invaders, however, were prevailing, when, at the prayer of Primal Man, God sent forth Living Spirit, by whom they were driven out, and Primal Man was rescued; although not until the powers of darkness had swallowed “a portion of his armor, which is the living soul”. To this part, thus enchained in the bondage of matter, was given the name of Passible Jesus; and thenceforth it was the object of the spirits of darkness to detain the heavenly particles which they had absorbed, while God was bent on effecting their deliverance. In order to their gradual emancipation, Living Spirit, by the command of God, framed our world out of materials in which the elements of light and darkness had become commingled during the late struggle. The powers of darkness produced children; their prince, by devouring these, concentrated in himself the particles of heavenly essence which were diffused through their bodies; and he employed the materials thus obtained in the formation of man, molded after the image of the heavenly Primal Man. Adam was therefore a microcosm, including in himself all the elements of both kingdoms, having a soul of light and one of darkness, with a body which was material, and therefore necessarily evil. With a view of retaining him in bondage, his maker forbade him to eat of the tree of knowledge; but Christ or an angel, in the form of the serpent, instructed him—he ate and was enlightened. The Demon produced Eve, and, although God put into her a portion of heavenly light, it was not strong enough to master her evil tendencies. She tempted Adam to sensual pleasure; disregarding the commands of God, who had charged him to restrain, by means of his higher soul, the desires of his lower soul and of his body, he yielded and fell; the particles of heavenly light became yet further enthralled to matter; and, as the race of man continued, it deteriorated more and more from generation to generation.

God had produced out of himself two beings of pure light—Christ and the Holy Spirit—whose office it was to help in the deliverance of mankind. Christ dwelt by his power in the sun, and by his wisdom in the moon—which were therefore to be worshipped, not as deities, but as his habitations; the Holy Spirit dwelt in the air. The world was supported by a mighty angel, who from his office was called in Greek Omophoros (bearer on shoulders); and the frequent signs of impatience exhibi­ted by this being (whose movements were the cause of earthquakes) hastened the coming of Christ in human form. As the evil nature of matter rendered it unsuitable that the Savior should have a material body, his humanity was represented by Manes after the docetic fashion; it was supposed that he appeared suddenly among the Jews (for the narrations as to his birth and early years were rejected), and that his acts and sufferings were only in appearance The object of his mission was to give enlightenment —to teach men their heavenly origin, and urge them to strive after the recovery of bliss, overcoming their body and their evil soul; to deliver them from the blindness of Judaism and other false religions. No idea of atonement could enter into the system, since the divine soul was incapable of guilt, and the lower soul was incapable of salvation.

The particles of celestial life which had been absorbed by the kingdom of matter—the “Passible Jesus”—were not in man only, but in the lower animals and in vegetables—“hanging” (it was said) “on every tree”. From their abodes in the sun, the moon, and the air, Christ and the Spirit act in the work of disengaging these particles; it is by their operation that herbs burst forth from the ground, striving towards their kindred light, while the powers of darkness, whom the Living Spirit, after his victory, had crucified in the stars, thence exert baleful influences on the earth. Animal and even vegetable life was therefore sacred for the Manichaeans, who believed that vegetables had the same feelings of pain as mankind. The elect (the highest class in the community) might not even pluck a leaf or a fruit with their own hands; when about to eat bread, it is said that they thus addressed it:—“It was not I who reaped, or ground, or baked thee; may they who did so be reaped, and ground, and baked in their turn”. While the elect ate, the particles of divine essence contained in their food were set free : thus, says St. Augustine, did Manes make man the savior of Christ. But the effect of other men’s eating was to confine the heavenly particles in the bonds of matter; and hence it was inferred that, although a Manichaean might relieve a beggar with money, it would be impious to give him food.

It was taught that the natural man, born after the flesh, was not the work of God; but the new man, the believer, who, in St. Paul’s words, “after God is created in righteousness and true holiness”. By those who should obey the precepts of Christ and of Manes, the evil elements of their nature would at length be shaken off; but, although penitence atoned for sin, the work of purgation could not be finished in this life. The sun and the moon were “two ships” for the conveyance of the elect souls to bliss. On leaving the body such souls were transferred to the sun by the revolution of a vast wheel with twelve buckets; the sun, after purging them by his rays, delivered them over to the moon, where they were for fifteen days to undergo a further cleansing by water; and they were then to be received into the primal light. The less sanctified souls were to return to earth in other forms—some of them after undergoing intermediate tortures. Their new forms were to be such as would subject them to retribution for the misdeeds of their past life, so that one who had killed any animal would be changed into a creature of the same kind, while those who had reaped, or ground, or baked, were themselves to become wheat, and to undergo the like operations; and thus the purgation of souls was to be carried on in successive migrations until they should become fitted to enter into the bliss of the elect. When this world should have completed its course, it would be burnt into an inert mass, to which those souls which had chosen the service of evil would be chained, while the powers of darkness would be forever confined to their own dismal region.

Manes represented the Old Testament as a work of the powers of darkness. He attacked its morality and its representations of God, dwelt on its alleged inconsistency with the New Testament, and denied that it prophesied of Christ. The gospel, it was said, was intended chiefly for gentiles; and on them, the Jewish prophets could have no claim, insomuch that it would be more reasonable for gentiles to listen to the oracles of the Sibyl or of Hermes Trismegistus; those who should give heed to the prophets would die eternally. Christ had left his revelation imperfect, promising to send the Paraclete for its completion; and St. Paul had spoken of the further knowledge which was thus to be given. The promise, according to Manes, was fulfilled in himself but, in claiming to be the Paraclete, he did not imply the full blasphemy which such a pretension suggests to a Christian mind. He rejected the Acts of the Apostles as opposed to his doctrine on this subject; he declared the Gospels to be the work of unknown persons who lived long after the apostolic times, and also to be much adulterated, so that he might assume the right of correcting them after his own fancy; and he set aside such other portions of the New Testament as were inconsistent with his scheme. The sect relied on some apocryphal Gospels and other forgeries of a like kind, but their chief sources of belief were the writings of the founder; and they claimed the liberty of interpreting the New Testament in accordance with the teaching of their Paraclete, in like manner as the orthodox interpreted the older Scriptures by the light of the Christian revelation. They denounced the idea of symbolism in religion, and made it their especial boast that their opinions were agreeable to reason—that their converts were emancipated from the bondage of authority and faith.

The Manichaeans were divided into elect and hearers. The former class professed a high degree of ascetic sanctity. They were bound by the “three seals”—“of the mouth, of the hand, and of the bosom”; they were to live in poverty, celibacy, and abstinence; they were not allowed even to gather the fruits of the earth for themselves, but were supported and served by the hearers, who were obliged by the fear of the severest punishments after death to supply all their necessities. The hearers were not subject to such rigid rules : although forbidden to kill animals, they were allowed to eat flesh and to drink wine, to marry, and to engage in the usual occupations of life. At a later time, charges of hypocrisy and gross sensuality were freely brought against the Manichaeans, notwithstanding their pale and mortified appearance; nor do these charges appear to have been without substantial foundation.

The Manichaean hierarchy consisted of a chief, twelve masters, and seventy-two bishops, with priests and deacons under them. The worship of the sect, simple and naked agreeably to its Persian origin, was in many points studiously opposed to that of the church—as in the rejection or disregard of the Christian festivals, and in observing the Lord’s day as a fast. The anniversary of the heresiarch’s death, in the month of March, was the great festival of their year, and was known by the name of Bema. In prayer the Manichaeans turned towards the sun. The hearers were allowed to listen to the reading of Manes’ books, but did not receive any explanation of their meaning; the worship of the elect was shrouded in mystery, which naturally gave rise to rumors of abominable rites. St. Augustine, after having been nine years a hearer, could only state that the Eucharist was celebrated among the elect; of the manner of administration he had been unable to learn anything, although, as the principles of the Manichaeans forbade them to use wine, he taunts them with “acknowledging their God in the grape, and refusing to acknowledge him in the cup”. Baptism is supposed to have been administered with oil; that with water was held indifferent, if it was not forbidden.

