1. Ωριγενους Φιλοσοφουμενα η κατα πασων αιρεσεων ελεγχος.
_Origenis Philosophumena sive omnium hæresium refutatio. E codice
Parisino nunc primum edidit_ Emmanuel Miller. Oxonii: e
Typographeo Academico. 1851.
2. _Hippolytus and his Age; or the Doctrine and Practice of the
Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Severus; and Ancient
and Modern Christianity and Divinity compared._ By CHRISTIAN
CHARLES JOSIAS BUNSEN, D.C.L. In Four Volumes. London. 1852.
When a stranger knocks at the gate of the Clarendon Printing-house,
and presents his petition for aid, the University of Oxford maintains
its national character for good-natured opulence,--gives its money and
signs its name, without very close inquiry into the case. The
documents are really so respectable that there cannot be much amiss;
and a venerable institution, well known to be fond of the house,
cannot be expected to go trudging through the back-lanes of history,
and exposing its nostrils in the purlieus of heresy, in order to
identify a literary petitioner, evidently above all common imposture.
So it supplies all his wants upon the spot, dresses him handsomely,
and sends him out into the world as its worthy (though eccentric)
friend, the catechist of Alexandria. The introduction, being left at
the Prussian Legation, falls into the hands of no stay-at-home
benefactor, but of one who knows the by-ways of human life, and has an
ear for the dialects of many a place. M. Bunsen--as Oxford might have
remembered--is not unacquainted with Egypt; and no sooner does he
raise his eyes from the credentials to the person of the stranger,
than he discovers him to be no disciple of the Alexandrine Clement;
recognizes the accent of the West; is reminded of the voice of
Irenæus; and, finally, being even more familiar with the Tiber than
the Nile, detects a Roman beneath the mask of Origen. We do not in the
least grudge the friend of Niebuhr the honor of a discovery which no
one could turn to more effectual account; but every English scholar
must feel mortified that the _Imprimatur_ of our great Ecclesiastical
University should appear on a title-page manifestly false; that the
first reader should see at a glance what the learned proprietors had
missed; and that their _Editio Princeps_ of a recovered monument of
Church antiquity should be superseded within a year or two of its
publication. They are not principals, it is true, but only secondaries
to the Editor, in the commission of this error: still, a lay
bibliographer might reasonably expect, in resorting for aid to so
renowned and reverend a body, that his own judgment would be kept in
check; and their very consent to issue the work implies _some_
critical opinion of its value, as derived from age and authorship.
Whether they are called upon to adopt at once M. Bunsen's proposed
title-page, and substitute the name of Hippolytus for that of Origen,
we will not say; but that the present title gives the book to the
wrong author, seems placed beyond the reach of doubt.
M. Emmanuel Miller, one of the curators of the National Library in
Paris, was the first to make himself acquainted with the contents of
this work, and to appreciate their importance. Among the manuscripts
under his care was one on cotton paper of the fourteenth century,
which had been brought from Mount Athos in 1842, by M. Mynoïdes Mynas,
a Greek agent employed by the French government to search the
neglected treasures of that celebrated spot. The superscription, "On
all Heresies," was not inviting; but on turning over the leaves, some
lines, unknown before, of Pindar and of another lyric poet, were found
and copied; and the value of these excerpts being ascertained, M.
Miller's attention was directed to the body of the treatise containing
them. The treatise had already been described, in the _Moniteur_ of
the 5th of January, 1844, as a Refutation of all Heresies, in ten
books, but with the first three missing, as well as the conclusion of
the whole; and he soon became aware, that, of the three missing books,
the first already existed, and had been printed under the name of
"Philosophumena," in the editions of Origen's works. Its very title is
found in the manuscript at the end of the fourth book, and denotes
that the portion of the work there concluded completes the sketch of
philosophical systems, which the author prefixes to his account of
ecclesiastical aberrations; and there are mutual references, backwards
and forwards, between the printed book and the manuscript, which leave
no doubt that the latter is a sequel to the former. The Editor,
therefore, has very properly reprinted the "Philosophumena" as the
commencement of the newly recovered work; which thus exhibits a
regular plan, and consists of two parts, viz.: first, four books,--of
which the second and third are lost,--expounding the Pagan
philosophies, especially the Greek, from which, the author contends,
the various heresies of Christendom are mere plagiarisms; then six
books, containing an account, in an order prevailingly historical, of
thirty or thirty-two heresies, supported by extracts from their
standard writings, and wound up in the recapitulary book at the end by
the writer's own profession of faith. Now who is the author?
Not Origen; for, as Huet had already remarked respecting the
"Philosophumena," the writer speaks of himself in terms implying an
episcopal position; and, in the ninth book, he gives an account of
transactions in Rome, extending over many years, in which he was
evidently an eyewitness and an actor. While the scene is thus laid at
a distance from Origen's sphere, and the date also of the personal
matter runs back into his boyhood, the cast of the theological
doctrine is wholly different from his; for instance, in a certain
"Treatise on the Universe," to which the author refers as his own, and
of which a fragment is preserved, the penal condition of the wicked
after death is said to be immutable;[26] but Origen, it is well known,
taught a doctrine of final restoration. Add to this, that no such work
as the present is attributed to Origen by any ancient witness, and the
case against his name may be regarded as complete.
The evidence which disappoints this claim narrows also our choice of
others. The personal transactions to which we have referred took place
at Rome, while Zephyrinus and his successor, Callistus, presided over
the Christian community there, that is, during the first twenty years
of the third century. We must, therefore, look for our author among
the metropolitan clergymen of that period. Still closer is the circle
drawn by the fact, that the writer largely borrows from the treatise
of Irenæus on the same subject; and, though vastly improving on that
foolish production, and copiously contributing fresh materials,
betrays the general affinity of thought which unites the stronger
disciple with the feebler master.
