HISTORY
OF THE
CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST
OF
LATTER-DAY SAINTS.
PERIOD I.
History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet.
By Himself.
Volume I.
An Introduction and Notes
by
B. H. Roberts.
Published by the Church.
Deseret News. Salt Lake City, Utah. 1902.
{III}
Preface.
In publishing the History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, it is felt that a solemn duty is being performed to the Saints
and to the world. The events which make up the history of the Church
in this age are the most important that history can chronicle. It is
due therefore both to the Saints themselves and to the world that
a faithful and complete history of the facts in which the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had its origin, together with
the events through which it was subsequently developed, and all the
circumstances, experiences and trials through which it passed be
made known to mankind. It is important, too, that so far as possible
the events which make up the history be related by the persons who
witnessed them, since such statements give the reader testimony of the
facts at first hand; and there is placed on record at the same time the
highest order of historical evidence of the truth of what is stated.
It was these considerations which induced the Church authorities,
under whose auspices this history is published, to take the narrative
of the Prophet Joseph Smith as found in the manuscript History of the
Church--now in the archives of the Historian's office--for the body
of the work, rather than to authorize the writing of a history in
the ordinary way. The editors of the work are not oblivious to the
fact that to proceed in the manner followed in these volumes has its
disadvantages; that it renders it impossible to correlate the facts,
and give unity to the work; {IV} that it makes the body of the work
more of the nature of annals than of history; with the accompanying
result that the conclusion of an event, or even a series of events,
is frequently postponed indefinitely, and each reader is left to be
his own "philosopher of history" while perusing these pages; that is,
to form his own conclusions upon the data here presented to him. To
overcome, at least in some small degree, the obvious disadvantages of
the style in which it has been determined to publish this history,
marginal notes relating to important matters are given, which, while it
is not claimed that they overcome the difficulties of the annalistic
style of the main body of the work, will nevertheless, be of great
service to the reader both in this respect and also in here and there
enlarging upon the Prophet's narrative where the narrative does not
include all the facts known upon the subject.
From the first the Prophet Joseph Smith had a clear apprehension of
the importance of keeping a faithful record of the events connected
with the great work which God was bringing forth through his
instrumentality; and it is to his appreciation of the importance of
that fact, and his never tiring energy respecting it, that we are
indebted for the minute completeness of our Church annals. While the
very rapidity with which events happened, together with the quickly
changing circumstances through which the purposes of God were unfolded
in the great Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, necessarily occupied
the time of the Prophet, and well nigh made it impossible for him to
give all the attention to the making of annals that is necessary to
such work, still he quite thoroughly supervised the writing of his
history, with the result that more complete historical data have been
written and preserved {V} respecting the coming forth of the work of
God in these last days than any other great movement whatsoever.
One difficulty the Prophet experienced in writing the annals of the
Church, which he usually called his history, was the unfaithfulness
of some whom he employed in this service, and the frequent change of
historians, owing to the ever shifting conditions surrounding the
Church in the early years of its existence. It would be marvelous
indeed if under all these circumstances there had been no mistakes
made in our annals, no conflict of dates, no errors in the relation of
events. But whether these conditions are taken into account or not, the
manuscript annals of the Church are astonishingly free from errors of
dates, relation of facts, and anachronisms of every description. When
the Church historians George A. Smith and Wilford Woodruff completed
their publication of the _History of Joseph Smith_, down to the 8th
of August, 1844, which history was published in installments in the
_Deseret News_, Utah, and in the _Millennial Star_, England, they
expressed themselves upon the correctness of what they had published in
the following manner:
"_The History of Joseph Smith_ is now before the world, and we are
satisfied that a history more correct in its details than this was
never published. To have it strictly correct, the greatest possible
pains have been taken by the historians and clerks engaged in the work.
They were eye and ear witnesses of nearly all the transactions recorded
in this history, most of which were reported as they transpired,
and, where they were not personally present, they have had access to
those who were. Moreover, since the death of the Prophet Joseph, the
history has been carefully revised under the strict inspection of {VI}
President Brigham Young, and approved by him. We, therefore, hereby
bear our testimony to all the world, unto whom these words shall come,
that the _History of Joseph Smith_ is true, and is one of the most
authentic histories ever written."
Their statement assuredly is true; and yet by a careful revision of
the work they did, and the correction of a few errors in dates and
other details, the work has been brought to a still higher state of
perfection. Where grammatical accuracy was violated in the original
record it has been corrected, so far as observed; but no historical or
doctrinal statement has been changed. Some changes will be observed in
the matter of the biographies of the leading Elders of the early days
of the Church. When a man of prominence connected himself with the
Church, the Prophet Joseph usually gave a biographical sketch of him
in his own history, then writing; and sometimes these biographies were
long and unduly interrupted the movement of events. To rid the body of
the work of this encumbrance it was decided to place all biographical
matter in marginal notes; this made it necessary to condense very much
those found in the Prophet's narrative, while severe brevity--after
accuracy--has been the aim in those prepared by the annotator.
The most careful attention has been given to this work by those
engaged in its preparation. The manuscript has been read to the Church
Historian, President Anthon H. Lund, with constant reference to the
original manuscript history and all copies of it published in the
_Times and Seasons_ and the _Millennial Star_; and also to various
editions of the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Book of Commandments
published at Independence, Missouri, in 1833, {VII} where the
revelations received by the Prophet Joseph Smith are contained. In the
course of this work slight variations in phraseology were discovered
in the several editions of the Doctrine and Covenants, that doubtless
arose through careless proof reading; and as between the most carefully
proof-read editions and the revelations found in the manuscript
_History of the Church_ there were some slight differences, which were
corrected to agree with the original manuscript; but the corrections
were never made until first submitted to the First Presidency, and
carefully considered and approved by them. We therefore feel that this
great care has resulted in presenting to the Church and to the world
the revelations which the Prophet Joseph Smith received in their most
perfect form; and that a standard is created for all future publication
of these revelations. Speaking of the revelations that appear in this
book, it is proper to remark that one of the chief values of this
volume of the _History of the Church_ will arise from the fact that
the greater number of those revelations received by the Prophet Joseph
Smith is published in it--one hundred and one, out of a hundred and
thirty-three found in the Doctrine and Covenants; and as they are
published in connection with the circumstances existing when brought
forth, the student of the doctrines of the Church will find this volume
of almost incalculable benefit to him.
In the Introduction it is believed the reader will find a fitting
background from which are projected with majestic boldness the great
events and splendid doctrines of the Dispensation of the Fulness of
Times. That dispensation, of which this history is but the chronicle,
bears an important relation to all former dispensations since {VIII}
the world began. It is the ocean into which they as streams flow. It
is their complement, and unifying force--it makes them all one; and
demonstrates that while things to men appear but in parts, God forever
stands in the presence of the whole, and dispenses His providences with
reference to His perfect comprehension of the end from the beginning.
It is to exhibit this relation of dispensations that the Introduction
is written, and the importance of the subject must be the apology for
its length.
{IX}
Table of Contents.
Volume I.
Preface.
Introduction.
Antiquity of the Gospel.
The Gospel Revealed to Adam.
Establishment of the Ancient Church.
The Gospel _Versus_ the Law.
From Moses to John the Baptist and Messiah.
The Dispensation of the Meridian of Time.
The Identity of the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time and the
Dispensation of the Fullness of Times Considered.
Joel's Prophecy of the Dispensation of the Last Days.
Daniel's Prophecy of the Rise of the Kingdom of God in the Last Days.
The Announcement of the Universal Apostasy.
Character of the Early Christians.
The Rise of False Teachers.
The Development of False Doctrines After the Death of the Apostles.
The Revolution of the Fourth Century: Constantine.
Christianity Made a Persecuting Religion.
Persecution of "Heretics."
Christianity Before and After Constantine.
Decline in Moral and Spiritual Living Among Christians.
Loss of Spiritual Gifts.
Departure of "Christendom" from the True Doctrine of Deity.
The Christian Doctrine of God.
Paganization of the Christian Doctrine of God.
The Church of Christ Displaced by the Churches of Men.
Testimony of Prophecy to the Universal Apostasy.
Conclusion.
{X} CHAPTER I.
Joseph Smith's Birth and Lineage--The Prophet's First Vision--"This is
My Beloved Son."
The Prophet's Introduction
Birth and Ancestry.
Religious Excitement in Western New York.
Reflection on Divided Christendom.
Perplexity of the Prophet.
The Promise of St. James Tested.
Effort of Satan to Destroy the Prophet.
The First Vision.
State of Christian World.
Sectarian opposition.
Reflections Upon Sectarian Oppositions.
All Doubts Settled.
CHAPTER II.
The Visitation of Moroni--Existence of the Book of Mormon Made Known.
Interval of Three Years, 1820-23.
Confession of Errors.
Appearing of Moroni.
Moroni's Message.
Ancient Prophecies Quoted.
Plates not to be Shown.
Second Appearing of Moroni.
Third Appearing of Moroni.
Fourth Appearing of Moroni.
The Hill Cumorah.
The Nephite Record.
Fourth Annual Visitation to Cumorah.
Story of Being a Money Digger.
The Prophet's Marriage.
CHAPTER III.
The Nephite Record Delivered to Joseph--The Angel's Warning The Work of
Translation.
The Prophet Receives the Plates.
Efforts of Enemies to Get the Plates.
Misrepresentations.
Removal to Pennsylvania.
Words of the Book given to the Learned.
The Loss of 116 Pages of Manuscript.
Prophet's Journey to Manchester and Return to Pennsylvania.
Interpreters and Plates Returned to the Prophet.
Interval in the Work of Translation.
Three Witnesses Promised.
{XI} CHAPTER IV.
Oliver Cowdery Becomes the Prophet's Scribe--The Translation of the
Plates Continued.
Oliver Cowdery.
Witness of the Spirit to Cowdery.
The Mission of John the Apostle.
Oliver desires to Translate.
CHAPTER V.
Restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood--First Baptisms.
The Aaronic Priesthood Restored.
Limitation of the Aaronic Priesthood.
John the Baptist, May 15, 1829.
Outpourings of the Spirit.
Ordination and Baptism Kept Secret.
Conversion of Samuel H. Smith.
Hyrum Smith's Inquiries.
Assistance from Joseph Knight, Sen.
Prophet's Removal to Fayette.
David, John, and Peter Whitmer, Jun., as Assistants.
Early Baptisms.
CHAPTER VI.
The Testimony of the Especial Witnesses to the Book of Mormon.
Provision made for Special Witnesses.
Seeking the Fulfillment of the Promise.
The Order of Prayer.
The Visitation of the Angel--Viewing the Plates.
Martin Harris Views the Plates.
Statement of the Witnesses.
Early Progress in the Work.
CHAPTER VII.
The Day Appointed for Organizing the Church--Revelation on Church
Government.
Directions for the Organization of the Church.
Instructions on Church Organization.
{XII} CHAPTER VIII.
The Book of Mormon Published--The Church Organized.
Price for Publishing Book of Mormon.
The Title Page.
Procedure in the Organization of the Church.
Joseph Smith, Jun., Appointed Prophet, Seer, and Revelator to the
Church.
The Church of Jesus Christ Begins its Career.
Word of the Lord to Several Persons.
CHAPTER IX.
The Commencement of the Public Ministry of the Church.
The First Public Discourse.
The Prophet's Ministry at Colesville.
Labors of the Prophet with Newel Knight.
The First Miracle in the Church.
Remarkable Experience of Newel Knight.
Effect of Publishing the Book of Mormon.
First Conference of the Church.
Effect of Spiritual Manifestations.
Baptisms.
Labor of the Prophet at Colesville.
The Adventures of Emily Coburn.
Mobbings.
The Prophet Arrested.
The Prophet Escapes the Mob.
Excitement over the Prophet's Case.
The Trial.
Daughters of Mr. Stoal as Witnesses.
The Acquittal.
The Prophet's second Arrest.
Unnecessary Severity.
The Second Trial.
Newel Knight vs. Lawyer Seymour.
Plea for the State.
Plea for the Defendant.
Change in Sentiment.
The Prophet Acquitted.
CHAPTER X.
The Molestation at Colesville by Mobs--The Revelation Embodying the
vision of Moses.
The Second Flight from Colesville.
Reflections on Persecution.
The Strength which God gave.
Encouragement from Inspired Dreams.
Compilation of Revelations.
Cowdery's Error.
Prophet's Correction of Error.
{XIII} CHAPTER XI.
Further Light Respecting the Sacrament--Prophet's Removal to Fayette.
Instructions on the Sacrament.
A Confirmation Meeting.
The Prophet's Father-in-law Embittered.
The Eyes of Enemies Blinded Through Faith.
The Prophet Finds an Asylum at Fayette.
Spurious Revelations Through Hyrum Page.
The Conference of September 26th.
Satisfactory Results of the Conference.
Mission to the Lamanites.
Departure of the Lamanite Mission.
Arrival at Kirtland.
Previous Relations of Pratt and Rigdon.
Presentation of the Book of Mormon to Sidney Rigdon.
Public Ministry at Mentor.
The Work Opened at Kirtland.
Conversion of Sidney Rigdon.
CHAPTER XII.
Lost Books of Ancient Scripture--Commandment to the Church in New York
to Move to Ohio.
Readiness of the Lord to Impart Knowledge.
Orson Pratt Seeks to Know the Will of the Lord.
Sidney Rigdon and Edward Partridge Visit the Prophet.
Of the Lost Books of Scripture.
CHAPTER XIII.
Prospects of the Church at the Opening of the year 1831--Removal of the
Prophet Joseph From New York to Ohio--Doctrinal Development.
Prospects of the Church, 1831.
Why Covill Rejected the Commandment.
The Prophet Removes to Ohio.
The Branch of the Church at Kirtland.
Revelation Giving the Law of the Church.
Pretensions of a Woman to Revelations, etc.
A Special Conference, 3rd-6th of June.
{XIV} CHAPTER XIV.
Effort to Overwhelm the Church By Falsehood--Sundry Revelations Leading
to Doctrinal Development.
Efforts Through the Press to Retard the Work.
The Gifts of the Holy Ghost.
John Whitmer Appointed Historian.
On the Purchase of Land in Ohio.
The Shaking Quakers.
Inquiry on Spiritual Manifestations.
Arrival in Ohio of the New York Saints.
CHAPTER XV.
The Important conference of June 3rd-6th--Arrival of the Elders in
Western Missouri.
Important Conference of June 3rd-6th at Kirtland.
Difficulty in the Thompson Branch.
Report of Oliver Cowdery on Conditions on Western Missouri.
Marsh and Thayre Separated as Missionary Companions.
Departure of the Prophets and Company for Missouri.
Treatment by the Way.
Arrival in Missouri.
Questions and the Answer by Revelation.
The First Sabbath in Zion.
Arrival of the Colesville Branch.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Founding of Zion.
The First Act in the Founding of Zion.
Description of the Land of Zion.
Agricultural Products.
Animals, Domestic and Wild.
The Climate.
The Future Glory of Zion.
Dedication of the Temple Site.
First Conference in Zion.
Death of Polly Knight.
Directions for the Elders.
Prophet and Others Depart for Kirtland.
A Chance Meeting of Elders.
Arrival of the Prophet and Party at Kirtland.
Anxiety of the Saints to Receive the Word of the Lord.
Preparation to Move to Hiram.
{XV} CHAPTER XVII.
The Apostasy of Ezra Booth--Preparations for Publishing Book of
Commandments.
The Prophet Move to Hiram.
Ezra Booth's Apostasy.
The Purchase of a Press.
A Prayer Revealed.
Revision of the Bible Renewed.
Instructions and Appointments of the Conference of October 11th.
Special Conference of October 21st.
Conference at Orange, Ohio, October 25th.
Special Conference Nov. 1st.
Language of Revelations Criticised.
The Folly of William M'Lellin.
Preparation of the Revelations for Publication, November 1st-15th.
Dedication of the Book of Commandments.
Esteem in which the Conference Held the Book of Commandments and Book
of Mormon.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Amherst Conference--The Vision of the Degrees of Glory in Man's
Future Life.
The Labors of the Prophet and Sidney Rigdon.
The Prophet's Earnest Labors in Kirtland.
Effectiveness of the Prophet's and Sidney Rigdon's Labors.
Translation Renewed.
The Amherst Conference.
Revelation of the Degrees of Future Glory.
The Prophet's Views on the Foregoing Revelation.
A Key to St. John's Book of Revelation.
Sundry Revelations.
CHAPTER XIX.
Mob Violence at Hiram--The Second Journey of the Prophet to Zion, and
Return to Kirtland.
Prospects of the "Evening and Morning Star."
The Prophet's Life in Hiram.
A Prophecy on Omsted Johnson.
Apostates.
Mob Violence at Hiram.
Brutality of the Mob.
The Prophet's Pitiable Condition.
A Case of Mistaken Identity.
The Prophet's Undaunted Spirit.
Elder Rigdon's Condition.
{XVI} Composition of the Mob.
The Prophet Starts on his Second Visit to Zion.
Incidents by the Way.
Prophet Acknowledged President of the High Priesthood.
The Purposes the Prophet Seeks to Effect Through Church Organization.
A Visit to the Colesville Saints Literary Affairs of the Church
Considered.
Transaction of Temporal Business.
Return Journey to Kirtland--Incidents by the Way.
The Foreknowledge of a Seer.
CHAPTER XX.
"The Evening and Morning Star."
Occupation of the Prophet, Summer of 1832.
Opposition by the Press.
Second No. of the "Star."
CHAPTER XXI.
Larger Views of the Doctrine of Priesthood Revealed--The Meeting of the
Prophet Joseph Smith. Jun., Brigham Young, and Heber C. Kimball.
Baptism of George A. Smith.
Return of Elders from Missouri.
The Prophet's Visit to Eastern Cities.
The Arrival of the Youngs at Kirtland.
CHAPTER XXII.
The Prophecy on the War of the Rebellion--The Olive Leaf--Communication
to Mr. Seaton--Warning to Zion.
State of the World at the Close of 1832.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Enjoyment of Spiritual Blessings in the Church--The Word of Wisdom.
Enjoyment of Spiritual Gifts.
Ordinances of the Washing of Feet.
The Elders Pronounced Clean.
Revision of the New Testament Completed.
John Murdock's Message to the Thompson Branch.
{XVII} Concerning the Prophet's Communication to Seaton.
Case of Burr Riggs.
Consideration of Missouri Correspondence of the 11th and 12th of
January.
Excommunication of Burr Riggs.
A Word of Comfort to the Prophet.
The Apocrypha.
A Mission to the East Appointed.
Case of Brother Lake.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Kirtland to be a Stake of Zion--Regulation of Church Affairs in
Missouri.
School of Prophets.
Rigdon and Williams Ordained Presidents.
Kirtland a Stake of Zion.
Matters Relating to Church Government in Zion Settled.
Purchase of the French Farm.
Conference in Zion.
The State of the World.
First Assembly of Mob in Zion.
Conference of High Priests in Kirtland.
Another Conference of High Priests.
Council Proceedings Approved.
Signs of the Times.
Removal of Indians.
Arrival of the Prophet's Relatives in Kirtland.
CHAPTER XXV.