Manichaeism soon spread into the west. Its appearance in proconsular Africa, within a few years after the founder’s death, is attested by an edict of Diocletian, which condemns the doctrine, not as Christian, but as coming from the hostile kingdom of Persia. This document orders that the teachers and their books should be burnt; that the disciples should be sent to the mines, or, if persons of rank, should be banished; and that in either case their property should be seized. But two centuries later (as we learn from St. Augustine) the sect was numerous in Italy and in Africa, where some of its secret members were even among the clergy of the church. Notwith­standing frequent and severe edicts of the Christian emperors, Manichaeism continued to exist, and we shall have frequent occasion to notice it hereafter among the heresies of the middle ages.

The persecuting edict of Aurelian was revoked by his successor Tacitus; and for many years the church was undisturbed by the secular power. In the reign of Diocletian it had attained a degree of prosperity exceeding that of any former time. Its buildings began to display architectural splendor, and were furnished with sacred vessels of silver and gold. Converts flocked in from all ranks; even the wife of the emperor, and his daughter Valeria, who was married to his colleague Galerius, appear to have been among the number. Christians held high offices in the state and in the imperial household. Provincial governments were entrusted to them, with a privilege of exemption from all such duties as might be inconsistent with their religion. With these advances in temporal well-being, the contemporary historian laments that there had been a decay of faith and love; that hypocrisy and ambition had crept in; that pastors and people alike were distracted by jealousies and dissensions. But it has been well observed that the very offences which now appeared in the church are a token of progress, since it is the strongest proof of the firm hold of a party, whether religious or political, upon the public mind, when it may offend with impunity against its own primary principles. That which at one time is a sign of incurable weakness, or approaching dissolution, at another seems but the excess of healthful energy, and the evidence of unbroken vigor.

DIOCLETIAN

It was in the year 284 that Diocletian assumed the purple. In 286 he admitted Maximian to share the empire, as Augustus; and in 292 Galerius and Constantius were associated in the government, with the inferior title of Caesars. Disregarding the republican forms under which the imperial power had hitherto been veiled, Diocletian assumed the state of an eastern monarch, established a new system of administration, with offices and titles of a pomp before unknown among the Romans, and removed his court from Rome to Nicomedia, on the Asiatic shore of the Propontis. The ancient capital ceased to be the center of government; the senate sank into insignificance and neglect. In the partition of the empire, Diocletian reserved for himself Thrace, the Asiatic provinces, and Egypt; Maximian, whose residence was at Milan, received Italy and Africa; Galerius had Illyria and the countries on the Danube; while Gaul, Spain, and Britain were assigned to Constantius.

The priests and others who were interested in the maintenance of the pagan system began to apprehend that they might lose their hold on the empire. Diocletian was indifferent as to religion, while Constantius openly favored the Christians; and, although Maximian and Galerius were hostile to Christianity, yet it may have seemed possible that the Caesar might be influenced by his Christian wife. Attempts were therefore made to work on the superstitious feelings of Diocletian by means of omens and oracles. On one occasion, when Apollo was consulted in his presence, the answer was given, not, as was usual, through the priest, but by the god himself, in a hollow voice which issued from the depths of the cave—that, on account of the righteous who were on the earth, the oracles were restrained from answering truly; and, in reply to Diocletian’s inquiries, the priests explained that these words pointed at the Christians. At another time, when the emperor was with his army in the east, it was announced that the entrails of the victims did not exhibit the usual marks by which the future was signified. The sacrifice was several times repeated without any better result; and at last the chief soothsayer declared that the presence of profane persons— that is to say, of Christians—was the cause of its failure.

AD 286-303. THE THEBAN LEGION.

It was in the army that Christians were most especially liable to be noted, and that the first attempts on their fidelity were made. The story of the Theban legion, which is referred to the year 286, although extravagantly fabulous in its details, may possibly have some foundation of truth. This legion, it is said, consisting of 6,600 Christians, was summoned from the east for the service of Maximian in Gaul. When near the Alpine town of Agaunum, which takes its modern name from their leader, St. Maurice, the soldiers discovered that they were to be employed in the persecution of their brethren in the faith, and refused to march onward for such a purpose. By order of Maximian, who was in the neighbourhood, they were twice decimated. But this cruelty was unable to shake the firmness of the survivors; and Maurice, in the name of his comrades, declared to the emperor that, while ready to obey him in all things consistent with their duty to God, they would rather die than violate that duty. Maximian, exasperated by their obstinacy, ordered the other troops to close around them; whereupon the devoted band laid down their arms and peacefully submitted to martyrdom. There are other and more authentic records of military confessors and martyrs in the early part of Diocletian’s reign; but whatever persecutions or annoyances may have then been experienced by Christian soldiers, it does not appear that any general attempt to force their conscience was made before the year 298, when it was ordered that all persons in military service or in public employment of any kind should offer sacrifice to the gods.

Galerius, during a visit which he paid to Diocletian at Nicomedia in the winter of 302-3, endeavored to excite the elder emperor against the Christians. For a time Diocletian withstood his importunity—whether sincerely, or only with a wish to gain credit for a show of reluctance, is doubtful. The advice of some lawyers and military officers was then called in (as is said to have been the emperor’s custom when he wished to divert from himself the odium of any unpopular measure), and a persecution was decreed. On the 23rd of February—the great Roman festival of the Terminalia,—an attack was made on the church of Nicomedia, which was situated on a height, and overlooked the palace. The heathen functionaries, on entering, found nothing to seize except the copies of the sacred books, which they burnt. It was then proposed to set fire to the building itself; but Diocletian, out of fear that the flames might spread, preferred to give it over to the soldiery for destruction, and by their exertions the church was in a few hours entirely demolished.

Next day the imperial edict was issued. It ordained that all who should refuse to sacrifice should lose their offices, their property, their rank, and civil privileges; that slaves persisting in the profession of the gospel should be excluded from the hope of liberty; that Christians of all ranks should be liable to torture; that all churches should be razed to the ground; that religious meetings should be suppressed; and that the Scriptures and other service-books should be committed to the flames. No sooner had the edict been publicly displayed, than a Christian, who is described as a man of station, tore it down, uttering at the same time words of insult against the emperors. In punishment of this audacious act, he was roasted at a slow fire, and the stern composure with which he bore his sufferings astonished and mortified his executioners.

Within a fortnight the palace of Nicomedia was twice discovered to be on fire. The cause is unknown; but on the second occasion, at least, the guilt was charged on the Christians, Diocletian was greatly alarmed and incensed. He compelled his wife and daughter to sacrifice, and proceeded to administer the same test to the members of his household and to the inhabitants of the city. Some of the most confidential chamberlains, who were Christians, were put to death, after having endured extreme tortures, and many other Christians, among whom was Anthimus, bishop of Nicomedia, also suffered martyrdom.

The edict was soon carried into execution throughout the empire. The churches were for the most part demolished; in some cases the furniture was carried out and burnt, and the buildings were shut up, or were converted to profane uses. The attempt to exterminate the Scriptures was a new feature in this persecution. Many Christians suffered death for refusing to deliver them up, while those who complied were branded by their brethren as traditors—a term which we shall have occasion to notice hereafter. As the officials were unable to distinguish the sacred books from other Christian writings, there is reason to believe that, through the confusion, a vast number of precious documents perished, to the irreparable loss of ecclesiastical history. In some cases, however, the destruction of these arose from the forbearance of the authorities, who disliked the task imposed on them, and were willing to accept any books that might be offered, without inquiring whether they were those which the Christians regarded as sacred. Thus, when Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, had withdrawn the copies of the Scriptures from his church, and had placed some heretical writings in their room, the proconsul Anulinus, on being informed of the pious fraud, refused to make any further search. In some cases, indeed, the magistrates even hinted to the Christians that a substitution of this kind would be admitted; and such connivance was the more remarkable, if it is correct to suppose that negligence in execution of the edict was punishable even with death. But on the other hand, there were governors who gladly seized the opportunity of venting their enmity against the church, and carried on the work of persecution with a severity which exceeded the imperial orders.