The problem then being to find a pupil of the Bishop of Lyons among
the ecclesiastics of Rome, at the beginning of the third century, two
names are given in as answering the conditions,--those of Hippolytus,
a suburban clergyman, and of Caius, whose charge lay within the city
itself. In order to vindicate the claim of the first, it has been
necessary for M. Bunsen to prove that his locality is right; and that
the "Portus Romæ," of which he was bishop, was not, as Le Moyne and
Cave had groundlessly supposed, the Arabian "Portus Romanus" of the
district of Aden, but the new harbor made, or at least enlarged, by
Trajan, on the northern bank of the Tiber, immediately opposite to
Ostia. That he suffered martyrdom there, and was buried in a cemetery
on the Tiburtine road, is generally admitted, on the evidence of
Prudentius, who has left a poem describing his memorial chapel on that
spot, and of a statue of him, seated in a cathedra, which was dug up
there three hundred years ago, and now stands in the library of the
Vatican. It is certainly perplexing to find Jerome avowing ignorance
of the see over which he presided, if, for a quarter of a century, he
was active at the centre of the Christian world; and not less so to
discover in Rome itself, nay, in a Pope, or his transcriber, at the
end of the fifth century, the impression that his scene of labor had
been in Arabia; and under the influence of these facts it has been
supposed that though, coming to Italy, he had fallen among the martyrs
of the West, he ought to be reckoned among the bishops of the East. On
the whole, however, the reasons preponderate in favor of his
residence, as "Episcopus Portuensis," within the presbytery of Rome.
The title itself is an old one, still always assigned to some
dignitary of the curia, and, no doubt, deriving its origin from the
time when the Northern Harbor of the Tiber--of which in the ninth
century, scarce a trace was left--was a flourishing emporium. The name
of Hippolytus is associated by tradition with the spot; it is given,
our author assures us, to a certain tower, near Fiumicino; and in the
eighth and ninth centuries, a basilica of St. Hippolytus was restored
at Portus by Leo III. and IV. An episcopal palace still remains. By
acute and skilful combinations, effected with evidence scanty as a
whole, and suspicious in every part, M. Bunsen has endeavored to
reproduce the historical image of Hippolytus. His office of "bishop"
implied simply the charge of the single congregation at Portus; the
members of that congregation were the "plebs" committed to his
supervision; the city or village in which they lived was his diocese.
His vicinity to the great capital drew him, however, into a wider
circle of duties. For while Rome itself was divided into several
ecclesiastical districts, each of which had its own clergyman and lay
deacons, the suburban bishops were associated with these officers to
form a committee of management, or presbytery, presided over by the
metropolitan. By his seat at this board, he was kept in living contact
with all the most stirring interests of Christendom, which, wherever
their origin might be, found their way to the imperial city, and more
and more sought their equilibrium there. At a commercial seaport, his
own congregation would largely consist of temporary settlers and
mercantile agents, Greek brokers, Jewish bankers, African importers,
to whom Italy was a lodging-house rather than a home; and by the
continual influx of foreigners he would hear tidings of the remotest
churches, and carry to the clerical meetings in the city the newest
gossip of all the heresies. Possibly this position, with its
opportunities of various intercourse, may have contributed to form in
him the agreeable address, and faculty of eloquent speech, which
tradition ascribes to him; and induced him to commence the practice of
writing with studious care the homilies which were to be delivered in
the congregation. At all events he is the first of whom we distinctly
hear as a great preacher. His period extends, it is supposed, from the
reign of Commodus (180-193) to the first year of Maximin (235-6); and
so brought him into the same presbytery-room with five popes,--Victor
(187-198); Zephyrinus (201-218); Callistus (219-222); Urbanus
(223-230); and Pontianus (230-235); with the last of whom he shared,
in the last year of his life, a cruel exile to Sardinia, and returned
only to fall a victim to fresh informations, and suffer martyrdom by
drowning in a canal. It cannot be denied that, in order to recover
this picture of Hippolytus, and still more in order to fix his
literary position, the materials of evidence have to be dealt with in
somewhat arbitrary fashion, and their _lacunæ_ to be filled by
conjecture. Prudentius, for instance, is called as an historical
witness, yet convicted of fable in much of what he says. His poem
declares that at one time Hippolytus had supported Novatus in his
attempt to close the gates of repentance against the _Lapsi_, but had
been reconciled to the catholic doctrine before he died. He must in
this case have joined in the opposition raised by Novatianus (in 251)
to the election of Cornelius to the papacy, and have died in the
Decian persecution, which continued till the year 257. Moreover, the
painting seen by the Spanish versifier on the walls of the memorial
chapel introduces us to so ridiculous a story, as only to show how
completely the martyrological legends had already escaped all the
restraints of history. In this fresco the mythical fate of Hippolytus,
the son of Theseus, is transferred to the Roman presbyter: he is
represented as torn to pieces by horses; while the faithful follow to
pick up his limbs and hair, and sponge away the blood upon the ground.
If the sanctuary exhibiting this scene received the martyr's remains
from their original resting-place as early as the time of
Constantine,--and such is our author's opinion,--into what a state of
degradation had the history of Hippolytus sunk in three quarters of a
century! And if already memorial painting could thus impudently lie,
how can we better trust the statue, admitted to be later still? Yet
this statue, on whose side is a list of the writings of Hippolytus, is
appealed to in determining the martyr's written productions, as the
painted chapel in evidence of facts in his personal career. We fully
admit the success of M. Bunsen in eliciting a possible result from a
mass of intricate and tangled conditions, and presenting us with a
highly interesting personage. But perhaps, as the venerable image of
the good bishop has grown in clearness before his eye, and attracted
his affection more and more, the very vividness of the conception may
have rendered him insensible to the precariousness of the proof.
Ecclesiastical fancy, in its unrestrained career, has torn his
personality to pieces, and left the _disjecta membra_ so rudely
scattered on the strand of history, that we almost doubt the power of
any critical Æsculapius to restore him to the world again.