Preparations for Building the Kirtland Temple--Trial and
Excommunication of "Doctor" Philastus Hurlburt.
The House of the Lord at Kirtland.
The Trial of "Doctor" Hurlburt.
The House of the Lord to be Built at Kirtland.
The French Farm.
John Johnson Ordained a High Priest.
Ground Broken for Kirtland Temple.
Action of Conference with Reference to the Temple.
Hurlburt's Appeal.
Copley's Case.
Excommunication of "Doctor" Hurlburt.
Case of James Higbee.
{XVIII} CHAPTER XXVI.
The Plat of the City of Zion--Its Temples--Correspondence on Affairs in
Zion and Eugene.
The General Plan of the City of Zion.
The Blocks Set Aside for Temples.
Location of Land for the Agriculturist.
Zion a Group of Cities.
Names of the Temples.
The House of the Lord for the Presidency.
The Pulpits of the Temple.
The Windows.
General Dimensions.
Arrangements of the Curtains.
Important Letter to Brethren in Zion.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Preparation of the Mob in Jackson County to Resort to
Violence--Important Excerpts From the "Star."
The Rise of Mob Force in Jackson County.
The Mob Ignores the Constitutional Guarantee of Religious Freedom.
Council of Elders in Kirtland.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Mob Violence in the Land of Zion.
Demands of the Mob.
The Mob's Treatment of Elder Partridge.
Charles Allen.
Reflection of the Prophet.
Aftermath of Mob Violence.
The Second Gathering of the Mob.
A Messenger Sent to Kirtland.
The "Western" Monitor on Jackson County Troubles.
The Prophet's Comment of the "Monitor" article.
Corner Stone of Kirtland Temple Laid.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Minor Events in Zion and Kirtland--An Appeal to the Governor of
Missouri.
Prophet's Letter to Vienna Jaques.
{XIX} CHAPTER XXX.
The Prophet's Mission to Canada.
The Prophet Starts for Canada.
Letter to Saints in Zion.
Distraction about Zion.
Narrative of Canada Journey Renewed.
At Father Nickerson's.
Through Upper Canada.
Meeting at Bradford.
Meeting and Baptisms at Mt. Pleasant.
Return to Kirtland.
Action of Governor Dunklin on Petition.
Preparations for Asserting Rights.
Counsel Employed.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Expulsion of the Saints From Jackson County.
Attack on the Saints Settled on Big Blue.
The Saints at the Prairie Settlement Attacked.
Mobbing at Independence.
Other Incidents at Independence.
An Appeal to the Circuit Court.
Events of Monday, Nov. 4th.
The Battle.
Gilbert _et al_. on Trial.
Assault on the Prisoners.
Incidents of the 5th November.
One Hundred Volunteers.
The Demand of the Mob Militia.
The Savagery of the Mob.
Events of the 5th and 6th of November.
Scenes on the Banks of the Missouri.
Lieutenant Governor Boggs.
In Exile.
The Stars Fall.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Remembrance of Canada Saints--Correspondence and Petition Relative to
Missouri Affairs.
Letter to Moses C. Nickerson.
The Prophet's Reflections.
Sidney Rigdon.
A Prophecy.
The Prophet's Maxims.
Frederick G. Williams.
Attorney General's Letter to the Exiles' Counsel.
Judge Ryland's Letter to Amos Reese.
Hyde and Gould Return to Kirtland.
Remnants Scattered.
New Church Press.
The Dedication of the New Press.
{XX} CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Prophet's Sympathy for the Exiled Saints--Reasons for their
expulsion From Zion.
Expulsion of Saints from Van Buren County.
Sad Condition of the Saints
CHAPTER XXXIV.
A Press Established at Kirtland--Blessing Upon the Prophet's
Family--Responsibility for Lawless Acts in Missouri.
Dedication of Printing Press.
Strength and Weakness of Oliver Cowdery.
The Prophet's Blessing Upon his Father's House.
His Mother.
His Brother Hyrum.
His Brother Samuel.
Prophecy on the Head of his Brother William.
A Prayer.
Messengers to Zion.
A Life Guard of Washington Driven from Jackson County.
Court of Inquiry.
Excommunications at Kirtland.
Elliott, Haggart and Babbitt cases.
Disposition of the _Star_ Press.
Where Responsibility Rests.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Important Correspondence on Jackson County Affairs, Chiefly Between
Leading Officials of the Church in Zion and State Officials of Missouri.
Algernon Sidney Gilbert's Letter to Governor Dunklin.
Letter of the First Presidency to the Scattered Saints.
Letter from Governor Dunklin to the Brethren in Missouri.
Letter of Algernon Sidney Gilbert to A. Leonard, Esq., Attorney.
Letter from Brethren in Clay County, Mo., to Judge Ryland.
{XXI} Letter of W. W. Phelps _et al_. to Judge Woodward.
Affidavit of Abigail Leonard.
Letter of W. W. Phelps to the Brethren in Kirtland, Detailing the
Farcical Effort of the Officers of Missouri to Enforce the Law.
Second Petition to the President of the United States.
Letter of Algernon S. Gilbert _et al_. to President Accompanying
Foregoing Petition.
Letter of the Brethren to Governor Dunklin, Asking him to Write the
President in Connection with their Petition.
Letter of W. W. Phelps to U. S. Senator Benton of Missouri on the
Subject of the Petition to the President.
Letter from Governor Dunklin to the Brethren, Answering the one
Inviting him to Write the President on the Subject of Saint's Petition.
The Brethren in Missouri to Governor Dunklin, Informing him that they
Expect the Arrival of Reinforcement from their Brethren in the East.
Letter of Governor Dunklin Replying to the Communication of April 24th
from the Brethren in Clay County.
Letter to Governor Dunklin Answering his of April 20th, Wherein he
Cautioned the Saints to Keep their Enemies in the Wrong.
Letter to Colonel S. D. Lucas Asking About Arms Surrendered at
Independence.
Reply of the General Government to the Petition of the Saints.
{XXV}
Introduction.
Antiquity of the Gospel.
The History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is also
the history of the opening and progress of the Dispensation of the
fullness of Times; and as that dispensation bears an important relation
to all dispensations which have preceded it, let us here ascertain
in what that relation consists. By doing so we shall have a better
appreciation of the full import of those events which make up the
history of the Church.
A dispensation, without reference to any specific application or
limitation of the term, is the act of dealing out or distributing, such
as the dispensation of justice by courts, the dispensation of blessings
or afflictions by the hand of Providence. Theologically a dispensation
is defined as one of the several systems or bodies of law in which at
different periods God has revealed his mind and will to man, such as
the Patriarchal Dispensation, the Mosaic Dispensation, or the Christian
Dispensation. The word is also sometimes applied to the periods of time
during which the said laws obtain. That is, the period from Adam to
Noah is usually called the Patriarchal Dispensation. From Noah to the
calling of Abraham, the Noachian Dispensation; and from Abraham to the
calling of Moses, the Abrahamic Dispensation. But the word dispensation
as connected with the Gospel of Jesus Christ means the opening of the
heavens to men; the giving out or dispensing to them the word of God;
the revealing to men in whole or the part the principles and ordinances
of the Gospel; the conferring of divine authority upon certain chosen
ones, by which they are empowered to act in the name, that is, in the
authority of God, and for Him. That is a dispensation as relating
to the Gospel; and the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times is the
dispensation which includes all others and gathers to itself all things
which bear any relation whatsoever to the work of God. Also it is the
last dispensation, the one in which will be gathered together in one
all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth;
even in Him. [1] It is the dispensation which will see fulfilled all
the decrees of God respecting the salvation of men and the redemption
of the earth itself; and bears such relation to all other {XXVI}
dispensations of the Gospel as the ocean does to all earth's streams.
It receives and unites them all in itself.
That there have been many dispensations of the Gospel, many times that
divine authority has been conferred upon men, is apparent from the
Scripture narrative of such events. And yet, strange as it may seem, in
the face of such Scripture narratives, there are those among professing
Christians who hold that the Gospel had no earlier origin than the time
of Messiah's ministry in the flesh. As a matter of fact, however, the
Gospel of Jesus Christ has existed from the very earliest ages of the
world. There are, indeed, certain passages of Scripture which lead us
to believe that even before the earth was made or ever man was placed
upon it, the Gospel had been formulated and was understood by the
spirits which inhabited the kingdom of the Father; and who, in course
of time, would be blessed with a probation on the earth--an earth-life.
If this be not true, of what significance is the Scripture which speaks
of Jesus as the Lamb ordained before the foundation of the world, but
revealed in this day for the salvation of man? [2] What of the "Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world"? [3] And further: "They that
dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the
Book of Life from the foundation of the world." [4] "Where wast thou,"
asked the Lord of Job, "when I laid the foundations of the earth? * * *
When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted
for joy?" [5] There is evidence in these expressions found in Scripture
that before the foundations of the earth were laid the sacrifice
necessary to the redemption of men was understood, and the "Lamb" for
the sacrifice was chosen, Jesus, the Messiah. There is evidence in
these expressions from Scripture of the pre-existence of the spirits
of men, and the names of some of them at least were written in the
"Book of Life" from the foundation of the world, and it is not unlikely
that the shouting of all the sons of God for joy, at the creation of
the earth was in consequence of the prospects which opened before them
because of the earth-life and the salvation that would come to them
through the Gospel--even in the prospects of that "eternal life, which
God that cannot lie, promised before the world began."
_The Gospel Revealed to Adam_.
The Gospel, then, is of great antiquity. Older than the hills, older
{XXVII} than the earth; for in the heavenly kingdom was it formulated
before the foundations of the earth were laid. Nor were men left in
ignorance of the plan of their redemption until the coming of the
Messiah in the flesh. From the first that plan was known. Our annals
are imperfect on that head, doubtless, but enough exists even in the
Jewish scriptures to indicate the existence of a knowledge of the fact
of the Atonement and of the redemption of man through that means. Abel,
the son of Adam, is the first we read of in the Jewish scriptures as
offering "the firstlings of his flock" as a sacrifice unto God. How
came he to offer sacrifice of the firstlings of his flock? Doubtless
behind Abel's sacrifice, as behind similar offerings in subsequent
ages, stood the fact of the Christ's Atonement. [6] In it was figured
forth the means of man's redemption--through a sacrifice, and that the
sacrifice of the first-born. But where learned Abel to offer sacrifice
if not from his father Adam? It is reasonably certain that Adam as well
as Abel offered sacrifices, in like manner and for the same intent;
and to Adam, though the Jewish scriptures are silent respecting it,
God must have revealed both the necessity of offering sacrifice and
the great thing of which it was but the symbol. And here, to some
advantage, may be quoted a passage from the writings of Moses, as
revealed to Joseph Smith, in December, 1830. From what was then made
known to the great latter-day Prophet of the writings of Moses, it
appears that our book of Genesis does not contain all that was revealed
to Moses respecting the revelations of God to Adam and his children
of the first generation. According to this more complete account of
the revelation to Moses, after Adam was driven from Eden, God gave
commandments both to him and his wife, that they should worship the
Lord their God, and should offer the firstlings of their flocks for an
offering unto the Lord, and Adam was obedient unto the commandment:
And after many days an angel of the Lord appeared unto Adam,
saying: Why doest thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam
said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me. And the
angel spake, saying: This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of
the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth.
Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the
Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son
for evermore. [7]
After some time elapsed and men multiplied in the earth and wickedness
increased; after Abel, the righteous, was slain and Cain was a vagabond
in the earth for the murder; after Lamech had also become a murderer
and Satan had great power among the disobedient--then, it is written:
{XXVIII} And God cursed the earth with a sore curse, and was angry
with the wicked, with all the sons of men whom he had made; for they
would not hearken unto His voice, nor believe on His Only Begotten Son,
even Him whom He declared should come in the meridian of time, who was
prepared from before the foundation of the world. And thus the Gospel
began to be preached, from the beginning, being declared by holy angels
sent forth from the presence of God, and by His own voice, and by the
gift of the Holy Ghost. And thus all things were confirmed unto Adam,
by an holy ordinance, and the Gospel preached, and a decree sent forth,
that it should be in the world, until the end thereof. [8]
_Establishment of the Ancient Church_.
As the Gospel was thus preached there were those among the children
of Adam who obeyed it, and a record of those men was kept, and they
constituted the ancient Church of God. Enoch was of the number of
righteous ones, and a preacher of righteousness. In these revealed
writings of Moses he is represented in the course of his ministry as
referring to the manner in which the Gospel was taught to Adam;
And he said unto them: Because that Adam fell, we are and by his
fall came death; and we are made partakers of misery and woe.
Behold Satan hath come among the children of men, and tempteth them
to worship him; and men have become carnal, sensual, and devilish,
and are shut out from the presence of God. But God hath made known
unto our fathers that all men must repent. And He called upon our
father Adam by His own voice, saying: I am God; I made the world,
and men before they were in the flesh. And He also said unto him:
If thou wilt turn unto me, and hearken unto my voice, and believe,
and repent of all thy transgressions, and be baptized, even in
water, in the name of mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace
and truth, which is Jesus Christ, the only name which shall be
given under heaven, whereby salvation shall come unto the children
of men, ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, asking all
things in His name, and whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be given
you. [9]
Adam was obedient to the commandments of the Lord, and taught them to
his children, many of whom believed them, obeyed, and became the sons
of God.
Enoch, we are told, "walked with God: and he was not; for God
took him." [10] Paul, in speaking of him, says: "By faith Enoch
was translated that he should not see death; and was not found,
because God had translated him." [11] But the writings of Moses, as
revealed to {XXIX} Joseph Smith, and from which I have been quoting,
give information that not only was Enoch translated but the Saints
inhabiting his city, into which he had gathered his people, and this
city was called Zion; "And it came to pass that Zion was not, for God
received it up into His own bosom; and from thence went forth the
saying, Zion is fled." [12]
_The Gospel versus the Law_.
Thus the gospel was taught to the ancients. Noah was a preacher of it
as well as Enoch. So, too, was Melchizedek, priest of the Most High
God, King of Salem, who met Abraham in his day and blessed him. [13]
Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, bears unmistakable testimony to the
fact that the Gospel was preached unto Abraham; and also that it was
offered to Israel under Moses before "the law of carnal commandments"
was given. "I would not that ye should be ignorant," he says, "how that
all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did
all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual
drink: _for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and
that Rock was Christ_." [14]
Referring again to the fact of the presentation of the Gospel to
ancient Israel, Paul says that the Gospel was preached unto ancient
Israel, as well as unto Israel in his day; but the preaching of the
Gospel to ancient Israel was not profitable to them, because they
received it not in faith, and as a result displeased God by their
unbelief, and the rebellious perished in the wilderness. [15]
Paul's great controversy with the Christian Jews was in relation to the
superiority of the Gospel to the law of Moses. Many of the Christian
Jews while accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah, still
held to the law with something like superstitious reverence, and could
not be persuaded that the Gospel superseded the law, and was, in fact,
a fulfillment of all its types and symbols. This controversy culminated
in Paul's now celebrated letter to the Galatians, wherein he says:
Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the
children of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would {XXX}
justify the heathen through faith, _preached before the Gospel unto
Abraham_, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. * * * * Now to
Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not And to seeds,
as of many: but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I
say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the
law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul,
that it should make the promise of none effect. * * * * Wherefore then
serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed
should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels
in the hand of a mediator. * * * Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster
to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after
that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are
all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. [16]
_From Moses to John the Baptist and Messiah_.
In greater clearness, however, than in these sayings of Paul gathered
up from his writings like scattered rays of light from a prism's
reflection, the antiquity of the Gospel, as far as it concerns ancient
Israel, is stated in a revelation of God to the Prophet Joseph Smith.
And not only the antiquity of the Gospel, but in greater clearness
also is stated the reasons why, after the Gospel was first preached
to ancient Israel, the law of carnal commandments was "added" to the
Gospel, or given in its place, to act as a schoolmaster to bring Israel
unto Christ. And by the knowledge imparted in that revelation the time
between the Mosaic dispensation and the coming of John the Baptist, to
prepare the way for the coming of Christ, is spanned by a statement
so rational, that the truth of it cannot be reasonably questioned.
Speaking of the Melchizedek Priesthood and its powers in administering
the ordinances of the Gospel, and how it came to disappear as an
organization in Israel, the passage in question says:
This greater Priesthood administereth the Gospel and holdeth the
key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge
of God; Therefore, in the ordinances thereof, the power of
godliness is manifest; and without the ordinances thereof, and the
authority of the Priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest
unto men in the flesh, for without this no man can see the face of
God, even the Father, and live. Now this Moses plainly taught to
the children of Israel in the wilderness, and sought diligently
to sanctify his people that they might behold the face of God:
but they hardened their hearts and could not endure his presence,
therefore, the Lord in His wrath (for His anger was kindled against
them) swore that they should not enter into his rest while in the
wilderness, which rest is the fullness of his glory. Therefore
He took Moses out of their midst, and the Holy {XXXI} Priesthood
also; and the lesser Priesthood continued, which Priesthood holdeth
the key of the ministering of angels and the preparatory Gospel;
which Gospel is the Gospel of repentance and of baptism, and the
remission of sins, and the law of carnal commandments, which the
Lord in His wrath, caused to continue with the house of Aaron among
the children of Israel until John, whom God raised up, being filled
with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb; for he was baptized
while he was yet in his childhood, and was ordained by the angel of
God at the time he was eight days old unto this power to overthrow
the kingdom of the Jews, and to make straight the way of the Lord
before the face of His people, to prepare them for the coming of
the Lord, in whose hand is given all power. [17]
As before remarked, this passage spans the interval of time between
Moses and John the Baptist, and gives a fuller explanation than can
be found in the writings of Paul or elsewhere, for the reason why and
in what manner the law supplanted the Gospel; and what measure of the
Priesthood remained with Israel unto the coming of John; in what the
mission of John consisted, and in what manner he was qualified to
fulfill that mission.
It should be remarked, however, that while the Lord took Moses out of
the midst of ancient Israel, and the Holy Melchisedek Priesthood also,
as an institution, as an organization, it is evident that subsequently
special dispensations of that Priesthood were given to individual
prophets, such as Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
and Daniel: for these men exercised powers and enjoyed privileges which
belong exclusively to the Melchisedek Priesthood.
_The Dispensation of the Meridian of Time_.