Some troubles in Armenia and Syria, which were falsely charged on the Christians, afforded a pretext for a second edict, by which it was ordered that their teachers should be arrested. In consequence of this, as Eusebius informs us, the prisons were filled with bishops and clergy, so that no room could be found for the malefactors by whom they were commonly occupied. By a third edict, issued in the same year which had witnessed the beginning of the persecution, it was directed that the prisoners should be required to sacrifice, and, in case of refusal, should be tortured; and a fourth edict, in the following year, extended this order to Christians of every class. As it was supposed that the victims would be proof against the usual kinds of torture, the judges were charged to invent new and more excruciating torments. Yet no one of these edicts enacted death as a punishment, although through the zeal of officials, and under various pretexts, that punishment was inflicted on multitudes of believers.

AD 309-313. THE LAST PERSECUTION

On the 1st of May 305, Diocletian abdicated the empire at Nicomedia, and Maximian, in reluctant sub­mission to the influence of his colleague and benefactor, performed a like ceremony of resignation at Milan. Constantius and Galerius now succeeded to the highest dignity, and two new Caesars, Maximin and Severus, were associated with them. For some years the imperial power was the subject of contentions, changes, and partitions : at one time there were no fewer than six emperors—in the east, Galerius, Maximin, and Licinius; in the west, Maximian, who had resumed his power, his son Maxentius, and his son-in-law Constantine, the son and successor of Constantius. Meanwhile the condition of the Christians throughout the empire varied according to the character of its several rulers.

Constantius, while he held the subordinate dignity of Caesar, destroyed the churches in his dominions, out of deference to the authority of the elder emperors; but he protected Christians, and entertained many of them in his court. On his elevation (AD 305) to the rank of Augustus he befriended them more openly; and in this policy he was followed by Constantine, who succeeded him in 306, and showed himself yet more decidedly favorable to the Christians.

Galerius persecuted with great zeal until, in the year 311, having found his cruelty utterly ineffectual towards the suppression of the gospel, and feeling himself sinking under a loathsome and excruciating disease, he issued, in his own name and in those of Licinius and Constantine, an edict by which Christians were allowed to exercise their religion and to rebuild their churches, provided that they refrained from doing anything against the discipline of the state; and he concluded with the remarkable request that they would offer up prayers for his safety. There can be little doubt that in this change of policy the emperor was influenced by other motives than that pity for the perversity of the Christians, and that regard for the unity of his subjects, which were professed in the edict. Perhaps his bodily sufferings may have been aggravated by remorse for the cruelties which he had committed; or it may have been that, despairing of other relief, he sought to obtain a chance of recovery through the favor of the God of Christians,—regarding him as a power of the same class with the multitude of heathen deities.

In Italy and in Africa the persecution was severe during the reign of Maximian. When his son Maxentius assumed the government of those countries, the Christians, although they suffered from the usurper’s tyranny in common with his other subjects, were not molested on account of their religion; indeed, he even pretended to favor them. For it was now felt that they were an important element in the state, and princes who had no regard for their religion might nevertheless be with reason desirous to secure their political support.

The most violent of all the persecutors was Maximin, who in the year 305 received the sovereignty of Syria and Egypt, and on the death of Galerius added Asia Minor to his dominions. Brutal, ferocious, and ignorant, he was a slave to pagan superstition, and a dupe to priests, soothsayers, and professors of magical arts. Galerius did not venture to include his name in the edict for toleration of the gospel; but Maximin, although he declined to publish it in his dominions, gave verbal orders to a like effect. At the same time, however, he took measures for restoring the splendor of the heathen worship, and six months later he issued an edict for a renewal of persecution, professing to do so in compliance with petitions from Antioch and other cities,—petitions which, according to the Christian writers of the age, had been instigated by himself. It was required that all his subjects, even to infants at the breast, should offer sacrifice; that provisions in the markets should be sprinkled with the libations, and that guards should be placed at the doors of the public baths, with a charge to defile in the same manner those who were about to go forth after having performed their ablutions. Calumny too was employed to discredit the Christian religion. Forged “Acts of Pilate” were circulated, and were introduced into schools as lesson-books, so that the very children had their mouths filled with blasphemies against the Savior. Women of the vilest character were suborned to confess abominations of which they pretended to have partaken among the Christians. The edict was engraved on plates of brass, and set up in every city. In it Maximin boasted of the blessings which had followed on his measures for the revival of paganism—success in war, fruitful seasons, immunity from the plagues of earthquake, storm, and sickness. But soon after the renewal of persecution, this boast was signally falsified by the appearance of famine and pestilence, which fearfully wasted his dominions. And in this time of trial, as before on similar occasions, the power of Christian faith and love was admirably manifested. The believers, while they shared in the common visitation, distinguished themselves from the multitude by their behavior under it, hazarding their lives in ministering to the sick and in burying the dead who were abandoned by their own nearest kindred.

The varieties of torture exercised during the per­secution need not be here detailed. On the whole, the Christians endured their sufferings with a noble constancy and patience, although, in addition to the weakness of the traditors, there were some who denied the faith, and others who provoked their death by violent and fanatical conduct. The pagans who witnessed their sufferings were at length disgusted by such profusion of bloodshed and cruelty; the persecutors themselves became weary of slaying, and resorted to other punishments—such as mutilation of the limbs, plucking out an eye, employing bishops and other eminent persons in degrading occupations, and sending large numbers of all classes to labor in unwholesome mines.

The persecution altogether lasted ten years, although after the first two it was but little felt in the west. Gibbon, with an evident desire to state as low as possible the number of those who were put to death, reckons them at two thousand; of bodily torments short of death, and of the immense wretchedness of other kinds which must have been experienced by the members of the suffering community during that long period of terror, the historian disdains to take any account whatever.

Among the martyrs, the most celebrated for station or character were—Peter, bishop of Alexandria; Lucian, a presbyter of Antioch, who in early life had been connected with Paul of Samosata, but afterwards returned to the orthodox communion, and distinguished himself by his labors on the Scriptures; Pamphilus, the founder of the library of Caesarea, celebrated for his zeal in multiplying and correcting copies of the sacred text, for his writings in defence of Origen, and for his intimate friendship with the historian Eusebius; and Methodius, bishop of Tyre, the opponent of Pamphilus in the Origenistic controversy. In addition to those whose names are recorded in authentic history, a great number of martyrs enjoying a general or a local celebrity are referred to this period —as St. Sebastian and St. Agnes, who are said to have suffered at Rome, and are commemorated by churches and catacombs without the walls of the city; St. Januarius, of Naples; SS. Cosmus and Damian, two Arabian brothers, who are said to have suffered in Cilicia, and are regarded as patrons of the medical art; St. Vincent of Saragossa; St. Denys (Dionysius) of Paris, St. Clement of Metz, St. Quentin, from whom the capital of the Veromandui takes its modern name, St Victor of Marseilles, and many others in France; St. Gereon and his 318 companions, whose relics are shown in a singular and beautiful church at Cologne; St. George, who is supposed to have suffered at Nicomedia, and is famous as the patron of England. To the earlier part of Diocletian’s reign, before the edict of 303, belongs the story of the British protomartyr St. Alban.

After his victory over Maxentius, in the end of October 312, Constantine published an edict in favor of the Christians; and by a second, which he issued in conjunction with Licinius, from Milan, in June 313, he established for them, in common with all other subjects of the empire, complete religious freedom,—ordering that the churches and other property of the community should be restored to them, and inviting persons who might suffer by this restitution to seek compensation from the public purse. In consequence of the overthrow of Maximin by Licinius (April 30, 313), the benefits of this edict were speedily extended to the whole empire. The fury of the defeated tyrant, who had vowed that, if victorious, he would exterminate the Christian name, was now turned into an opposite direction; in his despair he put to death many of the priests and soothsayers on whose counsels he had relied, and he proclaimed an entire toleration of the Christians—laying the blame of his former severities against them on the judges and governors, whom he attempted to represent as having misunderstood his intentions. Maximin died miserably at Tarsus in August 313; and in the contrast between the prosperity of the princes who had befriended them and the calamitous ends of their oppressors, the Christians could not but suppose that they discerned tokens of the Divine judgment.

The change in the relations of the Christian community to the imperial power opens a new period in ecclesiastical history.

 

CHAPTER VIII.

