The first point to be noticed is the new conception of morality as the
positive law of a theocratic community possessing a written code imposed
by divine revelation, and sanctioned by divine promises and
threatenings. It is true that we find in ancient thought, from Socrates
downwards, the notion of a law of God, eternal and immutable, partly
expressed and partly obscured by the shifting codes and customs of
actual human societies. But the sanctions of this law were vaguely and,
for the most part, feebly imagined; its principles were essentially
unwritten, and thus referred not to the external will of an Almighty
Being who claimed unquestioning submission, but rather to the reason
that gods and men shared, by the exercise of which alone they could be
adequately known and defined. Hence, even if the notion of law had been
more prominent than it was in ancient ethical thought, it could never
have led to a juridical, as distinct from a philosophical, treatment of
morality. In Christianity, on the other hand, we early find that the
method of moralists determining right conduct is to a great extent
analogous to that of juris-consults interpreting a code. It is assumed
that divine commands have been implicitly given for all occasions of
life, and that they are to be ascertained in particular cases by
interpretation of the general rules obtained from texts of scripture,
and by inference from scriptural examples. This juridical method
descended naturally from the Jewish theocracy, of which Christendom was
a universalization. Moral insight, in the view of the most thoughtful
Jews of the age immediately preceding Christianity, was conceived as
knowledge of a divine code, emanating from an authority external to
human reason which had only the function of interpreting and applying
its rules. This law was derived partly from Moses, partly from the
utterances of the later prophets, partly from oral tradition and from
the commentaries and supplementary maxims of generations of students.
Christianity inherited the notion of a written divine code acknowledged
as such by the "true Israel"--now potentially including the whole of
mankind, or at least the chosen of all nations,--on the sincere
acceptance of which the Christian's share of the divine promises to
Israel depended. And though the ceremonial part of the old Hebrew code
was altogether rejected, and with it all the supplementary jurisprudence
resting on tradition and erudite commentary, still God's law was
believed to be contained in the sacred books of the Jews, supplemented
by the teaching of Christ and his apostles. By the recognition of this
law the church was constituted as an ordered community, essentially
distinct from the State; the distinction between the two was emphasized
by the withdrawal of the early Christians from civic life, to avoid the
performance of idolatrous ceremonies imposed as official expressions of
loyalty, and by the persecutions which they had to endure, when the
spread of an association apparently so hostile to the framework of
ancient society had at length alarmed the imperial government. Nor was
the distinction obliterated by the recognition of Christianity as the
state religion under Constantine.
Thus the jural form in which morality was conceived only emphasized the
fundamental difference between it and the laws of the state. The
ultimate sanctions of the moral code were the infinite rewards and
punishments awaiting the immortal soul hereafter; but the church early
felt the necessity of withdrawing the privileges of membership from
apostates and allowing them to be gradually regained only by a solemn
ceremonial expressive of repentance, protracted through several years.
This formal and regulated "penitence" was extended from apostasy to
other grave--or, as they were subsequently called, "deadly"--sins; while
for minor offences all Christians were called upon to express contrition
by fasting and abstinence from ordinarily permitted pleasures, as well
as verbally in public and private devotions. "Excommunication" and
"penance" thus came to be temporal ecclesiastical sanctions of the moral
law. As the graduation of these sanctions naturally became more minute,
a correspondingly detailed classification of offences was rendered
necessary, and thus a system of ecclesiastical jurisprudence was
gradually produced, somewhat analogous to that of Judaism. At the same
time this tendency to make prominent a scheme of external duties has
always been counteracted in Christianity by the remembrance of its
original antithesis to Jewish legalism. We find that this antithesis, as
exaggerated by some of the Gnostic sects of the 2nd and 3rd centuries
A.D., led, not merely to theoretical antinomianism, but even (if the
charges of their orthodox opponents are not entirely to be discredited)
to gross immorality of conduct. A similar tendency has shown itself at
other periods of church history. And though such antinomianism has
always been sternly repudiated by the moral consciousness of
Christendom, it has never been forgotten that "inwardness," rightness of
heart or spirit, is the pre-eminent characteristic of Christian
goodness. It must not, of course, be supposed that the need of something
more than mere fulfilment of external duty was ignored even by the later
Judaism. Rabbinic erudition could not forget the repression of vicious
desires in the tenth commandment, the stress laid in Deuteronomy on the
necessity of service to God, or the inculcation by later prophets of
humility and faith. "The real and only Pharisee," says the Talmud, "is
he who does the will of his Father because he loves Him." But it remains
true that the contrast with the "righteousness of the scribes and
pharisees" has always served to mark the requirement of "inwardness" as
a distinctive feature of the Christian code--an inwardness not merely
negative, tending to the repression of vicious desires as well as
vicious acts, but also involving a positive rectitude of the inner state
of the soul.
