As to the Jews, since they lived before the event, it is not wonderful,

that, though they were right in their general interpretation of

Scripture as far as it went, they stopped short of the whole truth;

nay, that even when their Messiah came, they could not recognize Him as

the promised King as we recognize Him now;—for we have the experience

of His history for nearly two thousand years, by which to interpret

their Scriptures. We may partly understand their position towards those

prophecies, by our own at present towards the Apocalypse. Who can deny

the superhuman grandeur and impressiveness of that sacred book! yet,

as a prophecy, though some outlines of the future are discernible,

how differently it affects us from the predictions of Isaiah! either

because it relates to undreamed-of events still to come, or because

it has been fulfilled long ago in events which in their detail and

circumstance have never become history. And the same remark applies

doubtless to portions of the Messianic prophecies still; but, if their

fulfilment has been thus gradual in time past, we must not be surprised

though portions of them still await their slow but true accomplishment

in the future.

8.

When I implied that in some points of view Christianity has not

answered the expectations of the old prophecies, of which it claims

to be the fulfilment, I had in mind principally the contrast which is

presented to us between the picture which they draw of the universality

of the kingdom of the Messiah, and that partial development of it

through the world, which is all the Christian Church can show; and

again the contrast between the rest and peace which they said He was to

introduce, and the Church’s actual history,—the conflicts of opinion

which have raged within its pale, the violent acts and unworthy lives

of many of its rulers, and the moral degradation of great masses of its

people. I do not profess to meet these difficulties here, except by

saying that the failure of Christianity in one respect in corresponding

to those prophecies cannot destroy the force of its correspondence to

them in others; just as we may allow that the portrait of a friend is a

faulty likeness to him, and yet be quite sure that it is his portrait.

What I shall actually attempt to show here is this,—that Christianity

was quite aware from the first of its own prospective future, so

unlike the expectations which the prophets would excite concerning it,

and that it meets the difficulty thence arising by anticipation, by

giving us its own predictions of what it was to be in historical fact,

predictions which are at once explanatory comments upon the Jewish

Scriptures, and direct evidences of its own prescience.

I think it observable then, that, though our Lord claims to be the

Messiah, He shows so little of conscious dependence on the old

Scriptures, or of anxiety to fulfil them; as if it became Him, who was

the Lord of the Prophets, to take His own course, and to leave their

utterances to adjust themselves to Him as they could, and not to be

careful to accommodate Himself to them. The evangelists do indeed show

some such natural zeal in His behalf, and thereby illustrate what I

notice in Him by the contrast. They betray an earnestness to trace in

His Person and history the accomplishment of prophecy, as when they

discern it in His return from Egypt, in His life at Nazareth, in the

gentleness and tenderness of His mode of teaching, and in the various

minute occurrences of His passion; but He Himself goes straight forward

on His way, of course claiming to be the Messiah of the Prophets,(48)

still not so much recurring to past prophecies, as uttering new ones,

with an antithesis not unlike that which is so impressive in the

Sermon on the Mount, when He first says, “It has been said by them

of old time,” and then adds, “But I say unto you.” Another striking

instance of this is seen in the Names under which He spoke of Himself,

which have little or no foundation in any thing which was said of

Him beforehand in the Jewish Scriptures. They speak of Him as Ruler,

Prophet, King, Hope of Israel, Offspring of Judah, and Messiah; and

His Evangelists and Disciples call Him Master, Lord, Prophet, Son of

David, King of Israel, King of the Jews, and Messiah or Christ; but He

Himself, though, I repeat, He acknowledges these titles as His own,

especially that of the Christ, chooses as His special designations

these two, Son of God and Son of Man, the latter of which is only once

given Him in the Old Scriptures, and by which He corrects any narrow

Judaic interpretation of them; while the former was never distinctly

used of Him before He came, and seems first to have been announced to

the world by the Angel Gabriel and St. John the Baptist. In those two

Names, Son of God and Son of Man, declaratory of the two natures of

Emmanuel, He separates Himself from the Jewish Dispensation, in which

He was born, and inaugurates the New Covenant.

This is not an accident, and I shall now give some instances of it,

that is, of what I may call the independent autocratic view which He

takes of His own religion, into which the old Judaism was melting, and

of the prophetic insight into its spirit and its future which that view

involves. In quoting His own sayings from the Evangelists for this

purpose, I assume (of which there is no reasonable doubt) that they

wrote before any historical events had happened of a nature to cause

them unconsciously to modify or to colour the language which their

Master used.

1. First, then, the fact has been often insisted on as a bold

conception, unheard of before, and worthy of divine origin, that He

should even project a universal religion, and that to be effected by

what may be called a propagandist movement from one centre. Hitherto

it had been the received notion in the world, that each nation had its

own gods. The Romans legislated upon that basis, and the Jews had held

it from the first, holding of course also, that all gods but their

own God were idols and demons. It is true that the Jews ought to have

been taught by their prophecies what was in store for the world and

for them, and that their first dispersion through the Empire centuries

before Christ came, and the proselytes which they collected around them

in every place, were a kind of comment on the prophecies larger than

their own; but we see what was, in fact, when our Lord came, their

expectation from those prophecies, in the passages which I have quoted

above from the Roman historians of His day. But He from the first

resisted those plausible, but mistaken interpretations of Scripture. In

His cradle indeed He had been recognized by the Eastern sages as their

king; the Angel announced that He was to reign over the house of Jacob;

Nathanael, too, owned Him as the Messiah with a regal title; but He,

on entering upon His work, interpreted these anticipations in His own

way, and that not the way of Theudas and Judas of Galilee, who took the

sword, and collected soldiers about them,—nor the way of the Tempter,

who offered Him “all the kingdoms of the world.” In the words of the

Evangelists, He began, not to fight, but “to preach;” and further, to

“preach the kingdom of heaven,” saying, “The time is accomplished, and

the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe the Gospel.” This is

the significant title, “the kingdom of heaven,”—the more significant,

when explained by the attendant precept of repentance and faith,—on

which He founds the polity which He was establishing from first to

last. One of His last sayings before He suffered was, “My kingdom is

not of this world.” And His last words, before He left the earth, when

His disciples asked Him about His kingdom, were that they, preachers

as they were, and not soldiers, should “be His witnesses to the end of

the earth,” should “preach to all nations, beginning with Jerusalem,”

should “go into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,”

should “go and make disciples of all nations till the consummation of

all things.”

The last Evangelist of the four is equally precise in recording the

initial purpose with which our Lord began His ministry, viz. to create

an empire, not by force, but by persuasion. “Light is come into the

world; every one that doth evil, hateth the light, but he that doth

truth, cometh to the light.” “Lift up your eyes, and see the countries,

for they are white already to harvest.” “No man can come to Me, except

the Father, who hath sent Me, draw him.” “And I, if I be lifted up from

the earth, will draw all things to Myself.”

Thus, while the Jews, relying on their Scriptures with great appearance

of reason, looked for a deliverer who should conquer with the sword, we

find that Christianity, from the first, not by an after-thought upon

trial and experience, but as a fundamental truth, magisterially set

right that mistake, transfiguring the old prophecies, and bringing to

light, as St. Paul might say, “the mystery which had been hidden from

ages and generations, but now was made manifest in His saints, the

glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you,” not

simply over you, but in you, by faith and love, “the hope of glory.”

2. I have partly anticipated my next remark, which relates to the

means by which the Christian enterprise was to be carried into effect.

That preaching was to have a share in the victories of the Messiah

was plain from Prophet and Psalmist; but then Charlemagne preached,

and Mahomet preached, with an army to back them. The same Psalm which

speaks of those “who preach good tidings,” speaks also of their King’s

“foot being dipped in the blood of His enemies;” but what is so grandly

original in Christianity is, that on its broad field of conflict its

preachers were to be simply unarmed, and to suffer, but to prevail.

If we were not so familiar with our Lord’s words, I think they would

astonish us. “Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves.”

This was to be their normal state, and so it was; and all the promises

and directions given to them imply it. “Blessed are they that suffer

persecution;” “blessed are ye when they revile you;” “the meek shall

inherit the earth;” “resist not evil;” “you shall be hated of all

men for My Name’s sake;” “a man’s enemies shall be they of his own

household;” “he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.”

What sort of encouragement was this for men who were to go about an

immense work? Do men in this way send out their soldiers to battle, or

their sons to India or Australia? The King of Israel hated Micaiah,

because he always “prophesied of him evil.” “So persecuted they the

Prophets that were before you,” says our Lord. Yes, and the Prophets

failed; they were persecuted and they lost the battle. “Take, my

brethren,” says St. James, “for an example of suffering evil, of labour

and patience, the Prophets, who spake in the Name of the Lord.” They

were “racked, mocked, stoned, cut asunder, they wandered about,—of whom

the world was not worthy,” says St. Paul. What an argument to encourage

them to aim at success by suffering, to put before them the precedent

of those who suffered and who failed!