SUPPLEMENTARY

 

I. Progress of the Gospel.

There is reason to believe that, by the end of the third century, the gospel had been made known in some degree to almost all the nations with which the Romans had intercourse, although we have very little information as to the details of its progress, or as to the agency by which this was effected. From an early period Christian writers are found appealing triumphantly to the extension of their brotherhood. “There exists not”, says Justin Martyr, “a people, whether Greek or barbarian, or any other race of men, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however ignorant of arts or of agriculture, whether they dwell under tents or wander about in covered wagons, among whom prayers [and thanksgivings] are not offered up in the name of a crucified Jesus to the Father and Creator of all things”. Irenaeus declares that in his day many barbarous nations had the traditional faith of the church written in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, without the instrumentality of paper and ink. Tertullian, in reckoning up the nations which had received the gospel, names, in addition to those which were represented at Jerusalem on the great day of Pentecost,—Getulians, Moors, Spaniards, Gauls, Britons beyond the Roman pale, Sarmatians, Dacians, Germans, and Scythians. Origen speaks of it as having won myriads of converts among every nation and kind of men; as having carried its conquests to a large extent over the barbaric world. Arnobius, an eloquent African apologist, who wrote about the year 304, in one passage mentions widely distant nations among which Christians were found, and elsewhere asserts that there was then no nation of barbarians which had not been affected by the softening influence of the gospel. Such passages are not, indeed, free from rhetorical vagueness and exaggeration; but, after all reasonable abatement, they must be admitted as evidence that, in the times when they were written, the faith of Christ had been widely diffused, and in many quarters had penetrated beyond the bounds of civilizations

Although the narrative of the preceding chapters has been for the most part confined to the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, the accounts of Pantaenus and Origen have brought before us notices of Christianity in regions which are vaguely designated by the names of Arabia and India; and the story of Manes has shown the existence of Christian communities in Persia and Mesopotamia. The church of Edessa, whatever may be the value of the statements which ascribe to it an apostolic origin, is known to have been firmly established in the middle of the second century; and shortly after that date the Edessan Bardesanes witnesses to the propagation of the gospel in Parthia, Persia, Media, and Bactria. It was not until towards the end of the period that it was introduced into Armenia; but the apostle of that country, Gregory, styled the Illuminator, made a convert of the king, Tiridates III, and Armenia had the honor of being the first country in which Christianity was adopted as the national religion.

From the time when “they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution which arose about Stephen went everywhere preaching the word”, the calamities which drove Christians from their homes became the means of spreading the tidings of salvation. We have seen that such consequences followed from the banishment of bishops and clergy under Decius and Valerian; and thus it was that the Goths in Moesia derived their first knowledge of the faith from captives whom they had carried off after inroads on the empire during the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus.

Irenaeus, towards the end of the second century, speaks of churches as existing among the Celts, in Spain, and in Germany. His mention of the last of these countries ought, perhaps, to be understood as referring to the Roman province only—the portion within the Rhine; but it is probable that, in the course of the following century, converts had also been won among the barbarous nations to the eastward of that river.

Of the early history of Christianity in Gaul very little is known. It is hardly to be supposed that Pothinus and his Asiatic companions, the founders of the church of Lyons, were the earliest missionaries who appeared in that country; but they were the first of whom any authentic record is preserved, or whose labors had any considerable success. Gregory of Tours, who wrote towards the end of the sixth century, states that in the reign of Decius seven missionaries set out from Rome for the conversion of Gaul, and that among them was Dionysius, bishop of Paris, who is confounded by later legendary writers with the Areopagite of the apostolic age. That there may have been some such mission about the time which is assigned for it, is not improbable; but the story as told by Gregory is inconsistent with unquestionable facts, and the work of the missionaries, if they were really sent into Gaul about the middle of the third century, must have consisted in strengthening and extending the church of that country—not in laying its foundation by the first introduction of the faith.

The origin of the British church is involved in fable. The story of Joseph of Arimathea’s preaching, and even the correspondence of an alleged British king Lucius with Eleutherius, bishop of Rome, about the year 167, need not be here discussed. Yet within about thirty years from the supposed date of that correspondence, we meet with the statement already quoted from Tertullian, that the gospel had made its way into parts of this island which the Romans had never reached—a statement which may be supposed to indicate that, in the end of the second century, even Scotland had not been unvisited by missionaries. Somewhat later than Tertullian, Origen speaks of Britons, “although divided from our world”, as united with Mauritanians in the worship of the same one God. It seems to be certain that under the government of Constantius and his son, at the end of the period which we have been surveying, the British Christians were numerous; and in the council of Arles, a.d. 314, we find the names of three British bishops—Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelfius, whose see is generally identified with Lincoln. The social position of those who embraced the gospel in the earliest times afforded a theme for the ridicule of Celsus; and Gibbon, with evident delight, repeats the taunt that “the new sect was almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace—of peasants and mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves”.

If, as the same writer states, “this very odious imputation seems to be less strenuously denied by the apologists, than it is urged by the adversaries, of the faith”, the cause may probably be found in their sense of its irrelevancy to any question as to the truth of the gospel, and in the feeling which forbade them to imitate, even towards the meanest or the most sinful among those for whom the Savior had died, the contempt with which the philosophers of heathenism were wont to look down on those whom they regarded as inferior to themselves. But, as the historian goes on to admit, the reproach of meanness and vulgarity was far from being universally applicable to the converts. Among those whom we read of even in the New Testament were many persons of wealth and station, including some members of the imperial household. There can be little doubt that Christianity was the foreign superstition of which, according to Tacitus, Pomponia Graecina, wife of Aulus Plautius, the conqueror of Britain, became a votary in the reign of Nero; on that the profession of it was the dimly indicated offence which under Domitian brought persecution on his own near relations, Flavia Domitilla and her husband, the consul Flavius Clemens. It was not a mere rhetorical flight when Tertullian, in the end of the second century, told the heathens that his brethren were to be found filling the camp, the assemblies, the palace, and the senate. The same writer distinctly states that Septimius Severus, in the earlier part of his reign, allowed men and women of very high rank to profess the gospel; and in like manner we are told by Origen, a little after Tertullian’s time, that among the converts were men of dignified position, with noble and delicate ladies. We have seen that, at a later date, Diocletian’s empress and daughter were believed to be of the number and in the edicts both of that prince and of his predecessor Valerian, it is assumed that in many cases the penalties for professing Christianity would be incurred by persons of wealth and station.

That the “poor of this world” were often found “rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom of God”—that the preaching of Christ, addressed as it was to all, found more acceptance among the simple than among the wise men of the world—that the gospel was sometimes introduced into families by the agency of slaves—that female influence was effective in spreading it—such statements we need not care to controvert. But we have seen also how by degrees the faith won its converts and its advocates among men of the highest ability and cultivation and how the Christian schools came to be frequented even by many of the heathen, on account of the advantages which they offered for a liberal and philosophical education. The very rebukes addressed by Clement, in his Pedagogue, to the Christians of Alexandria, prove that he had to deal with a wealthy and luxurious community. And, on the whole, there is reason to believe that, while the gospel had its proselytes in every rank below the throne, “its main strength lay in the middle, perhaps the mercantile, classes”.

The proportion which the Christians bore to the heathen population of the empire has been very variously estimated. We are not concerned on religious grounds to question Gibbon’s calculation, that, until their religion was sanctioned by the authority of Constantine, they did not amount to “more than a twentieth part” of the whole; indeed, if all the hindrances to the progress of the gospel be fairly considered, even such a proportion would deserve to be regarded as a token rather of great than of little success; but there can be little doubt that the estimate is by far too low. By other writers the Christians have been reckoned as a tenth or a fifth of the whole body of Roman subjects; in some districts, as in the dominions of Maximin, they were perhaps even the majority.

The Hierarchy

In the course of the second and third centuries the hierarchy of the church underwent some changes. The only order which existed in the apostolic age, in addition to those of bishops, priests, and deacons, was that of deaconesses—women (and at first usually widows) who were employed in such ministrations to persons of their own sex as were either naturally unsuitable for males, or were so regarded by the customs of the ancient world—especially in the east. Thus, they assisted at the baptism of female converts; they visited the women of the community at their homes; and, by obtaining access to their apartments, from which the clergy were excluded, they had the means of doing much for the advancement of the faith among the middle and higher classes.