With the period between Moses and John the Baptist spanned, we come
to the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time. This dispensation begins
with the preaching of John the Baptist in the wilderness. It was made
glorious by the personal ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of
God; by His suffering and death, for the redemption of mankind; by
His glorious resurrection from the dead; by his subsequent ministry
among his followers, and His final ascension into heaven to the throne
of His Father; by the faithful ministry of His Apostles, by whom the
good tidings of man's salvation were published to the world: by the
establishment of the Church as the agency through which the Gospel
was to be more widely proclaimed, and those who accepted the Gospel
were more thoroughly instructed in its doctrines, guarded from error,
and finally perfected in the Christian life. An inspired volume of
Scripture, the New Testament, was also brought {XXXII} into existence,
from the teachings of the inspired Apostles, in which the great
fundamental truths of the Gospel were embodied and cast in a form that
would be enduring, and to which men could appeal through all the ages
to come, as an authoritative statement, not only of what Jesus said and
what He did, but also a statement of what doctrines are to be believed;
what precepts to be practiced; what ordinances to be observed. By thus
embodying the chief doctrines of Christ in a volume of Scripture that
should live forever, and be published in all the languages of the
world, provision was made for such a dissemination of the knowledge of
God, that the world would never again be wholly without that knowledge;
and though the Church might become corrupted, as it afterwards did;
though men ambitious of distinction and power might usurp authority and
establish churches, in which they taught for doctrines the commandments
of men, as they certainly did; still in this volume of Scripture men
henceforth would have at hand a standard of truth by which to test
the utterances of would-be teachers, while at the same time it would
keep above the horizon of a world's knowledge the great truths of
the Gospel--the existence and character of God; the manifestation
of Him through the person and character of Jesus of Nazareth; the
relationship existing between God and man; the fall of man; and the
redemption provided for him in the atonement of Jesus Christ. All this
was achieved in the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time; a mighty
work accomplished by the Son of God and His associates; a work sealed
not only by the blood of Jesus Christ, but by the blood also of many
faithful witnesses, which shall make their testimony of force in the
world.
_Identity of the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time and the
Dispensation of the Fulness of Times Considered_.
At this point we are confronted with a question that must be settled
before progress is possible with this Introduction. Owing to the
phraseology of certain passages of Scripture, making reference to
the coming of Messiah in the flesh, and to the work of God in those
days, the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time is mistaken for the
Dispensation of the Fulness of Times. In Mark's Gospel, for instance,
John the Baptist is represented as saying, "_The time is fulfilled_,
and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel."
[18] The words in Italics are usually understood to make reference to
the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times. Again it is written: "_But
when the fulness of the time was come_, God sent forth His Son, made of
a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law."
[19] The words, "when the fulness of the time was come," are supposed
to refer to the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times. Other passages of
Scripture referring to the days of Messiah's personal ministry among
men in the flesh, speak of them as the "last days." Paul in the opening
sentence of his letter to the Hebrews, does this: "God, who at sundry
times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the
prophets, hath _in these last days_ spoken unto us by His Son, whom He
hath appointed heir of all things." [20] So St. John, in addressing
the Saints in his day: "Little children, _it is the last time:_ and
as ye have heard that anti-Christ shall come, even now are there many
anti-Christs; whereby we know that _it is the last time._" [21] These with
two other special passages of Scripture to be separately considered,
constitute the authority upon which the Meridian Dispensation is
confounded with the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times. And yet all
these passages are susceptible of quite a different and more natural
rendering. Without controversy it will be conceded that the Lord had
an appointed time for His Son Jesus to come to earth in the flesh and
perform the mission that had been assigned him; to suffer; to die; to
arise again from the dead. And when the fullness of this time was come,
God indeed sent forth His Son into the world. As for those inspired
writers who speak of the "last days," and the "last times"--they speak
relatively; that is, with reference to former days and times; and,
of course, the days and times in which they lived to them were the
last days, and the last times; but they were not the last days of the
earth's temporal existence; they were not the last days in any general
sense at all, as there have been now some two thousand years of days
since then. They were not the "last days" that are understood as
immediately preceding the glorious coming of the Son of God.
_Joel's Great Prophecy of the Dispensation of the Last Days_.
Of the special passages before referred to, and which I said would
receive separate consideration, the first is Peter's quotation from
the Prophet Joel concerning the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon
"all flesh in the last days." This quotation from Joel is regarded as
identifying the days in which the Apostle was speaking, as "the last
days;" and the dispensation in which he was living as the Dispensation
of the Last Days and of the Fulness of Times. The conditions existing
when Peter was speaking, and the prophecy of Joel, however, admit
{XXXIV} of no such interpretation. The circumstances were as follows:
The Holy Ghost in an extraordinary manner rested upon the Apostles and
gave them the power of speaking in other languages than those they
had learned. Some in the listening multitude attributed this singular
manifestation to drunkenness, whereupon the Apostle Peter arose and
refuted the slander, saying: "These are not drunken, as ye suppose,
seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But this is _that_ which
was spoken by the Prophet Joel; and it shall come to pass _in the last
days_, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your
sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see
visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants and
on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they
shall prophesy: and I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in
the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke: the sun shall
be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before that great and
notable day of the Lord come: and it shall come to pass, that whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." [22] "For," to
finish the passage as it stands in Joel, but which is not in Peter's
quotation, "For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as
the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call." [23]
Because Peter, referring to the Spirit that was then resting upon the
Twelve Apostles, said, "this is that which was spoken by the Prophet
Joel," etc., the very general opinion prevails that Joel's prophecy
was then fulfilled; and hence the _last days_ were come. This is an
entire misapprehension of the purpose of Peter in making the quotation;
as also of the quoted passage itself. Beyond all controversy Peter
meant only: This Spirit which you now see resting upon these Apostles
of Jesus of Nazareth, is that same Spirit which your Prophet Joel
says will, in the last days, be poured out upon all flesh. Obviously
he did not mean that this occasion of the Apostles receiving the Holy
Ghost was a complete fulfillment of Joel's prediction. To insist upon
such an exegesis would be to charge the chief of the Apostles with
palpable ignorance of the meaning of Joel's prophecy. On the occasion
in question the Holy Ghost was poured out upon the Twelve Apostles,
who were given the power to speak in various tongues; Joel's prophecy
for its complete fulfillment requires that the Spirit of the Lord,
the Holy Ghost, shall be poured out upon _all flesh;_ and undoubtedly
refers to that time which shall come in the blessed millennium when the
enmity shall not only cease between man and man, but even between the
beasts of the forests and of the fields; and between man and beast, as
described by Isaiah in the following language:
The wolf also shall dwell with the Lamb, and the leopard shall lie
down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling
together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the
bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the
lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling child shall play
on the hole of the asp; and the weaned child shall put his hand on
the cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as
the waters cover the sea. [24]
Compare these conditions so vividly described with what Joel himself
says of the period when the Spirit of the Lord shall be poured out
upon all flesh, and it will at once be clear that the two Prophets
are dealing with the same period, and not only dealing with the same
period, but that the period itself is certainly far beyond in time the
days of Peter; in fact is still in the future; for the sun has not
yet been turned into blackness; nor the moon into blood; nor have the
stars withdrawn their shining. It is obvious that the events upon the
day of Pentecost did not fulfil the terms of this prophecy, except in
those particulars already pointed out. The mention in this prophecy,
however, of those special signs which Jesus refers to as immediately
preceding His own second and glorious coming, clearly demonstrate that
Joel was speaking of the last days indeed, and not of a circumstance
that occurred in connection with a period more properly designated
as the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time. Immediately following
his prediction of the outpouring of God's Spirit upon all flesh, Joel
represents the Lord as saying: "And I will show wonders in the heavens
and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall
be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and
the terrible day of the Lord come." And later: "The sun and the moon
shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord
also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and
the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of
his people, and the strength of the children of Israel."
Compare this with the Savior's description of conditions in the earth
that will precede His own second coming:
Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be
darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall
fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and
then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall
all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall
send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather
together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the
other. [25]
The same wonders in heaven and earth; the same changes in sun, and
moon, and stars; the same promises of the gathering of God's people as
are found in the prophecy of Joel. There can be no question, then, but
that the prophecy of Joel refers to the same "last days" that Jesus
here alludes to--the days of the coming of the Son of Man--and not to
the days of Peter and the other Apostles in the Meridian of time.
The sum of the matter then is, that Peter was not living in the "last
days;" that the prophecy of Joel was not in its entirety fulfilled
in the outpouring of God's Spirit upon the Apostles on the day of
Pentecost; that at no time subsequent to the days of the Apostles has
there existed such conditions in the earth as amount to a complete
fulfilment of Joel's prophecy; therefore at some time future from the
days of the Apostles, we may look forward to a universal outpouring
of God's Holy Spirit upon all flesh, resulting in a universal peace
and widespread knowledge of God, brought about, unquestionably, by
a subsequent dispensation from that in which Peter wrought--the
Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, in which God promises to "gather
together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and
which are on earth; even in Him." [26]
_Daniel's Prophecy of the Rise of the Kingdom of God in the Last Days._
The second special Scripture to which I have promised a separate
consideration is the prophecy of Daniel relative to the succession of
the great earth empires; and the final establishment of the Kingdom of
God, which in "the last days" shall fill the whole earth and remain
for ever. By an error on the part of Christian writers Daniel's
prophecy concerning the Kingdom of God to be set up in "the last days"
is supposed to have been fulfilled by the founding of "The spiritual
kingdom of Christ" in the days of Messiah's earthly ministry; and
therefore the conclusion is drawn that those days were "the last days,"
and the dispensation then ushered in, the final dispensation of the
Gospel. It is my purpose here to refute that error.
The prophecy in question is familiar, and comes from Daniel's
interpretation of the king of Babylon's dream of the great image, whose
"brightness was excellent, whose form was terrible." The head of the
image was of gold; his breast and arms were of silver; the body and
thighs of brass; the legs of iron; and the feet and the toes part of
iron and part of clay. The king in his dream also saw a little stone
cut out of the mountain without hands, that smote the image upon the
feet of mixed clay and iron, and broke it to pieces--until it became
like the chaff of the summer {XXXVII} thrashing floor, and the wind
of heaven carried it away, that no place was found for it: but the
little stone cut from the mountain without hands, which smote the
image on the feet and ground it to dust, became a great mountain and
filled the whole earth. This it the dream; and this is the prophet's
interpretation, addressed to the king of Babylon:
Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given
thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever
the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls
of the heaven hath He given into thine hand, and hath made thee
ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold. And after thee
shall rise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third
kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth. And the
fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh
in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all
these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest
the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the
kingdom shall be divided: but there shall be in it of the strength
of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with the miry
clay. And as the toes and the feet were part of iron, and part of
clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And
whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle
themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to
another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. And in the days of
these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall
never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other
people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms
and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone
was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in
pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold,
the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass
hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof
sure. [27]
As understood by the learned, Daniel's interpretation stands thus:
"(1) The _Golden Head_--the Assyrio-Babylonish monarchy (the 6th and
5th century B.C.);
"(2) The _Silver Breast and Arms_--the Medo-Persian empire (from 538
B.C. to about 330 B.C.);
"(3) The _Brazen Belly and Thighs_--the Greco-Macedonian kingdom,
especially after Alexander, those of Egypt and Syria (from about 330
B.C. to 160 B.C.);
"(4) The _Legs of Iron_--the power of Rome, bestriding the east and
west, but broken into a number of states, the ten toes, which retained
some of its warlike strength (the iron), mingled with elements of
weakness (the soft potters' clay), which rendered the whole imperial
structure unstable.
{XXXVIII} "(5) The _Stone_ cut without hands out of the _Living Rock_,
dashing down the image, becoming a great mountain, and filling all the
earth--_The Spiritual Kingdom of Christ_."
The last phrase--"The Spiritual Kingdom of Christ"--meaning of course
the "Christian churches" which have existed from the time of Christ,
and that now exist, and which, taken together, form Christ's spiritual
kingdom.
On the foregoing exegesis, which is the one commonly accepted by
orthodox Christians, I make the following several observations:
_First:_ The phrase with reference to the little Stone, "cut out of
the Living Rock," is one introduced by Dr. Smith, from whose "Old
Testament History" [28] the above analysis of Daniel's interpretation is
taken. The language of the Bible is, "cut out of the mountain without
hands." Why it is changed by the Doctor one may not conjecture, unless
it is to lay the foundation of an argument not warranted by the text
of Daniel's interpretation. It is enough here to note that the change
in phraseology is wholly gratuitous and unwarranted.
_Second:_ The claim that the "little Stone cut from the mountain
without hands," is
the "_Spiritual Kingdom of Christ_"--if by that "spiritual kingdom" is
meant not a real kingdom, actually existing, visible and tangible--is
an assumption of the Doctor's. It is not the language of the Bible, nor
is there any evidence in Scripture for believing that the "kingdom,"
represented by "the stone cut out of the mountain without hands,"
is any less a _material_ kingdom than those which preceded it. The
differences between this kingdom of God and the other kingdoms of the
vision are not in the kingdom being "spiritual," but in these: (1) that
the kingdom which God shall set up will never be destroyed; (2) never
left to another people: (3) will break in pieces and consume all other
kingdoms: (4) it shall fill the whole earth; (5) and stand forever. We
are warranted in the belief, however, that it will be a tangible, _bona
fide_, government of God on earth, consisting of a king; subordinate
officers; laws; subjects; and the whole earth for its territory--for
its dominion. The coming forth of such a government, the founding of
such a kingdom, is in harmony with all the hopes of all the saints,
and the predictions of all the prophets who have touched upon the
subject. It is the actual reign of Christ on earth with His Saints, in
fulfillment of the hopes held out to them in every dispensation of the
Gospel. It is to be the burden of the song of the redeemed out of every
kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation, that Christ has made them
unto their God kings and priests--"and we shall reign on the earth." [29] It
is to be the chorus in {XXXIX} heaven--the kingdoms of this world are
become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign
for ever and ever. [30] And the elders in heaven shall say:
We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and
art to come; because thou hast taken to thee Thy great power, and
hast reigned. And the nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come,
and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that Thou
shouldst give reward unto Thy servants the prophets, and to the
saints, and them that fear Thy name, small and great; and shouldst
destroy them which destroy the earth. [31]
And still again:
Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on
such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of
God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years. [32]
It should be observed respecting the last passage and the one preceding
it, that "the reign on earth" of the kingdom of God is connected with
the resurrection of the righteous saints; so that it will be the "last
days" indeed--not in the days of the Roman empire. And this reign of
the saints on earth, this kingdom of God which they shall constitute
shall be a reign of righteousness, but a veritable kingdom nevertheless.
_Third_: The orthodox exegesis under consideration omits one
important matter of fact, viz., that instead of four great dominant
political powers symbolized in the image which Nebuchadnezzar saw,
and which Daniel interpreted, there are five: viz., (1) The Head
of Gold--Babylonish kingdom; (2) the Chest and Arms of Silver--the
Medo-Persian monarchy; (3) the Brazen Belly and Thighs--the
Greco-Macedonian Empire: (4) the Legs of Iron--Rome; (5) the _Feet and
Toes_ mixed of _iron and clay_--the modern kingdoms and states of the
world.
This failure to recognize the fifth political power represented by the
feet and toes of Daniel's image leads to serious errors with respect
to this prophecy. It has led the theologians to assign the setting up
of God's kingdom spoken of in the prophecy to the wrong period of the
world's history. They say the kingdom represented by the stone cut
from the mountain without hands is "the spiritual kingdom of Christ;"
and that the said kingdom was set up in the days of Messiah's earthly
ministry in the meridian of time. This, however, cannot be correct; for
the Church which Jesus established by His personal ministry and which,
it is granted, is sometimes spoken of as the Kingdom of {XL} God,
was founded in the days of the Roman empire, the fourth world power
of Daniel's prophecy; and at a time, too, when imperial Rome was at
the very zenith of her glory and power. Whereas the terms of Daniel's
prophecy require that the kingdom which God shall establish, and which
was represented by the stone cut from the mountain without hands, shall
be set up in the days of the fifth political world power--in the days
of the kingdom represented by the pieces of iron and clay in the feet
and toes of the image. The language of the prophecy on this point is:
"And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and
part of iron, the kingdom [i. e. the political power so represented,
and that succeeds the fourth power or Roman empire,] shall be divided;
but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as
thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet
were part of iron, and part of clay, * * * they [i. e., the kingdom
represented by the pieces of iron and clay,] shall mingle themselves
with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as
iron is not mixed with clay. And in the days of _these kings_ [not in
the days of the Roman empire]--_in the days of these kings_ shall the
God of heaven set up a kingdom, which never shall be destroyed."
_Fourth:_ One of the peculiarities of the kingdom of God of Daniel's
prophecy is, that when it is established among men it will not only
never be destroyed, but "_the kingdom shall not be left to other
people_." By which saying we can only conclude that when the kingdom
of God shall be set up by the Lord in the last days, it will not
be taken from the people to whom it shall come, and be given to,
or left, to another people. But how stands it with the institution
which arose from the preaching of the Gospel in the days of Messiah's
earthly ministry, the church, sometimes called the kingdom of God,
and the kingdom of heaven? Was it not "left to other people"? Messiah
Himself said of the Jews, "Therefore say I unto you, _the kingdom of
God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the
fruits thereof._" This passage comes, too, as a conclusion to the
parable of the householder who let both his house and his vineyard
to unworthy husbandmen, who successively beat, stoned, and slew the
servants, and even the son and heir whom the master sent to collect
his portion of the fruit of the vineyard. "When the Lord of the
vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?" asked Jesus
of his hearers. "He will miserably destroy these wicked men," they
replied, "and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which
shall render him the fruits in their season." They had pronounced
judgment among themselves. The parable presented the case of the
Jews to whom Jesus was speaking, exactly, and Jesus quickly made the
application of the judgment--"Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of
God shall be taken from you, and given unto a nation bringing forth
the fruits thereof." [33] There can be no mistaking the meaning of the
parable or its application; and some years later we have Paul saying
to the contradicting and blaspheming Jews of Antioch in Pisidia: "It
was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to
you; but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of
everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. _For so hath the Lord
commanded us_." [34] And so it came to pass that as Israel in those days
rejected the Gospel of the kingdom which was first offered to them,
so God also rejected them; and they have stood rejected to this day;
smitten and trodden under food of the Gentile races, a scoff, a hiss,
and a byword in every land that they have inhabited; while the kingdom
of God first offered to them was left to other people, to the Gentiles,
who, for a season, brought forth the fruits thereof. But the fact that
the kingdom then preached to the Jews was taken from them and given to
another people, is proof positive that it was not the kingdom which was
to fulfill the terms of Daniel's great prophecy.
_Fifth:_ Another characteristic of the kingdom of God of Daniel's
prophecy is, that it will never be destroyed, but will break in pieces
and consume all other kingdoms, and stand for ever. This is not true of
that institution brought into existence by the preaching of Messiah and
the Apostles, sometimes called the kingdom of God, but more properly
the Church of Christ. Saddening as the thought may seem, the Church
founded by the labors of Jesus and His Apostles was destroyed from
the earth; the Gospel was perverted; its ordinances were changed; its
laws were transgressed; its covenant was, on the part of man, broken;
and the world was left to flounder in the darkness of a long period of
apostasy from God. For the reason, then, that the institution founded
by the preaching of the Apostles was destroyed in the earth, as well
as for the other reasons considered, the conclusion is forced upon the
mind that the Church founded by Jesus and the Apostles was not the
fulfillment of Daniel's great prophecy respecting the kingdom which God
promised to set up in the last days: and hence we may look for another
dispensation beyond the times of the Apostles, which will culminate in
subduing the kingdoms of this world and making them the kingdom of our
God and His Christ, followed by that reign of righteousness and peace
of which all the prophets have spoken.
Having considered the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time and
corrected the popular error which confounds that dispensation with the
{XLII} Dispensation of the Fulness of Times, it is necessary now to
consider the decline of the Christian religion.
_The Announcement of the Universal Apostasy_.
