HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH FROM THE APOSTOLIC AGE TO THE REFORMATION A.D. 64-1517 |
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BOOK I
CHAPTER I.
THE APOSTOLIC AGE
THE fullness of the time was come 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 works of Gentile thought, employing the highest powers in
the search after 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 honour 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 works
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 Phrygia. The church of Alexandria
traced itself to St. Mark; that of Milan, but with less warrant, 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 works 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 it
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
may be wrong in connecting the names with the works, it is an
unreasonable skepticism to insist on
separating them without examination and without exception.
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 sewn 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 centre. 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 Simeon, 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.
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 licitae); 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 labour, 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 (A.D. 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.
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 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
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH
IN ROME
I
THE JEWISH COLONY IN ROME
AT the beginning of the first century of the Christian
era the Jewish colony in Rome had attained large dimensions. As early as B.C.
162 we hear of agreements— we can scarcely call them treaties—concluded between
the Jews under the Maccabean dynasty and the Republic. After the capture of
Jerusalem by Pompey, B.C. 63, a number more of Jewish exiles swelled the number
of the chosen people who had settled in the capital. Cicero when pleading for Flaccus, who was their enemy, publicly alludes to their
numbers and influence. Their ranks were still further recruited in B.C. 51,
when a lieutenant of Crassus brought some thousands of Jewish prisoners to
Rome. During the civil wars, Julius Caesar showed marked favour to the chosen people. After his murder they were prominent among those who mourned
him.
Augustus continued the policy of Julius Caesar, and
showed them much favour; their influence in Roman
society during the earlier years of the Empire seems to have been considerable.
They are mentioned by the great poets who flourished in the Augustan age. The
Jewish Sabbath is especially alluded to by Roman writers as positively becoming
a fashionable observance in the capital.
A few distinguished families, who really possessed
little of the Hebrew character and nationality beyond the name, such as the Herods, adopted the manners and ways of life of the Roman patrician
families; but as a rule the Jews in foreign lands preferred the obscurity to
which the reputation of poverty condemned them. Some of them were doubtless
possessors of wealth, but they carefully concealed it; the majority, however,
were poor, and they even gloried in their poverty; they haunted the lowest and
poorest quarters of the great city. Restlessly industrious, they made their
livelihood, many of them, out of the most worthless objects of merchandise; but
they obtained in the famous capital a curious celebrity. There was something
peculiar in this strange people at once attractive and repellent. The French
writer Allard, in the exhaustive and striking volumes in which he tells the
story of the persecutions in his own novel and brilliant way, epigrammatically
writes of the Jew in the golden age of Augustus as “one who was known to pray
and to pore over his holy national literature in Rome which never prayed and
which possessed no religious books”.
They lived their solitary life alone in the midst of
the crowded city—by themselves in life, by themselves, too, in death; for they
possessed their own cemeteries in the suburbs,—catacombs we now term
them,—strange God’s acres where they buried, for they never burned, their dead,
carefully avoiding the practice of cremation, a practice then generally in
vogue in pagan Rome. Upon these Jewish cemeteries the Christians, as they
increased in numbers, largely modelled those vast cities of the dead of which
we shall speak presently.
They watched over and tenderly succoured their own poor and needy, the widow and the orphan; on the whole living pure
self-denying Eves, chiefly disfigured by the restless spirit, which ever dwelt
in the Jewish race, of greed and avarice. They were happy, however, in their
own way, living on the sacred memories of a glorious past, believing with an
intense belief that they were still, as in the glorious days of David and
Solomon, the people beloved of God—and that ever beneath them, in spite of their
many confessed backslidings, were the Everlasting Arms; trusting, with a faith
which never paled or faltered, that the day would surely come when out of their
own people a mighty Deliverer would arise, who would restore them to their
loved sacred city and country; would invest His own, His chosen nation, with a
glory and power grander, greater than the world had ever seen.
There is no doubt but that the Jew of Rome in Rome’s
golden days, in spite of his seeming poverty and degradation, possessed a
peculiar moral power in the great empire, unknown among pagan nations.
In the reign of Nero, when the disciples of Jesus in
Rome first emerged from the clouds and mists which envelop the earliest days of
Roman Christianity, the number of Jews in the capital is variously computed as
amounting to from 30,000 to 50,000 persons.
The Jewish colony in Rome was a thoroughly representative
body of Jews. They were gathered from many centres of
population, Palestine and Jerusalem itself contributing a considerable
contingent. They evidently were distinguished for the various qualities, good
and bad, which generally characterized this strange, wonderful people. They
were restless, at times turbulent, proud and disdainful, avaricious and
grasping; but at the same time they were tender and compassionate in a very
high degree to the sad-eyed unfortunate ones among their own people,—most
reverent, as we have remarked, in the matter of disposing of their dead,—on the
whole giving an example of a morality far higher than that which, as a rule,
prevailed among the citizens of the mighty capital in the midst of whom they
dwelt.
The nobler qualities which emphatically distinguished the race were no doubt fostered by the intense religious spirit which lived and breathed in every Jewish household. The fear of the eternal God, who they believed with an intense and changeless faith loved them, was ever before the eyes alike of the humblest, poorest little trader, as of the wealthiest merchant in their company.
II
INTO this mass of Jewish strangers dwelling in the
great city came the news of the wonderful work of Jesus Christ. As among the
Jews at Jerusalem, so too in Rome, the story of the Cross attracted many—repelled
many. The glorious news of salvation, of redemption, sank quietly into many a
sick and weary heart; these hearts were kindled into a passionate love for Him
who had redeemed them—into a love such as had never before been kindled in any
human heart. While, on the other hand, with many, the thought that the
treasured privileges of the chosen people were henceforward to be shared on
equal terms by the despised Gentile world, excited a bitter and uncompromising
opposition—an opposition which oftentimes shaded into an intense hate.