At the same board of church councillors with Hippolytus sat another
λογιωτατος ανηρ,[27] the presbyter Caius; and as an urban clergyman, he
would be more constantly there than his suburban brother, separated by a
distance of eighteen miles. To form any living image of him from the
scanty notices of him which begin with Eusebius and end with Photius, is
quite impossible. In one respect only do the personal characteristics
attributed to him distinguish him from the bishop of Portus. He was a
strenuous opponent of the peculiarities favored by the Christians of
Lesser Asia, and especially of the claims to prophetic gifts, and the
appeal to clairvoyant skill, by Montanus and his followers. With one of
these, by name Proclus, he held a disputation; from which Eusebius has
preserved a passage or two, showing, in conjunction with the title, not
very intelligibly assigned to him, of "Bishop of the Gentiles," that he
belonged to the most advanced anti-Jewish party in the Church, lamented
the grossness of the popular millenarian dreams, vindicated the
apostolic dignity of the Roman against the pretensions of the Eastern
Christianity, and disowned the Epistle to the Hebrews. This feature in
the figure of Caius, though constituting the distinction, does not,
however, necessarily _oppose_ him to Hippolytus, whose attitude towards
the Montanists may not have been very different, but only less
positively marked. Still the suspicions directed against the two men are
of an opposite kind: with Hippolytus, the difficulty is to set him clear
of sympathy with Montanism;[28] with Caius, to prevent his being classed
with its unmeasured opponents, the Alogi.[29] And a report even reaches
us, that among the Chaldean Christians there exists, or did exist in the
fourteenth century, a controversial treatise of Hippolytus against
Caius.[30]
Between these two men, so similar in position, and not, perhaps, unused
to sharp argument face to face, springs up, at the end of all these
ages, a rival claim to property in the "Refutation of all the Heresies."
The chief counsel for Hippolytus, besides our author, are the eminent
Professors Jacobi, Duncker, and Schneidewin,--all, we believe, belonging
to the Neander school of theology; and as the last two are about to edit
the work anew, and probably to give it its final form, their opinion of
its authorship may be expected to prevail. The other side, however,
advocated by Dr. Fessler, is sustained by perhaps the greatest of living
historical critics, F. C. Baur, representative of the much-abused
Tübingen school. Into so intricate a question we might be excused for
inviting our readers, had we anything fresh to offer towards its
solution; but the chief impression we have brought from its study is one
of astonishment at the extreme positiveness with which the learned men
on either side affirm their own conclusion. A more equal balance of
evidence we never remember to have met with in any similar research; and
the faint and slender preponderance which alone the scale can ever
exhibit, amusingly contrasts with the triumphant assertion, of both sets
of disputants, that not a reasonable doubt remains. The leading points
of M. Bunsen's case are these. A work "On all Heresies" is attributed to
Hippolytus, and in no instance to Caius, by Eusebius, Jerome,
Epiphanius, and Peter of Alexandria, at the beginning of the fourth
century. Such a book was still extant in the ninth century; for Photius,
the celebrated patriarch of Constantinople, has given us an account of
its contents in the journal and epitome of his studies which he has left
us. On comparing his report with the newly discovered book, the identity
of the two works is established in some important respects: the _number_
and _concluding term_ of the series of heresies are the same; they both
of them include materials taken from Irenæus, while reversing his order
of treatment. Further, in the newly found treatise reference is made by
the author to other works of his, in which he has discussed certain
points of early Hebrew chronology in proving the antiquity of the
Abrahamic race. Now, Eusebius was acquainted with a certain "Chronicle"
of Hippolytus, brought down to the first year of Alexander Severus; and
such a chronicle, in a Latin translation, is found in Fabricius's
edition of Hippolytus, only that its list of Roman emperors terminates,
not with the beginning, but with the end, of Severus's reign. It has,
however, in common with our work, a peculiar number of tribes,--viz.
seventy-two, derived from Noah. Thus, the author of the "Heresies" and
of the "Chronicle" would appear to be the same, and, according to
Eusebius, to be Hippolytus. Lastly, both in our new work, and also in a
book called the "Labyrinth," written against some Unitarians of the
second century, reference is made to a treatise "On the Universe," which
the author mentions as his own production. By printing a fragment of
this last in his edition of "Hippolytus," Fabricius has shown to what
name all three should, in his judgment, be set down; and that they
cannot be given to Caius is rendered evident by the occurrence, in the
fragment, of certain Apocalyptic fictions inconsistent with his
rejection of the Book of Revelations. Moreover, the list of works on the
statue of Hippolytus includes a disquisition "Against the Greeks and
against Plato, or _Respecting the Universe_."