Yet the first preachers, our Lord’s immediate disciples, saw no

difficulty in a prospect to human eyes so appalling, so hopeless. How

connatural this strange, unreasoning, reckless courage was with their

regenerate state is shown most signally in St. Paul, as having been a

convert of later vocation. He was no personal associate of our Lord’s,

yet how faithfully he echoes back our Lord’s language! His instrument

of conversion is “the foolishness of preaching;” “the weak things of

the earth confound the strong;” “we hunger and thirst, and are naked,

and are buffeted, and have no home;” “we are reviled and bless, we are

persecuted, and blasphemed, and are made the refuse of this world, and

the offscouring of all things.” Such is the intimate comprehension,

on the part of one who had never seen our Lord on earth, and knew

little from His original disciples of the genius of His teaching;—and

considering that the prophecies, upon which he had lived from his

birth, for the most part bear on their surface a contrary doctrine, and

that the Jews of that day did commonly understand them in that contrary

sense, we cannot deny that Christianity, in tracing out the method

by which it was to prevail in the future, took its own, independent

line, and, in assigning from the first a rule and a history to its

propagation, a rule and a history which have been carried out to this

day, rescues itself from the charge of but partially fulfilling those

Jewish prophecies, by the assumption of a prophetical character of its

own.

3. Now we come to a third point, in which the Divine Master explains,

and in a certain sense corrects, the prophecies of the Old Covenant, by

a more exact interpretation of them from Himself. I have granted that

they seemed to say that His coming would issue in a period of peace

and religiousness. “Behold,” says the Prophet, “a king shall reign in

justice, and princes shall rule in judgment. The fool shall no more

be called prince, neither shall the deceitful be called great. The

wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid.

They shall not hurt nor kill in all My holy mountain, for the earth is

filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the covering waters of the

sea.”

These words seem to predict a reversal of the consequences of the

fall, and that reversal has not been granted to us, it is true; but

let us consider how distinctly Christianity warns us against any such

anticipation. While it is so forcibly laid down in the Gospels that the

history of the kingdom of heaven begins in suffering and sanctity, it

is as plainly said that it results in unfaithfulness and sin; that is

to say, that, though there are at all times many holy, many religious

men in it, and though sanctity, as at the beginning, is ever the life

and the substance and the germinal seed of the Divine Kingdom, yet

there will be many too, there will be more, who by their lives are a

scandal and injury to it, not a defence. This again, is an astonishing

announcement, and the more so when viewed in contrast with the precepts

delivered by our Lord in His Sermon on the Mount, and His description

to the Apostles of their weapons and their warfare. So perplexing to

Christians was the fact when fulfilled, as it was in no long time on a

large scale, that three of the early heresies more or less originated

in obstinate, unchristian refusal to readmit to the privileges of the

Gospel those who had fallen into sin. Yet our Lord’s words are express:

He tells us that “Many are called, few are chosen;” in the parable of

the Marriage Feast, the servants who are sent out gather together “all

that they found, both bad and good;” the foolish virgins “had no oil in

their vessels;” amid the good seed an enemy sows seed that is noxious

or worthless; and “the kingdom is like to a net which gathered together

all kind of fishes;” and “at the end of the world the Angels shall go

forth, and shall separate the wicked from among the just.”

Moreover, He not only speaks of His religion as destined to possess a

wide temporal power, such, that, as in the case of the Babylonian, “the

birds of the air should dwell in its branches,” but He opens on us the

prospect of ambition and rivalry in its leading members, when He warns

His disciples against desiring the first places in His kingdom; nay, of

grosser sins, in His description of the Ruler, who “began to strike his

fellow-servants, and to eat and drink and be drunken,”—passages which

have an awful significance, considering what kind of men have before

now been His chosen representatives, and have sat in the chair of His

Apostles.

If then it be objected that Christianity does not, as the old prophets

seem to promise, abolish sin and irreligion within its pale, we may

answer, not only that it did not engage to do so, but that actually in

a prophetical spirit it warned its followers against the expectation of

its so doing.

9.

According to our Lord’s announcements before the event, Christianity

was to prevail and to become a great empire, and to fill the earth; but

it was to accomplish this destiny, not as other victorious powers had

done, and as the Jews expected, by force of arms or by other means of

this world, but by the novel expedient of sanctity and suffering. If

some aspiring party of this day, the great Orleans family, or a branch

of the Hohenzollern, wishing to found a kingdom, were to profess, as

their only weapon, the practice of virtue, they would not startle us

more than it startled a Jew eighteen hundred years ago, to be told that

his glorious Messiah was not to fight, like Joshua or David, but simply

to preach. It is indeed a thought so strange, both in its prediction

and in its fulfilment, as urgently to suggest to us that some Divine

Power went with him who conceived and proclaimed it. This is what I

have been saying;—now I wish to consider the fact, which was predicted,

in itself, without reference to its being the subject whether of a

prediction or of a fulfilment; that is, the history of the rise and

establishment of Christianity; and to inquire whether it is a history

that admits of being resolved, by any philosophical ingenuity, into the

ordinary operation of moral, social, or political causes.

As is well known, various writers have attempted to assign human causes

in explanation of the phenomenon: Gibbon especially has mentioned five,

viz. the zeal of Christians, inherited from the Jews, their doctrine

of a future state, their claim to miraculous power, their virtues, and

their ecclesiastical organization. Let us briefly consider them.

He thinks these five causes, when combined, will fairly account for the

event; but he has not thought of accounting for their combination. If

they are ever so available for his purpose, still that availableness

arises out of their coincidence, and out of what does that coincidence

arise? Until this is explained, nothing is explained, and the question

had better have been let alone. These presumed causes are quite

distinct from each other, and, I say, the wonder is, what made them

come together. How came a multitude of Gentiles to be influenced with

Jewish zeal? How came zealots to submit to a strict, ecclesiastical

_régime_? What connexion has a secular _régime_ with the immortality

of the soul? Why should immortality, a philosophical doctrine, lead

to belief in miracles, which is a superstition of the vulgar? What

tendency had miracles and magic to make men austerely virtuous? Lastly,

what power was there in a code of virtue, as calm and enlightened

as that of Antoninus, to generate a zeal as fierce as that of

Maccabæus? Wonderful events before now have apparently been nothing

but coincidences, certainly; but they do not become less wonderful by

cataloguing their constituent causes, unless we also show how these

came to be constituent.

However, this by the way; the real question is this,—are these

historical characteristics of Christianity, also in matter of fact,

historical causes of Christianity? Has Gibbon given proof that they

are? Has he brought evidence of their operation, or does he simply

conjecture in his private judgment that they operated? Whether they

were adapted to accomplish a certain work, is a matter of opinion;

whether they did accomplish it is a question of fact. He ought to

adduce instances of their efficiency before he has a right to say that

they are efficient. And the second question is, what is this effect, of

which they are to be considered as causes? It is no other than this,

the conversion of bodies of men to the Christian faith. Let us keep

this in view. We have to determine whether these five characteristics

of Christianity were efficient causes of bodies of men becoming

Christians? I think they neither did effect such conversions, nor were

adapted to do so, and for these reasons:—

1. For first, as to zeal, by which Gibbon means party spirit, or

_esprit de corps_; this doubtless is a motive principle when men

are already members of a body, but does it operate in bringing them

into it? The Jews were born in Judaism, they had a long and glorious

history, and would naturally feel and show _esprit de corps_; but how

did party spirit tend to transplant Jew or Gentile out of his own

place into a new society, and that a society which as yet scarcely

was formed in a society? Zeal, certainly, may be felt for a cause,

or for a person; on this point I shall speak presently; but Gibbon’s

idea of Christian zeal is nothing better than the old wine of Judaism

decanted into new Christian bottles, and would be too flat a stimulant,

even if it admitted of such a transference, to be taken as a cause of

conversion to Christianity without definite evidence in proof of the

fact. Christians had zeal for Christianity after they were converted,

not before.

2. Next, as to the doctrine of a future state. Gibbon seems to mean by

this doctrine the fear of hell; now certainly in this day there are

persons converted from sin to a religious life, by vivid descriptions

of the future punishment of the wicked; but then it must be recollected

that such persons already believe in the doctrine thus urged upon

them. On the contrary, give some Tract upon hell-fire to one of the

wild boys in a large town, who has had no education, who has no faith;

and, instead of being startled by it, he will laugh at it as something

frightfully ridiculous. The belief in Styx and Tartarus was dying out

of the world at the time that Christianity came in, as the parallel

belief now seems to be dying out in all classes of our own society. The

doctrine of eternal punishment does only anger the multitude of men in

our large towns now, and make them blaspheme; why should it have had

any other effect on the heathen populations in the age when our Lord

came? Yet it was among those populations, that He and His made their

way from the first. As to the hope of eternal life, that doubtless, as

well as the fear of hell, was a most operative doctrine in the case of

men who had been actually converted, of Christians brought before the

magistrate, or writhing under torture, but the thought of eternal glory

does not keep bad men from a bad life now, and why should it convert

them then from their pleasant sins, to a heavy, mortified, joyless

existence, to a life of ill-usage, fright, contempt, and desolation?

3. That the claim to miracles should have any wide influence in favour

of Christianity among heathen populations, who had plenty of portents

of their own, is an opinion in curious contrast with the objection

against Christianity which has provoked an answer from Paley, viz.

that “Christian miracles are not recited or appealed to, by early

Christian writers themselves, so fully or so frequently as might have

been expected.” Paley solves the difficulty as far as it is a fact,

by observing, as I have suggested, that “it was their lot to contend

with magical agency, against which the mere production of these facts

was not sufficient for the convincing of their adversaries:” “I do

not know,” he continues, “whether they themselves thought it quite

decisive of the controversy.” A claim to miraculous power on the part

of Christians, which was so unfrequent as to become now an objection to

the fact of their possessing it, can hardly have been a principal cause

of their success.