It is a most startling announcement with which the Prophet Joseph Smith
begins his message to the world. Concerning the question, he asked
God--"Which of all the sects is right, and which shall I join?" he says:
"_I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all
wrong, and the personage who addressed me said that all their
creeds were abomination in His sight: that those professors were
all corrupt; that they draw near to me with their lips, but their
hearts are far from me; they teach for doctrines the commandments
of men: having a form of godliness, but they deny the power
thereof._" [35]
This is a tremendous arraignment of all Christendom. It charges a
condition of universal apostasy from God, especially upon Christendom
that was dwelling in a fancied security of being the farthest removed
from the possibility of such a charge; each division of the so-called
Christian Church felicitating itself with the flattering unction that
its own particular society possessed the enlightened fullness of the
Christian religion. While the boldness of this declaration of the young
Prophet is astounding, upon reflection it must be conceded that just
such a condition of affairs in the religious world is consistent with
the work he, under the direction of divine Providence, was about to
inaugurate. Nothing less than a complete apostasy from the Christian
religion would warrant the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints. Of sects there were already enough in existence.
Division and subdivision had already created of confusion more than
enough, and there was no possible excuse for the introduction of a new
Christian sect. But if men through apostasy had corrupted the Christian
religion and lost divine authority to administer the ordinances of the
Gospel, it was of the utmost importance that a new dispensation of the
true Christian religion should be given to the world. It should also
be observed at this point, that Joseph Smith, then but a boy, scarcely
removed from childhood, was not himself pronouncing judgment upon the
status of Christendom. It was not he who declared the sects to be all
wrong, their creeds an abomination, and the professors thereof corrupt.
He of all persons, both on account of his extreme {XLIII} youthfulness
and his lack of general information, was among the least qualified
to pronounce upon such a question. Indeed, he himself confesses his
unfitness for such an office. His seeking knowledge from God upon this
very question--"which of all the sects is right?" is a confession
of his own inability to determine the matter. No human wisdom was
sufficient to answer that question. No man in all the world was so
pre-eminent as to be justified in proclaiming the divine acceptance of
one church in preference to another. Divine wisdom alone was sufficient
to pass judgment upon such a question; and there is peculiar force in
the circumstance that the announcement which Joseph Smith makes with
reference to this subject is not formulated by him nor by any other
man, but is given to him of God. God has been the judge of apostate
Christendom, Joseph Smith but His messenger, to herald that judgment to
the world.
It now becomes my melancholy task to trace through the early Christian
centuries the decline of the Christian religion. By this phrase I mean
that a really unchristian religion was gradually substituted for the
beautiful religion of Jesus Christ; that a universal apostasy from the
Christian doctrine and the Christian Church took place. So tracing
the decline of Christianity, I shall establish the truth of the first
great message with which the modern prophet, Joseph Smith, came to the
world; and shall also prove the fact, that a necessity existed for the
establishment of such a work as he claims, under God, to have founded,
and of which the several volumes of this work are the detailed history.
_Character of the Early Christians_.
First of all, it should be remarked that the early Christians were not
so far removed from the possession of the common weaknesses of humanity
as to preclude the possibility of apostatizing from the Christian
religion. Owing to our being so far removed from them in time, by which
many of their defects are obscured, and the exaggerated celebration of
their virtues, extravagant ideas of the sanctity of their lives, and
the holiness of their natures have very generally obtained, whereas a
little inquiry into the character of the early Saints will prove that
they were very human, and men of like passions with ourselves. The
mother of Zebedee's children exhibited a rather ambitious spirit, and
the two brethren themselves gave much offense to their fellow Apostles
by aspiring to sit one on the right hand of Jesus and the other on His
left when He should come in His kingdom. [36] Even Peter, the chief
Apostle, exhibited his full share of human weakness {XLIV} when he
thrice denied his Lord in the presence of his enemies, through fear,
and even confirmed that denial by cursing and swearing. [37] It was
rather a heated controversy, too, that arose in the early Christian
Church as to whether those who accepted the Christian faith were still
bound to the observances of the law of Moses, and more especially
to the rite of circumcision. Although there seems to have been an
amicable and authoritative settlement of that question by the decision
of what some learned writers have called the first general council
of the Church held by the Apostles and Elders at Jerusalem, [38] yet
the old difficulty broke out again and again, not only between the
Jewish saints and the Gentile converts, but even among the Apostles
themselves, leading to serious accusations one against another, the
straining of friendship between fellow-workmen in the ministry, through
criminations and recriminations.
After the settlement of this very question of circumcision by the
council at Jerusalem, Peter went down to Antioch and at first mingled
unreservedly with both Gentile and Jewish converts without distinction,
accepting both Jew and Gentile in perfect fellowship, departing
entirely from the restraints placed on a Jew by the law of Moses, which
rendered it unlawful for one who was a Jew to have such unrestricted
fellowship with the Gentiles. But when certain ones came down from
James, who resided at Jerusalem, then Peter, fearful of offending
"them which were of the circumcision," suddenly withdrew his social
fellowship from the Gentile converts. Other Jewish brethren did the
same; Barnabas, the friend of Paul, being among the number. Whereupon
Paul, as he himself testified, withstood Peter to the face, directly
charging him before all the brethren with dissimulation, saying: "If
thou being a Jew livest after the manner of Gentiles and not as do the
Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?" [39]
Yet this same Paul notwithstanding his loyalty to the Gentile converts
on that occasion, his zeal for the decision which had been rendered by
the council of the Church at Jerusalem, and notwithstanding his usually
strong moral courage, subsequently showed by his conduct, that he,
too, was not beyond the weakness of "becoming all things to all men;"
for a short time after the incident with Peter at Antioch, when in the
province of Galatia, and he desired Timothy to be his companion in the
ministry, Paul took him and circumcised him, because it was well known
that while his mother was a Jewess, his father was a Greek, and all
this for fear of the Jews. [40]
{XLV} This question continued to be a cause of contention, even after
this sharp disputation at Antioch; for though the decision of the
council at Jerusalem was against the contention of the Judaizing
party, yet they continued to agitate the question whenever opportunity
presented itself, and seemed especially to follow close upon the
footsteps of Paul in his missionary journeys; and in Galatia, at least,
succeeded in turning the saints of that province from the grace of
Christ unto another gospel, perverting the Gospel of Christ. [41] This
question continued to agitate the Church throughout the Apostolic age,
and was finally settled through overwhelming numbers of Gentiles being
converted, and taking possession of the Church, rather than through any
profound respect for the decision of the council at Jerusalem.
The withdrawal of John Mark from the ministry while accompanying
Paul and Barnabas on their first mission in Asia Minor, and which
withdrawal grew out of a faltering of his zeal or a misunderstanding
with his companions, will be readily called to mind. [42] Subsequently,
when Paul proposed to Barnabas that they go again and visit the
brethren in every city where they had preached while on their first
mission, a sharp contention arose between them about this same John
Mark. Barnabas desired to take him again into the ministry, but Paul
seriously objected; and so pronounced was the quarrel between them that
these two friends and fellow yokemen in the ministry parted company
no more to be united. It is just possible also that in addition to
this misunderstanding about John Mark, the severe reproof which Paul
administered to Barnabas in the affair of dissimulation at Antioch had
somewhat strained their friendship.
Turning from these misunderstandings and criminations among the leading
officers of the Church, let us inquire how it stood with the members.
The epistle of Paul to the church at Corinth discloses the fact that
there were serious schisms among them; some boasting that they were of
Paul, others that they were of Apollos, others of Cephas, and still
others of Christ; which led Paul to ask sharply, "Is Christ divided?
was Paul crucified for you?" [43] There were endless strifes as well as
divisions among them, which caused Paul to denounce them as carnally
minded. [44] Among them also was such fornication as was not named
among the Gentiles, "that one should have his father's wife!" And this
shameful sin had not humbled the church at Corinth, for Paul denounced
them for being puffed up in the presence of such a crime, rather than
having mourned over it. [45] They were in the habit of going {XLVI}
to law one with another, and that before the world, in violation of
the teachings of Jesus Christ. [46] They desecrated the ordinance of
the Lord's Supper by their drunkenness, for which they were sharply
reproved by the Apostle. [47] They ate and drank unworthily, "not
discerning the Lord's body; for which cause many were sickly among
them, and many slept" (that is, died). There were heresies also among
them, [48] some denying the resurrection of the dead, while others
possessed not the knowledge of God, which the Apostle declared was
their shame. [49] It is true, this sharp letter of reproof made the
Corinthian saints sorry, and sorry, too, after a godly fashion, in
that it brought them to a partial repentance; but even in the second
epistle, from which we learn of their partial repentance, the Apostle
could still charge that there were many in the church who had not
repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which
they had committed. [50] From this second letter, also, we learn that
there were many in the Church at large who corrupted the word of God;
[51] that there were those, even in the ministry, who were "false
prophets, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the Apostles
of Christ." [52]
Of the churches throughout the province of Galatia, it is scarcely
necessary to say more than we have already said concerning the invasion
of that province by Judaizing Christian ministers who were turning
away the saints from the grace of Christ back to the beggarly elements
of the law of carnal commandments; a circumstance which led Paul to
exclaim: "I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that had
called you unto the grace of Christ, unto another gospel; which is not
another, but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the
Gospel of Christ." [53]
That there were two distinct parties in the Church at this time,
between whom bitter contentions arose, is further evidenced by the
letter of Paul to the Philippians. Some preached Christ even of
envy and strife, and some of good will. "The one preach Christ of
contention, not sincerely," says Paul, "supposing to add affliction
to my bonds: but the other of love, knowing that I am set for the
defense of the Gospel." [54] "Beware of dogs," said he again to the
same people; "beware of evil workers; beware of the concision." [55]
"Brethren, be {XLVII} followers of me," he admonishes them, "and mark
them which walk so as ye have us for an example, for many walk of whom
I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the
enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is
their belly, and whose glory is their shame, who mind earthly things."
[56] To the Colossians Paul found it necessary to say: "Beware lest any
man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions
of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. * * *
* Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and
worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not
seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind." [57]
But it is in Paul's pastoral letters that we get a deeper insight into
corruptions threatening the early church, and even beginning to lay
the foundation for that subsequent apostasy which overwhelmed it. The
Apostle sent Timothy to the saints at Ephesus to represent him, that
he might charge some to teach no other doctrines than those which
he had delivered to them: "Neither give heed to fables and endless
genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying
which is in faith," for some had turned aside from the commandment
of charity, out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith
unfeigned, unto "vile jangling, desiring to be teachers of the law,
understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm." [58]
Others concerning faith had made shipwreck, of whom were Hymenaeus and
Alexander, whom Paul had delivered unto Satan that they might learn
not to blaspheme. [59] Others had "erred concerning the faith" and
had "given heed to vain babblings, and opposition of science falsely
so called." [60] In his second letter to Timothy, Paul informs him
that all the saints in Asia had turned away from him, "of whom were
Phygellus and Hermogenes." [61] He admonishes Timothy again to shun
"profane and vain babblings," "for," said he, "they will increase unto
more ungodliness, and their word will eat as doth a canker; of whom is
Hymenaeus and Philetus; who, concerning the truth, have erred, saying
that the resurrection is passed already, and overthrown the faith of
some." [62] Demos, once a fellow-laborer with Paul, had forsaken him,
"having loved this present world;" [63] and at Paul's first answer,
that is, when arraigned before the court at Rome, no man {XLVIII} stood
with him, but all men forsook him; he prays that God will not lay this
to their charge. [64]
Paul admonished Titus to hold fast to the faith, for there were
many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, especially those of the
circumcision; who subverted whole houses, teaching things which they
ought not, for filthy lucre's sake; and were giving heed to Jewish
fables and commandments of men and turning from the truth. [65]
Peter also had something to say with reference to the danger of
heresies and false teachers which menaced the Church. He declared that
there would be false teachers among the saints, who "privily would
bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and
bring upon themselves swift destruction." "And many," said he, "shall
follow their pernicious ways: by reason of whom the truth shall be evil
spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make
merchandise of you; whose judgment now for a long time lingereth not,
and their damnation slumbereth not. For if God spared not the angels
that sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them unto chains
of darkness to be reserved unto judgment"--he argued that the Lord
would not spare these corrupters of the Gospel of Christ, who, like the
dog, had turned again to his own vomit, and the sow who was washed to
her wallowing in the mire. [66] He charged also that some were wresting
the epistles of Paul, as they were some of the "other scriptures," unto
their own destruction. [67]
John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, also bears testimony to the
existence of anti-Christs, false prophets, and the depravity of many in
the early Church. "It is the last time," said he, "and as ye have heard
that anti-Christ shall come, even now there are many anti-Christs,
whereby we know that it is the last time;" * * * * "They went out from
us * * * * that they might be manifest that they were not all of us."
[68] "Try the spirits," said he, in the same epistle, "whether they are
of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world." [69]
Again: "Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver, an anti-Christ."
[70]
Jude also is a witness against this class of deceivers. He admonished
{XLIX} the saints to "contend earnestly for the faith which was once
delivered unto the saints;" "for," said he, "there are certain men
crept in unawares, * * * ungodly men, turning the grace of our God
into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus
Christ." [71] The rest of the epistle he devotes to a description of
their wickedness, comparing it with the conduct of Satan, and the
vileness of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
I have not given this review of the condition of the Church of Christ
in the Apostolic age with the view of establishing the idea that the
Church at that time was in a complete state of apostasy; nor have
I dwelt upon the weaknesses and sins of the early saints for the
purpose of holding them up for contempt. My only purpose has been to
dispel, first of all, the extravagant ideas that obtain in many minds
concerning the absolute sanctity of the early Christians; and secondly,
and mainly, to show that there were elements and tendencies existing
in the early Church, even in the days of the Apostles, that would,
when unrestrained by Apostolic authority and power, lead to its entire
overthrow.
We have no good reason to believe that there occurred any change
for the better in the affairs of the Church after the demise of the
Apostles, no reason to believe that there were fewer heresies or
fewer false teachers, or false prophets to lead away the people with
their vain philosophies, their foolish babblings, and opposition of
science falsely so called. On the contrary, one is forced to believe
the prediction of Paul, viz., that evil men and seducers would wax
worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived; [72] for who, after the
Apostles were fallen asleep, would stand up and correct the heresies
that were brought into the Church, rebuke the schismatics, the false
teachers and false prophets that arose to draw away disciples after
them? If false teachers insinuated themselves into the Church, brought
in damnable heresies by reason of which the way of truth was evil
spoken of, and the pure religion of Jesus Christ corrupted even while
inspired Apostles were still in the Church, it is not unreasonable to
conclude that all these evils would increase and revel unchecked after
the death of the Apostles.
_The Rise of False Teachers_.
I cannot, of course, in this introduction, enter into even a brief
history of false teachers in the early Christian centuries. That of
itself would be matter for a volume. I shall therefore content myself
with making quotations from reliable authorities that will directly
establish the fact of the rapid increase in the number of false
teachers, and the {L} pernicious effects of their doctrines upon the
Christian religion. It should be said before making these quotations,
however, that Protestant writers are interested in maintaining that the
Christian religion was perpetuated, even through the ages of apostasy,
and given back to mankind by the agency of the so-called "Reformation"
of the sixteenth century. Hence in their writings, when stating the
corruptions of the early Church, they are especially guarded lest
too strong a statement would lead to the belief that the Christian
religion had been utterly subverted. Indeed, it is well known that
Milner wrote his Church History--which should be regarded not so much
as the history of the Church as the history of piety--to counteract
the influence of Mosheim's Institutes of Ecclesiastical History, which
work Milner considered too frank in its statements of perversions
and abuses of religion. The Protestant writers must need set forth
the theory that the Christian religion survived all the abuses and
corruptions of it through ages of apostasy, else they would have no
logical ground for the sixteenth century "Reformation" to stand upon.
They seem not oblivious to the fact, though never mentioning it, that
if the Christian religion was displaced by a paganized religion--a
false religion--as is fully predicted, as we shall see later, in
the New Testament prophecies, and of which the works of Protestant
writers go far towards proving--then the only possible way in which
the true Christian religion and the Church of Christ could be restored
would be by re-opening of the heavens, and the giving forth of a
new dispensation of the Gospel, together with a renewal of divine
authority to preach it, and administer its ordinances of salvation.
Catholics hold that there has been no great apostasy in the Church.
Their theory is, that there has been a constant, unbroken, perpetuation
of the Christian Church from the days of the Messiah and His Apostles
until now; and that the Roman Catholic church is that very Church so
perpetuated through the ages. Catholic writers admit that there have
been very corrupt periods in the Church and many wicked prelates, and
some vile popes; yet they hold that the Church has persisted, that the
Christian religion has been preserved in the earth.
With these remarks on the position of the Protestant and Catholic
churches respecting their attitude on the subject of the perpetuation
of the Christian religion, I proceed with the quotations promised;
and, first, a passage from Neander's History of the Christian Religion
and Church, on the very great difference between the writings of the
Apostles and the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers; and the
suddenness of that transition, to the disparagement of the productions
of the Fathers:
A phenomenon, singular in its kind, is the striking difference
between {LI} the writings of the Apostles and the writings of
the Apostolic Fathers, who were so nearly their contemporaries.
In other cases, transitions are wont to be gradual; but in this
instance we observe a sudden change. There are here no gentle
gradations, but all at once an abrupt transition from one style
of language to another; a phenomenon which should lead us to
acknowledge the fact of a special agency of the Divine Spirit
in the souls of the Apostles. After the time of the first
extraordinary operations of the Holy Ghost followed by the period
of the free development of human nature in Christianity; and here,
as in all other cases, the beginning must be small and feeble
before the effects of Christianity could penetrate more widely, and
bring fully under their influence the great powers of the human
mind. It was to be shown first, what the divine power could effect
by the foolishness of preaching. The writings of the so-called
Apostolic Fathers have unhappily for the most part, come down to
us in a condition very little worthy of confidence, partly because
under the name of these men, so highly venerated in the Church,
writings were early forged for the purpose of giving authority to
particular opinions or principles; and partly because their own
writings which were extant became interpolated in subservience to a
Jewish hierarchical interest which aimed to crush the free spirit
of the Gospel. [73]
There is no authority of scripture for the supposition made here by
Dr. Neander that the extraordinary operations of the Holy Ghost were
to be confined to the Apostles; the whole tenor of scripture authority
is to the contrary. It is the theory of the Gospel itself, that all
who receive it, and particularly its ministers, shall have the divine
Spirit as a special agency working in their souls, through all time,
and there is no warrant for the belief that its operations were to be
confined to those who first received it and became its first ministers.
Therefore, this sudden transition in the matter of excellence and
trustworthiness between the writings of the Apostles and the writings
of the Apostolic Fathers indicates not only a deterioration in the
character of the teachers in the Church and what is taught, but more
especially indicates the progress of the "mystery of iniquity" which
was at work subverting the Christian religion and destroying the Church
of Christ.