Christian and Pagan inwardness.
Faith.
In this aspect Christianity invites comparison with Stoicism, and indeed
with pagan ethical philosophy generally, if we except the hedonistic
schools. Rightness of purpose, preference of virtue for its own sake,
suppression of vicious desires, were made essential points by the
Aristotelians, who attached the most importance to outward circumstances
in their view of virtue, no less than by the Stoics, to whom all outward
things were indifferent. The fundamental differences between pagan and
Christian ethics depend not on any difference in the value set on
rightness of heart, but on different views of the essential form or
conditions of this inward rightness. In neither case is it presented
purely and simply as moral rectitude. By the pagan philosophers it was
always conceived under the form of Knowledge or Wisdom, it being
inconceivable to all the schools sprung from Socrates that a man could
truly know his own good and yet deliberately choose anything else. This
knowledge, as Aristotle held, might be permanently precluded by vicious
habits, or temporarily obliterated by passion, but if present in the
mind it must produce rightness of purpose. Or even if it were held with
some of the Stoics that true wisdom was out of the reach of the best men
actually living, it none the less remained the ideal condition of
perfect human life. By Christian teachers, on the other hand, the inner
springs of good conduct were generally conceived as Faith and Love. Of
these notions the former has a somewhat complex ethical import; it seems
to blend several elements differently prominent in different minds. Its
simplest and commonest meaning is that emphasized in the contrast of
"faith" with "sight"; where it signifies belief in the invisible divine
order represented by the church, in the actuality of the law, the
threats, the promises of God, in spite of all the influences in man's
natural life that tend to obscure this belief. Out of this contrast
there ultimately grew an essentially different opposition between faith
and knowledge or reason, according to which the theological basis of
ethics was contrasted with the philosophical; the theologians
maintaining sometimes that the divine law is essentially arbitrary, the
expression of will, not reason; more frequently that its reasonableness
is inscrutable, and that actual human reason should confine itself to
examining the credentials of God's messengers, and not the message
itself. But in early Christianity this latter antithesis was as yet
undeveloped; faith means simply force in clinging to moral and religious
conviction, whatever their rational grounds may be; this force, in the
Christian consciousness, being inseparably bound up with personal
loyalty and trust towards Christ, the leader in the battle with evil,
the ruler of the kingdom to be realized. So far, however, there is no
ethical difference between Christian faith and that of Judaism, or its
later imitation, Mahommedanism; except that the personal affection of
loyal trust is peculiarly stirred by the blending of human and divine
natures in Christ, and the rule of duty impressively taught by the
manifestation of his perfect life. A more distinctively Christian, and a
more deeply moral, significance is given to the notion in the antithesis
of "faith" and "works." Here faith means more than loyal acceptance of
the divine law and reverent trust in the lawgiver; it implies a
consciousness, at once continually present and continually transcended,
of the radical imperfection of all human obedience to the law, and at
the same time of the irremissible condemnation which this imperfection
entails. The Stoic doctrine of the worthlessness of ordinary human
virtue, and the stern paradox that all offenders are equally, in so far
as all are absolutely, guilty, find their counterparts in Christianity;
but the latter (maintaining this ideal severity in the moral standard,
with an emotional consciousness of what is involved in it quite unlike
that of the Stoic) overcomes its practical exclusiveness through faith.
This faith, again, may be conceived in two modes, essentially distinct
though usually combined. In one view it gives the believer strength to
attain, by God's supernatural aid or "grace," a goodness of which he is
naturally incapable; in the other view it gives him an assurance that,
though he knows himself a sinner deserving of utter condemnation, a
perfectly just God still regards him with favour on account of the
perfect services and suffering of Christ. Of these views the former is
the more catholic, more universally present in the Christian
consciousness; the latter more deeply penetrates the mystery of the
Atonement, as expounded in the Pauline epistles.
Love.
Purity.