4. And how is it possible to imagine with Gibbon that what he calls

the “sober and domestic virtues” of Christians, their “aversion to

the luxury of the age,” their “chastity, temperance, and economy,”

that these dull qualities were persuasives of a nature to win and

melt the hard heathen heart, in spite too of the dreary prospect of

the _barathrum_, the amphitheatre, and the stake? Did the Christian

morality by its severe beauty make a convert of Gibbon himself?

On the contrary, he bitterly says, “It was not in this world that

the primitive Christians were desirous of making themselves either

agreeable or useful.” “The virtue of the primitive Christians, like

that of the first Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and

ignorance.” “Their gloomy and austere aspect, their abhorrence of the

common business and pleasures of life, and their frequent predictions

of impending calamities, inspired the Pagans with the apprehension of

some danger which would arise from the new sect.” Here we have not only

Gibbon hating their moral and social bearing, but his heathen also. How

then were those heathen overcome by the amiableness of that which they

viewed with such disgust? We have here plain proof that the Christian

character repelled the heathen; where is the evidence that it converted

them?

5. Lastly, as to the ecclesiastical organization, this, doubtless, as

time went on, was a special characteristic of the new religion; but

how could it directly contribute to its extension? Of course it gave

it strength, but it did not give it life. We are not born of bones and

muscles. It is one thing to make conquests, another to consolidate an

empire. It was before Constantine that Christians made their great

conquests. Rules are for settled times, not for time of war. So much

is this contrast felt in the Catholic Church now, that, as is well

known, in heathen countries and in countries which have thrown off her

yoke, she suspends her diocesan administration and her Canon Law, and

puts her children under the extraordinary, extra-legal jurisdiction of

Propaganda.

This is what I am led to say on Gibbon’s Five Causes. I do not deny

that they might have operated now and then; Simon Magus came to

Christianity in order to learn the craft of miracles, and Peregrinus

from love of influence and power; but Christianity made its way, not by

individual, but by broad, wholesale conversions, and the question is,

how they originated?

It is very remarkable that it should not have occurred to a man of

Gibbon’s sagacity to inquire, what account the Christians themselves

gave of the matter. Would it not have been worth while for him to have

let conjecture alone, and to have looked for facts instead? Why did he

not try the hypothesis of faith, hope, and charity? Did he never hear

of repentance towards God, and faith in Christ? Did he not recollect

the many words of Apostles, Bishops, Apologists, Martyrs, all forming

one testimony? No; such thoughts are close upon him, and close upon the

truth; but he cannot sympathize with them, he cannot believe in them,

he cannot even enter into them, _because_ he needs the due formation

of mind.(49) Let us see whether the facts of the case do not come out

clear and unequivocal, if we will but have the patience to endure them.

A Deliverer of the human race through the Jewish nation had been

promised from time immemorial. The day came when He was to appear,

and He was eagerly expected; moreover, One actually did make His

appearance at that date in Palestine, and claimed to be He. He left the

earth without apparently doing much for the object of His coming. But

when He was gone, His disciples took upon themselves to go forth to

preach to all parts of the earth with the object of preaching _Him_,

and collecting converts _in His Name_. After a little while they are

found wonderfully to have succeeded. Large bodies of men in various

places are to be seen, professing to be His disciples, owning Him as

their King, and continually swelling in number and penetrating into

the populations of the Roman Empire; at length they convert the Empire

itself. All this is historical fact. Now, we want to know the farther

historical fact, viz. the cause of their conversion; in other words,

what were the topics of that preaching which was so effective? If

we believe what is told us by the preachers and their converts, the

answer is plain. They “preached Christ;” they called on men to believe,

hope, and place their affections, in that Deliverer who had come and

gone; and the moral instrument by which they persuaded them to do so,

was a description of the life, character, mission, and power of that

Deliverer, a promise of His invisible Presence and Protection here,

and of the Vision and Fruition of Him hereafter. From first to last to

Christians, as to Abraham, He Himself is the centre and fulness of the

dispensation. They, as Abraham, “see His day, and are glad.”

A temporal sovereign makes himself felt by means of his subordinate

administrators, who bring his power and will to bear upon every

individual of his subjects who personally know him not; the universal

Deliverer, long expected, when He came, He too, instead of making and

securing subjects by a visible graciousness or majesty, departs;—_but_

is found, through His preachers, to have imprinted the Image(50) or

Idea of Himself in the minds of His subjects individually; and that

Image, apprehended and worshipped in individual minds, becomes a

principle of association, and a real bond of those subjects one with

another, who are thus united to the body by being united to that Image;

and moreover that Image, which is their moral life, when they have been

already converted, is also the original instrument of their conversion.

It is the Image of Him who fulfils the one great need of human nature,

the Healer of its wounds, the Physician of the soul, this Image it is

which both creates faith, and then rewards it.

When we recognize this central Image as the vivifying idea both of the

Christian body and of individuals in it, then, certainly, we are able

to take into account at least two of Gibbon’s causes, as having, in

connexion with that idea, some influence both in making converts and

in strengthening them to persevere. It was the Thought of Christ, not

a corporate body or a doctrine, which inspired that zeal which the

historian so poorly comprehends; and it was the Thought of Christ which

gave a life to the promise of that eternity, which without Him would

be, in any soul, nothing short of an intolerable burden.

Now a mental vision such as this, perhaps will be called cloudy,

fanciful, unintelligible; that is, in other words, miraculous. I

think it is so. How, without the Hand of God, could a new idea, one

and the same, enter at once into myriads of men, women, and children

of all ranks, especially the lower, and have power to wean them from

their indulgences and sins, and to nerve them against the most cruel

tortures, and to last in vigour as a sustaining influence for seven

or eight generations, till it founded an extended polity, broke the

obstinacy of the strongest and wisest government which the world has

ever seen, and forced its way from its first caves and catacombs to the

fulness of imperial power?

In considering this subject, I shall confine myself to the proof, as

far as my limits allow, of two points,—first, that this Thought or

Image of Christ was the principle of conversion and of fellowship;

and next, that among the lower classes, who had no power, influence,

reputation, or education, lay its principal success.(51)

As to the vivifying idea, this is St. Paul’s account of it: “I make

known to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have

received, and wherein you stand; by which also you are saved. For I

delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,” &c., &c. “I am

the least of the Apostles; but, whether I or they, so we preached, and

so you believed.” “It has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching

to save them that believe.” “We preach Christ crucified.” “I determined

to know nothing among you, but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” “Your

life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, shall

appear, then you also shall appear with Him in glory.” “I live, but now

not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

St. Peter, who has been accounted the master of a separate school, says

the same: “Jesus Christ, whom you have not seen, yet love; in whom you

now believe, and shall rejoice.”

And St. John, who is sometimes accounted a third master in

Christianity: “It hath not yet appeared what we shall be; but we know

that, when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him, because we shall

see Him as He is.”

That their disciples followed them in this sovereign devotion to an

Invisible Lord, will appear as I proceed.

And next, as to the worldly position and character of His disciples,

our Lord, in the well-known passage, returns thanks to His Heavenly

Father “because,” He says, “Thou hast hid these things”—the mysteries

of His kingdom—“from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to

little ones.” And, in accordance with this announcement, St. Paul says

that “not many wise men according to the flesh, not many mighty, not

many noble,” became Christians. He, indeed, is one of those few; so

were others his contemporaries, and, as time went on, the number of

these exceptions increased, so that converts were found, not a few, in

the high places of the Empire, and in the schools of philosophy and

learning; but still the rule held, that the great mass of Christians

were to be found in those classes which were of no account in the

world, whether on the score of rank or of education.

We all know this was the case with our Lord and His Apostles. It seems

almost irreverent to speak of their temporal employments, when we are

so simply accustomed to consider them in their spiritual associations;

but it is profitable to remind ourselves that our Lord Himself was a

sort of smith, and made ploughs and cattle-yokes. Four Apostles were

fishermen, one a petty tax collector, two husbandmen, and another is

said to have been a market gardener.(52) When Peter and John were

brought before the Council, they are spoken of as being, in a secular

point of view, “illiterate men, and of the lower sort,” and thus they

are spoken of in a later age by the Fathers.

That their converts were of the same rank as themselves, is reported,

in their favour or to their discredit, by friends and enemies, for

four centuries. “If a man be educated,” says Celsus in mockery, “let

him keep clear of us Christians; we want no men of wisdom, no men of

sense. We account all such as evil. No; but, if there be one who is

inexperienced, or stupid, or untaught, or a fool, let him come with

good heart.” “They are weavers,” he says elsewhere, “shoemakers,

fullers, illiterate, clowns.” “Fools, low-born fellows,” says Trypho.

“The greater part of you,” says Cæcilius, “are worn with want, cold,

toil, and famine; men collected from the lowest dregs of the people;

ignorant, credulous women;” “unpolished, boors, illiterate, ignorant

even of the sordid arts of life; they do not understand even civil

matters, how can they understand divine?” “They have left their tongs,

mallets, and anvils, to preach about the things of heaven,” says

Libanius. “They deceive women, servants, and slaves,” says Julian.

The author of Philopatris speaks of them as “poor creatures, blocks,

withered old fellows, men of downcast and pale visages.” As to their

religion, it had the reputation popularly, according to various

Fathers, of being an anile superstition, the discovery of old women, a

joke, a madness, an infatuation, an absurdity, a fanaticism.