The question as to who first preached the gospel
of Jesus Christ to this great Jewish colony will probably never be answered.
There is a high probability that the “story of the Cross” was told very soon
after the Resurrection by some of those pilgrims to the Holy City who had been
eyewitnesses of the miracle of the first Pentecost.
There is, however, a question connected with the beginnings
of Christianity in Rome which is of the deepest interest to the student of
ecclesiastical history, a question upon which much that has happened since
largely hangs.
Was S. Peter in any way connected with the laying of
the foundation of the great Christian community in Rome; can he really be
considered as one of the founders of that most important Church? An immemorial
tradition persists in so connecting him; upon what grounds is this most ancient
tradition based?
Scholars of all religious schools of thought now
generally allow that S. Peter visited Rome and spent some time in the capital
city; wrote his great First Epistle from it, in which Epistle he called “Rome”
by the not unusual mystic name of “Babylon”, and eventually suffered martyrdom
there on a spot hard by the mighty basilica called by his name.
The only point at issue is, did he—as the favourite tradition asserts—pay his first visit to Rome
quite early in the Christian story, circa a.d. 42, remaining there for
some seven or eight years preaching and teaching, laying the foundations of the
great Church which rapidly sprang up in the capital?
Then when the decree of the Emperor Claudius banished
the Jews, a.d. 49-50, the tradition asserts that the apostle returned to the East, was present
at the Apostolic Council held at Jerusalem a.d. 50, only returning to Rome circa a.d. 63. Somewhere about a.d. 64 the
First Epistle of Peter was probably written from Rome. His martyrdom there is
best dated about a.d. 67.
THE Roman Church in the year of grace 61 was evidently
already a powerful and influential congregation: everything points to this
conclusion: its traditions, we might even say its history, and, above all, the
notices contained in S. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans written not later than a.d. 58.
Virtually alone among the Churches of the first thirty
years of Christianity does S. Paul give to this congregation unstinting,
unqualified praise—very different to his words addressed to the Church in
Corinth in both of his Epistles to that notable Christian centre,
or to the Galatian congregation in his letter to the Church of that province;
or even to the Thessalonians, the Church which he loved well, where reproach
and grave warnings are mingled with and colour his
loving words.
But to the Church of Rome, in which in its many early
years of struggle and combat he bore no part whatever, his praise is quite
unmingled with rebuke or warning. As regards this congregation (Rom. I. 8),
Paul thanks God for them all that their faith is spoken of throughout the whole
world. In the concluding chapter of the Epistle, some twenty-five specially
distinguished members of the Roman congregation are saluted by name, though it
by no means follows that S. Paul was personally acquainted with all of those
who were named by him.
About three years after writing his famous letter to
the Romans,—just referred to,—Paul came as a prisoner to the capital city. But
although a prisoner awaiting a public trial, the imperial government gave him
free liberty to receive in his own hired house members of the Christian Church,
and indeed any who chose to come and listen to his teaching; and this liberty
of free access to him was continued all through the two years of his waiting
for the public trial. The words of the “Acts of the Apostles”, a writing
universally received as authentic, are singularly definite here : “And Paul
dwelt two whole years in his own hired house (in Rome), and received all that
came unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which
concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him”.
It was during these two years of the imprisonment that
the great teacher justified his subsequent title, accorded him by so many of
the early Christian writers, of joint founder with S. Peter of the Roman
Church. The foundations of the Church of the metropolis we believe certainly to
have been laid by another leading member of the apostolic band, S. Peter. But
S. Paul’s share in strengthening and in building up this Church, the most
important congregation in the first days of Christianity, was without doubt
very great.
At a very early period, certainly after the fall of
Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, Rome became the acknowledged centre and the metropolis of Christendom. The great
world-capital was the meeting-place of the followers of the Name from all
lands. Thither, too, naturally flocked the teachers of the principal heresies
in doctrinal truth which very soon sprang up among Christian converts. Under
these conditions something more, in such a centre as
Rome, was imperatively needed than the simple direct Gospel teaching, however
fervid: something additional to the recited of the wondrous Gospel story as
told by S. Peter and repeated possibly verbatim by his disciple S. Mark. A
deeper and fuller instruction was surely required in such a centre as Rome quickly became. Men would ask, Who and what
was the Divine Founder of the religion,—what was His relation to the Father,
what to the angel-world? What was known of His pre-existence? These and
such-like questions would speedily press for a reply in such a cosmopolitan centre as imperial Rome. Inspired teaching bearing on such
points as these required to be welded into the original foundation stories of
the leading Church which Rome speedily became, and this was supplied by the
great master S. Paul, to whom the Holy Ghost had vouchsafed what may be justly
termed a double portion of the Spirit. The Christology of Paul, to use a later
theological term, was, in view of all that was about to come to pass in the
immediate future, a most necessary part of the equipment of the Church of God in
Rome.
The keynote of the famous master’s teaching during those
two years of his Roman imprisonment may be doubtless found in the letters
written by him at that time. Three of these, the “Ephesian,” “Colossian,” and “Philippian”
Epistles, were emphatically massive expositions of doctrine—especially that
addressed to the Colossians. From these we can gather what was the principal
subject-matter of the Pauline teaching at Rome. His thoughts were largely taken
up with the great doctrinal questions bearing on the person of the Founder of
Christianity.
We will quote one or two passages from the great
doctrinal Epistle to the Colossians as examples of the Pauline teaching at this
juncture of his life when he was engaged in building up the Roman Church, and furnishing
it with an arsenal of weapons which would soon be needed in their life
and death contest with the dangerous heresies which so soon made their
appearance in the city which was at once the metropolis of the Church and the
Empire.