But faith, however understood, is rather an indispensable pre-requisite
than the essential motive principle of Christian good conduct. This
motive is supplied by the other central notion, love. On love depends
the "fulfilling of the law," and the sole moral value of Christian
duty--that is, on love to God, in the first place, which in its fullest
development must spring from Christian faith; and, secondly, love to all
mankind, as the objects of divine love and sharers in the humanity
ennobled by the incarnation. This derivative philanthropy characterizes
the spirit in which all Christian performance of social duty is to be
done; loving devotion to God being the fundamental attitude of mind that
is to be maintained throughout the whole of the Christian's life. But
further, as regards abstinence from unlawful acts and desires prompting
to them, we have to notice another form in which the inwardness of
Christian morality manifests itself, which, though less distinctive,
should yet receive attention in any comparison of Christian ethics with
the view of Graeco-Roman philosophy. The profound horror with which the
Christian's conception of a suffering as well as an avenging divinity
tended to make him regard all condemnable acts was tinged with a
sentiment which we may perhaps describe as a ceremonial aversion
moralized--the aversion, that is, to foulness or impurity. In Judaism,
as in other, especially Oriental, religions, the natural dislike of
material defilement has been elevated into a religious sentiment, and
made to support a complicated system of quasi-sanitary abstinences and
ceremonial purifications; then, as the ethical element predominated in
the Jewish religion, a moral symbolism was felt to reside in the
ceremonial code, and thus aversion to impurity came to be a common form
of the ethico-religious sentiment. Then, when Christianity threw off the
Mosaic ritual, this religious sense of purity was left with no other
sphere besides morality; while, from its highly idealized character, it
was peculiarly well adapted for that repression of vicious desires which
Christianity claimed as its special function.
Distinctive particulars of Christian morality.
The distinctive features of Christian ethics are obedience,
unworldliness, benevolence, purity and humility. They are naturally
connected with the more general characteristics just stated; though many
of them may also be referred directly to the example and precepts of
Christ, and in several cases they are clearly due to both causes,
inseparably combined.
1. We may notice, in the first place, that the conception of morality as
a code which, if not in itself arbitrary, is yet to be accepted by men
with unquestioning submission, tends naturally to bring into prominence
the virtue of _obedience to authority_; just as the philosophic view of
goodness as the realization of reason gives a special value to
_self-determination_ and independence (as we see more clearly in the
post-Aristotelian schools where ethics is distinctly separated from
politics).
2. Again, the opposition between the natural world and the spiritual
order into which the Christian has been born anew led not merely to a
contempt equal to that of the Stoic for wealth, fame, power, and other
objects of worldly pursuit, but also, for some time at least, to a
comparative depreciation of the domestic and civic relations of the
natural man. This tendency was exhibited most simply and generally in
the earliest period of the church's history. In the view of primitive
Christians, ordinary human society was a world temporarily surrendered
to Satanic rule, over which a swift and sudden destruction was
impending; in such a world the little band who were gathered in the ark
of the church could have no part or lot,--the only attitude they could
maintain was that of passive alienation. On the other hand, it was
difficult practically to realize this alienation, and a keen sense of
this difficulty induced the same hostility to the body as a clog and
hindrance, that we find to some extent in Plato, but more fully
developed in Neoplatonism, Neopythagoreanism, and other products of the
mingling of Greek with Oriental thought. This feeling is exhibited in
the value set on fasting in the Christian church from the earliest
times, and in an extreme form in the self-torments of later monasticism;
while both tendencies, anti-worldliness and anti-sensualism, seem to
have combined in causing the preference of celibacy over marriage which
is common to most early Christian writers.[16] Patriotism, again, and
the sense of civic duty, the most elevated of all social sentiments in
the Graeco-Roman civilization, tended, under the influence of
Christianity, either to expand itself into universal philanthropy, or to
concentrate itself on the ecclesiastical community. "We recognize one
commonwealth, the world," says Tertullian; "we know," says Origen, "that
we have a fatherland founded by the word of God." We might further
derive from the general spirit of Christian unworldliness that
repudiation of the secular modes of conflict, even in a righteous cause,
which substituted a passive patience and endurance for the old pagan
virtue of courage, in which the active element was prominent. Here,
however, we clearly trace the influence of Christ's express prohibition
of violent resistance to violence, and his inculcation, by example and
precept, of a love that was to conquer even natural resentment. An
extreme result of this influence is shown in Tertullian's view, that no
Christian could properly hold the office of a secular magistrate in
which he would have to doom to death, chains, imprisonment; but even
more sober writers, such as Ambrose, extend Christian passivity so far
as to preclude self-defence even against a murderous assault. The common
sense of Christendom gradually shook off these extravagances; but the
reluctance to shed blood lingered long, and was hardly extinguished even
by the growing horror of heresy. We have a curious relic of this in the
later times of ecclesiastical persecution, when the heretic was doomed
to the stake that he might be punished in some manner "short of
bloodshed."[17]
Benevolence.