The Fathers themselves confirm these statements, so far as they relate

to the insignificance and ignorance of their brethren. Athenagoras

speaks of the virtue of their “ignorant men, mechanics, and old

women.” “They are gathered,” says St. Jerome, “not from the Academy or

Lyceum, but from the low populace.” “They are whitesmiths, servants,

farm-labourers, woodmen, men of sordid trades, beggars,” says

Theodoret. “We are engaged in the farm, in the market, at the baths,

wine-shops, stables, and fairs; as seamen, as soldiers, as peasants,

as dealers,” says Tertullian. How came such men to be converted? and,

being converted, how came such men to overturn the world? Yet they went

forth from the first, “conquering and to conquer.”

The first manifestation of their formidable numbers is made just about

the time when St. Peter and St. Paul suffered martyrdom, and was the

cause of a terrible persecution. We have the account of it in Tacitus.

“Nero,” he says, “to put an end to the common talk [that Rome had

been set on fire by his order], imputed it to others, visiting with a

refinement of punishment those detestable criminals who went by the

name of Christians. The author of that denomination was Christus, who

had been executed in Tiberius’s time by the procurator, Pontius Pilate.

The pestilent superstition, checked for a while, burst out again, not

only throughout Judea, the first seat of the evil, but even throughout

Rome, the centre both of confluence and outbreak of all that is

atrocious and disgraceful from every quarter. First were arrested those

who made no secret of their sect; and by this clue a vast multitude of

others, convicted, not so much of firing the city, as of hatred to the

human race. Mockery was added to death; clad in skins of beasts, they

were torn to pieces by dogs; they were nailed up to crosses; they were

made inflammable, so that, when day failed, they might serve as lights.

Hence, guilty as they were, and deserving of exemplary punishment, they

excited compassion, as being destroyed, not for the public welfare, but

from the cruelty of one man.”

The two Apostles suffered, and a silence follows of a whole generation.

At the end of thirty or forty years, Pliny, the friend of Trajan, as

well as of Tacitus, is sent as that Emperor’s Proprætor into Bithynia,

and is startled and perplexed by the number, influence, and pertinacity

of the Christians whom he finds there, and in the neighbouring province

of Pontus. He has the opportunity of being far more fair to them than

his friend the historian. He writes to Trajan to know how he ought to

deal with them, and I will quote some portions of his letter.

He says he does not know how to proceed with them, as their religion

has not received toleration from the state. He never was present at any

trial of them; he doubted whether the children among them, as well as

grown people, ought to be accounted as culprits, whether recantation

would set matters right, or whether they incurred punishment all the

same; whether they were to be punished, merely because Christians, even

though no definite crime was proved against them. His way had been to

examine them, and put questions to them; if they confessed the charge,

he gave them one or two chances, threatening them with punishment;

then, if they persisted, he gave orders for their execution. “For,” he

argues, “I felt no doubt that, whatever might be the character of their

opinions, stubborn and inflexible obstinacy deserved punishment. Others

there were of a like infatuation, whom, being citizens, I sent to Rome.”

Some satisfied him; they repeated after him an invocation to the

gods, and offered wine and incense to the Emperor’s image, and in

addition, cursed the name of Christ. “Accordingly,” he says, “I let

them go; for I am told nothing can compel a real Christian to do any

of these things.” There were others, too, who sacrificed; who had been

Christians, some of them for as many as twenty years.

Then he is curious to know something more definite about them. “This,

the informers told me, was the whole of their crime or mistake, that

they were accustomed to assemble on a stated day before dawn, and to

say together a hymn to Christ as a god, and to bind themselves by an

oath [sacramento] (not to any crime, but on the contrary) to keep from

theft, robbery, adultery, breach of promise, and making free with

deposits. After this they used to separate, and then to meet again for

a meal, which was social and harmless. However, they left even that

off, after my Edict against their meeting.”

This information led him to put to the torture two maid-servants, “who

were called ministers,” in order to find out what was true, what was

false in it; but he says he could make out nothing, except a depraved

and excessive superstition. This is what led him to consult the

Emperor, “especially because of the number who were implicated in it;

for these are, or are likely to be, many, of all ages, nay, of both

sexes. For the contagion of this superstition has spread, not only

in the cities, but about the villages and the open country.” He adds

that already there was some improvement. “The almost forsaken temples

begin to be filled again, and the sacred solemnities after a long

intermission are revived. Victims, too, are again on sale, purchasers

having been most rare to find.”

The salient points in this account are these, that, at the end of

one generation from the Apostles, nay, almost in the lifetime of St.

John, Christians had so widely spread in a large district of Asia, as

nearly to suppress the Pagan religions there; that they were people of

exemplary lives; that they had a name for invincible fidelity to their

religion; that no threats or sufferings could make them deny it; and

that their only tangible characteristic was the worship of our Lord.

This was at the beginning of the second century; not a great many

years after, we have another account of the Christian body, from an

anonymous Greek Christian, in a letter to a friend whom he was anxious

to convert. It is far too long to quote, and difficult to compress; but

a few sentences will show how strikingly it agrees with the account

of the heathen Pliny, especially in two points,—first, in the numbers

of the Christians, secondly, on devotion to our Lord as the vivifying

principle of their association.

“Christians,” says the writer, “differ not from other men in country,

or speech, or customs. They do not live in cities of their own, or

speak in any peculiar dialect, or adopt any strange modes of living.

They inhabit their native countries, but as sojourners; they take their

part in all burdens, as if citizens, and in all sufferings, as if they

were strangers. In foreign countries they recognize a home, and in

every home they see a foreign country. They marry like other men, but

do not disown their children. They obey the established laws, but they

go beyond them in the tenor of their lives. They love all men, and are

persecuted by all; they are not known, and they are condemned; they

are poor, and make many rich; they are dishonoured, yet in dishonour

they are glorified; they are slandered, and they are cleared; they are

called names, and they bless. By the Jews they are assailed as aliens,

by the Greeks they are persecuted, nor can they who hate them say why.

“Christians are in the world, as the soul in the body. The soul

pervades the limbs of the body, and Christians the cities of the

world. The flesh hates the soul, and wars against it, though suffering

no wrong from it; and the world hates Christians. The soul loves

the flesh that hates it, and Christians love their enemies. Their

tradition is not an earthly invention, nor is it a mortal thought

which they so carefully guard, nor a dispensation of human mysteries

which is committed to their charge; but God Himself, the Omnipotent

and Invisible Creator, has from heaven established among men His Truth

and His Word, the Holy and Incomprehensible, and has deeply fixed the

same in their hearts; not, as might be expected, sending any servant,

angel, or prince, or administrator of things earthly or heavenly, but

the very Artificer and Demiurge of the Universe. Him God hath sent to

man, not to inflict terror, but in clemency and gentleness, as a King

sending a King who was His Son; He sent Him as God to men, to save

them. He hated not, nor rejected us, nor remembered our guilt, but

showed Himself long-suffering, and, in His own words, bore our sins. He

gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the just for the unjust. For what

other thing, except His Righteousness, could cover our guilt? In whom

was it possible for us, lawless sinners, to find justification, save

in the Son of God alone? O sweet interchange! O heavenly workmanship

past finding out! O benefits exceeding expectation! Sending, then, a

Saviour, who is able to save those who of themselves are incapable of

salvation, He has willed that we should regard Him as our Guardian,

Father, Teacher, Counsellor, Physician; our Mind, Light, Honour, Glory,

Strength, and Life.(53)”

The writing from which I have been quoting is of the early part of

the second century. Twenty or thirty years after it St. Justin Martyr

speaks as strongly of the spread of the new Religion: “There is not

any one race of men,” he says, “barbarian or Greek, nay, of those who

live in waggons, or who are Nomads, or Shepherds in tents, among whom

prayers and eucharists are not offered to the Father and Maker of the

Universe, through the name of the crucified Jesus.”

Towards the end of the century, Clement:—“The word of our Master did

not remain in Judea, as philosophy remained in Greece, but has been

poured out over the whole world, persuading Greeks and Barbarians

alike, race by race, village by village, every city, whole houses, and

hearers one by one, nay, not a few of the philosophers themselves.”

And Tertullian, at the very close of it, could in his _Apologia_

even proceed to threaten the Roman Government:—“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, palaces, senate, forum. We leave you your temples

only. We can count your armies, and our numbers in a single province

will be greater. In what war with you should we not be sufficient and

ready, even though unequal in numbers, who so willingly are put to

death, if it were not in this Religion of ours more lawful to be slain

than to slay?”

Once more, let us hear the great Origen, in the early part of the

next century:—“In all Greece and in all barbarous races within our

world, there are tens of thousands who have left their national laws

and customary gods for the law of Moses and the word of Jesus Christ;

though to adhere to that law is to incur the hatred of idolaters, and

the risk of death besides to have embraced that word. And considering

how, in so few years, in spite of the attacks made on us, to the loss

of life or property, and with no great store of teachers, the preaching

of that word has found its way into every part of the world, so that

Greek and barbarians, wise and unwise, adhere to the religion of Jesus,

doubtless it is a work greater than any work of man.”