“The Father, ... who hath translated us into the
kingdom of His dear Son, ... who is the image of the invisible God, the
first-born of every creature: for by Him were all things created, that are in
heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones,
or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him,
and for Him: and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He
is the head of the body, the Church: who is the beginning, the first-born from
the dead; that in all things he might have the pre-eminence. For it pleased the
Father that in Him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the
blood of His Cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him (I
say), whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Col. I. 12-20).
And once more : “Beware lest any man spoil you through
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, ... and not after
Christ. For in Him dwdleth all the fullness of the
Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all
principality and power”.
Preaching on such texts, which contain those
tremendous truths which just at this time he embodied in his Colossian letter,
did S. Paul lay the foundation of the “Christology” of the Church of Rome. With
justice, then, was he ranked by the early Christian writers as one of the
founders of the Roman Church, for he was without doubt the principal teacher of
the famous congregation in the all-important doctrinal truths bearing on the
person and office of Jesus Christ.
S. Peter, whose yet earlier work at Rome, we believe, stretching over some eight or nine years, we have already dwelt on, was evidently absent from the capital when S. Paul in a.d. 58 wrote his famous Letter to the Romans; nor had he returned in A.D. 61, when Paul was brought to the metropolis as a prisoner; but that he returned to Rome somewhere about a.d. 63-4 is fairly certain.
IV
FOR a little more than thirty years, dating back to
the Resurrection morning, with the exception of the occasion of that temporary
and partial banishment of the Jews and Christians from Rome in the days of the
Emperor Claudius, had the Christian propaganda gone on apparently unnoticed,
certainly unheeded by the imperial government.
The banishment decree of Claudius, the outcome of a
local disturbance in the Jewish quarter of the capital, was after a brief
interval apparently rescinded, or at least ignored by the ruling powers; but in
the middle of the year 64, only a few months after S. Paul’s long-delayed trial
and acquittal and subsequent departure from Rome, a startling event happened
which brought the Christians into a sad notoriety, and put an end to the
attitude of contemptuous indifference with which they had been generally
regarded by the magistrates both in the provinces and in the capital.
A terrible and unlooked for calamity reduced Rome to a
state of mourning and desolation. The 19th July, a.d. 64,— the date of the
commencement of the desolating fire,—was long remembered. It broke out in the
shops which clustered round the great Circus; a strong summer wind fanned the
flames, which soon became uncontrollable. The narrow streets of the old quarter
and the somewhat crumbling buildings fed the fire, which raged for some nine
days, destroying many of the ancient historic buildings. Thousands of the
poorer inhabitants were rendered homeless and penniless. At that period Rome
was divided into fourteen regions; of these three were
entirely consumed seven more were
rendered uninhabitable by the fierce fire; only four were left really unharmed
by the desolating calamity.
The passions of the mob, ever quickly aroused, were
directed in the first instance against the Emperor Nero, who was accused—probably
quite wrongfully—of being the incendiary : there is indeed a long, a mournful
chronicle of evil deeds registered against the memory of this evil Emperor; but
that he was the guilty author of this special outrage is in the highest degree
unlikely. His wild life, his cruelties, his ungovernable passions, his
insanity,—for no reader of history can doubt that in his case the sickness
which so often affects an uncontrolled despot had with Nero resulted in insanity,—indeed,
all his works and days, gave colour to the monstrous
and absurd charges which a fickle and angry mob brought against the once
strangely popular tyrant.
All kinds of wild stories connected with the fire were
circulated ; he had no doubt many remorseless enemies. Men said, Nero sitting
high on one of the towers of Rome, watched with fiendish joy and exultation the
progress of the devouring flames, and as Rome burned before his eyes, played
upon his lyre and sung a hymn of his own composition, for he imagined himself a
poet, in which he compared the burning of his Rome with the ruin of Troy.
Another legend was current, averring that the slaves
of the Emperor’s household had been seen fanning the flames in their desolating
course; another rumour was spread abroad which whispered
that the mad and wicked Emperor desired to see Old Rome, with its narrow and
crowded streets, destroyed, that he might be able to rebuild it on a new and
stately scale, and thus, regardless of the immemorial traditions of the ancient
city, to render his name immortal through this notable and magnificent work.
At all events these improbable stories more or less
gained credence in many quarters, and the Emperor found himself execrated by
thousands of thoughtless men and women who had suffered the loss of their all
in the fire, and who were glad to vent their fury on one whom they once admired
and even loved, though their admiration and love had been often mingled with
that fierce envy with which the people too frequently view the great and rich
and powerful.
Prompted by his evil advisers, among whom the infamous Tigellinus was the most conspicuous, the Emperor in
the first instance accused the Jews of being the incendiaries: curiously enough
the quarter of the city where they mostly congregated had been spared in the
late conflagration. It was no difficult task to persuade the fickle people that
the strange race of foreigners, who hated Rome and Rome's gods, had avenged
themselves and the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the Roman nation,
by firing the capital city.
Up to this time—in the eyes of most of the Romans—the
Jew and the Christian were one people ; they considered that if any difference
at all existed, it was simply that the Christian was a dissenting Jew. Now apparently,
after the burning of Rome, for the first time was any distinction made. It
happened on this wise: the Jews had powerful friends in the court of the
despotic Emperor. Poppaea the Empress, if not a Jewess, was at least a devoted
proselyte of the chosen race. There is no doubt but that her influence, backed
up no doubt by others about her person at the court, diverted the suspicions
which had been awakened, from the Jews to the Christians. These, it was
pointed out, were no real Jews, but were their deadly enemies; they were a
hateful and hated sect quite improperly confounded with the chosen people. The
Christians were now formally accused of being the real authors of the late
calamity, and the accusation seems to have been generally popular among the
masses of the Roman population. Our authorities for this popular hatred—we may
style them contemporary—are Tacitus and Suetonius and the Christian Clement of
Rome. The testimony of Pliny the Younger, who governed Bithynia under the
Emperor Trajan, will be discussed later.