But in the end of the second century, or early in the third, several new offices, below the order of deacons, were introduced. These originated in the greater churches, where—partly from a supposed expediency of limiting the number of deacons to that of the apostolical church at Jerusalem, and partly from the importance which the deacons acquired in such communities, as being entrusted with the administration of the public funds—a need was felt of assistance in performing the lower functions of the diaconate, which it is too probable that the deacons had in many cases begun to regard as unworthy of them. The first mention of any inferior office is in Tertullian, who speaks of readers. The fuller organization of the lesser orders comes before us in the epistles of St. Cyprian, and in one of his contemporary Cornelius, bishop of Rome, who states that the Roman church then numbered forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolyths, and fifty-two exorcists, readers, and door-keepers. The business of the subdeacons was to take care of the sacred vessels and to assist the deacons in their secular duties; the acolyths lighted the lamps and attended at the celebra­tion of the sacraments; the exorcists had the charge of the energumens (or persons who were supposed to be possessed by evil spirits); the readers were employed to read the Scriptures in the services of the church.

These offices were not universally adopted. As to that of exorcist, the Apostolical Constitutions (which represent the eastern system as it was about the end of the third century) declare that it is not to be conferred by ordination, as being a special gift of divine grace, and a voluntary exercise of benevolence.

POWER OF BISHOPS

While the ministry of the church was thus receiving an addition of inferior offices, the authority of its highest members, the bishops, became more defined, and distinctions were introduced into their order. The circumstances of the times required that power should be centralized, as an expedient conducive to strength and safety; moreover, as their flocks increased in numbers and in wealth, and as the clergy subject to them were multiplied, the position of the bishops naturally acquired a greater appearance of outward dignity. There seems, however, to be much exaggeration in the statements of some writers, both as to the smallness of the authority which they suppose the episcopate to have originally possessed, and as to the height which it had attained in the course of these centuries. Even to the end of the period we meet with nothing like autocratic power in the bishops. They were themselves elected by the clergy and people; they consulted with the presbyters in the more private matters, and with the body of the faithful in such as concerned the whole community; even the selection of persons to be ordained for the ministry of the church was .referred to the consent of its members generally.

From time to time circumstances rendered it desirable that the pastors of neighboring churches should meet in consultation, agreeably to apostolic precedent. In addition to such occasional synods, the custom of holding regular meetings twice, or at least once, a year was intro­duced in the latter part of the second century. The origin of these stated synods appears to have been in Greece, where they were recommended by the analogy of the ancient deliberative assemblies, such as that of the Amphictyons, which still existed; and by degrees they were introduced into other countries. The chief city of each district was regarded as the metropolis, or mother city. There the synods met; the bishop of the place naturally took a lead as president, and he became tile representative of his brethren in their communications with other churches. Thus the metropolitans acquired a pre-eminence among the bishops : and, although every bishop was still regarded as of equal dignity,—although each was considered to be independent in his own diocese (unless, indeed, suspicions of his orthodoxy in­vited his brethren to interfere for the vindication of the faith, and for the protection of his flock),—although each, within his own sphere, retained the direction of the ritual and of indifferent matters in general,—the individual dioceses became practically subject to the decisions of the larger circles in which they were included.

A still higher authority than that of ordinary metropolitans was attached to the bishops of the great seats of government, as Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. The title of patriarch, by which these came to be distinguished, was not, however, restricted to them in the period which we are now surveying.

The authority of the churches which could trace their origin to apostolic founders was highly regarded. Irenaeus and Tertullian, in arguing with heretics who refused to abide by the words of Scripture under pretense of its having been corrupted, refer them to the tradition of the apostolic churches and to the uninterrupted succession of their bishops, as evidence of the apostolic doctrine. In so doing, Tertullian places all such churches on the same level—classing Philippi, Corinth, Thessalonica, and Ephesus with Rome. But the great church of the imperial city had especial advantages, which could not fail to exalt it in a manner altogether peculiar. It was the only apostolic church of the west, and the channel through which most of the western nations had received the gospel; it was believed to have been founded by the labours and adorned by the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul; it was strong in the number of its members, and in the wealth which enabled it not only to maintain a higher degree of state than other churches, but to send large charities to the less opulent brethren in every quarter; it was linked with all other communities by continual intercourse; while it was preserved by national character from those speculative errors which so greatly disquieted the churches of the east. Hence the Roman church necessarily became preeminent above every other. But while this eminence was willingly acknowledged in ordinary circumstances, the pretensions of Rome were firmly resisted whenever such bishops as Victor or Stephen attempted to interfere with the independent rights of their brethren in the episcopate. The history of these centuries clearly shows that the bishops of Rome did not as yet possess any jurisdiction over other churches, or any other authority than the precedence and the influence which naturally resulted from their position.

CHOREPISCOPI

From the cities, in which it was first planted, Christianity gradually penetrated into the country. When a church was formed in a village or a small town, it was administered by a presbyter, subject to the bishop of the neighboring city, and in some cases by a chorepiscopus (or country bishop). Although this title does not occur before the fourth century, the office which it designates was of much earlier origin. The chorepiscopi were subordinate to the bishops of cities, and acted for them in confirming the baptized, in granting letters of communion, in ordaining the clergy of the minor orders, and sometimes, by special permission, the priests and deacons. It is a question to what order of the ministry they belonged. Some writers suppose that they were all bishops; others (among whom are Romanists of high name as well as presbyterians) consider them to have been presbyters; while, according to a third opinion, some were of one class and some of the other. If we regard the object of their appointment, this last view may seem the most probable. As the chorepiscopi were substitutes of the city bishops, and empowered to discharge some part of their functions, it may in some cases have been sufficient to appoint a presbyter, with authority to perform certain acts which by such delegation might rightly be entrusted to presbyters, although not included in the ordinary presbyterial commission; while in other cases it may have been expedient that the chorepiscopus should be a bishop, although, as being the deputy of another bishop, he was limited in the exercise of his powers.

The right of the Christian clergy to “live of the gospel” was asserted and acknowledged from the first. As the church became more completely organized, they were withdrawn from secular business, and were restricted to the duties of their ministry; in the African church of St. Cyprian’s time a clergyman was forbidden even to undertake the office of executor or guardian. Their maintenance was derived from the oblations of the faithful; in some places they received a certain proportion of the whole fund collected for the uses of the church; in other places, as at Carthage, provision was made for them by special monthly collections. The amount of income thus obtained was naturally very various in different churches; it would seem that the practice of trading, which is sometimes spoken of as a discredit to the clergy, and forbidden by canons, may in many cases have originated, not in covetousness, but in a real need of some further means of subsistence in addition to those provided by the church.

Rites and Usages.

During the earliest years of the gospel—while the congregations of believers were scanty and poor, and their assemblies were held in continual fear of disturbance on the part of the heathens—although it seems probable that they may have set certain rooms apart for the performance of their worship, it is not to be supposed that any entire buildings can have been devoted exclusively to religious uses. We find, however, that in Tertullian’s time churches were already built: the notices of them become more frequent in the course of the third century; and, as has been stated in a former chapter, a new splendor of structure and ornament was introduced during the long interval of peace which followed after the persecution under Valerian.

In these churches a portion was separated from the rest by railings, which were intended to exclude the laity. Within this enclosure were the holy table or altar which was usually made of wood, the pulpit or reading-desk, and the seats of the clergy.

In the apostolical times, baptism was administered immediately on the acknowledgment of Christ by the receiver; but when the church became more firmly settled, converts were required to pass through a course of moral training, combined with instruction in the faith before admission to its communion by this sacrament. Their entry on this training (during which the title of Christians was already given to them, as well as that of catechumens) was marked by a solemn reception, with prayer, the sign of the cross, and imposition of hands. The length of the preparatory period was not uniform; the council of Illiberis (Elvira, near Granada) appoints two years, while the Apostolical Constitutions prescribe three, although with a permission that the term may be shortened in special cases. If the catechumen were in danger of death during his probation, he was baptized without further delay.