We need no proof to assure us that this steady and rapid growth of

Christianity was a phenomenon which startled its contemporaries, as

much as it excites the curiosity of philosophic historians now; and

they too then had their own ways of accounting for it, different indeed

from Gibbon’s, but quite as pertinent, though less elaborate. These

were principally two, both leading them to persecute it,—the obstinacy

of the Christians and their magical powers, of which the former was the

explanation adopted by educated minds, and the latter chiefly by the

populace.

As to the former, from first to last, men in power magisterially

reprobate the senseless obstinacy of the members of the new sect, as

their characteristic offence. Pliny, as we have seen, found it to be

their only fault, but one sufficient to merit capital punishment. The

Emperor Marcus seems to consider obstinacy the ultimate motive-cause

to which their unnatural conduct was traceable. After speaking of the

soul, as “ready, if it must now be separated from the body, to be

extinguished, or dissolved, or to remain with it;” he adds, “but the

readiness must come of its own judgment, not from simple perverseness,

as in the case of Christians, but with considerateness, with gravity,

and without theatrical effect, so as to be persuasive.” And Diocletian,

in his Edict of persecution, professes it to be his “earnest aim to

punish the depraved persistence of those most wicked men.”

As to the latter charge, their founder, it was said, had gained a

knowledge of magic in Egypt, and had left behind him in his sacred

books the secrets of the art. Suetonius himself speaks of them as “men

of a magical superstition;” and Celsus accuses them of “incantations

in the name of demons.” The officer who had custody of St. Perpetua,

feared her escape from prison “by magical incantations.” When St.

Tiburtius had walked barefoot on hot coals, his judge cried out that

Christ had taught him magic. St. Anastasia was thrown into prison as

dealing in poisons; the populace called out against St. Agnes, “Away

with the witch! away with the sorceress!” When St. Bonosus and St.

Maximilian bore the burning pitch without shrinking, Jews and heathen

cried out, “Those wizards and sorcerers!” “What new delusion,” says

the magistrate concerning St. Romanus, in the Hymn of Prudentius, “has

brought in these sophists who deny the worship of the Gods? how doth

this chief sorcerer mock us, stilled by his Thessalian charm to laugh

at punishment?(54)”

It is indeed difficult to enter into the feelings of irritation and

fear, of contempt and amazement, which were excited, whether in the

town populace or in the magistrates in the presence of conduct so

novel, so unvarying, so absolutely beyond their comprehension. The

very young and the very old, the child, the youth in the heyday of

his passions, the sober man of middle age, maidens and mothers of

families, boors and slaves as well as philosophers and nobles, solitary

confessors and companies of men and women,—all these were seen equally

to defy the powers of darkness to do their worst. In this strange

encounter it became a point of honour with the Roman to break the

determination of his victim, and it was the triumph of faith when his

most savage expedients for that purpose were found to be in vain.

The martyrs shrank from suffering like other men, but such natural

shrinking was incommensurable with apostasy. No intensity of torture

had any means of affecting what was a mental conviction; and the

sovereign Thought in which they had lived was their adequate support

and consolation in their death. To them the prospect of wounds and

loss of limbs was not more terrible than it is to the combatant of

this world. They faced the implements of torture as the soldier takes

his post before the enemy’s battery. They cheered and ran forward to

meet his attack, and as it were dared him, if he would, to destroy the

numbers who kept closing up the foremost rank, as their comrades who

had filled it fell. And when Rome at last found she had to deal with a

host of Scævolas, then the proudest of earthly sovereignties, arrayed

in the completeness of her material resources, humbled herself before a

power which was founded on a mere sense of the unseen.

In the colloquy of the aged Ignatius, the disciple of the Apostles,

with the Emperor Trajan, we have a sort of type of what went on for

three, or rather four centuries. He was sent all the way from Antioch

to Rome to be devoured by the beasts in the amphitheatre. As he

travelled, he wrote letters to various Christian Churches, and among

others to his Roman brethren, among whom he was to suffer. Let us

see whether, as I have said, the Image of that Divine King, who had

been promised from the beginning, was not the living principle of his

obstinate resolve. The old man is almost fierce in his determination

to be martyred. “May those beasts,” he says to his brethren, “be my

gain, which are in readiness for me! I will provoke and coax them to

devour me quickly, and not to be afraid of me, as they are of some whom

they will not touch. Should they be unwilling, I will compel them.

Bear with me; I know what is my gain. Now I begin to be a disciple. Of

nothing of things visible or invisible am I ambitious, save to gain

Christ. Whether it is fire or the cross, the assault of wild beasts,

the wrenching of my bones, the crunching of my limbs, the crushing of

my whole body, let the tortures of the devil all assail me, if I do but

gain Christ Jesus.” Elsewhere in the same Epistle he says, “I write

to you, still alive, but longing to die. My Love is crucified! I have

no taste for perishable food. I long for God’s Bread, heavenly Bread,

Bread of life, which is Flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I long

for God’s draught, His Blood, which is Love without corruption, and

Life for evermore.” It is said that, when he came into the presence

of Trajan, the latter cried out, “Who are you, poor devil, who are so

eager to transgress our rules?” “That is no name,” he answered, “for

Theophorus.” “Who is Theophorus?” asked the Emperor. “He who bears

Christ in his breast.” In the Apostle’s words, already cited, he had

“Christ in him, the hope of glory.” All this may be called enthusiasm;

but enthusiasm affords a much more adequate explanation of the

confessorship of an old man, than do Gibbon’s five reasons.

Instances of the same ardent spirit, and of the living faith on which

it was founded, are to be found wherever we open the _Acta Martyrum_.

In the outbreak at Smyrna, in the middle of the second century, amid

tortures which even moved the heathen bystanders to compassion, the

sufferers were conspicuous for their serene calmness. “They made it

evident to us all,” says the Epistle of the Church, “that in the midst

of those sufferings they were absent from the body, or rather, that the

Lord stood by them, and walked in the midst of them.”

At that time Polycarp, the familiar friend of St. John, and a

contemporary of Ignatius, suffered in his extreme old age. When, before

his sentence, the Proconsul bade him “swear by the fortunes of Cæsar,

and have done with Christ,” his answer betrayed that intimate devotion

to the self-same Idea, which had been the inward life of Ignatius.

“Eighty and six years,” he answered, “have I been His servant, and

He has never wronged me, but ever has preserved me; and how can I

blaspheme my King and my Saviour?” When they would have fastened him to

the stake, he said, “Let alone; He who gives me to bear the fire, will

give me also to stand firm upon the pyre without your nails.”

Christians felt it as an acceptable service to Him who loved them, to

confess with courage and to suffer with dignity. In this chivalrous

spirit, as it may be called, they met the words and deeds of their

persecutors, as the children of men return bitterness for bitterness,

and blow for blow. “What soldier,” says Minucius, with a reference to

the invisible Presence of our Lord, “does not challenge danger more

daringly under the eye of his commander?” In that same outbreak at

Smyrna, when the Proconsul urged the young Germanicus to have mercy

on himself and on his youth, to the astonishment of the populace he

provoked a wild beast to fall upon him. In like manner, St. Justin

tells us of Lucius, who, when he saw a Christian sent off to suffer, at

once remonstrated sharply with the judge, and was sent off to execution

with him; and then another presented himself, and was sent off also.

When the Christians were thrown into prison, in the fierce persecution

at Lyons, Vettius Epagathus, a youth of distinction who had given

himself to an ascetic life, could not bear the sight of the sufferings

of his brethren, and asked leave to plead their cause. The only answer

he got was to be sent off the first to die. What the contemporary

account sees in his conduct is, not that he was zealous for his

brethren, though zealous he was, nor that he believed in miracles,

though he doubtless did believe; but that he “was a gracious disciple

of Christ, following the Lamb whithersoever He went.”

In that memorable persecution, when Blandina, a slave, was seized for

confessorship, her mistress and her fellow-Christians dreaded lest,

from her delicate make, she should give way under the torments; but

she even tired out her tormentors. It was a refreshment and relief

to her to cry out amid her pains, “I am a Christian.” They remanded

her to prison, and then brought her out for fresh suffering a second

day and a third. On the last day she saw a boy of fifteen brought

into the amphitheatre for death; she feared for him, as others had

feared for her; but he too went through his trial generously, and

went to God before her. Her last sufferings were to be placed in the

notorious red-hot chair, and then to be exposed in a net to a wild

bull; they finished by cutting her throat. Sanctus, too, when the

burning plates of brass were placed on his limbs, all through his

torments did but say, “I am a Christian,” and stood erect and firm,

“bathed and strengthened,” say his brethren who write the account,

“in the heavenly well of living water which flows from the breast of

Christ,” or, as they say elsewhere of all the martyrs, “refreshed with

the joy of martyrdom, the hope of blessedness, love towards Christ, and

the spirit of God the Father.” How clearly do we see all through this

narrative what it was which nerved them for the combat! If they love

their brethren, it is in the fellowship of their Lord; if they look for

heaven, it is because He is the Light of it.

Epipodius, a youth of gentle nurture, when struck by the Prefect on

the mouth, while blood flowed from it, cried out, “I confess that

Jesus Christ is God, together with the Father and the Holy Ghost.”