Under the orders of Nero—who turned to his own
purposes the popular dislike to the new sect of Jewish fanatics, as they
generally were supposed to be—the Christians were sought for. It turned out
that there was a vast multitude of them in the city, “ingens multitudo”, says Tacitus; and Clement of Rome, the
Christian bishop and writer, circa a.d. 96, also speaks of their
great numbers. Many of the accused were condemned on the false charge of
incendiarism, to which was added an accusation far harder to disprove—general
hostility to society, and hatred of the world (odio generis humani).
A crowd of Christians of both sexes was condemned to
the wild beasts. It was arranged that they should provide a hideous amusement for the people who witnessed the games just then about to be celebrated in the
imperial gardens on the Vatican Hill—on the very spot where the glorious
basilica of S. Peter now stands.
Nero, anxious to restore his waning popularity with
the crowd, and to divert the strange suspicion which had fixed upon him as the
incendiary of the great fire, was determined that the games should surpass any
former exhibition of the like kind in the number of victims provided, and in
the refined cruelty of the awful punishment to which the sufferers were
condemned. He had in good truth an array of victims for his ghastly exhibition
such as had never been seen before. A like exhibition indeed was never
repeated; the hideousness of it positively shocking the Roman populace, cruel
though they were, and passionately devoted to scenic representations which
included death and torture, crime and shame. Numbers of these first Christian
martyrs were simply exposed to the beasts; others clothed in skins were hunted
down by fierce wild dogs; others were forced to play a part in infamous dramas,
which ever closed with the death of the victims in pain and agony.
But the closing scene was the most shocking. As the
night fell on the great show, as a novel delight for the populace, the Roman
people being especially charmed with brilliant and striking illuminations, the
outer ring of the vast arena was encircled with crosses on which a certain
number of Christians were bound, impaled, or nailed. The condemned were clothed
in tunics steeped in pitch and in other inflammable matter, and then, horrible
to relate, the crucified and impaled were set on fire, and in the lurid light
of these ghastly living torches the famous chariot races, in which the wicked
Emperor took a part, were ran.
But this was never repeated; as we have just stated, the sight of the living flambeaux, the protracted agony of the victims, was too dreadful even for that debased and hardened Roman crowd of heedless cruel spectators; the illuminations of Nero’s show were never forgotten; they remained an awful memory, but only a memory, even in Rome..
There is good reason to suppose that one of the
lookers on at the games of that long day and sombre evening in the gardens of the Vatican Hill was Seneca, the famous Stoic
philosopher, once the tutor and afterwards for a time the minister of Nero.
Seneca had retired from public life, and in two of his letters written during
his retirement to his sick and suffering friend Lucilius,
encouraging him to bear his distressing malady with brave patience, reminds
him of the tortures which were now and again inflicted on the condemned; in
vivid language picturing the fire, the chains, the worrying of wild beasts, the
prison horrors, the cross, the tunic steeped in pitch, the rack, the red-hot
irons placed on the quivering flesh. What, he asks his friend, are your sufferings compared with sufferings caused by these tortures ? And yet, he
adds, his eyes had seen these things endured; from the sufferer no groan was
heard—no cry for mercy—nay, in the midst of all he had seen the bravely patient
victims smile.
Surely here the great Stoic was referring to what he
had witnessed in Nero’s dread games of the Vatican gardens; no other scene
would furnish such a memory at once weird and pathetic. The strange ineffable
smile of the Christian in pain and agony dying for his God, had gone home to
the heart of the great scholar statesman. Like many another Roman citizen of
his day and time, Seneca had often seen men die, but he had never before looked
on any one dying after this fashion.
From the days of that ever memorable summer of the
year 64 until Constantine and Licinius signed the
edict which in the name of the Emperors gave peace and stillness to the
harassed Church, a.d. 313, roughly speaking a long period of two centuries and a half, the sword of
persecution was never sheathed. For practically from the year 64, the date of
the famous games in the Vatican gardens, there was a continuous persecution of
those that confessed the name of Christ. The ordinary number of the ten
persecutions is after all an arbitrary computation. The whole principle and
constitution of Christianity on examination were condemned by the Roman
government as irreconcilably hostile to the established order; and mere
membership of the sect, if persisted in, was regarded as treasonable, and the
confessors of Christianity became liable to the punishment of death. And this
remained the unvarying, the changeless policy of the Government of the State,
though not always put in force, until the memorable edict of Constantine, a.d. 313.
After the terrible scenes in the games of the Vatican
gardens, the persecution of the Christians still continued. The charges of
incendiarism were dropped, no one believing that there was any truth in these
allegations; but in Rome and in the provinces the Christian sect from this time
forward was generally regarded as hostile to the Empire.
The accusation of being the authors of the great fire
had revealed many things in connexion with the sect;
the arrests, the judicial inquiries, had thrown a flood of new light upon the
tenets of the new religion, had disclosed its large and evidently rapidly
increasing numbers. Most probably for many years were they still confused with
the Jews, but it was seen that the new sect was something more than a mere body
of Jewish dissenters.
It was universally acknowledged that the Christians
were innocent of any connexion with the great fire;
but something else was discovered; they were a very numerous company (ingens multitude)} intensely in earnest, opposed to the
State religion, preferring in numberless instances torture, confiscation,
death, rather than submit to the State regulations in the matter of religion.
For some time before the fire they had been generally
disliked, possibly hated by very many of the Roman citizens, by men of
different ranks, for various reasons; by traders who lost much by their
avoidance of all idolatrous feasts; by pagan families who resented the
proselytism which was constantly taking place in their homes, thus causing a
breach in the family circle; by priests and those specially connected with the
network of rites and ceremonies, sacrifices and offerings belonging to the
temples of the old gods. But, after all, this widespread popular dislike to the
sect was not the chief cause of the steady persecution which set in after the
wild and intemperate scenes which followed the great fire.