3. It is, however, in the impulse given to practical beneficence in all
its forms, by the exaltation of love as the root of all virtues, that
the most important influence of Christianity on the particulars of
civilized morality is to be found; although the exact amount of this
influence is here somewhat difficult to ascertain, since it merely
carries further a development traceable in the history of pagan
morality. This development appears when we compare the different
post-Socratic systems of ethics. In Plato's exposition of the different
virtues there is no mention whatever of benevolence, although his
writings show a keen sense of the importance of friendship as an element
of philosophic life, especially of the intense personal affection
naturally arising between master and disciple. Aristotle goes somewhat
further in recognizing the moral value of friendship [Greek: (philia)];
and though he considers that in its highest form it can be realized only
by the fellowship of the wise and good, he yet extends the notion so as
to include the domestic affections, and takes notice of the importance
of mutual kindness in binding together all human societies. Still in his
formal statement of the different virtues, positive beneficence is
discernible only under the notion of "liberality," in which form its
excellence is hardly distinguished from that of graceful profusion in
self-regarding expenditure (_Nic. Eth_. iv. 1). Cicero, on the other
hand, in his paraphrase of a Stoic treatise on external duties (_De
officiis_), ranks the rendering of positive services to other men as a
chief department of social duty; and the Stoics generally recognized the
universal fellowship and natural mutual claims of human beings as such.
Indeed, this recognition in later Stoicism is sometimes expressed with
so much warmth of feeling as to be hardly distinguishable from Christian
philanthropy. Nor was this regard for humanity merely a doctrine of the
school. Partly through the influence of Stoic and other Greek
philosophy, partly from the natural expansion of human sympathies, the
legislation of the Empire, during the first three centuries, shows a
steady development in the direction of natural justice and humanity; and
some similar progress may be traced in the general tone of moral
opinion. Still the utmost point that this development reached fell
considerably short of the standard of Christian charity. Without
dwelling on the immense impetus given to the practice of social duty
generally by the religion that made beneficence a form of divine
service, and identified "piety" with "pity," we have to put down as
definite changes introduced by Christianity--(1) the severe condemnation
and final suppression of the practice of exposing infants; (2) effective
abhorrence of the barbarism of gladiatorial combats; (3) immediate moral
mitigation of slavery, and a strong encouragement of emancipation; (4)
great extension of the eleemosynary provision made for the sick and the
poor. As regards almsgiving, however--the importance of which has
caused it to usurp, in modern languages, the general name of
"charity"--it ought to be observed that Christianity merely
universalized a duty which has always been inculcated by Judaism, within
the limits of the chosen people.
4. The same may be said of the stricter regulation which Christianity
enforced on the relations of the sexes; except so far as the prohibition
of divorce is concerned, and the stress laid on "purity of heart" as
contrasted with merely outward chastity.
5. Even the peculiarly Christian virtue of humility, which presents so
striking a contrast to the Greek "highmindedness," was to some extent
anticipated in the Rabbinic teaching. Its far greater prominence under
the new dispensation may be partly referred to the express teaching and
example of Christ; partly, in so far as the virtue is manifested in the
renunciation of external rank and dignity, or the glory of merely
secular gifts and acquirements, it is one aspect of the unworldliness
which we have already noticed; while the deeper humility that represses
the claim of personal merit even in the saint belongs to the strict
self-examination, the continual sense of imperfection, the utter
reliance on strength not his own, which characterize the inner moral
life of the Christian. Humility in this latter sense, "before God," is
an essential condition of all truly Christian goodness.