Symphorian, of Autun, also a youth, and of noble birth, when told

to adore an idol, answered, “Give me leave, and I will hammer it to

pieces.” When Leonidas, the father of the young Origen, was in prison

for his faith, the boy, then seventeen, burned to share his martyrdom,

and his mother had to hide his clothes to prevent him from executing

his purpose. Afterwards he attended the confessors in prison, stood

by them at the tribunal, and gave them the kiss of peace when they

were led out to suffer, and this, in spite of being several times

apprehended and put upon the rack. Also in Alexandria, the beautiful

slave, Potamiæna, when about to be stripped in order to be thrown into

the cauldron of hot pitch, said to the Prefect, “I pray you rather let

me be dipped down slowly into it with my clothes on, and you shall

see with what patience I am gifted by Him of whom you are ignorant,

Jesus Christ.” When the populace in the same city had beaten out

the aged Apollonia’s teeth, and lit a fire to burn her, unless she

would blaspheme, she leaped into the fire herself, and so gained her

crown. When Sixtus, Bishop of Rome, was led to martyrdom, his deacon,

Laurence, followed him weeping and complaining, “O my father, whither

goest thou without thy son?” And when his own turn came, three days

afterwards, and he was put upon the gridiron, after a while he said to

the Prefect, “Turn me; this side is done.” Whence came this tremendous

spirit, scaring, nay, offending, the fastidious criticism of our

delicate days? Does Gibbon think to sound the depths of the eternal

ocean with the tape and measuring-rod of his merely literary philosophy?

When Barulas, a child of seven years old, was scourged to blood for

repeating his catechism before the heathen judge—viz. “There is but

one God, and Jesus Christ is true God”—his mother encouraged him to

persevere, chiding him for asking for some drink. At Merida, a girl

of noble family, of the age of twelve, presented herself before the

tribunal, and overturned the idols. She was scourged and burned with

torches; she neither shed a tear, nor showed other signs of suffering.

When the fire reached her face, she opened her mouth to receive it, and

was suffocated. At Cæsarea, a girl, under eighteen, went boldly to ask

the prayers of some Christians who were in chains before the Prætorium.

She was seized at once, and her sides torn open with the iron rakes,

preserving the while a bright and joyous countenance. Peter, Dorotheus,

Gorgonius, were boys of the imperial bedchamber; they were highly in

favour with their masters, and were Christians. They too suffered

dreadful torments, dying under them, without a shadow of wavering. Call

such conduct madness, if you will, or magic: but do not mock us by

ascribing it in such mere children to simple desire of immortality, or

to any ecclesiastical organization.

When the persecution raged in Asia, a vast multitude of Christians

presented themselves before the Proconsul, challenging him to proceed

against them. “Poor wretches!” half in contempt and half in affright,

he answered, “if you must die, cannot you find ropes or precipices

for the purpose?” At Utica, a hundred and fifty Christians of both

sexes and all ages were martyrs in one company. They are said to have

been told to burn incense to an idol, or they should be thrown into a

pit of burning lime; they without hesitation leapt into it. In Egypt

a hundred and twenty confessors, after having sustained the loss of

eyes or of feet, endured to linger out their lives in the mines of

Palestine and Cilicia. In the last persecution, according to the

testimony of the grave Eusebius, a contemporary, the slaughter of men,

women, and children, went on by twenties, sixties, hundreds, till the

instruments of execution were worn out, and the executioners could

kill no more. Yet he tells us, as an eye-witness, that, as soon as any

Christians were condemned, others ran from all parts, and surrounded

the tribunals, confessing the faith, and joyfully receiving their

condemnation, and singing songs of thanksgiving and triumph to the last.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Thus was the Roman power overcome. Thus did the Seed of Abraham, and

the Expectation of the Gentiles, the meek Son of man, “take to Himself

His great power and reign” in the hearts of His people, in the public

theatre of the world. The mode in which the primeval prophecy was

fulfilled is as marvellous, as the prophecy itself is clear and bold.

“So may all Thy enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love Thee

shine, as the sun shineth in his rising!”

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

I will add the memorable words of the two great Apologists of the

period:—

“Your cruelty,” says Tertullian, “though each act be more refined

than the last, doth profit you nothing. To our sect it is rather an

inducement. We grow up in greater numbers, as often as you cut us down.

The blood of the martyrs is their seed for the harvest.”

Origen even uses the language of prophecy. To the objection of Celsus

that Christianity from its principles would, if let alone, open the

whole empire to the irruption of the barbarians, and the utter ruin of

civilization, he replies, “If all Romans are such as we, then too the

barbarians will draw near to the Word of God, and will become the most

observant of the Law. And every worship shall come to nought, and that

of the Christians alone obtain the mastery, for the Word is continually

gaining possession of more and more souls.”

One additional remark:—It was fitting that those mixed unlettered

multitudes, who for three centuries had suffered and triumphed by

virtue of the inward Vision of their Divine Lord, should be selected,

as we know they were, in the fourth, to be the special champions of His

Divinity and the victorious foes of its impugners, at a time when the

civil power, which had found them too strong for its arms, attempted,

by means of a portentous heresy in the high places of the Church, to

rob them of that Truth which had all along been the principle of their

strength.

10.

I have been forestalling all along the thought with which I shall close

these considerations on the subject of Christianity; and necessarily

forestalling it, because it properly comes first, though the course

which my argument has taken has not allowed me to introduce it in its

natural place. Revelation begins where Natural Religion fails. The

Religion of Nature is a mere inchoation, and needs a complement,—it can

have but one complement, and that very complement is Christianity.

Natural Religion is based upon the sense of sin; it recognizes the

disease, but it cannot find, it does but look out for the remedy. That

remedy, both for guilt and for moral impotence, is found in the central

doctrine of Revelation, the Mediation of Christ. I need not go into a

subject so familiar to all men in a Christian country.

Thus it is that Christianity is the fulfilment of the promise made to

Abraham, and of the Mosaic revelations; this is how it has been able

from the first to occupy the world and gain a hold on every class of

human society to which its preachers reached; this is why the Roman

power and the multitude of religions which it embraced could not

stand against it; this is the secret of its sustained energy, and its

never-flagging martyrdoms; this is how at present it is so mysteriously

potent, in spite of the new and fearful adversaries which beset its

path. It has with it that gift of staunching and healing the one

deep wound of human nature, which avails more for its success than

a full encyclopedia of scientific knowledge and a whole library of

controversy, and therefore it must last while human nature lasts. It is

a living truth which never can grow old.

Some persons speak of it as if it were a thing of history, with only

indirect bearings upon modern times; I cannot allow that it is a mere

historical religion. Certainly it has its foundations in past and

glorious memories, but its power is in the present. It is no dreary

matter of antiquarianism; we do not contemplate it in conclusions

drawn from dumb documents and dead events, but by faith exercised in

ever-living objects, and by the appropriation and use of ever-recurring

gifts.

Our communion with it is in the unseen, not in the obsolete. At this

very day its rites and ordinances are continually eliciting the active

interposition of that Omnipotence in which the Religion long ago began.

First and above all is the Holy Mass, in which He who once died for us

upon the Cross, brings back and perpetuates, by His literal presence

in it, that one and the same sacrifice which cannot be repeated. Next,

there is the actual entrance of Himself, soul and body, and divinity,

into the soul and body of every worshipper who comes to Him for the

gift, a privilege more intimate than if we lived with Him during His

long-past sojourn upon earth. And then, moreover, there is His personal

abidance in our churches, raising earthly service into a foretaste of

heaven. Such is the profession of Christianity, and, I repeat, its very

divination of our needs is in itself a proof that it is really the

supply of them.

Upon the doctrines which I have mentioned as central truths, others,

as we all know, follow, which rule our personal conduct and course

of life, and our social and civil relations. The promised Deliverer,

the Expectation of the nations, has not done His work by halves. He

has given us Saints and Angels for our protection. He has taught us

how by our prayers and services to benefit our departed friends, and

to keep up a memorial of ourselves when we are gone. He has created a

visible hierarchy and a succession of sacraments, to be the channels

of His mercies, and the Crucifix secures the thought of Him in every

house and chamber. In all these ways He brings Himself before us. I

am not here speaking of His gifts as gifts, but as memorials; not as

what Christians know they convey, but in their visible character; and I

say, that, as human nature itself is still in life and action as much

as ever it was, so He too lives, to our imaginations, by His visible

symbols, as if He were on earth, with a practical efficacy which even

unbelievers cannot deny, to be the corrective of that nature, and its

strength day by day, and that this power of perpetuating His Image,

being altogether singular and special, and the prerogative of Him

and Him alone, is a grand evidence how well He fulfils to this day

that Sovereign Mission which, from the first beginning of the world’s

history, has been in prophecy assigned to Him.

I cannot better illustrate this argument than by recurring to a deep

thought on the subject of Christianity, which has before now attracted

the notice of philosophers and preachers,(55) as coming from the

wonderful man who swayed the destinies of Europe in the first years

of this century. It was an argument not unnatural in one who had that

special passion for human glory, which has been the incentive of so

many heroic careers and of so many mighty revolutions in the history

of the world. In the solitude of his imprisonment, and in the view of

death, he is said to have expressed himself to the following effect:—

“I have been accustomed to put before me the examples of Alexander

and Cæsar, with the hope of rivalling their exploits, and living

in the minds of men for ever. Yet, after all, in what sense does

Cæsar, in what sense does Alexander live? Who knows or cares

anything about them? At best, nothing but their names is known;

for who among the multitude of men, who hear or who utter their

names, really knows anything about their lives or their deeds, or

attaches to those names any definite idea? Nay, even their names

do but flit up and down the world like ghosts, mentioned only on

particular occasions, or from accidental associations. Their chief

home is the schoolroom; they have a foremost place in boys’

grammars and exercise-books; they are splendid examples for

themes; they form writing-copies. So low is heroic Alexander

fallen, so low is imperial Cæsar, ‘ut pueris placeant et

declamatio fiant.’