On the question of forged books and writings mentioned in the passage
from Neander, Dr. Nathaniel Lardner refers to a dissertation written
by Dr. Mosheim, which shows the reasons and causes for the many forged
writings produced in the first and second centuries, and then adds:
"All own that Christians of all sorts were guilty of this fraud. Indeed
we may say it was one great fault of the times; for truth needs no such
defenses, and would blush at the sight of them." [74]
Eusebius, quoting Hegesippus on the subject of false teachers and
referring to the condition of the Church about the close of the first
century, says:
{LII} The Church continued until then [close of the first century]
as a pure and uncorrupt virgin, whilst if there were any at all
that attempted to pervert the sound doctrine of the saving Gospel,
they were yet skulking in dark retreats: but when the sacred choir
of Apostles became extinct, and the generation of those that had
been privileged to hear their inspired wisdom had passed away, then
also the combinations of impious errors arose by the fraud and
delusions of false teachers. These also, as there were none of the
Apostles left, henceforth attempted without shame, to preach their
false doctrine against the gospel of truth. [75]
Dr. Mosheim has the following on the same subject:
Not long after the Savior's ascension, various histories of
His life and doctrines, full of impositions and fables, were
composed by persons of no bad intentions, perhaps, but who were
superstitious, simple, and piously fraudulent; and afterwards
various other spurious writings were palmed upon the world, falsely
inscribed with the names of the holy Apostles. [76]
This condition of things with reference to the writers in the centuries
under consideration, naturally leads one to the reflection, that if
there were so much of fraud, and so many forged writings, what must
have been the state of the Church at this time with reference to oral
teaching? We are justified in believing, I think, that bad as was the
state of things with reference to the writings of these early teachers
of the Church, the discourses of such as preached may be depended
upon as being much worse. In this view of the case, one can readily
understand that the "authority of antiquity" so generally urged as a
reason for accepting the testimonies of the Fathers, that "handmaid to
scripture," as "antiquity" is sometimes called, the whole body of it,
written and oral, may indeed "be regarded," as Dr. Jortin remarks, "as
Briarean, for she has a hundred hands, and these hands often clash and
beat one another." [77]
Moreover, it often happens that those who are condemned by some of
these Fathers as heretics were not only censured for their heresies,
but sometimes for the truths which they held. For example: Papias,
a Bishop and Christian Father in the second century, is condemned
by Eusebius for saying that he received from Apostolic men--meaning
thereby men who were associated with the Apostles--the fact that there
would be a corporeal reign of Christ on earth with the saints, after
the resurrection, which would continue through a thousand years. [78]
{LIII} Prodicus is censured by Clement of Alexandria for holding that
men are by nature the children of Deity. [79]
Marcion, besides being condemned for his many errors, is also censured
by Irenaeus for believing in salvation for the dead, concerning which,
it must be acknowledged, Marcion did hold peculiar views; but that is
no reason why the general principle should be condemned. [80] He taught
that Jesus Christ went to Hades and preached there, and brought hence
all that believed on him. "The ancients," continue Irenaeus, as quoted
by Lardner, "being of opinion that eternal life is not to be obtained
but through faith in Jesus Christ, and that God is too merciful to let
men perish for not hearing the Gospel, supposed that the Lord preached
also to the dead, that they might have the same advantage with the
living." He further adds, "In the language of Marcion and the fathers,
hell does not necessarily mean the place of the damned; in that place
is Tartarus, the place of torment, and Paradise, or the bosom of
Abraham, a place of rest and refreshment. In that part of Hades Jesus
found the just men of the Old Testament. They were not miserable, but
were in a place of comfort and pleasure." "For Christ," he continues,
"promiseth the Jews after this life, rest in Hades, even in the bosom
of Abraham." This far the doctrine of Marcion is in strict agreement
with the New Testament, though denounced as blasphemy by his opponent.
The unfortunate part of Marcion's doctrine on this head is that he
taught that Cain and the wicked of Sodom and the Egyptians, and in fact
all the nations in general, though they had lived in all manner of
wickedness, were saved by the Lord, but that Abel, Enoch, Noah, and the
patriarchs and prophets and other righteous men who walked with God and
pleased Him in their earth life, did not obtain salvation because they
suspected that in the preaching of Christ in the spirit world there was
some scheme of deception to lead them away from their present qualified
acceptance with God, and therefore they would not come to Christ nor
believe in him, for which reason, as he says, "their souls remained in
hell." [81]
Marcion is also condemned for believing in the eternity of matter. [82]
So, too, Hermogenes is censured by Tertullian for the same cause, and
for arguing that God made the world out of matter and could not have
made it out of nothing. [83]
And so throughout there is censure and counter censure between the
orthodox and the heretics, and it is difficult at times to determine
which are the orthodox and which heretics, so frequently do they change
{LIV} places. Nor was there any improvement in the ages that succeeded
these that have been briefly considered. The editor of Dr. Jortin's
learned work on ecclesiastical history, William Trollope, on a passage
of Jortin's on the early fathers, says of the fathers of the fourth
century:
After the counsel of Nice, [84] a class of writers sprung up,
greatly inferior to their predecessors, in whatever light their
pretensions are viewed. Sadly deficient in learning, prejudiced
in opinion, and inelegant in style, they cannot be admitted for a
moment into competition with those who were contemporary with the
Apostles and their immediate successors. [85]
The whole tenor of his remarks is to the effect that while the fathers
of the second and third centuries, are not to be relied upon in their
interpretations of scripture, were frequently deceived in opinions, and
not always to be depended upon in matters of tradition, yet they were
greatly to be preferred in all respects to the fathers of succeeding
centuries.
_The Development of False Doctrines After the Death of the Apostles_.
Here, too, I shall rely very largely upon the conclusions of the
learned. Dr. Lardner, referring to the development of the heresies, the
seeds of which were sown in the days of the Apostles, says:
Eusebius relates that Ignatius, on his way from Antioch to Rome,
exhorted the churches to beware of heresies which were then
springing up, and which would increase; and that he afterwards
wrote his epistles in order to guard them against these
corruptions, and to confirm them in the faith. This opinion that
the seeds of these heresies were sown in the time of the Apostles,
and sprang up immediately after is an opinion probable in itself
and is embraced by several learned moderns; particularly by
Vitringa, and by the late Rev. Mr. Brekel of Liverpool. [86]
A certain Mr. Deacon attempted to refute the Mr. Brekel referred to
by Dr. Lardner, and to maintain the purity of the Church of the first
three centuries. On this Mr. Brekel observed that "If this point
were thoroughly examined, it would appear that the Christian Church
preserved her virgin purity no longer than the Apostolic age, at least
if we may give credit to Hegesippus." Relying upon the {LV} support of
the ecclesiastical history of Socrates, a writer of the first half of
the fifth century, Mr. Brekel also says: "To mention the corruptions
and innovations in religion of the four first centuries, is wholly
superfluous; when it is so very notorious, that, even before the reign
of Constantine, there sprang up a sort of heathenish Christianity which
mingled itself with the true Christian religion." [87]
Of the impending departure from the Christian religion immediately
succeeding the days of the apostles, Dr. Neander says:
Already, in the latter part of the age of St. Paul, we shall see
many things different from what they had been originally; and so it
cannot appear strange if other changes come to be introduced into
the constitution of the [Christian] communities, by the altered
circumstances of the times immediately succeeding those of St. Paul
or St. John. Then ensued those strongly marked oppositions and
schisms, those dangers with which the corruptions engendered by
manifold foreign elements threatened primitive Christianity. [88]
Dr. Philip Smith, the author of the "Students' Ecclesiastical History,"
in speaking of the early corruptions of the Christian religion, says:
The sad truth is that as soon as Christianity was generally
diffused, it began to absorb corruption from all the lands in which
it was planted, and to reflect the complexion of all their systems
of religion and philosophy. [89]
Dean Milman, in his preface to his annotated edition of Edward Gibbon's
great work, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and commenting
upon that great author's attitude respecting the Christian religion,
says:
If, after all, the view of the early progress of Christianity be
melancholy and humiliating, we must beware lest we charge the
whole of this on the infidelity of the historian. It is idle, it
is disingenuous to deny or to dissemble the early depravations of
Christianity, its gradual but rapid departure from its primitive
simplicity and purity, still more from its spirit of universal
love. It may be no unsalutary lesson to the Christian world, that
this silent, this unavoidable perhaps, _yet fatal change_ shall
have been drawn by an impartial, or even an hostile hand. [90]
Dr. Mosheim, in his "Institutes," deals at length with the abuses which
arose in the Church in the second and third centuries, which I abridge
to the following, and first as to the second century: Many rites were
added without necessity to both public and private {LVI} religious
worship, to the great offense of good men; and principally because of
the perversity of mankind who are more delighted with the pomp and
splendor of external forms and pageantry than with the true devotion of
the heart. There is good reason to believe that the Christian bishops
purposely multiplied sacred rites for the sake of rendering the Jews
and pagans more friendly to them. For both these classes had always
been accustomed to numerous and splendid ceremonies, and believed them
an essential part of religion. In pursuance of this policy, and to
silence the calumnies of the pagans and the Jews against them--to the
effect that the Christians were pronounced atheists, because destitute
of temples, altars, victims, priests, and all that pomp in which the
vulgar suppose the essence of religion to consist--the Christian
leaders introduced many rites, that they might be able to maintain
that they really had those things which the pagans had, only they
subsisted under different forms. Some of these rites--justified, as
was supposed, by a comparison of the Christian oblations with Jewish
victims and sacrifices--in time corrupted essentially the doctrine of
the Lord's supper, and converted it into a sacrifice. To add further to
the dignity of the Christian Religion, the churches of the east feigned
mysteries similar to those of the pagan religions; and, as with the
pagans, the holy rites of the mysteries were concealed from the vulgar:
"And they not only applied the terms used in the pagan mysteries to the
Christian institutions, particularly baptism and the Lord's supper,
but they gradually introduced also the rites which were designated by
those terms." This practice originated in the eastern provinces of the
empire, and thence, after the times of Adrian (who first introduced the
Grecian mysteries among the Latins), it spread among the Christians
of the west. "A large part, therefore, of Christian observances and
institutions, even in this century, had the aspect of the pagan
mysteries." In like manner many ceremonies and customs of the Egyptians
were adopted. [91]
Speaking of the third century the Doctor says that all the monuments
of this century show that there was a great increase of ceremonies in
the Church owing to the prevailing passion for the Platonic philosophy.
Hence arose the public exorcisms, the multiplication of fasts, the
aversion to matrimony, and the painful austerities and penances which
were enjoined upon offenders. [92]
_The Revolution of the Fourth Century: Constantine_.
It will be observed that I have so far confined my quotations
concerning the corruptions which arose in the Church to the first three
centuries {LVII} of the Christian Era. I have done so purposely; and
chiefly that I might show by such quotations that the forces which
were to bring about the destruction of the Christian Church were
active during those ages; and also because an event took place in the
first part of the fourth century that culminated in the triumph of
those forces. This event was the establishment of Christianity as the
state religion of Rome. Constantine the Great was the emperor under
whose reign this unlooked for revolution took place. He was the son
of Constantine Chlorus, emperor of the West in the preceding reign,
which reign he had shared with Galerius Maximianus, who ruled the
East. Constantine was an "emperor born of an emperor, the pious son of
a most pious and virtuous father," is the flattering announcement of
his parentage on the paternal side, by his contemporary, Eusebius, the
church historian; though he neglects to mention the obscure origin and
humble vocation (that of inn keeper) of his mother, Helena, whom her
husband repudiated when raised to the dignity of "Caesar" in the reign
of Diocletian.
Constantine was proclaimed emperor by the army in Britain on the death
of his father at York, 306 A. D.; but civil strife raged through the
empire for eighteen years, occasioned by the contending aspirants for
the imperial dignity. The future patron of Christianity, however,
overcame all his rivals and reigned sole monarch of Rome from 323 A.
D., to the time of his death, fourteen years later.
The policy of Constantine's father towards the Christians in his
division of the empire, the West, had been one not only of toleration
but also of friendship; and this policy the son followed from the
commencement of his career as emperor. The fact of both his own and
his father's friendliness toward the Church on the one hand, and the
hostility of his rivals against the Church on the other, brought to
him the united support of the Christians throughout the empire; and
though they were not so numerous as they are frequently represented to
be, yet it cannot be denied that the Christians were important factors
in determining the course of events in the empire at this time, and
truly they were faithful allies to Constantine, and he, on his part,
neglected not to meet their anticipations of reward.
A careful study of his life and character will force the conviction
upon the mind that Constantine was a most suitable head for the
revolution which ended by establishing a pseudo-Christianity as the
state religion of the decaying empire. A professed Christian for many
years, if we may believe Lactantius and Eusebius he postponed his
baptism, after the fashion of his times, until the very last year of
his life, in order that, purified at once from all the stains of sin
by means of it, he might be sure of entering into bliss. Such the
explanation of those who would defend this delay of the emperor's;
but one cannot fail to {LVIII} remember that it was quite customary
at this time among many professing the Christian religion to put off
baptism as long as they dared that they might enjoy a life of sin, and
then through the means of baptism, just before death, as by magic,
obtain forgiveness. [93] On the motives that prompted Constantine's
acceptance of Christianity, our historians are not agreed. According
to Eusebius his conversion was brought about through seeing in the
heavens a luminous cross at midday, and above it the inscription: "_By
this Conquer._" This miraculous sign was supplemented on the night
following by the appearance of Jesus Christ to the emperor in a dream,
with the same symbol, the cross, and directed him to make it the ensign
of his banners and his protection against the power of the enemy. [94]
According to Theodoret the emperor was converted through the arguments
of his Christian mother. [95] According to Zosimus, it was through
the arguments of an Egyptian Christian bishop--supposed to be Hosius,
Bishop of Corduba--who promised him absolution for his crimes, which
included a number of murders, if he would but accept Christianity. [96]
It is as difficult to settle upon the time of Constantine's conversion
as it is the means and nature of it. Neander inclines to the opinion
that he was early influenced in favor of Christianity through the
example if not the teachings of his parents, who, if not fully
converted to the Christian faith, were at least tolerant of it; and may
be reasonably counted among that number who at least admitted Christ
to the pantheon of the gods. But an act of his in 308 A. D., after the
death of his father, and he himself had been proclaimed emperor of
the West, shows that he was at that time still attached to the pagan
forms of worship; for hearing that the Franks who had been inclined
to rebellion against his government had, on his preparations to make
war upon them, laid down their arms, he offered public thanks in a
celebrated temple of Apollo and gave a magnificent offering to the god.
[97]
The story of his conversion as related by Eusebius would fix that
event in the year 312 A. D.; and surely if the open vision of the
luminous cross and the subsequent appearing of Christ in his dream,
were realities, Constantine had sufficient grounds for a prompt and
unequivocal conversion to the Christian faith. But after that, if
we consider the conduct of the emperor, we shall find him, however
astonishing it may seem, still attached to pagan ceremonies of
worship. As late as 321, A. D., nine years after the visitation of
Christ to him, we find him accused of artfully balancing the hopes and
fears of both his pagan and Christian {LIX} subjects by publishing
in the same year two edicts; the first of which enjoined the solemn
observance of Sunday; and the second directed the consultation of
the Haruspices [98]--the soothsayers of the old pagan religion. Of
this circumstance, Neander, who is disposed to palliate the conduct
of Constantine as far as possible, after intimating that this lapse
might be accounted for on the grounds of state policy, says, "Yet the
other hypothesis, viz., that Constantine had actually fallen back into
heathen superstitions may indeed be regarded as the more natural."
[99] Five years after his supposed miraculous conversion "we find
marks of the pagan state religion upon the imperial coins." [100] "A
medal was struck," says Dr. John W. Draper, doubtless referring to
the same thing, "on which was impressed his [Constantine's] title of
'God,' together with the monogram of Christ." "Another," he continues,
"represented him as raised by a hand from the sky while seated in the
chariot of the Sun. But more particularly the great porphyry pillar,
a column one hundred and twenty feet in height, exhibited the true
religious condition of the founder of Constantinople. The statue on
its summit mingled together the Sun, the Savior, and the Emperor. Its
body was a colossal image of Apollo, whose features were replaced by
those of Constantine, and around the head, like rays, were fixed the
nails of the cross of Christ recently discovered in Jerusalem." [101]
While on the day Constantinople was formally made the capital of the
empire, he honored the statue of Fortune with his gifts. In view of
all these acts, ranging as they do over the greater part of the first
Christian emperor's life, and through many years after his supposed
conversion, I think Gibbon is justified in his remarks upon this part
of Constantine's conduct: "It was an arduous task to eradicate the
habits and prejudices of his education, to acknowledge the divine power
of Christ, and to understand that the truth of _his_ revelation was
incompatible with the worship of the gods." [102]
Turning from the consideration of the equivocal conduct of the
emperor to his character, we have a subject about which there is less
disagreement among authorities; for even Christian apologists are
compelled to admit the wickedness of this first Christian emperor.
"Relying with presumptuous confidence," says Neander, "on the great
things which God had done, through him, for the advancement of the
Christian Church, he found it easy to excuse or extenuate to his
conscience many a wrong deed, into which he had suffered himself to be
betrayed by {LX} ambition, the love of rule, the arbitrary exercise of
power, or the jealousy of despotism." [103]
"It is indeed true that Constantine's life was not such as the precepts
of Christianity required," Dr. Mosheim remarks, but softens the
statement against the emperor by saying that, "It is but too notorious
that many persons who look upon the Christian religion as indubitably
true and of divine origin, yet do not conform their lives to all its
holy precepts." [104]
Dr. Lardner, after drawing a most favorable outline of Constantine's
person and character, and citing the flattery of contemporary
panegyrists as a description of the man, says: "Having observed these
virtues of Constantine, and other things, which are to his advantage; a
just respect to truth obligeth us to take notice of some other things,
which seem to cast a reflection upon him." [105] And then in the most
naive manner he adds: "Among these, one of the chief is putting to
death so many of his relatives!" He enumerates the victims of the
first Christian emperor as follows: "Maximilian Herculius, his wife's
father; Bassianus, husband of his sister Anastasia; Crispus, his own
son; Fausta, his wife; Licinius, husband of his sister Constantia;
and Licinianus, or Licinius the younger, his nephew, and son of the
forementioned Licinius." [106] The last named victim was a mere lad
when put to death, "not more than a little above eleven years of age,
if so much," is Dr. Lardner's own description of him. Fausta was
suffocated in a steam bath, though she had been his wife for twenty
years and mother of three of his sons. It should be remembered that
this is the list of victims admitted by a most learned and pious
Christian writer, not a catalogue drawn up by pagan historians, whom
we might suspect of malice against one who had deserted the shrines
of the ancient gods for the faith of the Christians. But this rather
formidable list of murdered victims admitted by Dr. Lardner, shakes not
his faith in the goodness of the first Christian emperor. Some of these
"executions" he palliates, if not justifies, on the ground of political
necessity; and others on the ground of domestic perfidy; though he
almost stumbles in his efforts at excusing the taking off of Crispus,
the emperor's own son; Fausta, his wife; and the lad Licinius. "These
are the executions," he says, "which above all others cast a reflection
upon the reign of Constantine; though there are also hints of the death
of some others about the same time, with whom Constantine had till then
lived in {LXI} friendship." [107] After which the Doctor immediately
adds--in the very face of all the facts he adduces, and after reciting
the condemnation of both heathen and Christian writers of some of these
murders--the following: "I do by no means think that Constantine was
a man of a cruel disposition; and therefore I am unwilling to touch
upon any other actions of a like nature: as his making some German
princes taken captive, fight in the theatre; and sending the head of
Maxentius to Africa, after it had been made a part of Constantine's
triumphal entry at Rome." When one finds a sober Christian writer of
the eighteenth century who can thus speak of Constantine; and further
remembers that to this day a priest of the Greek church seldom mentions
the name of the "imperial saint," without adding the title, "_Equal
to the Apostles_;" one is not surprised that while he lived, and at
his court a Christian bishop could be found who "congratulated him as
constituted by God to rule over all, in the present world, and destined
to reign with the son of God in the world to come." [108] Or that
Eusebius, who is spoken of as one of the best bishops of the imperial
court, "did not scruple for a moment to ascribe to the purest motives
of a true servant of God all those transactions into which the emperor,
without evincing the slightest regard to truth or to humanity, had
suffered himself to be drawn by an ambition which could not abide a
rival, in the struggle with Licinius; when he represents the emperor,
in a war which, beyond a doubt, had been undertaken from motives of
a purely selfish policy, as marshalling the order of the battle, and
giving out the words of command by divine inspiration bestowed in
answer to his prayer." [109]
Enough of this. Let us look no longer at this first of the Christian
emperors through the eyes of churchmen seeking to extol his virtues
and hide his crimes, all for the honor of the Church. So odious had he
become in Rome for his many murders that a pasquinade which compared
his reign to that of the detested Nero was nailed to the palace gates.