With the system of preparatory training was introduced the practice of confining the ordinary administration of baptism to particular seasons. Easter and Whitsuntide were considered as especially suitable, on account of the connection between the sacrament and the great events which those seasons respectively commemorated; and it was on the vigil of each festival that the chief performance of the baptismal rites took place. Yet baptism might still be given at other times: “Every day is the Lord's”, says Tertullian, after stating the reasons for preferring Easter and Pentecost; “every hour, every time, is fitting for baptism; if there be a difference as to solemnity, there is none as to grace”.

Agreeably to apostolical practice, a profession of faith was exacted at baptism. Hence arose the use of creeds, embodying the essential points of belief, which were imparted to the catechumens in the last stage of their preparation. The name given to these forms—symbolai —seems either to have meant simply that they were tokens of Christian brotherhood, or to have been borrowed from the analogy of military service, in which the watchwords or passwords were so called. Renunciation of the devil and other spiritual enemies was also re­quired and it was probably in the second century that the rite of exorcising was introduced into the baptismal office—a rite which was founded on the view that men were under the dominion of the evil one until set free by the reception of Christian grace. About the same time probably were added various symbolical ceremonies :— the sign of the cross on the forehead; the kiss of peace, in token of admission into spiritual fellowship; white robes, figurative of the cleansing from sin; and the tasting of milk and honey, which were intended to typify the blessings of the heavenly Canaan.

Baptism was administered by immersion, except in cases of sickness, where effusion or sprinkling was used. St. Cyprian strongly asserts the sufficiency of this “clinical baptism”; but a stigma was justly attached to persons who put off their baptism until the supposed approach of death should enable them (as it was thought) to secure the benefits of the sacrament without incurring its obligation to newness of life. In opposition to this error, Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian earnestly insist on the principle that right dispositions of mind are necessary in order to partake of the baptismal gifts, and warn against trusting to the virtue of an ordinance received in circumstances where it was hardly possible to conceive that such dispositions could exist.

That the baptism of infants was of apostolical origin, there are abundant grounds of presumption. Thus, our Lord Himself, by receiving and blessing little children, showed that they are capable of spiritual benefits. His charge to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them” was given to persons who had been accustomed to the admission of infants into a spiritual covenant by the right of circumcision, and even to the baptism of the children of proselytes. St. Paul seems to assume that all who were capable of becoming members of the Jewish church were equally admissible to the Christian church; and we hear nothing of any dissensions on this point, whereas the exclusion of their infants would surely have been a grievance sufficient to provoke in the highest degree the characteristic jealousy of Jewish converts. We read of whole households as having been baptized at once, without a hint that any members of them were excepted on account of tender age. And in St. Paul’s charges as to the training of children, they seem to be regarded as already members of the church ; for otherwise we might certainly have expected to meet with directions for their instruction and discipline in preparation for baptism. The first distinct mention of infant-baptism is by St. Irenaeus; but the whole bearing of early writings is in accordance with the judgment of Origen, who referred the practice to apostolical tradition. Tertullian, in terms hardly consistent with a belief in original sin (which, however, he elsewhere strongly declares) argues against hastening to administer baptism to “the age of innocence”; but his objection proves that this was the established usage, and he himself allows that infants may be baptized when in danger of death.

Tertullian is also a witness for the use of sponsors at baptism.

Confirmation, by imposition of hands and anointing with chrism, was originally given immediately after baptism; but in the second century the administration of it was ordinarily reserved to bishops, although in the east it was still sometimes performed by presbyters. When baptism was administered by a bishop or in his presence, as in cities at the great festivals, the supplementary rites were immediately added; in other cases, they were deferred until there should be an opportunity of receiving them at the hands of the bishop. Confirmation was bestowed on infants as well as on other baptized persons; and in some churches a practice of administering the Eucharist to infants and young children—founded on a belief that our Lord’s words imposed a universal necessity of that sacrament in order to salvation —was established by the middle of the third century.

The elements of Christian worship appear, by the notices which occur in the New Testament, to have been the same from the earliest days, although varieties of detail and arrangement obtained in different churches. The ordinary service of “the day which is called Sunday”, in the second century, is described by Justin Martyr. It began with passages from the Scriptures, read in a language which the hearers in general could understand; or, where no version as yet existed in a tongue intelligible to the common people, the selected passages were first read in Greek or Latin, and were then rendered into the local dialect by an interpreter. After this followed a discourse by the presiding ecclesiastic, which was usually directed to the application of the lessons which had been read. These addresses were at first simple and familiar in style, and hence received the name of homilies (i.e. conversations); but by degrees they rose into greater importance as a part of the service, and acquired something of a rhetorical character, which had originally been avoided for the sake of distinction from the harangues of secular orators and philosophers. Psalmody formed a large portion of the early Christian worship. It consisted partly of the Old Testament psalms, and partly of hymns composed on Christian themes; and both in the church and among heretical sects it was found a very effective means of impressing doctrine on the minds of the less educated members.

In the apostolic age the administration of the Eucharist took place in the evening, after the pattern of its original institution. The service included a thanksgiving by the bishop or presbyter for God’s bounty in supplying the fruits of the earth; and in acknowledgment of these gifts the congregation presented offerings of bread and wine, from which the elements for consecration were taken. At the same time money was contributed for the relief of the poor, the maintenance of the clergy, and other ecclesiastical purposes. The bread used in the administration was of the common sort, leavened the wine was mixed with water,—at first, merely in compliance with the ordinary custom of the east, although mystical reasons for the mixture were devised at least as early as the time of Clement of Alexandria, and an opinion of its necessity afterwards grew up. Before the consecration, the names of those who had offered, and of such saints or deceased members of the church as were to be specially commemorated, were read from the diptychs; and, although the practice of reciting such lists was afterwards abandoned on account of the inconvenient length to which they had grown, it became usual to insert in the diptychs the names of the sovereign, of the patriarchs, and of the neighboring bishops, as a sign of Christian fellowship.

The Eucharist was at first preceded, but at a later date was more usually followed, by the agape or love-feast. The materials of this were contributed by the members of the congregation, according to the means of each; all, of whatever station, sat down to it as equals, in token of their spiritual brotherhood; and the meal was concluded with psalmody and prayer. It was, however, too soon found (as even the apostolic writings bear witness) that the ideal of this feast was liable to be grievously marred in practice. There was danger of excess and selfishness in partaking of it; for the richer Christians there was a temptation either to “shame” their poorer brethren, or, by a more subtle form of evil, to value themselves on their bounty and condescension towards them. It was found also that the secret celebration of such meals tended to excite the suspicions of the heathen; that it gave rise and countenance to the popular reports of Thyestean banquets and other abominations. For such reasons the agape was first disjoined from the Lord’s Supper, and then was abandoned. In the fourth century canons were directed against celebrations bearing this name, but which were altogether different from those to which it had been attached in earlier times.

After a time, and probably with a view of disarming the jealousies of the heathen, the administration of the Eucharist was transferred from the evening to the morning, when it was added to the service which had before been usual. Hence arose a distinction between the parts of the combined service. The earlier—the “mass of the catechumens”—was open to energumens (or possessed persons), to catechumens, penitents, and in the fourth century even to heretics, Jews, and heathens; while to the celebration of the holy mysteries—the “mass of the faithful"”—none were admitted but such as were baptized and in full communion with the church. This division of the service must have been fully established before Tertullian’s time, since he censures the Marcionites for their neglect of it.

In the very earliest times of the church, the sacramental “breaking of bread” was daily; but the fervor of devotion in which such an observance was possible soon passed away, and the celebration was usually confined to the Lord’s day. In Africa an idea of the necessity of daily communion (which was supposed to be indicated in the petition for “our daily bread”) led to a custom of carrying home portions of the consecrated bread, and eating a morsel of it every morning, before going forth to the business of the day. Thus the individual Christian was supposed to witness and main­tain his union with his brethren elsewhere; and in this private use of one of the sacramental elements without the other appears to have originated one of the. most inexcusable corruptions of the later Latin church. The Eucharist being regarded as the chief sign and bond of Christian communion, it was considered that all the members of the church were bound to partake of it, except such as were debarred by ecclesiastical censures. All, therefore, who were present at the celebration of the sacrament communicated; and portions of the consecrated elements were reserved for the sick and for prisoners, to whom they were conveyed by the deacons after the public rites were ended.