For the first time the imperial government saw with
whom they had to do. It was the settled policy of Rome steadily to repress and
to stamp out all organizations, all self-governing communities, or clubs, as
highly dangerous to the spirit of imperial policy ; and as the result of the
trials and inquiries which followed the fire of Rome, it found in the Christian
community a living embodiment of this tendency which hitherto Rome had
succeeded in crushing—found that in their midst, in the capital and in the
provinces, an extra-imperial unity was fast growing up—an Empire within the
Empire.
In other words, the whole of the principles and the
constitution of Christianity were considered as hostile to the established
order, and if persisted in were to be deemed treasonable ; thus after the
discoveries made in the course of the judicial proceedings which were
instituted after the great fire, the Christians, even after their innocence on
the incendiary charge was generally acknowledged, were viewed by the imperial
authorities as a politically dangerous society, being an organized and united
body having its ramifications all over the Empire; but after the hideous and
revolting cruelties to which so many of them had been subjected in the famous
Vatican games, the original charge made against them came universally to be
considered as an infamous device of the Emperor Nero to divert public attention
from himself, to whom, although probably falsely, the guilt of causing the fire
was popularly attributed.
Still there is no doubt that although the alleged connexion of the Christian sect with the crime of
incendiarism seems to have been quickly forgotten, from the year 64 onward “the
persecution was continued as a permanent police measure, under the form of a
general prosecution of Christians as a sect dangerous to the public safety.”
This, after a lengthened discussion of the whole
question, is Professor Ramsay's conclusion, who considers it doubtful if any “edict”,
in the strict sense of the word, was promulgated by the Emperor Nero; and this
he deduces from the famous correspondence which took place between Pliny, the governor
of Bithynia, and the Emperor Trajan, some fifty years after the events just
related in the days of Nero.
The words of Pliny when he asked for more definite
directions from Trajan in the matter of Christian prosecutions, apparently
indicate that he considered the Christian question not as one coming under some
definite law, but as a matter of practical administration.
The more general opinion, however, held by modem
Church historians is that an edict against the Christians was promulgated by
Nero, and that Domitian specially acted upon the edict in the course of the
severe measures taken against the sect in the later years of his reign ; the
words of Melito of Sardis (second century), of
Tertullian (beginning of third century), of the Christian historians writing in
the fourth century and early years of the fifth century Sulpitius Severus and Lactantius, being quoted in support of
this view.
The expressions used by Sulpitius Severus here are certainly very definite in the matter of the imperial edict.
This historian founds his account of the persecution under Nero on “Tacitus,”
and then comments as follows : “ This was the beginning of severe measures
against the Christians. Afterwards the religion was forbidden by formal laws,
and the profession of Christianity was made illegal by published edicts.
It is not, however, of great importance if the
profession of Christianity was formally interdicted, or if a persecution was a
matter of practical administration, the profession of the faith being
considered dangerous to law and order, and deserving of death—as Ramsay
supposes. The other conclusion is of far greater moment. It is briefly this:
The first step taken by the imperial government in persecution
dates certainly from the reign of Nero, immediately after the scenes in the
Vatican games, when a Christian was condemned after evidence had been given
that he or she had committed some act of hostility to society—no difficult task
to prove. Subsequent to Nero’s reign, a further development in the
persecutions had taken place (probably in the time of Vespasian), in which all
Christians were assumed to have been guilty of such hostility to society, and
might be condemned off-hand on confession of the Name. This was the state of
things when Pliny wrote to Trajan for more detailed instructions. The great
number of professing Christians alarming that upright and merciful
official, he asked the Emperor was he to send them all to death?
The leading feature of the instruction of the Emperor
Trajan in reply to Pliny’s question, as we shall presently see, was, although
Christians were to be condemned if they confessed the Name, they were not to
be sought out. This " instruction ” held good until the closing years of
the Empire, when a sterner policy was pursued; while it is indisputable that
under Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, a yet more
hostile practice was adopted towards the Christians.
One great point is clear—that from the days of Nero
the Christians were never safe; they lived as their writings plainly show, even
under the rule of those Emperors who were, comparatively speaking, well
disposed to them, with the vision of martyrdom ever before their eyes; they
lived, not a few of them, positively training themselves to endure the great
trial as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. During the first and second centuries,
comparatively speaking, only a few names of these martyrs and confessors have
come down to us : we possess but a few really well authenticated recitals (Acts
and Passions), but these names and stories do not read like exceptional cases; irresistibly the grave truth forces itself upon us, that there were many heroes
and heroines whose names have not been preserved—whose stories have not
been recorded.
The sword of persecution ever hung over the heads of the members of the Christian flocks—ready to fall at any moment. The stem instructions, modified though they were by the kindly policy of some of the rulers of the State, were never abrogated, never forgotten; they were susceptible, it is true, of a gentler interpretation than the harsh terms in which they were couched at first seemed to warrant, but these interpretations constantly varied according to the policy of the provincial magistrate and the tone for the moment of the reigning Emperor; but we must never think of the spirit of persecution really slumbering even for one short year.
IT has been asked, How comes it that for much of the
first and second centuries there is a remarkable silence respecting these
persecutions which we are persuaded harassed the Christian congregations in the
provinces as in the great metropolis? The answer here is not difficult to
find.
The pagan writers of these centuries held the
Christian sect in deep contempt; they would never think the punishments dealt
out to a number of law-breakers and wild fanatics worthy of chronicling; the
mere loss of life in that age, so accustomed to wholesale destruction of human
beings, would not strike them as a notable incident in any year.