"The guilty emperor," says one, "in the first burst of anger, was on
the point of darkening the tragedy, if such a thing had been possible,
by a massacre of the Roman populace who had thus insulted him." His
brothers were consulted on this measure of vengeance, however, and
the result of their counsel was a resolution to degrade Rome to a
subordinate rank, and build a metropolis elsewhere, and hence the new
capital of the empire rose on the shores of the Bosphorus.
Reflecting upon the career of Constantine from the days of his young
manhood, which had in it something of the quality that makes the
successful leader of men, to the time when he fell under the influence
of the false priests of a corrupted religion, Draper says:
{LXII} From the rough soldier who accepted the purple at York, how
great the change to the effeminate emperor of the Bosphorus, in
silken robes stiffened with threads of gold, a diadem of sapphires
and pearls, and false hair, stained of various tints; his steps
stealthily guarded by mysterious eunuchs flitting through the
palace, the streets full of spies, and an ever watchful police! The
same man who approaches us as the Roman imperator retires from us
as the Asiastic despot. In the last days of his life he put aside
the imperial purple, and, assuming the customary white garments,
prepared for baptism, that the sins of his long and evil life might
all be washed away. Since complete purification can thus be only
once obtained, he was desirous to procrastinate that ceremony to
the last moment. Profoundly politic, even in his relations with
heaven, he thenceforth reclined on a white bed, took no further
part in worldly affairs, and, having thus insured a right to the
continuance of that prosperity in a future life which he had
enjoyed in this, expired. [110]
And so Gibbon:
The sublime theory of the gospel had made a much fainter impression
on the heart, than on the understanding, of Constantine himself.
He pursued the great objects of his ambition through the dark
and bloody paths of war and policy; and, after the victory,
he abandoned himself, without moderation, to the abuse of his
fortune. Instead of asserting his just superiority above the
imperfect heroism and profane philosophy of Trajan and the
Antonines, the mature age of Constantine forfeited the reputation
which he had acquired in his youth. As he gradually advanced
in the knowledge of truth, he proportionately declined in the
practice of virtue; and the same year of his reign in which he
convened the council of Nice, was polluted by the execution, or
rather murder of his eldest son [Crispus]. * * * * At the time
of the death of Crispus, the emperor could no longer hesitate in
the choice of religion; he could no longer be ignorant that the
church was possessed of an infallible remedy, [baptism] though he
chose to defer the application of it till the approach of death
had removed the temptation and danger of a relapse. * * * * The
example and reputation of Constantine seemed to countenance the
delay of baptism. Future tyrants were encouraged to believe that
the innocent blood which they might shed in a long reign would
instantly be washed away in the waters of regeneration; and the
abuse of religion dangerously undermined the foundations of moral
virtue. [111]
Such, then, was the first Christian emperor. He uplifted "Christianity"
from the condition of a persecuted religion, and made it the state
religion of Rome; and also provided means for its wider acceptance.
If for this it shall be claimed, as it is, that much in his evil life
should be overlooked, it would still be pertinent to ask whether his
acts in connection with Christianity did not debase rather than exalt
it; and if his provisions for its wider acceptation did not tend rather
to the corruption of what remained true in the Christianity then
extant, than to the establishment of true religion.
{LXIII} _Christianity made a Persecuting Religion_.
The edict of Milan, by which was intended no more than the
establishment of religious liberty in the empire, and which was issued
in 313 A. D., by Constantine and his colleague, Licinius, was well
enough. Freedom to teach and practice the truth is all the Christian
church could ask or expect. Had he stopped here, his action in this
particular would have met with universal applause. But he went beyond
this. He not only protected the Christians by his laws, but prohibited
by express edicts the free exercise of religion to the pagans. His
proscriptions were mild at first, going no further than to prohibit
soothsaying and divination in private houses or anywhere in secret.
Later, however, if we may believe the words of Eusebius, he placed the
pagan religion under the ban of the laws. Eusebius says:
The emperor proceeded to act with great vigor, gave the government
of the provinces chiefly to Christians, and when any Gentiles
were made governors they were prohibited to sacrifice. Which
law comprehended not only presidents of provinces but also
higher officers, and even the praetorian praefects. If they
were Christians, they were required to act according to their
principles. If they were otherwise disposed, still the practice
of idolatrous rites were forbidden. * * * * And soon after that
were two laws published, at one and the same time, one prohibiting
the detestable rites of idolatry hitherto practiced in cities and
country places; and that for the future none should erect statues
to the gods, nor perform the vain arts of divination, nor offer up
any sacrifices. The other law was for enlarging Christian oratories
and churches, or for rebuilding them more grand and splendid. [112]
When contrasting the course of the first Christian emperor with the
pagan emperors, Eusebius says, "They commanded the temples to be
magnificently adorned; he demolished them to the foundation, especially
such as were most respected by superstitious people." [113] Later
he expressly says that throughout the whole Roman empire, the doors
of idolatry were shut to the commonalty and to the soldiery, and
that "every kind of sacrifice was prohibited." Again he says, that
there were several laws published for these purposes, forbidding
sacrifices, divinations, raising statues, and the secret mysteries
or rites of initiation. And he says further, that "in Egypt a sort
of priesthood, consecrated to the honor of the Nile, was entirely
suppressed." [114] I am not unmindful that some respectable authorities
question if Constantine really departed from the policy of toleration
announced in his edict of Milan; and that even Gibbon is inclined
to believe in his toleration of {LXIV} paganism. The statement here
made by Eusebius, the contemporary and biographer of Constantine,
however, together with reference to the edicts of suppression quoted
by his son Constans in the succeeding reign, and which is quoted by
Lardner, [115] establishes beyond question the policy of intolerance
of Constantine toward paganism. Especially when what Eusebius has said
is supplemented by the fact that the emperor destroyed a number of
heathen temples, and peremptorily ordered the closing of the others.
Among the heathen temples destroyed was one at Aegae, in Cilicia,
erected to Aesculapius, celebrated for the number of sick that had been
healed there, and held in high esteem by men of the better class among
the pagans and philosophers. It is said that by its destruction and
the public exhibition of certain images of the gods, many tricks of
the priests were exposed and became objects of sport to the populace.
[116] But while this may have been the conduct of some insincere
pagans, those who remained heathens, as LeClerc has well said, "were
no doubt extremely shocked at the manner in which the statues of their
gods were treated; and could not consider the Christians as men of
moderation. For, in short, those statues were as dear to them, as
anything, the most sacred, could be to the Christians." [117] Eusebius
taunted the philosophers about the destruction of the temple, without
any interference on the part of the god to whom it had been erected,
apparently all unmindful of the fact that just such taunts had been
hurled at the Christian martyrs in the days that the "kingdom of
God suffered violence, and the violent took it by force." "Had not
Eusebius," remarked Lardner, "often heard with his own ears, and
read in the history of ancient martyrs, the insults and triumphs of
the heathens over the Christians, that they professed themselves the
worshipers of the great and only true God, and yet everybody, that
pleased, was able to molest and destroy them, as he saw good?" [118]
The zeal of Christian writers has done all in its power to excuse or
palliate the conduct of Constantine in his acts for the suppression of
the pagan religion and worship; but after all is said by his apologists
that can be said; after every allowance is conceded for the times in
which he lived, and the previous conduct of the pagans through two
centuries of violence towards the Christians, the fact remains that
the first Christian emperor did by his edicts put the ancient religion
of the empire under the ban of the law, and by acts of violence
destroyed some of its temples and closed the rest by imperial decree,
that the pagan gods might not be worshiped; and this, doubtless, with
the approval--and it would not {LXV} be difficult to believe, under
all the circumstances, at the suggestion--of Christian bishops who
thronged his court. On the foundation of intolerance thus laid by him,
others hastened to build. In the succeeding reign, among the first laws
enacted was this one against pagan sacrifices:
Let superstition cease; let the madness of sacrificing he
abolished. For whoever shall presume contrary to the constitution
of our father, a prince of blessed memory, and contrary to this
command of our clemency, to offer sacrifices, let a proper and
convenient punishment be inflicted, and execution presently done
upon him. [119]
This edict was supplemented a few years later [120] by the following
edict:
It is our pleasure that in all places and in all cities, the
temples be immediately shut, and carefully guarded that none may
have the power of offending, It is likewise our pleasure, that all
our subjects should abstain from sacrifices. If any one should be
guilty of such an act, let him feel the sword of vengeance; and
after his execution, let his property be confiscated to the public
use. We denounce the same penalties against the governors of the
provinces, if they neglect to punish the criminals. [121]
It is not necessary to pursue the subject much further. It will be
sufficient to say that during the fourth century, by following the
policy of suppression inaugurated by this first Christian emperor,
Christianity was changed from a persecuted to a persecuting religion.
Without restraint from the ecclesiastical authorities, the Christian
emperors issued edicts against the pagan religion, proscribed its
followers, destroyed its temples, and confiscated its property to the
uses of the rival religion. Even Neander, speaking of this revolution,
and constrained as he is to say all that he can for the honor of the
Christian Church, is compelled to admit that "the relation of things
had become reversed. As in former times the observance of the pagan
ceremonies, the religion of the state, had appeared in the light of
a civil duty, and the profession of Christianity in that of a crime
against the state; so now it was the case, not indeed that the outward
profession of Christianity was commanded as a universal civil duty, for
against this the spirit of Christianity too earnestly remonstrated;
but that the exercise of the pagan religion was made politically
dangerous." [122] In the pages of this eminent Christian historian
one may read that before the close of the century which witnessed the
elevation of Christianity to the dignity of the state religion of the
empire, wild troops of Christian monks were undertaking campaigns,
especially in the country, for the destruction of the {LXVI} heathen
temples in which sacrifices were alleged to have been performed;
of bishops who not only superintended the destruction of heathen
temples at the head of bands of soldiers and gladiators, but paraded
through the streets of the cities the symbols of the heathen faith,
provoking civil conflicts which Christian emperors did not hesitate
to take advantage of for the more complete suppression of paganism.
[123] Meantime a pagan apologist, Libanius, arises to plead the cause
of religious toleration, and in the course of his address to the
Christian emperor, Theodosius, he puts to shame the Christianity then
in vogue, by showing the emperor how far the Church had departed from
the spirit of the Christian religion, by saying: "Force is said not
to be permitted, even according to the laws of your own religion:
persuasion is said to be praised, but force condemned by them. Why
then, do you wreak your fury against the temples, when this surely
is not to persuade, but to use force? Thus, then, it is plain you
would transgress even the laws of your own religion." [124] Lardner
calls attention to the fact that as under pagan emperors previous to
Constantine Christianity had been in a state of persecution, so now,
after Constantine, he proceeds to show that paganism under Christian
emperors was all along in a state of persecution--"However, I would
hope, not so severe and vigorous as that of the Christians in the
foregoing period of near three hundred years." [125] And so LeClerc, as
quoted by Lardner:
Thus it was that the Christians continued to return to the pagans
what they had suffered from them during the first three centuries,
instead of gaining them by patience and mildness, which they had
so much recommended when they were the weakest. This conduct
was proper to make the pagans more obstinate, by teaching them
that the Christians affected to speak of humanity and moderation
from interest only, and not from a principle of religion as they
pretended. At least it is certain, that thereby they lost the
right to complain of the manner in which the pagans had treated
them in times past, or to boast of the mildness of their religion,
which they effectually disparaged by those persecutions. * * * Nor
ought we to imagine that the penalties laid by Christians upon the
pagans were light. If a sacrifice was offered in a private place,
with the knowledge of the proprietor, the place was confiscated;
if not, they were to pay a fine of twenty pounds of gold, as much
as if it had been done in a temple; and in some cases the penalty
of death was appointed. We may look into the oration of Libanius
for the temples, where that orator sustains the same character
before Theodosius as the Christians had formerly done before pagan
emperors. I must acknowledge that this phenomenon, if I may so call
it, gives me pain: for I could wish that they who defended the
{LXVII} truth had preserved to themselves the honor of being the
only persons that were persecuted for religion. [126]
_Persecution of "Heretics_."
Once started upon the policy of suppressing by force those of a
different religion, Christianity did not stop with the persecution
of the pagans; bad and un-Christian as that was, still more serious
results occurred from the persecutions inflicted upon so-called
heretics in the Church, by those who were considered orthodox. It
is true that there were heretics in the Church before the days of
Constantine; much progress had been made in the matter of paganizing
Christianity, and more or less of intolerance was manifested by
Christian sects towards one another; but it was the policy and example
of this first Christian emperor that laid the real foundation for
that monument of shame and disgrace to the Christian name which rises
upon the plains of Christian discord and strife and war waged against
heretics in the name and for the glory of Christ. It is this which
constitutes the most melancholy page of ecclesiastical history.
In his office of supreme pontiff in the old pagan religion, which he
held by virtue of being emperor of Rome, Constantine may naturally have
supposed that the supreme headship of the religion he had protected and
the Church he had elevated fell to him for the same reason; and with
it the right to reconcile differences, compose factions, and determine
what should be the orthodox faith. At any rate we find him acting
somewhat in this capacity. When contending church parties appealed
to him, he at first was indifferent to their disputes, and tried to
shame them into harmony by referring to the conduct of the Greek
philosophers, who never discussed difficult questions before ignorant
multitudes; who could "maintain their arguments without losing their
temper; and assert their freedom without violating any friendship."
[127] His efforts at reconciling the differences that arose among
Christians over what is known as the Arian controversy were of no
avail; and after six years of bitter strife, the emperor summoned the
bishops of the Church to Nicea in Bithynia. After long deliberation
Arianism was condemned, and orthodox Christianity was established by
decree of the council, ratified by the emperor, to which all Christians
must conform. Those who resisted the divine judgment of the synod
must prepare themselves for immediate exile. [128] How effectual
the argument, "belief or banishment," even among the bishops at the
council, was, may be determined from the fact that "the opposition to
the decision of the council was almost {LXVIII} instantly reduced from
seventeen to two." [129] In his zeal to enforce orthodoxy the emperor
forgot his former moderation, and in 326 A.D.--the year following the
council of Nicea--he issued a general edict against heretics, in which,
after condemning his own past forbearance as occasioning men's being
seduced, he says to the various heretical parties:
Wherefore, since this your pernicious wickedness is no longer to
be endured, we by this present law command you, that you no more
presume to meet together. And we have given orders that all those
places where you are wont to hold assemblies should be taken away.
Yea, our concern for this matter is such, that we not only forbid
you to assemble to any public place; but we likewise forbid all
assemblies of your foolish superstition in private houses, and
in all private places whatever. All of you, therefore, who have
any sincere love of truth, come to the Catholic church. And that
this remedy may have its full effect, we ordain that all your
superstitious conventicles, I mean oratories of all heretics, if it
be fit to call such houses oratories, be forthwith taken away, and
without any opposition delivered to the Catholic church: and that
the rest of your places be adjudged to the public. [130]
"Thus the dens of heretics were laid open by the imperial edict,"
exultantly exclaims Eusebius, the Christian bishop, "and the wild
beasts, the ring leaders of their impiety, were scattered." [131] And
thus was the paganized Christian church launched upon that career
of persecution of heretics within the church, as well as upon the
policy of persecuting those of a different religion; a policy that has
filled the world with religious wars, and deeds of cruelty which would
better become the reign of a Nero than Christian rulers of Christian
nations. It is a terrible arraignment which Gibbon draws against
apostate Christendom in the concluding paragraph of his review of the
persecutions which had been endured by the followers of Christ in the
Christian centuries preceding Constantine. He says:
We shall conclude this chapter by a melancholy truth, which
obtrudes itself on the reluctant mind; that, even admitting,
without hesitation or inquiry, all that history has recorded,
or devotion has feigned, on the subject of martyrdoms, it must
still be acknowledged that the Christians, in the course of their
intestine dissensions, have inflicted far greater severities on
each other than they have experienced from the zeal of infidels.
During the ages of ignorance which followed the subversion of the
Roman empire in the west, [132] the bishops of the imperial city
extended their dominion over the laity as well as clergy of the
Latin church. The {LXIX} fabric of superstition which they had
erected, and which might long have defied the feeble efforts of
reason, was at length assaulted by a crowd of daring fanatics, who,
from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, assumed the popular
character of reformers. The church of Rome defended by violence
the empire which she had acquired by fraud; a system of peace and
benevolence was soon disgraced by proscriptions, wars, massacres,
and the institution of the holy office; and as the reformers were
animated by the love of civil as well as religious freedom, the
Catholic princes connected their own interest with that of the
clergy, and enforced by fire and sword the terror of spiritual
censures. In the Netherlands alone more than one hundred thousand
of the subjects of Charles the Fifth are said to have suffered
by the hand of the executioner; and this extraordinary number is
attested by Grotius, a man of genius and learning, who preserved
his moderation amidst the fury of contending sects, and who
composed the annals of his own age and century, at the time when
the invention of printing had facilitated the means of intelligence
and increased the danger of detection. If we are obliged to submit
our belief to the authority of Grotius, it must be allowed that the
number of protestants who were executed in a single province and
a single reign far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the
space of three centuries, and of the Roman empire! [133]
Both Guizot and Milman, eminent Christian scholars, annotated the
work of Edward Gibbon, the former in French, the latter in an English
edition; and at every point where they could modify a statement or
soften a passage apparently unjust to Christianity, they did so; but in
the presence of the important and terrible passages just quoted, they
remained absolutely silent! Nor has any other Christian writer since
their day, so far as I know, attempted to contradict the statement of
Mr. Gibbon. It is proper to say, however, that in a note Mr. Gibbon
himself cites the fact that Fra Paola, an Italian writer, places the
number of Belgic martyrs at fifty thousand, but even that computation
would still leave the conclusion of Mr. Gibbon's reflections unimpaired.