What can be said to weaken so strong a case? Two doubts at once arise
upon it, which we find it by no means easy to set aside. Granted,
Hippolytus wrote a book "On all Heresies"; is it the same which is now
delivered into our hands? One medium of comparison we possess,
enabling us to place the original and the present book, for a short
space, side by side. The very Peter of Alexandria who is one of the
early witnesses called on Hippolytus's behalf has handed down to us a
passage or two (preserved in the Paschal Chronicle) from the book
which he attests, with a distinct reference to the place where they
are to be found. We turn to the right chapter, and the passages are
_not there_. Nor is it a mere want of verbal agreement which we have
to regret; the same topic--the controversy about the time of
Easter--is treated; the same side--that of the Western Church--is
taken, in both instances; but the arguments are different, and so far
irreconcilable, that no one who had command of that which Peter gives
would ever resort to the feebler one which our work contains. With the
dauntless ingenuity of German criticism M. Bunsen makes a virtue of
necessity, and endeavors to convert this unfortunate discrepancy into
a fresh proof of identity. He thinks that, in this and some other
parts, our work is but a clumsy abstract of Hippolytus's original,
which the citations of Peter enable us to recover and complete. This,
however, is a plea which, it strikes us, damages his case as much by
success as it could by failure. For if the book presented to us by the
Clarendon Press reflects the original no better than would appear from
this only sample which it is in our power to test, it may indeed be a
degenerate descendant from the pen of Hippolytus; but all reliable
identity is lost, and the traces of his hand are no longer
recoverable. The second doubt is this:--Is the work which Photius read
the same that has now been rescued? Of the few descriptive marks
supplied by the patriarch, there are as many absent from our work as
present in it. The treatise which he read was a "_little book_" or
"_tract_," as Lardner calls it (βιβλιδαριον), a word which can
scarcely apply to a volume extending (as ours would, if complete) to
four hundred and twenty octavo pages. M. Bunsen cuts down this number
to two hundred and fifty, by supposing Photius to have only the last
six books, containing the historical survey, without the groundwork of
the philosophical deduction, of the heresies. The curtailment, if
conceded, seems scarcely adequate to its purpose, and appears to us a
very questionable conjecture. The manuscript, stripped of the first
four books, would want the very basis of the whole argument; and, if
such a mutilation were conceivable, it is impossible that Photius
should fail to observe and mention it; for the fifth book opens, not
like an independent treatise, but with a summary statement of what has
been accomplished "_in the four books preceding this_." Again, Photius
mentions the _Dositheans_ as the first set of heretics discussed;
whereas their name does not occur at all, if we remember right, in our
work, and their place is occupied by the "Ophites." M. Bunsen treats
this as a mere inaccuracy of expression on the part of Photius, who
meant, by the name "Dositheans," to indicate the same "earliest
Judaizing schools" that are better described as "Ophites." The name,
however, is so unsuitable to this purpose, that it would be a strange
wilfulness in the learned patriarch to substitute it for the language
of the author he describes. He could not be ignorant that Dositheus,
Simon, Menander, were the three founders of the Samaritan sect,
exponents of the same doctrine, if not even reputed _avatars_ of the
same divine essence;[31] and if he had applied the name _Dositheans_
to any of the heretics enumerated in our work, it would assuredly have
been to the _followers of Simon_, who stand _fourth_ in the series of
thirty-two, and not to Phrygian serpent-worshippers, who commence the
list. Further, the author whom Photius read stated that his book was a
synopsis of the Lectures of Irenæus. In our work no such statement
occurs; and the use made of Irenæus does not agree, either in quantity
or character, with the substance of the assertion. And, lastly, the
patriarch's Hippolytus said "some things which are not quite correct;
for instance, that the Epistle to the Hebrews is not by the Apostle
Paul." In our work there is no such assertion; and when M. Bunsen
suggests that perhaps its place might be in the lost books, he forgets
that, according to his own conjecture, these books were no more in
Photius's hands than in ours, and that he cannot first cut them off in
order to make a βιβλιδαριον, and then restore them, to provide a locus
for a missing criticism on the Epistle to the Hebrews. The identity of
our "Philosophumena" with the treatise which Photius read and
Hippolytus wrote, appears, therefore, to be extremely problematical.
One fixed point, however, is gained in the course of the argument, and
gives an acknowledged position from which the opposite opinions are
willing to set out. Whoever wrote the disquisition "On the Universe"
wrote also our work. This fact rests on the assertion of the author
himself; yet, if the author be Hippolytus, and our "Philosophumena" be
his "Refutation of all Heresies," it is strange that no list of his
writings mentions _both_ books: the catalogues of Eusebius and Jerome
naming the "Heresies" without the essay "On the Universe"; and the
engraving on the statue giving the essay "On the Universe" without the
"Heresies." How can we explain it, that these ecclesiastical writers, in
knowing our work, did not know what is contained in it about the
authorship of the other book; and that this book should have wandered
_anonymously_ about down to the ninth century, side by side with an
acknowledged writing of Hippolytus, which all the while was proclaiming
the solution of the question? We should certainly expect that the book
of avowed authorship would convey the name of Hippolytus to the
companion production for which it claims the same paternity; but,
instead of this, it not only leaves its associate anonymous for six
hundred years, but afterward assumes the modest fit, and becomes
anonymous itself. Even if no previous reader had sense enough to put the
two things together, and pick out the testimony of the one book to the
origin of the other, are we to charge the same stupidity on the erudite
Photius, who had both books in his hand, and has given his report of
both? In his account of Hippolytus's treatise, he nowhere tells us that
it contains a reference to the essay "On the Universe," as being from
the same pen; and that he found no such reference is certain; for he
actually discusses the question, "Who wrote the essay on the Universe?"
without ever mentioning Hippolytus at all. Just such a reference,
however, as he did _not_ find in Hippolytus, he _did_ find in _another_
work, of which he speaks under the title of "The Labyrinth"; and,
strange to say, it was at the _end_ of the work,[32] precisely where it
stands in our "Philosophumena." Who can resist the suspicion, that the
anonymous "Labyrinth" of Photius is no other than our anonymous
"Philosophumena"? This conviction forced itself upon us on first
weighing the evidence collected by M. Bunsen, in support of his
different conclusion; and we observe that it is the opinion sustained by
the great authority of Baur,[33] who even finds a trace in our work of
the very _title_ given by Photius; the writer observing, at the
beginning of the tenth book, "The _Labyrinth of Heresies_ we have not
broken through by violence, but have resolved by refutation alone with
the force of truth; and now we come to the positive exposition of the
truth." At all events, the difference of title in the case of a work
having probably more names than one, is of no weight in disproof of
identity. With this new designation in our possession, we may return to
search for our book in the records of ecclesiastical antiquity; and we
have not far to go, before we alight on traces affording hopes of a
result. No "Labyrinth," indeed, turns up in the literary history of
earlier centuries than Photius; but a "_Little_ Labyrinth" is mentioned
by Theodoret,[34] as sometimes ascribed to Origen, but as evidently not
his; and from his account of it, confirmed by the matter which he
borrows from it, we learn that it was a controversial book, against a
set of Unitarians in Rome, followers of Theodotus. It so happens that
the very passage from this tract which Theodoret has used appears also,
with others from the same source, in Eusebius, only quoted under another
title,--the book being called a "Work against the Heresy of Artemon"
(who was another teacher of the same school in the same age). The
extracts thus preserved to us are not found in our work; which,
therefore, if it be the "Labyrinth," is a distinct production from the
"Little Labyrinth"; but they are so manifestly from the same pen,
occupied in the same task, as to render it perfectly conceivable that
the two books might receive the same name, with only a diminutive
epithet to distinguish the lesser from the greater. Nor are we left, as
Baur has shown, without a distinct assertion by our "great unknown,"
that he had already composed a smaller treatise on the same subject;
for, in the introduction to the "Philosophumena," he says of the
heretics, "We have before given a brief exposition of their opinions,
refuting them in the gross, without presenting them in detail." This
shorter work would naturally treat of the particular forms of error most
immediately present and mischievous before the author's eyes; and if he
dwelt especially on the doctrines of Theodotus and Artemon, it is just
what we should expect from an orthodox Roman. This essay, on a limited
range of heresy, would naturally be issued at first with the special
title by which Eusebius refers to it. But if it led the author to
execute afterwards a much enlarged design, to which, from its intricate
extent, he gave, on its completion, the fanciful designation of "The
Labyrinth," he might naturally carry the name back to the earlier
production, and, to mark the relation between the two, issue this in
future as "The Little Labyrinth." Photius speaks of the tract against
the heresy of Artemon as a separate work from "The Labyrinth,"[35] and
says the same thing of the latter[36] that Theodoret had remarked of the
former, that by some it was ascribed to Origen. The result to which we
are thus led is the following. Our newly found work is not Hippolytus's
βιβλιδαριον "On all Heresies," but the book known to Photius as "The
Labyrinth"; the author of which had previously produced two other works,
viz. "The Little Labyrinth" mentioned by Theodoret, and quoted under
another name by Eusebius, and the "Treatise on the Universe," whose
contents Photius reports. Whatever, therefore, fixes the authorship of
any of these, fixes the authorship of all.