We have, however, yet to notice the enlargement of the sphere of ethics
due to its close connexion with theology; for while this added religious
force and sanction to ordinary moral obligations, it equally tended to
impart a moral aspect to religious belief and worship. "Duty to God"--as
distinct from duty to man--had not been altogether unrecognized by pagan
moralists; but the rather dubious relations of even the more orthodox
philosophy to the established polytheism had generally prevented them
from laying much stress upon it. Again,--just as the Stoics held wisdom
to be indispensable to real rectitude of conduct, while at the same time
they included under the notion of wisdom a grasp of physical as well as
ethical truth,--so the similar emphasis laid on inwardness in Christian
ethics caused orthodoxy or correctness of religious belief to be
regarded as essential to goodness, and heresy as the most fatal of
vices, corrupting as it did the very springs of Christian life. To the
philosophers (with the single exception of Plato), however, convinced as
they were that the multitude must necessarily miss true well-being
through their folly and ignorance, it could never occur to guard against
these evils by any other method than that of providing philosophic
instruction for the few; whereas the Christian clergy, whose function it
was to offer truth and eternal life to all mankind, naturally regarded
theological misbelief as insidious preventible contagion. Indeed, their
sense of its deadliness was so keen that, when they were at length able
to control the secular administration, they rapidly overcame their
aversion to bloodshed, and initiated that long series of religious
persecutions to which we find no parallel in the pre-Christian
civilization of Europe. It was not that Christian writers did not feel
the difficulty of attributing criminality to sincere ignorance or error.
But the difficulty is not really peculiar to theology; and the
theologians usually got over it (as some philosophers had surmounted a
similar perplexity in the region of ethics proper) by supposing some
latent or antecedent voluntary sin, of which the apparently involuntary
heresy was the fearful fruit.
Lastly, we must observe that, in proportion as the legal conception of
morality as a code of which the violation deserves supernatural
punishment predominated over the philosophic view of ethics as the
method for attaining natural felicity, the question of man's freedom of
will to obey the law necessarily became prominent. At the same time it
cannot be broadly said that Christianity took a decisive side in the
metaphysical controversy on free-will and necessity; since, just as in
Greek philosophy the need of maintaining freedom as the ground of
responsibility clashes with the conviction that no one deliberately
chooses his own harm, so in Christian ethics it clashes with the
attribution of all true human virtue to supernatural grace, as well as
with the belief in divine foreknowledge. All we can say is that in the
development of Christian thought the conflict of conceptions was far
more profoundly felt, and far more serious efforts were made to evade or
transcend it.
Development of opinion in early Christianity.
Augustine.
In the preceding account of Christian morality, it has been already
indicated that the characteristics delineated did not all exhibit
themselves simultaneously to the same extent, or with perfect uniformity
throughout the church. Changes in the external condition of
Christianity, the different degrees of civilization in the societies of
which it was the dominant religion, and the natural process of internal
development, continually brought different features into prominence;
while again, the important antagonisms of opinion within Christendom
frequently involved ethical issues--even in the Eastern Church--until in
the 4th century it began to be absorbed in the labour of a dogmatic
construction. Thus, for example, the anti-secular tendencies of the new
creed, to which Tertullian (160-220) gave violent and rigid expression,
were exaggerated in the Montanist heresy which he ultimately joined; on
the other hand, Clement of Alexandria, in opposition to the general tone
of his age, maintained the value of pagan philosophy for the development
of Christian faith into true knowledge (Gnosis), and the value of the
natural development of man through marriage for the normal perfecting of
the Christian life. So again, there is a marked difference between the
writers before Augustine and those that succeeded him in all that
concerns the internal conditions of Christian morality. By Justin and
other apologists the need of redemption, faith, grace is indeed
recognized, but the theological system depending on these notions is not
sufficiently developed[18] to come into even apparent antagonism with
the freedom of the will. Christianity is for the most part conceived as
essentially a proclamation through the Divine Word, to immortal beings
gifted with free choice, of the true code of conduct sanctioned by
eternal rewards and punishments. This legalism contrasts strikingly with
the efforts of pagan philosophy to exhibit virtue as its own reward; and
the contrast is triumphantly pointed out by more than one early
Christian writer. Lactantius (_circa_ 300 A.D.), for example, roundly
declares that Plato and Aristotle, referring everything to this earthly
life, "made virtue mere folly"; though himself maintaining, with
pardonable inconsistency, that man's highest good did not consist in