The circumstance of the Church elevated by Constantine becoming a
persecuting Church is a strong evidence of its paganized state; for
the true Christian religion is not a persecuting religion; the true
Church of Christ is not a persecuting Church. When the Samaritans would
not receive the Messiah, some of the Apostles would have them consumed
by fire from heaven; but the Master turned and rebuked them, saying,
"Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is
not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." [134] It is true
that Messiah said: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth:
I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at
variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall
be {LXX} they of his own household." [135] This, however, is but a
prediction of the effect of the proclamation of the Gospel, not an
authorization to force the acceptance of Christianity by the sword; nor
does it authorize the Church to invoke the arm of the civil authority
to execute by force her doctrinal decrees. The Gospel of Jesus Christ,
it is true, did not bring peace, but a sword; the sword, however, was
found in the hands of those who rejected the Gospel, not in the hands
of those who accepted and preached it. And when the Church departed
so far from the spirit of Christ that she grasped the sword in her
own hands, or dictated the civil authority to wield it in her behalf,
and that became the policy of the Church, the adoption of that policy
proclaimed her apostate condition to the world, in a manner to be known
and read of all men.
_Christianity Before and After Constantine_.
I think sufficient has been said to justify the belief that the reign
of Constantine marks the period when the paganization of Christianity
had become complete. I do not mean by this that there is any particular
date which one may set down to show that here true Christianity ceases,
and there apostate Christianity begins; which is a point frequently
insisted upon by those who contend for the unbroken perpetuity of
Christianity from the days of Messiah. They demand to know on what
night it was that the whole collection of Christians, of different
nationalities and languages, went to bed sound in the Christian faith,
to awake the next morning all pagans. [136] I claim no such sudden
revolution brought about the apostasy which I am sure took place. We
have seen by what has already been said, that even in the time of the
Apostles there was a tendency on the part of the Christians to depart
from the religion of Jesus Christ; that after the days of the Apostles
there was a steady increase in the number and influence of false
teachers; an insidious introduction of heresies; a multiplication of
rites and ceremonies well known in the pagan celebration of religious
mysteries, but entirely foreign to the Gospel; and an amalgamation
of pagan doctrines with Christian principles. It remains to be shown
that there was a steady increase of immorality among the professing
Christians; a marked loss of spirituality; a rapid growth of pride and
worldliness on the part of Christian bishops and other church leaders;
and at last, an utter departure from the true and living God and Jesus
Christ whom He had sent, and the establishment of a system in its
place, as debasing to men as it was dishonorable to God.
Taking then the reign of Constantine as the period beyond which the
{LXXI} true religion of Christ did not extend, nor the true Church
of Christ exist, let us consider Christianity before his reign and
after it. Here I shall ask the reader to take into account as part of
the consideration of Christianity previous to Constantine what I have
already set before him in this introduction concerning the tendency
to division and heresies which existed in the Church in the days of
the Apostles; and also those quotations I have made from eminent
Christian authorities, which give evidence of the early corruption of
Christianity, and which too plainly testify that it was in a state of
steady decline through the second and third centuries, until it was fit
only for such enthronement as a Constantine could give it, when he made
it the state religion of a corrupt empire hastening to its decay. If
the reader will do this, it will obviate the necessity of my referring
to these matters again.
_Decline in Moral and Spiritual Living Among Christians_.
It will be conceded that the Gospel of Jesus Christ commands a very
high order of moral and spiritual living, and that the Apostles
enjoined this moral law upon the early saints as essential to the favor
of God. Others also after the days of the Apostles, followed in the
same admonition, and indeed the sharp contrast that existed between the
lives of converts before and after their acceptance of Christianity
was a matter of pride not only to St. Paul, [137] but to Justin Martyr
of the second century, who, in reference to the change produced in the
lives of Christian converts, said:
We who were once slaves of lust, now have delight only in purity
of morals; we, who once practiced arts of magic, have consecrated
ourselves to the Eternal and Good God; we, who once prized gain
above all things, give even what we have to the common use, and
share it with such as are in need; we, who once hated and murdered
one another, who on account of differences of customs would have
no common hearth with strangers, do now, since the appearance of
Christ, live together with them; we pray for our enemies; we seek
to convince those that hate us without cause, so that there may
order their lives according to Christ's glorious doctrine and
attain to the joyful hope of receiving like blessings with us from
God, the Lord of all. [138]
It was not long, however, before there was a marked departure from
this high moral level among the Christians. In tracing that decline I
shall use chiefly the History of the Church by Joseph Milner, published
in 1794. My reason for doing so is as follows: I have already stated
in this writing, that Milner wrote what some regard as his "great
history of the Church," to counteract the influence of Dr. Mosheim's
splendid "Institutes of Ecclesiastical History," which is evidently
by some {LXXII} regarded as too much a history of the perversions and
abuses of religion. Milner plainly informs his readers that he intends
to write the history of those only who have been real, not nominal,
Christians, irrespective of the external Church to which they belonged,
proceeding upon the theory that these good men constitute the Church
of Christ. His history, in other words, is a history of piety, not of
the Church. It will be his purpose therefore to exalt the morality
of the Christians in all ages; and I quote his work respecting the
moral deteriorations of the Christians that I may not be charged with
quoting authorities who some think have made too much of Christian
shortcomings. Milner says that a gloomy cloud, concerning moral
conditions, hung over the close of the first century, and proceeds to
argue that the first impressions made by the effusions of the spirit
are the strongest; that human depravity overborne for a time arose
afresh, particularly in the next generation, and hence the disorders
of schisms and heresies in the Church. Neander does not agree with the
philosophy of Milner. He says, "Christianity, since it first entered
human nature, has operated, wherever it has struck root, with the
same divine power for sanctification; and this divine power cannot
be weakened by the lapse of ages. In this respect, therefore, the
period of the first appearance of Christianity could have no advantage
over any of the following ages of the Christian Church." [139] And
he follows this declaration with a statement, that the change which
Christianity produced in the lives of those who accepted it appeared
so strongly marked by the contrast it presented with what they had
previously been when pagans. The correctness of the philosophy I
shall leave these two great Christian authorities to settle between
themselves. I am concerned more particularly with the facts in the case.
In consequence of the prominence that has been given to the
persecutions of the Christians during the first three centuries, the
impression very extensively prevails that the early Christian Church
was constantly under the hard pressure of continuous and relentless
persecutions. This, however, is not the case. There were many periods
of peace granted to the Christians. Indeed their periods of persecution
were only occasional, and it is a question if these periods of
peace were not more detrimental to Christianity than the seasons of
persecution. Milner, under the authority of Origen, says that the
long peace granted the Church in the third century, during the reign
of the several emperors, from about 260 A. D., to the opening of the
fourth century, produced a great degree of luke-warmness and religious
indecorum. "Let the reader," he says, "only notice the indifference
which Origen here describes and the conduct of Christians both in the
first and second centuries, and {LXXIII} he will be affected with the
greatness of the declension." Then he quotes Origen: "Several come to
church only on solemn festivals, and then not so much for instruction
as diversion. Some go out again as soon as they have heard the lecture,
without conferring or asking the pastors questions. Others stay not
till the lecture is ended, and others hear not so much as a single
word, but entertain themselves in a corner of the church." [140]
Coming to the middle of the third century, just previous to that severe
persecution inaugurated by the emperor Decius, and speaking of Cyprian,
Bishop of Carthage, Milner exclaims: "A star of the first magnitude,
when we consider the time in which he lived! Let us recreate ourselves
with the contemplation of it. We are fatigued with hunting for
Christian goodness, and we have discovered but little and that little
with much difficulty. We shall find Cyprian to be a character who
partook indeed of the declensions which we have noticed and lamented,
but who was still far superior, I apprehend, in real simplicity and
piety, to the Christians of the East." [141] This same Cyprian, in
which Milner delights, speaking of the effects of the long peace upon
the Church which preceded the Decian persecution, says:
Each had been bent on improving his own patrimony, and had
forgotten what believers had done under the Apostles, and what
they ought always to do. They were brooding over the arts of
amassing wealth; the pastors and the deacons each forgot his duty;
works of mercy were neglected, and discipline was at the lowest
ebb; luxury and effeminacy prevailed; meritricious arts in dress
were cultivated; fraud and deception practiced among brethren.
Christians would unite themselves in matrimony with unbelievers;
could swear, not only without reverence but without veracity. With
haughty asperity they despised their ecclesiastical superiors; they
railed against one another with outrageous acrimony, and conducted
quarrels with determined malice. Even many bishops, who ought to
be guides and patterns to the rest, neglected the peculiar duties
of their stations, gave themselves up to secular pursuits. They
deserted their places of residence and their flocks; they traveled
through distant provinces in quest of pleasure and gain; gave no
assistance to their needy brethren, but were insatiable in their
thirst of money. They possessed estates by fraud and multiplied
usury. What have we not deserved to suffer for such conduct? Even
the divine word hath foretold us what we might expect: "If his
children forsake my law and walk not in my judgments, I will visit
their offenses with the rod and their sins with scourges." These
things had been denounced and foretold, but in vain. Our sins had
brought our affairs to that pass, that because we had despised the
Lord's directions, we were obliged to undergo a correction of our
multiplied evils and a trial of our faith by severe remedies. [142]
{LXXIV} Referring to the long reign of peace in the closing decade of
the third century, Milner says:
This new scene [the toleration of Christianity by a pagan
government] did not prove favorable to the growth of grace and
holiness. In no period since the Apostles was there ever so great a
general decay as in this. Not even in particular instances can we
discover during this interval much of lively Christianity. [143]
Here I drop Milner to take up Eusebius, who was an eye witness of the
moral declension among the Christians previous to the last great pagan
persecution under the emperor Diocletian. Referring to the long period
of peace which the Church had enjoyed--a period of forty years--he says:
But when, by reason of excessive liberty, we sunk into negligence
and sloth, one envying and reviling another in different ways,
and we were almost, as it were, upon the point of taking up arms
against each other with words as with darts and spears, prelates
inveighing against prelates, and people rising up against people,
and hypocrisy and dissimulation had arisen to the greatest height
of malignity, then the divine judgment, which usually proceeds
with a lenient hand, whilst the multitudes were yet crowding into
the Church, with gentle and mild visitations began to afflict
the episcopacy; the persecution having begun with those brethren
in the army. But as if destitute of all sensibility, we were not
prompt in measures to appease and propitiate the Deity; some indeed
like atheists, regarding our situation as unheeded and unobserved
by a Providence, we added one wickedness and misery to another.
But some that appeared to be our pastors deserting the law of
piety, were inflamed against each other with mutual strifes, only
accumulating quarrels and threats, rivalship, hostility and hatred
to each other, only anxious to assert the government as a kind of
sovereignty for themselves. [144]
Here I shall avail myself of some reflections upon this condition
which I have elsewhere expressed; [145] Let it be remembered that
what is said in the foregoing quotation is from a writer contemporary
with the events, and who says, in the very chapter following the one
from which I have just quoted, that it was not for him to record the
dissensions and follies which the shepherds of the people exercised
against each other before the persecution. He also adds: "We shall
not make mention of those that were shaken by the persecution, nor
of those that suffered shipwreck in their salvation, and of their
own accord were sunk in the depths of the watery gulf." [146] Then
in his Book of Martyrs, referring to events that occurred between
the edicts ordering the persecution, he says: "But the events that
occurred in the intermediate times, besides {LXXV} those already
related, I have thought proper to pass by; I mean more particularly
the circumstances of the different heads of the churches, who from
being shepherds of the reasonable flocks of Christ, that did not
govern in a lawful and becoming manner, were condemned by divine
justice, as unworthy of such a charge, to be the keepers of the
unreasonable camel, an animal deformed in the structure of his body;
and condemned further to be the keepers of the imperial horses. *
* * * Moreover, the ambitious aspirings of many to office, and the
injudicious and unlawful ordinations that took place, the divisions
among the confessors themselves, the great schisms and difficulties
industriously fomented by the factions among the new members, against
the relics of the Church, devising one innovation after another, and
unmercifully thrusting them into the midst of all these calamities,
heaping up affliction upon affliction. All this, I say, I have resolved
to pass by, judging it foreign to my purpose, wishing, as I said in
the beginning, to shun and avoid giving an account of them." [147]
Hence, however bad the condition of the Church is represented to be
by ecclesiastical writers, we must know that it was still worse than
that; however numerous the schisms; however unholy the ambition of
aspiring prelates; however frequent and serious the innovations upon
the primitive ordinances of the Gospel; however great the confusion
and apostasy in the Church is represented to be; we must know that it
is still worse than that, since the Church historians contemporaneous
with the events refused to record these things in their fulness, lest
it should prove disastrous to the Church; just as some of our modern
scholars professing to write Church history express their determination
to close their eyes to the corruption and abuses which form the greater
part of the melancholy story of ecclesiastical history, for fear that
relating these things would make it appear that real religion scarcely
had any existence. [148]
I shall say no more upon the matter of moral declensions among
Christians, except this: If there was such moral declensions among
Christians as is represented by the foregoing high authorities on
Christian affairs in the centuries preceding Constantine, what moral
declension must have prevailed when from a proscribed religion
Christianity was exalted to the dignity of the state religion of the
empire; and her prelates and clergy were recalled from exile and
suffering, poverty and disgrace, and loaded with the wealth and honors
that the lord of the Roman world could bestow? Consider, in this
connection, the propositions of Constantine at the council of Nicea
for the propaganda of Christianity, and pass a candid judgment upon
the moral or rather immoral effect they would produce upon the Church.
Neander thus states them:
{LXXVI} "_The heathen would be most easily led to salvation, if the
condition of the Christians were made to appear to them in all respects
enviable_.
"_They [the bishops] should consider, that the advantage to be derived
from preaching could not belong to all_.
"_Some, he said, might be drawn to the faith by being seasonably
supplied with the means of subsistence_.
"_Others were accustomed to repair to that quarter where they found
protection and intercession (alluding to the intercessions of the
bishops)_.
"_Others would be won by an affable reception_.
"_Others by being honored with presents_.
"_There were but few who honestly loved the exhibitions of religious
doctrine; but few were the friends of truth (therefore but few sincere
converts)_.
"_For this reason they should accommodate themselves to the characters
of all, and like skillful physicians, give to each man that which might
contribute to his cure, so that in every way the saving doctrine might
be glorified in all_." [149]
The effect of adopting such methods for the more rapid propagation
of Christianity, as is here proposed by the emperor to the bishops
assembled at the council of Nicea, must be apparent to all, and is
quite universally lamented by Christian writers of later ages. "A
course of proceeding upon such principles," remarks Neander himself,
"must entirely have thrown open a wide door for all manner of
hypocrisy. Even Eusebius, the panegyrist of Constantine, blinded as
he was by the splendor which the latter had cast over the outward
Church--even he is obliged to reckon among the grievous evils of this
period, of which he was an eye witness, the indescribable hypocrisy
of those who gave themselves out as Christians merely for temporal
advantage, and who, by their outward show of zeal for the faith,
contrived to win the confidence of the emperor, which he suffered
them to abuse." [150] "The piercing eye of ambition and avarice,"
says Gibbon, "soon discovered that the profession of Christianity
might contribute to the interest of the present as well as of a future
life. The hopes of wealth and honors, the example of an emperor, his
exhortations, his irresistible smiles, diffused conviction among the
venal and obsequious crowds which usually fill the apartments of a
palace. The cities which signalized a forward zeal by the voluntary
destruction of their temples, were distinguished by municipal
privileges and rewarded with popular donatives. * * * As the lower
ranks of society are governed by imitation, the conversion of those
who possessed any eminence of birth, of power, or of riches, was soon
followed by dependent multitudes. The salvation of the common people
was purchased at an easy rate, if it be true that in one year {LXXVII}
twelve thousand men were baptized at Rome, besides a proportionable
number of women and children; and that a white garment, with twenty
pieces of gold, had been promised by the emperor to every convert."
[151]
Under all these circumstances it is small wonder if men exclaimed as
Augustine did somewhat later in his commentary on St. John--"How many
seek Jesus only that He may benefit them in earthly matters! One man
has a law suit, so he seeks the intercession of the clergy: another is
oppressed by his superior, so he takes refuge in the Church. Others
are seeking, one in this way and another in that, to be interceded for
in some quarter where they have but little influence themselves. The
Church is daily full of such persons. Seldom is Jesus sought for Jesus'
sake!" [152] After nicely balancing the possibility and probability
of those who came into the Church for present worldly advantage being
converted in time to a true faith in the Christian religion, Neander
says: "Beyond all doubt the number was far greater of those who grew
hardened in that worldly sense by which from the first they had
profaned a holy profession, and who were thus the means of introducing
into the Church a great mass of corruption."
"Unhappily," he adds, "there were bishops whose only wish was to make
the conversion to Christianity a right easy thing for the pagans. * * *
Hence they baptized even those who lived in open sin, and who plainly
enough manifested that it was not their purpose to forsake it. They
imagined that when these were only baptized and introduced into the
fellowship of the Church, it was then time enough to admonish them
against sin." [153] Surely it was not difficult among such a mass of
unconverted members thus brought into the Church to find elements that
would foster the errors, both in ethics and in doctrine, which about
this time arose in the Church. It is small wonder that it was well nigh
publicly adopted in this age--as we are informed by Mosheim--"That
to deceive and lie is a virtue when religion can be promoted by it,
and that error in religion ought to be visited with penalties and
punishments." The first of these evils resulted in the accumulation of
that mass of myth and fable that burdens the annals of the dark ages;
the second established the "holy inquisition," alike the shame of the
Roman Catholic church and the so-called Christian civilization she has
influenced. "It is almost incredible," continues Mosheim, speaking of
the first evil referred to, "what a mass of the most insipid fables,
and what a host of pious falsehoods have, through all the centuries,
grown out of it, to the great detriment of true religion. If some
inquisitive person were to examine the conduct and the writings of the
{LXXVIII} great and most pious teachers of this century, I fear he
would find about all of them infected with this leprosy." "Those idle
fictions," he adds, "which a regard for the Platonic philosophy, and
for the prevailing opinions of the day had induced most theologians
to embrace, even before the time of Constantine, were now in various
ways confirmed, extended and embellished. Hence it is that we see, on
every side, evident traces of excessive veneration for departed saints;
of a purifying fire for the soul when separated from the body; of the
celibacy of the clergy; of the worship of images and relics; and of
many other opinions, which in process of time almost banished the true
religion, or"--and here the Doctor perhaps remembered that he was a
Protestant and that his position as such would not admit of conceding
the utter subversion of the Christian religion, and hence added--"or
at least very much obscured and corrupted it." "Genuine piety" he
continues, "was supplanted by a long train of superstitious observances
which originated partly from opinions inconsiderately embraced, partly
from a preposterous disposition to adopt profane rites and combine them
with Christian worship, and partly from the natural predilections of
mankind in general for a splendid and ostentatious religion." [154]
_The Loss of Spiritual Gifts_.
