BOOK I

FROM THE PERSECUTION OF THE CHURCH BY NERO TO CONSTANTINE’S EDICT OF TOLERATION. A.D. 64-313.

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 endeavours 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 favourite 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 works, 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, in the beginning of his reign, favoured 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 favourably 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 amphitheatres; 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, unfavourable 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, endeavouring 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 endeavoured 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, moulded 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 behaviour 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 amphitheatre, 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 amphitheatre, 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 favourable for the reception of Montanism.

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 favourably 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.

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 favourable 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 endeavoured 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 endeavoured 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 y to press this affair into the service of the later papal claims is singularly unfortunate. Victor’s behaviour, 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.

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 endeavour 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 150. 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 for ever 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 fulfilment 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.

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 160. 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 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 having 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 ardour 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 tumour and 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; lie 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 favour:—“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 spiritualism 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 honour 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.

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 Saviour. 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 :f 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.

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 influenced 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 parsed 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.

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 (A.D. 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 (A.D. 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.

In this period we find that Christianity and heathen philosophy, in preparing for a continuation of their struggle, adopt something of each other’s armour; 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 220.

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 works 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 savoured 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.

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; y 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 Neo-platonic 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 for ever.

 

CHAPTER VI

FROM ALEXANDER SEVERUS TO VALERIAN A.D. 222-260.