mere pleasure, but in the consciousness of the filial relation of the
soul to God. It is plain, however, that on this external legalistic view
of duty it was impossible to maintain a difference in kind between
Christian and pagan morality; the philosopher's conformity to the rules
of chastity and beneficence, so far as it went, was indistinguishable
from the saint's. But when this inference was developed in the teaching
of Pelagius, it was repudiated as heretical by the church, under the
powerful leadership of Augustine (354-430); and the doctrine of man's
incapacity to obey God's law by his unaided moral energy was pressed to
a point at which it was difficult to reconcile it with the freedom of
the will. Augustine is fully aware of the theoretical indispensability
of maintaining Free Will, from its logical connexion with human
responsibility and divine justice; but he considers that these latter
points are sufficiently secured if actual freedom of choice between good
and evil is allowed in the single case of our progenitor Adam.[19] For
since the _natura seminalis_ from which all men were to arise already
existed in Adam, in his voluntary preference of self to God, humanity
chose evil once for all; for which ante-natal guilt all men are justly
condemned to perpetual absolute sinfulness and consequent punishment,
unless they are elected by God's unmerited grace to share the benefits
of Christ's redemption. Without this grace it is impossible for man to
obey the "first greatest commandment" of love to God; and, this
unfulfilled, he is guilty of the whole law, and is only free to choose
between degrees of sin; his apparent external virtues have no moral
value, since inner rightness of intention is wanting. "All that is not
of faith is of sin"; and faith and love are mutually involved and
inseparable; faith springs from the divinely imparted germ of love,
which in its turn is developed by faith to its full strength, while from
both united springs hope, joyful yearning towards ultimate perfect
fruition of the object of love. These three Augustine (after St Paul)
regards as the three essential elements of Christian virtue; along with
these he recognizes the fourfold division of virtue into prudence,
temperance, courage and justice according to their traditional
interpretation; but he explains these virtues to be in their true
natures only the same love to God in different aspects or exercises. The
uncompromising mysticism of this view may be at once compared and
contrasted with the philosophical severity of Stoicism. Love of God in
the former holds the same absolute and unique position as the sole
element of moral worth in human action, which, as we have seen, was
occupied by knowledge of Good in the latter; and we may carry the
parallel further by observing that in neither case is this severity in
the abstract estimate of goodness necessarily connected with extreme
rigidity in practical precepts. Indeed, an important part of Augustine's
work as a moralist lies in the reconciliation which he laboured to
effect between the anti-worldly spirit of Christianity and the
necessities of secular civilization. For example, we find him arguing
for the legitimacy of judicial punishments and military service against
an over-literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount; and he took
an important part in giving currency to the distinction between
evangelical "counsels" and "commands," and so defending the life of
marriage and temperate enjoyment of natural good against the attacks of
the more extravagant advocate of celibacy and self-abnegation; although
he fully admitted the superiority of the latter method of avoiding the
contamination of sin.
Ambrose.
The attempt to Christianize the old Platonic list of virtues, which we
have noticed in Augustine's system, was probably due to the influence of
his master Ambrose, in whose treatise _De officiis ministrorum_ we find
for the first time an exposition of Christian duty systematized on a
plan borrowed from a pre-Christian moralist. It is interesting to
compare Ambrose's account of what subsequently came to be known as the
"four cardinal virtues" with the corresponding delineations in
Cicero's[20] _De officiis_ which served the bishop as a model. Christian
Wisdom, so far as it is speculative, is of course primarily theological;
it has God, as the highest truth, for its chief object, and is therefore
necessarily grounded on faith. Christian Fortitude is essentially
firmness in withstanding the seductions of good and evil fortune,
resoluteness in the conflict perpetually waged against wickedness
without carnal weapons--though Ambrose, with the Old Testament in his
hand, will not quite relinquish the ordinary martial application of the
term. "Temperantia" retains the meaning of "observance of due measure"
in all conduct, which it had in Cicero's treatise; though its notion is
partly modified by being blended with the newer virtue of humility.
Finally in the exposition of Christian Justice the Stoic doctrine of the
natural union of all human interests is elevated to the full height and
intensity of evangelical philanthropy; the brethren are reminded that
the earth was made by God a common possession of all, and are bidden to
administer their means for the common benefit; Ambrose, we should
observe, is thoroughly aware of the fundamental union of these different
virtues in Christianity, though he does not, like Augustine, resolve
them all into the one central affection of love of God.