While the idea of the Christian life regards all our time as holy to the Lord, it was yet felt to be necessary that human weakness should be guided and trained by the appointment of certain days as more especially to be sanctified by religious solemnities. Hence, even from the very beginning of the church, we find traces of a particular reverence attached to the first day of the week. The special consecration of one day in seven was recommended by the analogy of the ancient Sabbath; the first of the seven was that which the apostles selected, as commemorative of their Master’s rising from the grave, with which a reference to the creation was combined. On this day the believers of the apostolic age met together; they celebrated it with prayer, psalmody, preaching, administration of the Lord’s Supper, and collections for the needs of the church; and according to their example the day was everywhere observed throughout the early centuries as one of holy joy and thanksgiving. All fasting on it was forbidden; the congregation stood at prayers, instead of kneeling as on other days. The first evidence of a cessation from worldly business on the Lord’s day is found in Tertullian, who, however, is careful (as are the early Christian writers in general) to distinguish between the Lord’s day and the Mosaic Sabbath.

In memory of our Lord’s betrayal and crucifixion, the fourth and sixth days of each week were kept as fasts by abstinence from food until the hour at which he gave up the ghost—the ninth hour, or 3 p.m. In the manner of observing the seventh day, the eastern church differed from the western. The orientals, influenced by the neighbourhood of the Jews and by the ideas of Jewish converts, regarded it as a continuation of the Mosaic Sabbath, and celebrated it almost, in the same manner as the Lord’s day; while their brethren of the west extended to it the fast of the preceding day.

Agreeably to the analogy of the elder church, the first Christians assigned certain seasons to an annual remembrance of the great events in the history of redemption. Of these seasons the chief was the Pascha, which included the celebration both of the crucifixion and of the resurrection. The festival of the resurrection was preceded by a solemn fast, as to the length of which the practice varied. Irenaeus states that some were in the habit of keeping one day, some two days, some more, and some forty; but whether the forty ought to be understood as signifying days or hours is disputed. In any case, the observance of the fast was as yet voluntary, except on the day of the crucifixion.

The whole pentecostal season—from Easter to Whit­suntide—was regarded as festival; as on Sundays, the people prayed standing, and all fasting was forbidden. Whitsunday itself was observed with especial solemnity; and in the course of the third century Ascension-day began to be also distinguished above the rest of the season.

It would seem that at Rome the Saviour’s birth was celebrated on the 25th of December that the eastern church (like the Basilidians) kept the 6th of January in memory of the Epiphany—by which name was understood his manifestation as the Messiah at his baptism; and that when, in course of time, the commemoration of the nativity made its way into some parts of the east, it was also observed on the same day—the words of St. Luke II. 23 being supposed to intimate that the baptism took place on the anniversary of the birth. The adoption of the Epiphany in the west (where a reference to other events in the gospel history was joined with, and at length supplanted, the subject of the old oriental festival), and the separate celebration of Christmas-day in the east, belong to the fourth century.

FESTIVALS OF MARTYRS.

The memory of martyrs was very early honored by religious commemorations, as appears from the letter written in the name of the church of Smyrna on the death of St. Polycarp. On the anniversary of a martyr’s suffering there was a meeting at the place of his burial—often a subterranean catacomb or crypt; the acts of his passion were read, and the brethren were exhorted to imitate his virtues; prayer was made; the Eucharist was celebrated, with an especial offering of thanks for the martyr; and sometimes the agape followed. But, although a belief early crept in that the intercession of martyrs had somewhat of a like power for opening the kingdom of heaven to that which was allowed them in restoring penitents to the communion of the earthly church,—while it was supposed to obtain both forgiveness and grace for their brethren who were yet in the flesh—although Origen even ascribes to the deaths of martyrs an atoning effect akin to that of the Redeemer’s sacrifice —their interest was bespoken only by entreaties before their suffering; they, like the rest of the faithful departed, were supposed to have not as yet entered on the perfect blessedness of heaven; nor is there in the writings or in the sepulchral monuments of the early Christians any evidence of prayer either to the martyrs or through them after death.

It does not appear that festivals were as yet assigned to the apostles, except in those churches with which they had been more especially connected.

A service in remembrance of departed relatives was usual on the anniversaries of their deaths. The surviving kindred met at the grave; the Eucharist was celebrated; an oblation for the deceased was laid on the altar with those of the living; and his name was mentioned in prayer, with a commendation to eternal peace.

The commission of grievous error in life or doctrine was punished by exclusion from the communion of the church; and, in order to obtain re-admission, offenders were obliged to submit to a prescribed course of penance. The regulations as to the length and manner of this penance varied in different times, and in the several branches of the church; the administration of it was chiefly in the hands of the bishops, who were at liberty to exercise their discretion in each case, on a consideration not only of the penitent’s demeanor under the discipline, but of his entire history and character. Reconciliation after the heaviest sins, such as murder, adultery, and idolatry, was allowed only once to the baptized. In some cases, the whole life was to be a period of penance; in some, reconciliation was not granted even in the hour of death, although the refusal was not meant to imply that the sinner was shut out from the Divine forgiveness. The church's office was not supposed in these ages to extend beyond prescribing the means which might best dispose the sinner's mind for seeking the mercy of God; Cyprian, Firmilian, and other teachers are careful to guard against the danger of imagining that ecclesiastical absolution could forestall the sentence of the last day. The dissensions which took place at Rome and at Carthage in consequence of the persecution under Decius afford abundant evidence of the popular tendency to error in connection with this subject. The difficulties then felt in treating the cases of the lapsed led to the establishment in some churches of penitentiary priests, whose business it was to hear privately the confessions of offenders, and to direct them in the conduct of their repentance. And towards the end of the third century, the system was further organized by a division of the penitents into four classes, each of which marked a particular stage in the course, and had a special place assigned to the members in the time of divine service.

The churches of the early Christians had no images or pictures; for the connection of art with heathen religion and with the moral impurities of heathenism was regarded as a reason against the employment of it in sacred things. It was through the usages of common life that art gradually found its way into the church. Instead of the figures or emblems of gods with which the heathen adorned their houses, their furniture, their cups, and their signets, the Christians substituted figurative representations, such as a shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders, emblematic of Christ the “good Shepherd”; a dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost; a ship, significant of the church, the ark of salvation, sailing towards heaven; a fish, which, by its connection with water, conveyed an allusion to baptism, while the letters which formed its Greek name might be interpreted as designating the Savior; a lyre or an anchor, the types of Christian joy and hope. And in this system were introduced even such heathen emblems as could be interpreted in a Christian sense by the initiated—for example, the vine of Bacchus and the phoenix. In like manner the Savior was represented as Orpheus, as Apollo, or (in his character of the good Shepherd) as Mercury; and Theseus slaying the Minotaur typified the victory of David over Goliath. But as yet hardly any other than symbolical figures were used. Even in the catacombs of Rome, which were withdrawn from the sight of the heathen, symbol prevails over the attempt at literal representation, and the ideas of the New Testament are commonly figured under the likeness of the Old, as where the story of Jonah is made to serve for a type of the resurrection, and Moses striking the rock symbolizes the waters of baptism. Even from the gospel history types are chosen in preference to attempting a more direct representation. Thus the feast on the miraculously multiplied loaves and fishes signifies the Eucharist, and perhaps the early pictures of the raising of Lazarus, in which he appears as a child, are rightly interpreted as meaning the spiritual rising from the death of sin in baptism. Neither art nor tradition professed to convey an idea of the Savior’s human form, while, on the supposed authority of some prophetical texts, it was generally believed to have been mean beyond that of mankind in general; the earliest imaginary representations of him are met with, not among orthodox Christians, but among the Carpocratian heretics and in the eclectic heathenism of Alexander Severus. Towards the end of the period, however, we find among the canons of the council of Illiberis one which forbids pictures in churches, “lest”, it is said, “that which is worshipped and adored be painted on the walls”. Such an enactment is evidence at once of a recent and growing practice, and of the light in which it was regarded by the simple and austere mind of the Spanish church.

The figure of the cross (with which, as Tertullian witnesses, it was the custom of the early Christians to sign their foreheads very frequently in the occasions of their daily life) was early introduced into churches. It had not, however, during this period assumed its place over the altar, nor was any devotion paid to it.