Notwithstanding, however, our threefold chance, we have only a
solitary evidence on this point. Attached to Photius's copy of the
"Treatise on the Universe" was a note, to the effect that the book was
not (as had been imagined) by Josephus, but by Caius, the Roman
presbyter, who also composed the "Labyrinth."[37] In the absence of
other external testimony, this judgment appears entitled to stand,
unless the books themselves disclose some features at variance with
the known character of Caius.
But, it is said, such variance we do actually find. For while our work
expressly appeals to the Apocalypse as the production of John, we know
from Eusebius that Caius ascribed it to Cerinthus, and, in opposing
himself to Montanism, rejected the millenarian doctrine which is taught
in the Revelations. This argument, we admit, would be decisive if its
allegations were indisputable. It is curious, however, that the one
_locus classicus_,[38] from which is inferred the presbyter's
repudiation of the Apocalypse, is confessedly ambiguous; and the charge
it prefers against Cerinthus may amount to either of these two
propositions; that he had composed the Book of Revelations and palmed it
on the world as the production of the Apostle John; or, that he had
given himself the air of a great Apostle, and published accordingly some
revelations affecting to be imparted, like those of John, by angels.
According to this last interpretation, the work of Cerinthus would be a
book distinct from our Apocalypse, written in imitation of it, and
seeking to share its authority. The contents of the production are
briefly described by Caius; but they present such a mixture of agreement
and disagreement with our canonical book, as to leave the ambiguity
unresolved. They affirm, that after the resurrection will follow an
earthly kingdom of Christ, in which the lower nature of man will, in
Jerusalem, be again in servitude to passion and pleasure; and that the
number of a thousand years are to be spent in the indulgence of sense.
So far as the _place_ and the _duration_ of the kingdom are concerned,
our Apocalypse might here be referred to; but it has nothing answering
to the description of a gross and luxurious millennium. Taking the
passage in conjunction with the similar statement of Theodoret, that
"Cerinthus invented certain revelations, pretending that they were given
in vision to himself," we think it unlikely that our Apocalypse can be
meant; and conceive the indictment to be, that Cerinthus had put forth a
set of apocryphal visions, in which he abused the style and corrupted
the teachings of a great Apostle to the purposes of a sensual
fanaticism. This is a charge which Caius might bring, in consistency
with the fullest acceptance of the Apocalypse as authentic and true. It
was not the doctrine of a reign of Christ on earth, not the millenarian
period assigned to it, to which he objected in Cerinthus; but the coarse
and demoralizing picture given of its employments and delights. In
proportion to his respect for the real Apocalypse and its teachings,
would he be likely to resent such a miserable parody on its lofty
theocratic visions. His opposition to the Montanists in no way pledged
him to renounce the eschatological expectations which they were
distinguished from other Christians not by entertaining, but by
exaggerating. If our work, in its notice of their heresy, passes by in
silence this particular element of the system, and treats their claim to
special gifts of prophecy with less contemptuous emphasis than might be
looked for in the antagonist of Proclus, there is nothing that ought
really to surprise us in this. It does not follow that, because in our
scanty knowledge we have only one idea about an historical personage,
the man himself never had another. Caius did not live in a perpetual
platform disputation with Proclus; and either before that controversy
had waked him up, or after it was well got over, he might naturally
enough dismiss the Montanists with very cursory notice; in the one case,
because they had not yet adequately provoked his antipathy; in the
other, because they had already had enough of it.[39]
Nothing therefore presents itself in our work which should deter us from
attributing it to Caius; and the more we ponder the evidence, the more
do we incline to believe it his. This result is to us an unwelcome one;
both because we know how strong the presumption must be against a
critical judgment condemned by the masterly genius of M. Bunsen, and
because he has really made us in love with his ecclesiastical hero,--has
put such an innocent and venerable life into that old effigy, that after
wandering with him about the quays of Portus, and entering with
listening fancy into the Basilica[40] where he preached, it is hard to
return him into stone, and think of him only as a dead bishop who made a
bad almanac. Should our readers have contracted no such ideal
attachment, we fear that this discussion of authorship may appear as
trivial as it is tedious. Somebody wrote the "Philosophumena," and
whether we call him Hippolytus or Caius, whether we lodge him on the
Tiber within sight of the _Pharos_, or of the _Milliarium Aureum_, may
seem a thing indifferent, so long as the elements of the personal image
do not materially change. This utilitarian impression is by no means
just, and indeed is at variance with all true historical feeling. But it
is time that we should give it its fair rights, and turn from the name
upon our new book to its substances and significance.