While as regards Christian records, the practice of
celebrating the anniversary days of even famous martyrs and confessors only
began in Rome far on in the third century.
But, as we shall see, although we possess no Christian
records definitely telling us of any special persecution between the times of
Nero and the later years of Domitian, the pages of the undoubtedly genuine
Christian writings of very early date, from which we shall presently quote,
were unmistakably all written under the shadow of a restless relentless
hostility on the part of the Roman government towards the Christian sect. The
followers of Jesus we see ever lived under the shadow of persecution.
Never safe for a single day was the life of one who
believed in the Name; his life and the life of his dear ones were never for an
instant secure: he and his family were at the mercy of every enemy, open and
secret. Confiscation, degradation from rank and position, banishment,
imprisonment, torture, death, were ever threatening him. A hard, stern combat,
indeed, was the daily life of every Christian disciple. Many came out as
victors from the terrible trial; this we learn from such writings as the Shepherd of Hermas, but some, alas I we learn from that same vivid and truthful picture
of Hermas, flinched and played the traitor when the
hour of decision between Christ and the pagan gods struck, as it often, very
often, did in the so-called quiet days of the Flavian Emperors.
But it is only from the general character and spirit
of the early Christian writers that we gather this; it is only from the
allusions scattered up and down these striking and pathetic pages, which after
all had other and nobler work before them than to record the many sufferings
and martyrdoms of the brethren, that we learn what was the character of the
hard life the followers of Jesus had to lead. So far from exaggerating, these
writers give a very imperfect account of the sufferings of that period.
But in spite of this dark shadow of danger under which
the Christian always lived, a cloud which for two hundred and fifty years never
really lifted; in spite of popular dislike and of public condemnation,—the
numbers of the persecuted sect multiplied with startling rapidity in all lands,
among all the various peoples massed together under the rule of the Empire, and
called by the name of Romans. Their great number attracted the attention of
pagan writers such as Tacitus, writing of the martyrdoms of a.d. 64; of Pliny, speaking of
what he witnessed in a.d. 112; of Christian writers like Tertullian, giving a picture of the sect at the
end of the second century.
In the middle years of this second century, only a
little more than a hundred years after the Resurrection morning, when the Antonines were reigning, we know that there were large
congregations in Spain and Gaul, in Germany, in North Africa, in Egypt and in
Syria, besides the great and powerful Church in Rome.
All that we learn of the busy, earnest, strenuous life
of these early Christian communities, of their noble charities, of their active
propaganda, of their grave and successful contentions with the heretical
teachers who successively arose in their midst, makes it hard to believe that
they were ever living, as it were, under the very shadow of persecution which
might burst upon them at any moment; and yet well-nigh all the writings of
these early days are coloured with these anticipations
of torture, confiscation, imprisonment, and death,—a death of pain and agony.
The Apocalypse refers to these things again and again—Clement of Rome in his
grave and measured Epistle—Hermas and Ignatius, Justin and Tertullian, and
somewhat later Cyprian writing in the middle of the third century— allude to
these things as part of the everyday Christian life. They give us, it is true,
few details, little history of the events which were constantly happening; but
as we read, we feel that the thought of martyrdom was constantly present with
them.
Now what was the attraction to this Christianity, the
profession of which was so fraught with danger — so surrounded with deadly
peril ?
It is true that martyrdom itself possessed a special
attraction for some. The famous chapters of Ignatius* Letter to the Roman
Church, written circa a.d. 109-10, very vividly picture this strange charm.
The constancy of the confessor, the calm serenity with which he endured
tortures, the smiling confidence with which he welcomed a death often of pain
and suffering—his eyes fixed upon something invisible to mortal eyes which he
saw immediately before him,—all this was new in the world of Rome; it was at
once striking and admirable. Such a sight, and it was a frequent one, was
indeed inspiring—“Why should not I,” thought many a
believer in Jesus, share in this glorious future ? Why should not I form one of
this noble band of elect and blessed souls? ”
Then again another attraction to Christianity was ever
present in the dose union which existed among the members of the community.
In this great Brotherhood, without any attempt to
level down the wealthier Christians, without any movement towards establishing
a general community of goods, the warmest feelings of friendship and love were
cultivated between all classes and degrees. The Christian teachers pointed out
with great force that in the eyes of the divine Master no difference existed
between the slave and the free-born, between the patrician and the little
trader; with Him there was perfect equality. Sex and age, rank and fortune,
poverty and riches, country and race, with Him were of no account. All men and
women who struggled after the life He loved, were His dear servants. The result
of all this was shown in the generous and self-denying love of the wealthier
members of the flock towards their poor and needy brothers and sisters.
This is conspicuously shown in the wonderful story of
the vast cemeteries of the suburbs of Rome, where at a very early date the rich
afforded the hospitality of the tomb to their poor friends.
Most of the so-called “catacombs’’ began in the
gardens of the rich and noble, where the little family God's acre was speedily
opened to the proletariat and the slave, who after death were tenderly and
lovingly cared for, and laid to sleep with all reverence alongside the members
of the patrician house to whom the cemetery belonged, and which in numberless instances
was enlarged to receive these poor and humble guests.
But, after all, great and different though these
various attractive influences were,—and which no doubt in countless cases
brought unnumbered men and women of all ranks and orders into the ranks of
Christianity,—there was something more which united all these various
nationalities, these different grades, with an indissoluble bond of union ;
something more which enabled them to live on year after year in the shadow of
persecution—in daily danger of losing all that men most prize and hold dear;
something more which gave them that serene courage at the last, which inspired
the great army of ’bravely patient martyrs to witness a good confession for the
Name’s sake. It was that burning, that living faith in the great sacrifice of
their loving Master—the faith which in the end vanquished even pagan Rome—the
faith which comes from no books or arguments, no preaching and no persuasion—
from no learning however profound and sacred — from no human arsenal, however
furnished with truth and righteousness.