Moral Character of Christians—Asceticism—Celibacy.

As the Christians of the early centuries embraced the gospel at the risk of much worldly sacrifice and suffering, we naturally expect to find that their lives were generally marked by a serious endeavor to realize their holy calling. And thus on the whole it was, although the condition of the church from the very beginning bore witness to the truth of those prophetic parables which had represented it as containing a mixture of evil members with the good. The apologists, while they acknowledge many defects among their brethren, are yet always able to point to the contrast between the lives of Christians and the utter degradation of heathen morals as an evidence of the power of the gospel. No stronger proof of this contrast need be sought than the fact that the philosophers who undertook to reinvigorate the heathen system with a view of meeting the aggressions of the new religion, found a moral reformation no less necessary than a reform of the current doctrines of heathenism.

The mutual love of Christians—a love which in its disinterested sympathy for all men was something wholly new to the heathen —was that which most impressed those who viewed the church from without. Their care of the poor, the aged, the widows, and the orphans of the community—their reverential ministrations to the brethren who were imprisoned for the faith—their kindness to slaves, whom the maxims of the ancient world had regarded as mere animated tools, whereas the gospel, while it did not interfere with the difference of social position, yet raised the slave to the footing of spiritual brotherhood with his master, and reminded the master that he too was the redeemed servant of Christ— the liberal gifts sent from one country to another for the relief of distress—the contributions raised in order to the deliverance of captives—the system of letters of communion, which not only procured for Christians admission to spiritual privileges in every church which they might visit, but entitled them to the charity and good offices of its members—such were some of the tokens in which the spirit of love was conspicuously shown; and while the sight of these things had its due effect on many, as a witness for the faith which could produce such fruits, it probably became one means of attracting unworthy converts from the needy classes, through the hope of sharing in the bounty of the richer brethren.

The force of Christian principle shone forth with especial luster in seasons of general calamity. The charitable labors of Cyprian and his flock on occasion of the plague in the reign of Gallus have been already mentioned. A like course was taken at the same time by Dionysius and the church of Alexandria; and, as we have lately seen, the Christian spirit was again nobly manifested by the Alexandrians during the famine and pestilence under Maximin.

It was felt that in their ordinary life Christians ought to be marked as distinct from heathens. Certain occupations were altogether forbidden—as those of diviners, actors, gladiators, charioteers, and makers of images. A convert who had followed any such calling was required to forsake it before admission to baptism; and, until he could find some other means of supporting himself, he was maintained from the funds of the church. St. Cyprian strongly condemns a Christian, who, having been formerly a player, endeavored to earn a livelihood by giving lessons in his old profession. Attendance at theatres was forbidden, not only on account of the original connection between the drama and heathen religion, or of the frequent offences against decency and morality which occurred in the performances of the stage, but also because the waste of time on such frivolous amusements was considered to be inconsistent with the spiritual life. Stories are told of judgments on persons who had ventured to disregard the rule; thus Tertullian relates that a woman who went to a theatre returned home possessed of a devil, and that the evil spirit, on being reproached by the exorcist for assaulting one of the faithful, answered that he had a right to do so, inasmuch as he had found her on his own ground. The games of the circus, the gladiatorial shows, and the combats of wild beasts, were interdicted in like manner. Some Christians, as we learn from Tertullian, attempted to argue that such prohibitions were not warranted by Scripture; but the great African vehemently denounces the interested casuistry which sought to relax the severity of the church’s laws.

The sense of the obligation to be unlike the heathen, while it acted as a safeguard to the virtue of many Christians, was yet not without danger in other respects. It sometimes became a temptation to a narrow, self-satisfied, and contemptuous spirit; it incited to a needless and offensive display of differences; it tended to an overvaluation of mere outward distinctions and acts, in respect both of their necessity and of their importance. Hence arose the extreme reverence for confessorship and martyrdom, without sufficient regard to the character and motives of the sufferers. Hence too came the system of professing an extraordinary austerity, and a renunciation of things which were allowed to be lawful for the mass of believers. Such renunciation had been practiced both among Jews and among heathens; and as early, at least, as the beginning of the second century, there were some Christian ascetics who bound themselves to an especial strictness of living, but without any perpetual or irrevocable vows. That the church, however, was not at that time disposed to attach an undue value to such exercises, may be inferred from the statement, that when one of the Lyonese martyrs, Alcibiades, attempted to continue in prison his custom of living on bread and water only, his fellow prisoner Attalus was charged in a vision to warn him against refusing God's creatures and risking offence to his. brethren; and that thereupon Alcibiades conformed to the usual diet. The ascetic life was more fully reduced to system when the influence of Platonism grew on the church—bringing with it the idea, common in oriental religions, of attaining to a likeness of the Divine repose by a lofty abstraction from mundane things. While ordinary believers were allowed to follow the usual business of the world, the higher spirits were to devote themselves to prayer and meditation; and in the countries where this division was first recognized, the influence of climate powerfully conduced to a preference of the contemplative over the active life.

In the course of the second century societies had been formed for the purpose of living together under a religious rule. Some, considering even such society to be too distracting, shut themselves up in utter seclusion; and in the third century these eremites, or hermits, retired further from the haunts of men, to bury themselves in the wildest and most inaccessible solitudes. Paul of Alexandria has been mentioned as having withdrawn into the wilderness from the Decian persecution. Antony, the most celebrated of the hermits, although his earlier history falls within this period, may more fitly be noticed hereafter.

The state of celibacy was, from the first, regarded as higher than that of matrimony; nor is it easy to distinguish in how far the commendations of single life were founded on its advantages in times of distress, or on its exemption from the dangers of heathen connection, and in how far they implied a belief in an essential superiority.

When, however, this superiority was exaggerated by sectaries, so as to disparage the holiness of marriage, the members of the church earnestly combated such opinions. It was found, too, that a profession of celibacy was not always enough to give security against the temptations of this world. Thus Tertullian, in his Montanistic days, threw out serious imputations against the character and motives of some who had been enrolled among the virgins of the African church; and Cyprian found himself obliged to write against the vanities of dress and demeanor in which the virgins of the same church in his time indulged. Moreover, when the lawful intercourse of the sexes was forbidden or renounced, grievous scandals sometimes arose in its place.

The single life came by degrees to be considered especially suitable for the clergy; but no constraint was as yet put on them, although a progress of restriction may be observed during the period. Thus, whereas it appears, from Tertullian’s invectives, that even second marriages were frequently contracted by the clergy of his day, we find the council of Illiberis, a century later, enacting that bishops, priests, deacons, and even the inferior clergy, should live with their wives as if unmarried.

The severity of this rule was, however; beyond the general notions of the age. Other canons, about the same date, forbid the marriage of the higher clergy, but do not interfere with the conjugal relations of such as had been married before their ordination to the diaconate.

The recognition of a distinction between a higher and a lower Christian life was dangerous, not only because it tended to encourage the mass of men in laxity, —so that the teachers of the church had often to combat excuses for careless living which rested on such grounds, —but also as laying a temptation to pride and self-sufficiency in the way of those who embraced the more exalted profession. Yet both in this and in many other respects, although we may see in the first three centuries the germ of errors and mischiefs which afterwards became unhappily prevalent, their appearance is as yet only in the germ. Hence we may, at the same time, detect the evil which lurks in ideas and practices of those early days, and yet duly reverence the holy men who originated or advanced such ideas or practices, without any suspicion of the evil which was in them. An understanding Chris­tian must never forget that, in the experience of the ages which have since passed, Providence has supplied him with instruction and warning which were not bestowed on the primitive church. He must remember that, for the formation of his own opinions, and for the guidance of his own conduct, he is bound to consider the proved results of things which at first were introduced as conducive to the further advancement of piety. While it is his duty to resist every feeling which would lead him to exalt himself above earlier and more simple times, he must yet, with a due sense of responsibility for the use of the means of judgment which have been vouchsafed to him, endeavor to discriminate, by the lights of Scripture and history, not only between absolute truth and fully developed falsehood, but between wholesome and dangerous tendencies, and to ascertain the boundaries at which lawful progress ends and corruption begins.