Many sensible persons are at a loss, we believe, to understand why this
refutation of thirty-two extinct heresies should be regarded with so
much interest. Is it so well done, then? they ask. Far from it: better
books are brought out every year; and such a controversial argument
offered in manuscript to Mr. Longman or Mr. Parker to-morrow, would
hardly be deemed worth the cost of printing. Does it add materially to
our knowledge of the early heresies? Something of this kind it certainly
contributes; but the gain is not large, and will make no essential
change in the conclusions of any competent historical inquirer. Is any
light thrown by it on the authenticity of our canonical books? This can
hardly be expected from a production of the third century; and M.
Bunsen's application of it to this purpose appears to us, for reasons
which we shall assign, extremely precarious. Perhaps it supplies the
want which every student of that period must have felt, and organically
joins ecclesiastical to civil history, so that they no longer remain
apart,--the one as the stage for saints and martyrs, bishops and books,
the other for soldiers and senators, emperors and paramours,--but mingle
in the common life of humanity. When we think how the author was placed,
it is impossible not to go to him with an eager hope of this nature. He
lived at the centre of the vast Roman world, and felt all the pulsations
and paroxysms of that mighty heart. He witnessed the ominous decline of
every traditional maxim and national reverence in favor of imported
superstitions and degenerate barbarities. Under Commodus he saw the
ancient Mars superseded by the Grecian Hercules, and Hercules
represented by an emperor who sunk into a prize-fighter, and the
administration of the empire in the wanton hands of a Phrygian slave,
who was only less brutal than his master. In the midst of pestilence,
which had become chronic in Italy from the time of M. Antoninus, and of
which a Christian bishop could not but know more than others, the city
was still adding to its semblance of splendor and salubrity; and the
magnificent baths and grounds that were opened to the public service at
the Porta Capena, with the multiplied festivities and donatives,
attested how little mere physical attention to the people can arrest the
miseries of a moral degradation. Nor could the Christians of that age be
wholly without insight into the habits of the highest class in Rome,
for, in that great _colluvies_ of heterogeneous faiths, the caprice of
taste, if not some better impulse, determined now and then an inmate of
the palace to favor the religion of Christ; and the favorite mistress of
Commodus, who ruled him while she could, and then had him drugged and
strangled in his sleep, is the very Marcia whom our presbyter describes
as φιλοθεος and at whose intervention the Christian exiles were released
from their banishment in Sardinia. If he was at home when the excellent
Pertinax was murdered, and cared to know what tyrant was to have the
world instead, he was perhaps in the throng that ran to the Quirinal,
and heard the Prætorians shout from their ramparts that the empire was
for sale, and saw the bargain with the foolish senator below, who bought
it with his money, and paid for it with his head. Caius and his people
had reason to tremble when they saw in Septimius Severus not only the
implacable conqueror who suffered no political opponent to live, but the
worshipper of demons, the gloomy and fitful devotee of astrology and
magic, pliant only to sacerdotal hate; and when the young Origen came to
be their guest awhile, and told of the terror in Alexandria which had
joined his father to the band of martyrs, the post that just then
brought the news of the Emperor's death in Britain would seem to take
off a weight of fear; especially as one son at least of the two
inheritors of the empire had in childhood been committed to a Christian
nurse, and been said to shrink and turn away from the savage spectacles
of the amphitheatre. They were doomed to be disappointed, if they had
placed any hope in Caracalla, and to find that what they had taken in
the boy for the nobleness of grace, was but the timidity of nature; the
murder, before his mother's face, of his only brother, and then of his
best counsellor, for refusing to justify the fratricide, would soon make
them ashamed of remembering that he had ever heard the name of Christ.
It would be curious to know how the Christians comported themselves when
the Priest of the Sun became monarch of the world, and seemed intent on
dethroning every divinity to enrich the homage to his own. The grand
temple on the Palatine, which he built for the god of Emesa, every
passer-by must have seen as it rose from its foundations. And when the
black stone was paraded on its chariot through the streets, and the
elder deities were compelled to leave their shrines and attend in escort
to the Eastern idol, or when the nuptials were celebrated between the
Syrian divinity and the goddess of Carthage, and Baal-peor and Astarte
succeeded to the honors of Jove, no Christian presbyter could fail to
witness the gorgeous and humiliating procession,--renewed as it was year
by year,--or to ask himself into what deeper abomination the city of
the Scipios must sink, ere the catastrophe of judgment made a sudden
end. The orgies of Helagabalus were more insulting to the elder Paganism
of Rome than injurious to the new faith, which equally detested both;
and the offended moral feeling of the city reacted perhaps in favor of
the Christian cause, and prepared the way for that more public teaching
of the religion, in buildings avowedly dedicated to the purpose, which
was first permitted in the succeeding reign. The natural recoil in the
imperial family itself from the degradation of the court tended,
perhaps, in the same direction, and drove the astute Mamæa to seek, amid
the universal corruption, for some school of discipline which might save
the young Alexander Severus from the ignominy of her sister's son.