“But, on the contrary” (he is reported to have continued), “there

is just One Name in the whole world that lives; it is the Name of

One who passed His years in obscurity, and who died a malefactor’s

death. Eighteen hundred years have gone since that time, but still

it has its hold upon the human mind. It has possessed the world,

and it maintains possession. Amid the most varied nations, under

the most diversified circumstances, in the most cultivated, in the

rudest races and intellects, in all classes of society, the Owner

of that great Name reigns. High and low, rich and poor,

acknowledge Him. Millions of souls are conversing with Him, are

venturing on His word, are looking for His presence. Palaces,

sumptuous, innumerable, are raised to His honour; His image, as in

the hour of his deepest humiliation, is triumphantly displayed in

the proud city, in the open country, in the corners of streets, on

the tops of mountains. It sanctifies the ancestral hall, the

closet, and the bedchamber; it is the subject for the exercise of

the highest genius in the imitative arts. It is worn next the

heart in life; it is held before the failing eyes in death. Here,

then, is One who is _not_ a mere name, who is not a mere fiction,

who is a reality. He is dead and gone, but still He lives,—lives

as the living, energetic thought of successive generations, as the

awful motive-power of a thousand great events. He has done without

effort what others with life-long struggles have not done. Can He

be less than Divine? Who is He but the Creator Himself; who is

sovereign over His own works, towards whom our eyes and hearts

turn instinctively, because He is our Father and our God?(56)”

Here I end my specimens, among the many which might be given, of the

arguments adducible for Christianity. I have dwelt upon them, in order

to show how I would apply the principles of this Essay to the proof

of its divine origin. Christianity is addressed, both as regards its

evidences and its contents, to minds which are in the normal condition

of human nature, as believing in God and in a future judgment.

Such minds it addresses both through the intellect and through the

imagination; creating a certitude of its truth by arguments too various

for enumeration, too personal and deep for words, too powerful and

concurrent for refutation. Nor need reason come first and faith second

(though this is the logical order), but one and the same teaching is in

different aspects both object and proof, and elicits one complex act

both of inference and of assent. It speaks to us one by one, and it is

received by us one by one, as the counterpart, so to say, of ourselves,

and is real as we are real.

In the sacred words of its Divine Author and Object concerning Himself,

“I am the Good Shepherd, and I know mine, and Mine know Me. My sheep

hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them

everlasting life, and they shall never perish; and no man shall pluck

them out of My hand.”

NOTE.

1. On the first publication of this volume, a Correspondent did me

the favour of marking for me a list of passages in Chillingworth’s

celebrated work, besides that which I had myself quoted, in which the

argument was more or less brought forward, on which I have animadverted

in ch. vii. § 2, p. 226. He did this with the purpose of showing, that

Chillingworth’s meaning, when carefully inquired into, would be found

to be in substantial agreement with the distinction I had myself made

between infallibility and certitude; those inaccuracies of language

into which he fell, being necessarily involved in the _argumentum

ad hominem_, which he was urging upon his opponent, or being the

accidental result of the peculiar character of his intellect, which,

while full of ideas, was wanting in the calmness and caution which are

conspicuous in Bishop Butler. Others more familiar with Chillingworth

than I am must decide on this point; but I can have no indisposition to

accept an explanation, which deprives controversialists of this day of

the authority of a vigorous and acute mind in their use of an argument,

which is certainly founded on a great confusion of thought.

I subjoin the references with which my Correspondent has supplied me:—

(1.) Passages tending to show an agreement of Chillingworth’s

opinion on the distinction between certitude and infallibility

with that laid down in the foregoing essay:—

1. “Religion of Protestants,” ch. ii. § 121 (vol. i. p. 243, Oxf.

ed. 1838), “For may not a private man,” &c.

2. _Ibid._ § 152 (p. 265). The last sentence, however, after “when

they thought they dreamt,” is a fall into the error which he had

been exposing.

3. _Ibid._ § 160 (p. 275).

4. Ch. iii. § 26 (p. 332), “Neither is your argument,” &c.

5. _Ibid._ § 36 (p. 346).

6. _Ibid._ § 50 (p. 363), “That Abraham,” &c.

7. Ch. v. § 63 (vol ii. p. 215).

8. _Ibid._ § 107 (p. 265).

9. Ch vii. § 13 (p. 452). _Vide_ also vol. i. pp. 115, 121, 196,

236, 242, 411.

(2.) Passages inconsistent with the above:—

1. Ch. ii. § 25 (vol. i. p. 177). _An argumentum ad hominem._

2. _Ibid._ § 28 (p. 180).

3. _Ibid._ § 45 (p. 189). _An argumentum ad hominem._

4. _Ibid._ § 149 (p. 263). _An argumentum ad hominem._

5. _Ibid._ § 154 (p. 267). Quoted in the text, p. 226.

6. Ch. v. § 45 (vol. ii. p. 391). He is arguing on his opponent’s

principles.

2. Also, I have to express my obligation to another Correspondent,

who called my attention to a passage of Hooker (“Eccles. Pol.” ii.

7) beginning “An earnest desire,” &c., which seemed to anticipate

the doctrine of Locke about certitude. It is so difficult to be sure

of the meaning of a writer whose style is so foreign to that of our

own times, that I am shy of attempting to turn this passage into

categorical statements. Else, I should ask, does not Hooker here assume

the absolute certainty of the inspiration and divine authority of

Scripture, and believe its teaching as the very truth unconditionally

and without any admixture of doubt? Yet what had he but probable

evidence as a warrant for such a view of it? Again, did he receive the

Athanasian Creed on any logical demonstration that its articles were in

Scripture? Yet he felt himself able without any misgiving to say aloud

in the congregation, “Which faith except every one do keep whole and

undefiled, _without doubt_ he shall perish everlastingly.” In truth it

is the happy inconsistency of his school to be more orthodox in their

conclusions than in their premisses; to be sceptics in their paper

theories, and believers in their own persons.

3. Also, a friend sends me word, as regards the controversy on the

various readings of Shakespeare to which I have referred (_supra_,

ch. viii. §1, p. 271) in illustration of the shortcomings of Formal

Inference, that, since the date of the article in the magazine,

of which I have there availed myself, the verdict of critics has

been unfavourable to the authority and value of the Annotated

Copy, discovered twenty years ago. I may add, that, since my first

edition, I have had the pleasure of reading Dr. Ingleby’s interesting

dissertation on the “Traces of the Authorship of the Works attributed

to Shakespeare.”

FOOTNOTES

1 “The Oxford Spy,” 1818; by J. S. Boone, p. 107.

2 Vide “Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects,” art. 4.

3 On the Formation of Images, _vide supr._ ch. iii. 1, pp. 27, 28.

4 Liberty of Prophesying, § 2.

5 This passage is already quoted in my “Essay on Development of

Doctrine,” vi. 1, § 2.

6 Gambier on Moral Evidence, p. 6.

7 “Supernaturalis mentis assensus, rebus fidei exhibitus, cùm præcipuè

dependeat à gratiâ Dei intrinsecus mentem illuminante et commovente,

potest esse, et est, major quocunque assensu certitudini naturali

præstito, seu ex motivis naturalibus orto,” &c.—Dmouski, Instit. t.

i. p. 28.

8 “Hoc [viz. multo certior est homo de eo quod audit à Deo qui falli

non potest, quàm de eo quod videt propriâ ratione quâ falli potest]

intelligendum est de certitudine fidei secundum appretiationem, non

secundum intentionem; nam sæpe contingit, ut scientia clariùs

percipiatur ab intellectu, atque ut connexio scientiæ cum veritate

magis appareat, quàm connexio fidei cum eâdem; cognitiones enim

naturales, utpote captui nostro accommodatæ, magis animum quietant,

delectant, et veluti. satiant.”—Scavini, Theol. Moral. t. ii. p.

428.

9 “Suppono enim, veritatem fidei non esse certiorem veritate

metaphysicâ aut geometricâ quoad modum assensionis, sed tantum quoad

modum adhæsionis; quia utrinque intellectus absolutè sine modo

limitante assentitur. Sola autem adhæsio voluntatis diversa est;

quia in actu fidei gratia seu habitus infusus roborat intellectum et

voluntatem, ne tam facilè mutentur aut perturbentur.”—Amort, Theol.

t. i. p. 312.

“Hæc distinctio certitudinis [ex diversitate motivorum] extrinsecam

tantum differentiam importat, cùm omnis naturalis certitudo,

formaliter spectata, sit æqualis; debet enim essentialiter erroris

periculum amovere, exclusio autem periculi erroris in indivisibili

consistit; aut enim babetur aut non habetur.”—Dmouski, ibid. p. 27.

10 “Fides est certior omni veritate naturali, etiam geometricè aut

metaphysicè certâ; idque non solum certitudine adhæsionis sed etiam

assentionis.... Intellectus sentit se in multis veritatibus etiam

metaphysicè certis posse per objectiones perturbari, e. g. si legat

scepticos.... E contrà circa ea, quæ constat esse revelata à Deo,

nullus potest perturbari.”—Amort, ibid. p. 367.

11 ii. n. 154. _Vide_ Note at the end of the volume.