It was that strong and deathless faith which is the
gift of God alone, and which in a double portion was the gift of the Holy Ghost
to the sorely tried Church in the heroic age of Christianity.
After the death of Nero, during the very brief reigns
of Galba Otho and Vitellius, probably the persecution of Christians, owing to
the disturbed state of Rome and the Empire, languished. When, however, the
Flavian House in the person of Vespasian was firmly placed in power, the policy
of the government of Nero, which held that the Christians were a sect the
tendency of whose beliefs and practice was hostile to the very foundations and
established principles of the Roman government, was strictly adhered to, and
possibly even developed.
The followers of the sect were deemed outlaws, and the
name of a Christian was treated as a crime.
There is a famous passage in Sulpicius Severus (fourth century) which most modem scholars consider to have been an
extract from a lost book of Tacitus. It is an account of a Council of War held
after the storming of Jerusalem, A.D. 70. In this Council, Titus the son and
heir of Vespasian— the hero of the great campaign which closed with the fall of
Jerusalem—is reported to have expressed the opinion that the Temple ought to be
destroyed in order that the religion of the Jews and of the Christians might be
more completely rooted up; for these religions, though opposed to each other,
had yet the same origin. The Christians had sprung from the Jews, and when the
root was tom up the stem issuing from the root would easily be destroyed. There
is no doubt but that this report of Titus’ speech at the Council of War is an
historical document of the utmost importance. It tells us exactly what was the
feeling of the imperial Flavian House towards the Christians—they represented
an evil which it was well to extirpate.
It is possible that in a mutilated passage of
Suetonius a reference occurs to Vespasian’s actions at this period (in the year
following a.d. 70) in respect to the Christians. The passage runs as follows : “Never in the
death of any one did Vespasian (take pleasure, and in the case of) merited
punishments he even wept and groaned.” This is clearly a reference to some
class of individuals whose punishment Vespasian felt bound to accept, while he
regretted it. "It is inconceivable that Vespasian, a Roman soldier of
long experience in the bloody wars of Britain and Judaea, wept and groaned at
every merited execution.... We think of the punishments which by the principle
of Nero attached to the Christians... the principle in question continued
permanently, and Suetonius alluded to it on account of the detail, interesting
to a biographer, that Vespasian wept while he confirmed its operation.” But a yet more
precise statement, that persecution was actively continued under Vespasian, is
to be found in the Latin Father, Hilary of Poitiers, who ranks Vespasian
between Nero and Decius as a persecutor of the Faith? Some critics have
supposed this notice an error. Lightfoot, however, thinks it more probable that
it was based upon some facts of history known to Hilary, but since blotted out
by time from the records of history.
Towards the end of Domitian’s reign, circa a.d. 95, the
persecution became more bitter. Indeed, so severely were the Christians hunted
out and prosecuted that the period had become memorable in history. Domitian is
constantly mentioned as the second great persecutor, Nero being the first. The
reason doubtless for this general tradition is that in a.d. 95, persons of the highest rank, some even belonging to the
imperial family, were among the condemned; notably Flavius Clemens the Consul,
and the two princesses bearing the name of Domitilla—all
these being very near relatives of the Emperor.
The violent outbreak of persecution, fierce and
terrible as it seems to have been in the last year and a half of Domitian's
reign, does not appear to have been owing to any special movement among the
Christian subjects of the Empire which aroused attention and suggested
distrust, but was solely owing to the Emperor’s private policy and personal
feelings. There is nothing to show that any edict against the sect was promulgated
in this reign. Since the time of Nero the persecution of Christians was a
standing matter, as was that of persons who were habitual law-breakers,
robbers, and such like. Probably under the princes of the Flavian dynasty, as
we have said, this policy of the government was somewhat developed throughout
the Empire, and now and again, owing to local circumstances and the disposition
of the chief magistrate, was more or less severe. It is said that some
governors boasted that they had brought back from their province their lictors’
axes unstained with blood; but others were actuated with very different
feelings.
In the case of the so-called Domitian persecution, the
ill-will of the autocratic Emperor naturally intensified it. Various motives
seem to have influenced the sovereign Lord of the Empire here.
Domitian was a sombre and
suspicious tyrant, and no doubt his cruel action in the case of his relatives,
the consul Flavius and the princesses of his House, was prompted by jealousy of
those who stood nearest his throne, and the fact that they were found to belong
to the proscribed sect gave him a pretext of which he was glad to avail
himself. But his bloody vengeance was by no means only wreaked upon his own
relatives. We learn from the pagan writer Dion Cassius (in the epitome of his
work by the monk Xiphilin) and also from Suetonius,
that he put to death various persons of high position, notably Acilius Glabrio who had been
consul in a.d. 91.
This Acilius Glabrio was also a Christian. The researches and
discoveries of De Rossi and Marruchi in the older
portion of the vast Catacomb of S. Priscilla have conclusively proved this.
There was another reason, however, for Domitian’s
special hatred of the Christian sect. The Emperor was a vigilant censor, and an
austere guardian of the ancient Roman traditions. In this respect he has with
some justice been cited as pursuing the same policy as did his great
predecessor Augustus, and, like him, he looked on the imperial cultus as part of the
State religion. Domitian felt that these ancient traditions which formed a part
of Roman life were compromised by the teaching and practices of the Christian
sect. No doubt this was one of the principal reasons which influenced him in
his active persecution of the followers of Jesus.
But although he struck at some of the noblest and most
highly placed in the Empire, especially, as it seems, those suspected of being
members of die hated sect, he appears to have vented his fury also upon many
who belonged to the lower classes of the citizens. Juvenal in a striking
passage evidently alludes to his pursuit of these comparatively unknown and
obscure ones, and traces the unpopularity which eventually led to his
assassination to this persecution of the poor nameless citizen?