Whether from this motive, or from suspicion of the growing force of
Christianity as a social power, she had sent for Origen, and had an
interview with him at Antioch; and the Roman disciples had reason to
rejoice that her intellectual impressions of their system should have
been derived from such a man, and her political estimate of it formed in
the East, where the crisis of conflict between the dying and the living
faiths was more advanced than in the West, and afforded a less disguised
augury of the result. From their fellow-believers trading with the
Levant, or arriving thence, the pastors of the metropolis would learn
the propitious temper of the young Cæsar and his mother; and would feel
no surprise, when he succeeded to the palace of his cousin, that he not
only swept out the ministers of lust and luxury, but in his private
oratory enshrined, among the busts of Pagan benefactors, the images also
of Abraham and of Christ. They could not, however, but observe how
little the morals of the court and the wisdom of the government could
now avail to arrest the progress of decay, and reach in detail the vices
and miseries of a degenerate state. When they passed the door of the
palace, they heard the public crier's voice proclaim, "Let only purity
and innocence enter here"; they visited a Christian tradesman in a
neighboring street, and found him just seized by a nobleman whom he had
dunned for an outstanding debt, charged with magic or poisoning, doomed
to pine in prison till he gave release, and no redress or justice to be
had. The Emperor who, gazing in his chapel on the features of Christ,
recognized a religion human and universal, was the first under whom a
visible badge was put upon the slave, and a distinctive servile dress
adopted; the slave markets were still in consecrated spots, the temple
of Castor and the Via Sacra; and if ever some captive Onesimus,
recommended by letters from the East to the brethren in Rome, was
brought to the metropolis for sale, thither must the deacon or the
pastor go to find how the auction disposes of their charge, and learn
_which_ among the chalked feet it is that are "shod with the preparation
of the Gospel of peace." The commonwealth had never boasted of so many
great jurists as in the age of Papinian and Paulus; but as the science
of Law was perfected, the power of Law declined; and Alexander Severus,
the justest of emperors, was unable to protect Ulpian, the greatest of
civilians, from military assassination in the palace itself, or to
punish the perpetrators of this outrage on popular feeling as well as
public right. The three days' tumult, in which this master of
jurisprudence fell the victim of Prætorian licentiousness, our presbyter
Caius must have witnessed; and countless other momentous scenes, during
a generation painfully affluent in vicissitude, must have passed before
his eyes; and had he but known of what value his reports would be to
this age of ours, he would have said more of the life he saw, and less
of the speculations he denounced. To us it would have been worth
anything to know just what was too close to him to catch his eye;--how
the Christians lived in such a world; what thoughts stirred in them as
they walked the streets and heard the news; what happened and was said
when they met together, and how this could adjust itself with the real
facts of an inconsistent and tyrannical present; and how, as the
corrupted State became ever more incapable of vindicating moral ends,
the rising Church undertook the secret governance of life, and
penetrated with its authority into recesses beyond the reach, not of the
arm of administration only, but of the definitions of the widest code.
But in this respect also our author fails to realize our hopes. He gives
us a book of fancies rather than of facts, and instead of painting
existence, which is transient, and must be caught as it flies, occupies
himself in describing nonsense, which is always to be had. The
enormities of Helagabalus, though staring him in the face, are nothing
to him in comparison with heresy in Lesser Asia, which keeps Easter on a
wrong day. He is shut up within the interior circle of the community of
believers, and gives but a single glimpse beyond; and builds for us no
bridge to abolish the mysterious separation of ecclesiastical and ideal
from civil and real existence in the early ages of our faith. He is not
peculiar in this defect. We all of us live in the midst of history
without knowing it, and ourselves _make_ history without feeling it; and
that which will most clearly paint us in the thought of other times,
which will seem our _power_ to them, our romance and nobleness, with
which, therefore, they will most crave to satiate their eye, is
precisely what is least consciously present to us,--the natural spirit
and daily spring of our common being, through which not the will of man,
but the providence of God, works its appointed ends. At all events, the
insight which we should be best pleased to gain into the life of the
third century is not given even incidentally, except in the scantiest
measure, by the "Philosophumena," which we must rank, in this respect,
below the Apologies, and with the writings of Irenæus and Epiphanius.
The book is dogmatic and controversial, and the interest attached to it
arises entirely from its being a _register of opinion_, a new witness to
the thoughts about divine things, which the Christianity of its period
owned and disowned. For those who care at all to know the state of
belief a century before the Council of Nice, the work possesses a high
value. But the worth of this sort of information is itself a thing
disputed, at least its _religious_ worth; and will be very differently
estimated, according to the preconception which occupies us as to the
nature of Divine Revelation, and the sources open to us for the
attainment of sacred truth. Here it is that we find M. Bunsen's great
and peculiar strength. His religious philosophy, taken by itself, brings
us occasionally to a pause of doubt. His historical criticism is not
always convincing. But his doctrine of the _relation between_ religion
and history, of the mingling of divine and human elements in the theatre
of time, and of the special agency of Christianity in the spiritual
education of mankind, appears to us profoundly true and beautiful. This
it is that makes him attach so much importance to the creed of the
second and third centuries, and to the new light now thrown upon it; an
importance which, from every ordinary point of view, can scarcely fail
to appear fanciful and exaggerated.
The Roman Catholic, for instance, entertains a conception about what
sacred truth is, and how it is to be had, which, leaving nothing to
depend on new discoveries, discharges all the richest interest from
any fresh knowledge we may gain of religion in the past. With him
divine truth, so far as it is special to Christendom, is something
wholly foreign to the human mind, intrinsically unrelated to any
faculty we have. In being supernatural, it belongs to another sphere
than that to which our thought is restricted, and is totally withdrawn
from all the movements of our nature. It consists, indeed, in a set of
objective facts from which we are absent, and which no ratiocination
of ours can seize, any more than our ear can tell whether there be
music on Saturn's ring. There is no human consciousness answering to
it; and to resort thither for it is like asking the dreamer or the
blindfold to describe the scene in which he stands, or consulting your
own feelings to learn what is going on in Pekin or Japan. On this
theory, the objects of faith are conceived of as objects of
_perception_, only by senses otherwise constituted than ours; we can
have no surmise about them, till they are announced to us by qualified
percipients, and no comprehension of them even then, but only
reception of them as facts imported for us from abroad. The bearing of
this doctrine of invisible realism on the treatment of ecclesiastical
history is manifest. The inaccessible facts are deposited with the
sacerdotal corporation; with whom alone is vested the duty and the
power of stating and defining them. They are not indeed all stated and
defined in their last amplitude at once; for definition is always an
enclosure of the true by exclusion of the false; and it is only in
proportion as the dreaming perversity of men throws forth one delusive
fancy after another, that the Church draws line after line to shut the
intrusion out. If the creeds seem to enlarge as the centuries pass, it
is not that they have more truth to give, but only more error to
remove. The divine facts were conceived aright and conceived complete
in the minds of Apostles and Evangelists, but they were not
contemplated then as _against_ the follies and contradictions opposed
to them in later times; but as soon as the hour came for this
antagonism to be felt, the infallible perception secured in perpetuity
to the living hierarchy supplied the due verdict of rejection. To the
Catholic, therefore, Christianity was made up and finished, its
treasury was full, in the first generation; its power of development
is only the refusal of deviation; and its intellectual life is tame as
the story of some perfect hero, who does nothing but stand still and
repel temptations. The history of doctrines thus becomes a history of
heresies; the primitive stock of tradition and Scripture must, on the
one hand, be maintained entire in the face of all possible exposures
by critical research; and, on the other, remain in eternal barrenness
and produce no more. Natural knowledge, whether of the world or of
humanity, may grow continually, but the new thoughts it may lead us to
entertain of God are either _not_ new, or not true; and every
pretended enrichment of truth is nothing but evolution of falsehood.