12 I have assumed throughout this Section that all verbal argumentation

is ultimately syllogistic; and in consequence that it ever requires

universal propositions and comes short of concrete fact. A friend

refers me to the dispute between Des Cartes and Gassendi, the latter

maintaining against the former that “Cogito ergo sum” implies the

universal “All who think exist.” I should deny this with Des Cartes;

but I should say (as indeed he said), that his dictum was not an

argument, but was the expression of a ratiocinative instinct, as I

explain below under the head of “Natural Logic.”

As to the instance “Brutes are not men; therefore men are not

brutes,” there seems to me no consequence here, neither a _præter_

nor a _propter_, but a tautology. And as to “It was either Tom or

Dick that did it; it was not Dick, ergo,” this may be referred to

the one great principle on which all logical reasoning is founded,

but really it ought not to be accounted an inference any more than

if I broke a biscuit, flung half away, and then said of the other

half, “This is what remains.” It does but state a fact. So, when the

1st, 2nd, or 3rd proposition of Euclid II. is put before the eyes in

a diagram, a boy, before he yet has learned to reason, sees with his

eyes the fact of the thesis, and this _seeing_ it even makes it

difficult for him to master the mathematical proof. Here, then, a

_fact_ is stated in the form of an _argument_.

However, I have inserted parentheses at pp. 277 and 283, in order to

say “transeat” to the question.

13 “Aids to Reflection,” p. 59, ed. 1839.

14 Taylor’s Translation, p. 131.

15 Ibid. pp. 108-110.

16 Ibid. pp. 429-436.

17 “North and South.”

18 Serm. xi. init.

19 Vide supr._ ch. v. § 1, pp. 109, 113.

20 Pp. 84, 85.

21 “Analogy,” pp. 329, 330, ed. 1836.

22 Ibid. p. 278.

23 “Mechanics,” p. 31.

24 Phillipps’ “Law of Evidence,” vol. i. p. 456.

25 “Orley Farm.”

26 Guardian_, June 28, 1865.

27 History, vol. x. pp. 286, 287.

28 “Peveril of the Peak.”

29 “Life of Mother Margaret M. Hallahan,” p. vii.

30 Eth. Nicom. vi. 11, fin.

31 Though Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, speaks of φρόνησις as

the virtue of the δοξαστικὸν generally, and as being concerned

generally with contingent matter (vi. 4), or what I have called the

concrete, and of its function being, as regards that matter,

ἀληθεύειν τῷ καταφάναι ἢ ἀποφάναι (_ibid._ 3), he does not treat of

it in that work in its general relation to truth and the affirmation

of truth, but only as it bears upon τὰ πρακτά.

32 Niebuhr, “Roman History,” vol. i. p. 177; vol. iii. pp. 262. 318.

322. “Lectures,” vol. iii. App. p. xxii. Lewis, “Roman History,”

vol. i. pp. 11-17; vol. ii. pp. 489-492. F. W. Newman, “Regal Rome,”

p. v. Grote, “Greece,” vol. ii. pp. 67, 68. 218. 630-639. Mure,

“Greece,” vol. iii. p. 503; vol. iv. p. 318. Clinton, ap. Grote,

suprà.

33 “Prophetical Office of the Church,” pp. 347, 348, ed. 1837.

34 Supra_, p. 105, &c. _Vide_ also Univ. Serm. ii. 7-13.

35 Penny Cyclopædia_, art. “Atonement” (abridged).

36 On these various subjects I have written in “University Sermons”

(Oxford), No. vi. “Idea of the University,” Disc. viii. “History of

Turks,” ch. iv. “Development of Doctrine,” ch. i. sect. 3.

37 Vide_ “Apologia,” p. 241.

38 Vide_ “Callista,” ch. xix.

39 “Analogy,” Pt. ii. ch. 5 (abridged).

40 “Scopus operis est, planiorem Protestantibus aperire viam ad veram

Ecclesiam. Cùm enim hactenus Polemici nostri insudarint toti in

demonstrandis singulis Religionis Catholicæ articulis, in id ego

unum incumbo, ut hæc tria evincam. Primo: Articulos fundamentales

Religionis Catholicæ esse evidenter credibiliores oppositis, &c.

&c.... Demonstratio autem hujus novæ, modestæ, ac facilis viæ, quâ

ex articulis fundamentalibus solùm probabilioribus adstruitur summa

Religionis certitudo, hæc est: Deus, cùm sit sapiens ac providus,

tenetur, Religionem à se revelatam reddere evidenter credibiliorem

religionibus falsis. Imprudenter enim vellet, suam Religionem ab

hominibus recipi, nisi eam redderet evidenter credibiliorem

religionibus cæteris. Ergo illa religio, quæ est evidenter

credibilior cæteris, est ipsissima religio a Deo revelata, adeoque

certissimè vera, seu demonstrata. Atqui, &c.... Motivum aggrediendi

novam hanc, modestam, ac facilem viam illud præcipuum est, quòd

observem, Protestantium plurimos post innumeros concertationum

fluctus, in iis tandem consedisse syrtibus, ut credant, nullam dari

religionem undequaque demonstratam, &c.... Ratiociniis denique

opponunt ratiocinia; præjudiciis præjudicia ex majoribus sua,” &c.

41 “Docet naturalis ratio, Deum, ex ipsâ naturâ bonitatis ac

providentiæ suæ, si velit in mundo habere religionem puram, eamque

instituere ac conservare usque in finem mundi, teneri ad eam

religionem reddendam evidenter credibiliorem ac verisimiliorem

cæteris, &c. &c.... Ex hoc sequitur ulterius; certitudinem moralem

de verâ Ecclesiâ elevari posse ad certitudinem metaphysicam, si homo

advertat, certitudinem moralem absolutè fallibilem substare in

materiâ religionis circa ejus constitutiva fundamentalia speciali

providentiæ divinæ, præservatrici ab omni errore.... Itaque homo

semel ex serie historicâ actorum perductus ad moralem certitudinem

de auctore, fundatione, propagatione, et continuatione Ecclesiæ

Christianæ, per reflexionem ad existentiam certissimam providentiæ

divinæ in materiâ religionis, à priori lumine naturæ certitudine

metaphysicâ notam, eo ipso eadem infallibili certitudine intelliget,

argumenta de auctore,” &c.—Amort. Ethica Christiana, p. 252.

42 “De hac damnatorum saltem hominum respiratione, nihil adhuc certi

decretum est ab Ecclesiâ Catholicâ: ut propterea non temerè, tanquam

absurda, sit explodenda sanctissimorum Patrum hæc opinio: quamvis à

communi sensu Catholicorum hoc tempore sit aliena.”—Petavius de

Angelis, fin.

43 Vide supra_, p. 302.

44 Vide_ the author’s Occasional Sermons, No. 5.

45 Vide supra_, p. 84.

46 History, vol. viii.

47 Before and apart from Christianity, the Samaritan Version reads,

“donec veniat Pacificus, et ad ipsum congregabuntur populi.” The

Targum, “donec veniat Messias, cujus est regnum, et obedient

populi.” The Septuagint, “donec veniant quæ reservata sunt illi” (or

“donec veniat cui reservatum est”), “et ipse expectatio gentium.”

And so again the Vulgate, “donec veniat qui mittendus est, et ipse

erit expectatio gentium.”

The ingenious translation of some learned men (“donec venerit Juda

Siluntem,” i. e. “the tribe-sceptre shall not depart from Judah till

Judah comes to Shiloh”), with the explanation that the tribe of

Judah had the leadership in the war against the Canaanites, _vide_

Judges i. 1, 2; xx. 18 (i. e. after Joshua’s _death_), and that

possibly, and for what we know, the tribe gave up that war-command

at Shiloh, _vide_ Joshua xviii. 1 (i. e. in Joshua’s _life-time_),

labours under three grave difficulties: 1. That the patriarchal

sceptre is a temporary war-command. 2. That this command belonged to

Judah at the very time that it belonged to Joshua. And 3. That it

was finally lost to Judah (Joshua living) before it had been

committed to Judah (Joshua dead).

48 He appeals to the prophecies in evidence of His Divine mission, in

addressing the Nazarites (Luke iv. 18), St. John’s disciples (Matt.

xi. 5), and the Pharisees (Matt. xxi. 42, and John v. 39), but not

in details. The appeal to details He reserves for His disciples.

_Vide_ Matt. xi. 10; xxvi. 24, 31, 54: Luke xxii. 37; xxiv. 27, 46.

49 Vide supra, pp. 341, 375, 413-416.

50 Vide supra.

51 Had my limits allowed it, I ought, as a third subject, to have

described the existing system of impure idolatry, and the wonderful

phenomenon of such multitudes, who had been slaves to it, escaping

from it by the power of Christianity,—under the guidance of the

great work (“On the Gentile and the Jew”) of Dr. Döllinger.

52 On the subjects which follow, _vide_ Lami, _De Eruditione

Apostolorum_; Mamachius, _Origines Christ._; Ruinart, _Act. Mart._;

Lardner, _Credibility_, &c.; Fleury, _Eccles. Hist._; Kortholt,

_Calumn. Pagan._; and _De Morib. Christ._, &c.

53 Ep. ad Diognet.

54 Essay on Development of Doctrine, ch. iv. § 1.

55 Fr. Lacordaire and M. Nicolas.

56 Occas. Serm., pp. 49-51.