Domitian was assassinated a.d. 96, and was succeeded by the good and gentle Emperor Nerva. The active and bitter persecution which Domitian carried on in the latter years of his reign, as far as we know, ceased, and once more the Christian sect was left in comparative quiet, that is to say, they were still in the position of outlaws, the sword of persecution ever hanging over their heads. The law which forbade their very existence was there, if any one was disposed to call it into action. The passion of the populace, the bigotry of a magistrate, or the malice of some responsible personage, might at any moment awake the slumbering law into activity. These various malicious influences, ever ready, were constantly setting the law in motion. This we certainly gather from Pliny’s reference to the “ Cognitiones ” or inquiries into accusations set on foot against Christians in his famous letter to the Emperor Trajan
CHAPTER II
THE REIGNS OF TRAJAN AND HADRIAN
A.D. 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 behaviour 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, 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 Simeon, 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 Quindecennalia—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, wilfulness 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 information 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.
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.
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 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 interests. 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 honours 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 labours; 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 amphitheatre, 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 honour by
the churches on the way.
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 favourable and its unfavourable side : while it discouraged
anonymous and false information, 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 amphitheatres 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 clamours 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 REIGNS OF THE ANTONINES
A.D. 138-180.
The rescripts of the last two emperors had
done much 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.
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 minds—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 defense 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 favour 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 worked 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.
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 information, 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 edict’s 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 endeavoured 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 favourably 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 demeanour 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 favour 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.
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 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 44 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 behaviour 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 neighbouring 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 clamours. 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 cried 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 honourable burial. As in the case of Ignatius,
the death of the bishop procured a respite for his flock.
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 noisomeness 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 behaviour 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.
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 labouring 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 Saviour’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 honoured 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 endeavoured 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 endeavours 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.
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 centre 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 for ever 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.
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 honoured 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 Spirit. 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 A.D. 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.
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 Apocalypses), 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 favourable 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.11 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 millenarian 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.
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 A.D. 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 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; m
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 they did not admit it as the work of
Moses himself, but, by ascribing it to reporters, who were supposed to
have wilfully 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 splendour before
unknown.
Ebionism continued to exist in Syria
and Peraea as late as the end of the fourth
century.
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 endeavoured 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, 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, in 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 endeavouring 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, a 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, 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.
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 Spirit. 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
Saviour), 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 endeavoured 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 pleromas—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; y 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
Saviour.
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 will burst forth, and will
annihilate all that is materials
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
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 ardour 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 fulfil 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 Saviour 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 Saviour’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 Saviour’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 A.D. 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 defense 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 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 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 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.
Elagabalus was succeeded in 222 by his
cousin Alexander Severus, a boy of sixteen. The young emperor was inclined
to favour 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 favourable 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
Saviour. 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 favour 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 (A.D. 238-244) and
that of Philip the Arabian (A.D. 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; 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 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 unfavourably 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
people. 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 entreties 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 favourable to
the church than even 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— 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.
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—endeavouring 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 endeavoured 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 endeavoured 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 endeavoured 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 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 works 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, 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 honour by his old
fellow-student, Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, and by Theoctistus,
bishop of Caesarea; 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.
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 Odapla. This gigantic work
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 spirits. 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. 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 work. 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 labour. He
afterwards became the subject of many marvellous 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 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
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 estates 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 Saviour 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.
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 (A.D. 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 favour 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 ardour;
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 vigour 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 millenarian 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.
As the name of Origen is famous in the
history of doctrine, that of his contemporary Cyprian1 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 200, 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 labours 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 clamoured 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 behaviour 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 favourable 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 favours. 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 endeavoured 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 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.
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 unfavourably 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,1 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 labours 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 for ever 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 endeavouring 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 endeavoured 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 attempted to heal 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 endeavoured 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.
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 labour 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 practised; 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.
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 judgments. 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,1 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
condition. 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 candour 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 Aries, 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, A.D. 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 labour 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
encouragements
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 neighbouring spot, “because
of the curiosity of the heathen”; but was afterwards removed by torchlight with
great solemnity, and laid in an honourable sepulchre; 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.
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 mind.
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'’ understanding of such a title fell 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 neighbouring clergy,
and to the more discerning portion of his flock. Through the favour 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 honour of the Saviour, 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 favour 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 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 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 favour 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 favourable 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.
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 favourable 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 a 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 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 favour, but was soon gained over by his enemies; he invited to
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.
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 armour, 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, moulded 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 Saviour 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
saviour 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 whee1 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 for ever 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 (I
Cor. XIII. 4) 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 rumours 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 splendour, 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 vigour.
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 centre 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 favoured 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. 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, endeavoured 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.
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 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 favourable 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 favour 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
favour 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
splendour 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 Saviour. 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 behaviour
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 conducts 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 labour 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 labours 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 favour 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.
CHAPTER VIII.
SUPPLEMENTARY
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
waggons, 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 civilization.
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 honour 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 works 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 Saviour 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, or 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.1 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 intrusted 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.
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 neighbouring 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 the
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 pretence 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 pre-eminent 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.
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 neighbouring 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 intrusted 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 splendour 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—symbola—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, out 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 in St. John 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 neighbouring 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 fervour 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.
THE LORD'S
DAY
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 joy1 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. Whitsun-day 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 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.
The memory of martyrs was very early
honoured 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 (which was styled his natalitia or
birthday, as being the day of his entrance on a better life) 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 the 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.
PENANCE.
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 ;n 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 demeanour 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 Saviour; 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 Saviour 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
Saviour'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
endeavour 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 show; 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 lustre in seasons of general calamity. The charitable
labours 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, endeavoured 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 practised 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 demeanour 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, endeavour 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.