This removal of all variety from religion, this expulsion of life and
change into the negative region of aberration and denial, eviscerates
the past of its devout interest, rests the study of it on contempt
instead of reverence for man; with all its pious air, it simply
betrays history with a kiss, and delivers it over for scribes to
buffet and chief priests to crucify. Short work is made in this way of
any fresh witness, like the author of our book, who turns up
unexpectedly from an early age. Does he speak in agreement with the
hierarchical standards? He only flings another voice into the
_consensus_ of obedient believers. Does he say anything at variance
with the _regula fidei_? Then have we only to see in what class of
heretics he stands. His testimony is either superfluous or misleading.
The Protestant, of the approved English type, arrives, under guidance
of a different thought, at the same flat and indifferent result.
Though he gives a more subjective character to divine truth than the
Roman Catholic, and brings both the want and the supply of it more
within the attestation of consciousness, he puts its discovery equally
beyond the reach of our ruined faculties, and equally cuts it off from
all relation to philosophy and the natural living exercise of reason
and conscience. He further agrees that his foreign gift of revelation
was imported all at once, and all complete, into our world, within the
Apostolic age; that the conceptions of that time are an authoritative
rule for all succeeding centuries; and that every newer doctrine is to
be regarded as a false accretion, to be flung off into the incompetent
and barren spaces of human speculation. He denies, however, the
twofold vehicle of this precious gift; and, cancelling altogether the
oral tradition and indeterminate Christian consciousness of the early
Church, shuts up the whole contents of religion within the canonical
Scriptures. The guardianship of unwritten tradition being abolished,
and the canon requiring no guardianship at all, the trust deposited
with the hierarchy disappears; and no permanent inspiration, no
authoritative judicial function, in matters of faith, remains.
Whatever Holy Spirit continues in the Church is not a progressively
teaching spirit, which can ever impart thoughts or experiences unknown
to the first believers; but a personally comforting and animating
spirit, whose highest climax of enlightenment is the exact
reproduction of the primitive state of mind. The apprehension of
Divine truth is thus reduced to an affair of verbal interpretation of
documents; and though in this process there is room for the largest
play of subjective feeling, so that different minds, different
nations, different ages, will unconsciously evolve very various
results; these are not to be regarded as possible Divine enrichments
of the faith, but to be brought rigidly to the standard of the
earliest Church, and disowned wherever they include what was absent
there. This view is less mischievous than the Roman Catholic, only
because it is more inconsequent and confused. The canon which you take
as sacred was selected and set in authority by the unwritten
consciousness and tradition which you reject as profane. The Church
existed before its records; expressed its life in ways spreading
indefinitely beyond them; and neither was exempt from human elements
till they were finished, nor lost the Divine spirit when they were
done. So arbitrary a doctrine corrupts the beauty of Scripture, and
deadens the noblest interest of history. If the New Testament is to
serve as an infallible standard, it is thus committed to perfect unity
and self-consistency; and you are obliged to contend that the various
types of doctrine found within its compass--the Messianic conceptions
of Matthew and John, the "Faith" of Paul and James, the eucharistic
conceptions of the first Evangelists and the last, the eschatology of
the Apocalypse and the Epistles--are only different sides of one and
the same belief, colored with the tints and shadings of several minds.
How utterly inadequate such an hypothesis is to the explanation of the
Scriptural phenomena, what a distorted and absurd representation it
gives of the sacred writers, and their mode of thought, is best known
to those who have honestly tried to deal with the fourth Gospel, for
instance, as historically the supplement of the others, and
dogmatically of the Book of Revelation; to suppose the Logos-doctrine
tacitly present in the speeches of Peter; to detect the pre-existence
in Mark, or remove it from John; or to identify the Paraclete with the
gifts of Pentecost. All feeling of living reality is lost from our
picture of the Apostolic time, when its outlines are thus blurred, its
contrasts destroyed, its grouped figures effaced, and the whole melted
away by the persevering drizzle of a watery criticism into a muddy
glory round the place where Christ should be. If, moreover, we are to
find everything in the first age, then the second, and the third, and
all others, must be worse, just in so far as they differ from it; and
the whole course of succeeding thought, the widening and deepening of
the Christian faith and feeling, the swelling of its stream by the
lapse into it of Oriental Gnosis and Hellenic Platonism and the
Western Conscience, must be a ceaseless degeneracy. Thus to the
Bibliolater as to the Romanist, Divine truth _has no history among
men_, unless it be the history of decline, or of recovery purchased by
decline. He also will accordingly care nothing about what the people
of Caius or Hippolytus thought. Is it in the Bible? If so, he knew it
before. Is it not in the Bible? Then he has nothing to do with it but
throw it away. By a fitting retribution, this moping worship of the
letter of a book and the creed of a generation brings it to pass that
both are lost to the mind in a dismal haze of ignorance and
misconception; and if the "Evangelical" believer could be transported
suddenly from Exeter Hall into the company of the twelve in Jerusalem,
or the Proseucha which Paul enters on the banks of the Strymon, or the
room where the Agape is prepared at Rome, we are persuaded that he
would find a scene newer to his expectations than by any other
migration into a known time and place.