Not only did the moral declensions in the Church, which started soon
after the demise of the Apostles, proceed with accelerated pace after
Constantine became the patron of the Church, and with such resulting
evils as I have pointed out, but there was a like declension in the
enjoyment of spiritual gifts in the Church. It is well known that the
Apostles promised the Holy Ghost to those who received the Gospel, and
the enjoyment of those supernatural gifts which go with it. Indeed
Jesus Himself said in His last commission to his disciples:
Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that
believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them
that believe: In my name they shall cast out devils; they shall
speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they
drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay
hands on the sick, and they shall recover. [155]
Paul, in speaking of the spiritual gifts promised in the Gospel, says:
Now there are diversities of gifts, by the same Spirit. And there
are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there
are {LXXIX} diversities of operations, but it is the same God which
worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given
to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit
the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same
Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts
of healing by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles;
to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits, to another
diverse kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues:
but all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing
to every man severally as He will. [156]
It is well known that the spiritual gifts here enumerated were enjoyed
by the saints in the early Christian centuries; and especially in
Apostolic times. The New Testament books are replete with reference to
the enjoyment of these gifts of the Spirit among the saints. Nor is
there any intimation of the discontinuance of them. On the contrary it
is reasonable to conclude that so long as the saints shall continue in
the enjoyment of the Holy Ghost, that long also will they enjoy the
spiritual gifts which proceed from a possession of Him. Moreover, "the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections
and lusts." [157] Such are the effects of the operations of the Holy
Ghost upon the nature of man. These fruits of the Spirit indicate the
change that the Spirit of God may effect in human nature; by which that
which is corrupted through sin may be conformed to that which is pure
and holy, according to the working whereby the Spirit is able to subdue
all things unto Himself, in them that give place for His indwelling
in their souls. This effectual working of the Spirit in the souls of
men, by which they were transformed from vileness to holiness, was
the boast of the early saints. And, upon reflection, all will concede
that the victories of the Spirit in reforming the lives of men and
making them in their very nature conform to the likeness of Christ in
righteousness, are more to be desired and more to be celebrated than
those victories which are physical or intellectual merely in their
nature. Indeed these latter fruits of the Spirit derive their chief
value from the extent to which they contribute to the production of
the former--that is, to the extent that they establish men in the
faith, enable them to crucify the flesh with the lusts thereof, and
help them to live in harmony with the sweet influence of the Spirit of
God. When men live in harmony with that Spirit there will righteousness
obtain; there will love abound; there will the Gospel of Christ
appear triumphant. Where these fruits do not appear, there the Gospel
of Christ is not; there the powers of darkness for the time being,
are triumphant. Yet notwithstanding this promise {LXXX} concerning
the enjoyment of the spiritual gifts of the Gospel, the evidence is
abundant and conclusive that when all the Apostles were deceased, then
there was a marked declension in the manifestation of the spiritual
powers of the Gospel. "With the close of the New Testament records,"
says Dr. Phillip Smith, author of The Student's Ecclesiastical History,
"and the death of the last surviving Apostle, the history of the Church
passes from its sacred to its purely human phase. The miraculous gifts
which attested the divine mission of the Apostles ceased; not indeed by
any formal record of their withdrawal, but by the clear evidence that
they were possessed no longer." [158]
Dr. Jortin bears witness to the same fact. He says:
The words Eusebius intimated that he thought those extraordinary
powers to be, at least, not very common afterwards--[_i. e._, the
beginning of the second century]. "They went about," says he, "with
God's co-operative grace, for even then the divine Spirit performed
many miracles by them." * * * This brings the probability of
miracles down to the beginning of the second century, in the middle
of which Justin Martyr says: "There are prophetic gifts among us
even until now:" and amongst these gifts he reckons up miraculous
powers, as healing the sick, casting out evil spirits, etc. His
words imply an opinion that such gifts were not only exercised in
his time, but had been continued down to his time, and he may be
justly supposed to speak the sense of his contemporary Christians;
and that is all that I cite him for. It seems probable that if we
bad a full and authentic history of the propagation of the Gospel,
from the time of the Apostles to the middle of the second century,
composed by eye witnesses and by the preachers of Christianity, we
should find miracles wrought for the conversion of the pagans. But
from A. D. 70 to 150 is a dark interval, and we have very short
accounts of the transactions of those days, unless we should accept
of groundless rumors and frivolous tales. [159]
So, also, Dr. Mosheim, speaking of the second century, and after
commenting on the extent to which the extraordinary divine gifts
contributed to the extension of the limits of the Church, says: "The
gift of foreign tongues appears to have gradually ceased, as soon as
many nations became enlightened with the truth; * * * but the other
gifts with which God favored the rising Church of Christ, were, as we
learn from numerous testimonies of the ancients, still conferred upon
particular persons here and there." And when writing of the fourth and
succeeding centuries, he, too, bears witness of the declension, and
final cessation of these spiritual powers among the Christians; and,
indeed, the most of our ecclesiastical writers form the same conclusion.
Thus the Christians lost the enjoyment of the spiritual gifts of
the {LXXXI} Gospel, such as inspired dreams, prophecies, healings,
speaking in new tongues, ministering of angels, and, most to be
lamented of all, direct revelation from God, by which the will of God
might be made known to His people and His Church preserved from error,
from decadence, and from destruction: and by the absence of these
spiritual gifts and powers among the Christians of the third and fourth
centuries, we may know that a mere man-made religion, having indeed a
form of godliness but denying the power thereof, had succeeded to the
spiritually gifted religion, of Jesus Christ, wherein the power of God
is ever present and outwardly as well as inwardly manifested.
_Departure of "Christendom" from the True Doctrine of Deity_.
In nothing perhaps was there a wider departure from the real truth
of Christianity than in the doctrine concerning God defined by the
general council of the Church held within the lifetime of Constantine,
and which, in fact, he assembled upon his own authority. This was the
celebrated Council of Nicea in Bithynia, Asia Minor, held in 325 A.D.
The main purpose for which the first general Council of the Church was
assembled was to settle a dispute between one Arius, a presbyter of
Alexandria, and his bishop, Alexander, of the same city, respecting
the doctrine of the Godhead. The dispute proved to be far-reaching in
its effects, and for three hundred years the rivalry of the contending
factions disturbed the peace of Christendom. We shall have clearer
conceptions of the subject, however, and be better able to judge of the
extent to which there was a departure from the true doctrine respecting
the Godhead, by the definitions formulated and enforced upon the Church
by the council of Nicea, if we first consider the doctrine of the
Godhead as found in the Testament.
_The Christian Doctrine of God_.
The existence of God both Jesus and the Apostles accepted as a fact.
In all the teachings of the former He nowhere seeks to prove God's
existence. He assumes that, and proceeds from that basis with His
doctrine. He declares the fact that God was His Father, and frequently
calls Himself the Son of God. [160] After His resurrection and
departure into heaven, the Apostle taught that He, the Son of God, was
with God the Father in the beginning; that He, as well as the Father,
was God; that under the direction of the Father He was the Creator of
{LXXXII} worlds; that without Him was not anything made that was made.
[161] That in him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; [162]
and that He was the express image of the Father's person. [163] Jesus
Himself taught that He and the Father were one [164] that whosoever
had seen Him had seen the Father also; [165] that it was part of His
mission to reveal God, the Father, through His own personality; for
as was the Son, so too was the Father. [166] Hence Jesus was God
manifested in flesh--a revelation of God to the world. [167] That is, a
revelation, not only of the _being_ of God, but of the _kind_ of being
God is.
Jesus also taught (and in doing so showed in what the "oneness" of
Himself and His Father consisted) that the disciples might be one
with Him, and also one with each other, _as_ He and the Father were
one. [168] Not one in person--not all merged into one individual, and
all distinctions of personality lost; but one in mind, in knowledge,
in love, in will--one by reason of the indwelling in all of the one
spirit, even as the mind and will of God the Father was also in Jesus
Christ. [169]
The Holy Ghost, too, was upheld by the Christian religion to be God.
[170] Jesus ascribed to Him a distinct personality; as proceeding from
the Father; as sent forth in the name of the Son, as feeling love;
experiencing grief; as forbidding; as abiding; as teaching; as bearing
witness; as appointing to work; and as interceding for men. All of
which clearly establishes for Him a personality.
The distinct personality of these three individual Gods (united however
into one Godhead, or Divine Council), was made apparent at the baptism
of Jesus; for as He, God the Son, came up out of the water from His
baptism at the hands of John, a manifestation of the presence of the
Holy Ghost was given in the sign of the dove which rested upon Jesus,
while out of the glory of heaven the voice of God the Father was heard
saying, "This," referring to Jesus, "is my beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased." The distinctness of the personality of each member of
the Godhead is also shown by the commandment to baptize those who
believe the Gospel equally in the name of each person of the Holy
Trinity. That is, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the {LXXXIII} Holy Ghost. [171] And again, also, in the Apostolic
benediction, viz., "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of
God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." [172]
These three personages constitute the Christian Godhead, the Holy
Trinity. In early Christian theology they were regarded as the Supreme
Governing and Creating Power in heaven and in earth. Of which Trinity
the Father was worshiped in the name of the Son, while the Holy Ghost
bore record of both the Father and the Son. And though the Holy Trinity
was made all of three distinct persons, yet did they constitute but one
Godhead, or Supreme Governing Power.
This outline of the doctrine of God derived from the New Testament
represents Him as anthropomorphic; that is, like man in form; or,
rather, it re-affirms the old doctrine found in the book of Genesis,
viz., that man is created in the image of God, and after His likeness.
The outline of New Testament doctrine of God also ascribes to Him what
are called human attributes and feelings; but as in the foregoing we
first say that God is represented as being in human form, and then to
get the exact truth say: "Or, rather, man was created in the image and
likeness of God," so in this latter case, when we have said that the
doctrine of the New Testament ascribes human attributes and feelings to
God, to get the exact truth we should say: "Or, rather, man possesses
the attributes of God"--the attributes of knowing, willing, judging,
loving, etc.--though it should be stated, of course, that man does not
possess these attributes in their perfection, as God does. The same may
also be said of the physical perfections. While man has been created in
the image and likeness of God, yet our bodies in their present state
of imperfection--sometimes stunted in growth, diseased, subject to
sickness, wasting, decay, and death--cannot be said to be like God's
glorious, perfect physical body, yet we have the Divine word that our
bodies shall be like His:
"_For our conversation is in heaven: from whence also we look for the
Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it
may be {LXXXIV} fashioned like unto His glorious body, according to the
working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself._"
[173]
So also the attributes of the spirit of man--the attributes of the
mind--now imperfect, impure, unholy, and limited in the range of vision
and apprehension of things, owing largely to the conditions in which
man finds himself placed in this earth-life (and all for a wise purpose
in God's economy); yet the time will come that it will be with the
spirit as with the body; for God shall change our vile spirit that it
may be fashioned like unto His own glorious spirit, "according to the
working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself."
That whereas now we see only as through a glass, darkly, then we shall
see as we are seen; that whereas now we know but in part, then we shall
know even as we are known. [174]
The foregoing doctrine of God, taught to the Christians in Apostolic
times, awakened their pious reverence without exciting their curiosity.
They dealt with no metaphysical abstractions, but were contented to
accept the teachings of the Apostles in humble faith, and believed that
Jesus Christ was the complete manifestation of Deity, and the express
image of God His Father; and hence a revelation to them of God; while
the Holy Ghost they accepted as God's witness and messenger to them.
_Paganization of the Christian Doctrine of God_.
But Christianity, as is well known, came in contact with other
doctrines concerning Deity. It was almost immediately brought in touch
with the mysticism of the Orient and also with the philosophy of the
Greeks, who took so much delight in intellectual subtleties. In the
Oriental philosophies, and in the Greek, there was conceived the idea
of a trinity in Deity; an idea which possibly may have come down from
the doctrines revealed to the patriarchs concerning the Godhead, but
which had been corrupted and rendered unintelligible by the vain
philosophizings of men. In some of the Oriental systems the trinity
or Trimurti consisted of Brahma, the Creator; Vishnu, the Preserver;
and Siva, the Destroyer. It will be seen, however, that this trinity
is not necessarily one of persons, or individuals, but may be one of
attributes, qualities, or even a trinity of functions in _one being_;
and in this way it is usually understood. [175]
Plato's trinity is sometimes stated in the terms, "First Cause; Reason,
or Logos; and Soul of the Universe;" but more commonly in these:
"Goodness, Intellect, and Will." The nature of the Greek trinity has
long been a matter of contention among the learned, and one indeed
that is not settled to this day. Is there indicated in his system
"a true and proper tri-personality, or merely a personification of
three impersonalities," a trinity of attributes or functions? The
answers to these questions are varied, and would require too much
space for consideration here. Christians having been taught to accept
the New Testament doctrine of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as
constituting one Godhead, Christianity no sooner came in contact with
the philosophies of the Greeks and Egyptians than there was an effort
made to {LXXXV} identify the Christian trinity with that of the Greek
and other philosophies. The temptation to do this was very great.
Christianity was a proscribed religion and its followers detested.
Whenever it could be shown, therefore, that under new symbols the
Church really taught the same doctrines that the old philosophers,
which were held in esteem, did, it was regarded as a distinct gain
to Christianity. The mere fact of Christianity teaching a trinity of
any kind was a sufficient basis of comparison, under the temptation
offered, and hence in a short time we have the alleged followers of
Christ involved in all the metaphysical disputations of the age. The
chief difficulty in those speculations was to define the nature of
the Logos, or Word of God; a title that is given to our Savior by the
Apostle St. John, [176] be it remembered. Adopting absolute "being"
as the postulate of their conception of God, absolute oneness, and
therefore absolute singleness, their difficulties arose in trying
to reconcile the existence of three persons in the Godhead to the
postulate of unity. The disputations were carried on chiefly concerning
Christ, the "Word," in His relationship to the Godhead; and the
disputants concerned themselves with such questions as these: "Is
Jesus the Word?" "If He be the Word, did He emanate from God in time
or before time?" "If He emanated from God, is He co-eternal and of
the _same_, that is _identical_, substance with Him, or merely of
a _similar_ substance?" "Is He distinct from the Father, that is,
separate from Him, or is He not?" "Is He made or begotten?" "Can He
beget in return?" "Has He paternity, or productive virtue without
paternity?" Similar questions were asked as to the other Person of
the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. These questions were violently agitated
at Alexandria by the bishop of that city, Alexander, and one of the
presbyters, Arius, 318-321 A. D.; thence spread throughout Christendom,
and culminated finally in the Council at Nicea, 325 A. D. Arius
held the doctrine that Logos or Word was a dependent or spontaneous
production created out of nothing by the will of the Father, hence
the Son of God, by whom all things were made, begotten before all
worlds; but there had been a time when the Logos _was not_; and also
He was of a substance, however similar it might be, different from
the Father. This doctrine, in the minds of the opponents of Arius,
detracted from the divine nature of Christ, in fact, denied Him true
Deity and relegated Him to the position of a creature, against which
the piety of a large number of Christians rebelled. After six years of
hot disputation and frequent appeals by the contestants to the emperor,
the council of Nicea was assembled and the mysteries of the Christian
faith submitted to public debate, a portion of the time, at least, in
the presence of the emperor, who, {LXXXVI} to some extent, seemed to
exercise the functions of president over the assembly. The doctrine of
Arius was condemned, and after "long deliberations, among struggles,
and scrupulous examinations," the following creed was adopted:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, creator of all things
visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of
the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God,
begotten, not made, being of the same substance with the Father, by
whom all things were made in heaven and in earth, who for us men
and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate, was
made man, suffered, rose again the third day, ascended into the
heavens, and He will come to judge the living and the dead; and in
the Holy Ghost. Those who say there was a time when He was not,
and He was not before He was begotten, and He was made of nothing
(he was created), or who says that He is of another hypostatis, or
of another substance (than the Father), or that the Son of God is
created, that he is mutable, or subject to change, the Catholic
church anathematizes. [177]
Arius himself was condemned as a heretic and banished into one of the
remote provinces, Ilyricum, his friends and disciples branded by law,
with the odius name of "Porphyrians," because it is supposed that
Arius, like Porphyry, had sought to injure Christianity. His writings
were condemned to the flames and a capital punishment was pronounced
against those in whose possession they should be found. Three years
later, however, through the influence of the women at the imperial
court, Constantine softened in his demeanor towards Arius and his
followers. The exiles were recalled and Arius himself was received at
court and his faith approved by a synod of prelates and presbyters at
Jerusalem; but on the day that he was to be publicly received in the
cathedral church at Constantinople, by the order of the emperor, who,
by the way, received the sacrament at the hands of Arius, he expired
under circumstances which have led many to believe that other means
than the prayers of the orthodox against him were the cause of his
death. The leaders of the orthodox party, Athanasius of Alexandria,
Eustathius of Antioch, and Paul of Constantinople, were now to feel
the wrath of the first Christian emperor. They were deposed on various
occasions and by the sentence of numerous councils, and banished into
distant provinces. In fact, so far from the adoption of the Nicene
creed ending the conflict which had arisen, it was more like the
opening of that controversy which agitated Christendom for so long, and
resulted in so many shameful conflicts. Councils were arrayed against
councils, and though they never could convince one another of error,
they never failed, in the spirit of such Christian charity as was
then extant, to close their {LXXXVII} decrees with curses. Votes were
bartered for and purchased in those councils, and facts justify the
latent sarcasm in Gibbon's remark, that "the cause of truth and justice
was promoted by the influence of gold." There were persecutions and
counter-persecutions, as now one party and then the other prevailed;
there were assassinations and bloody battles over this doctrine of
Deity, the accounts of which fill, as they also disgrace, our Christian
annals. The creed which was adopted at Nicea, however, became the
settled doctrine of orthodox Christendom, and remains so to this day.
It is difficult to determine which is really the worst, the creed
itself or the explanations of it. At any rate, we do not clearly see
the impiety of its doctrines until we listen to the explanations that
have been made of it. Athanasius himself has left on record a creed
explanatory of the one adopted at Nicea. True, among the learned,
many doubt Athanasius being the author of the creed which bears his
name; but, however much doubt may be thrown upon that question, no one
hesitates to accept it as the orthodox explanation of the doctrine of
Deity, and, in fact, it is accepted as one of the important symbols of
the Christian faith, and is as follows:
We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither
confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is
one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the
Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost is
all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such as the
Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father
uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate. The Father
incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost
incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the
Holy Ghost eternal. And yet there are not three eternals, but one
eternal. As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three
uncreate, but one uncreate and one incomprehensible. So likewise
the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Ghost
almighty; and yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty.
So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God;
and yet there are not three Gods, but one God.
As already stated, this creed of St. Athanasius is accepted as one of
the symbols of the orthodox Christian faith. It is understood that
these two creeds teach that God is incorporeal, that is to say, an
immaterial being. The Catholic church says: "There is but one God,
the creator of heaven and earth, the supreme _incorporeal_, uncreated
being who exists of Himself and is infinite in all his attributes."
[178] While the Church of England teaches in her articles of faith
"that there is but one living and true God everlasting, _without body_,
[179] parts, or passions, of infinite {LXXXVIII} power, wisdom and
goodness." This view of God as an incorporeal, immaterial, bodiless,
partless, passionless, being is now and has been from the days of the
great apostasy from God and Christ, in the second and third centuries,
the doctrine of Deity generally accepted by apostate Christendom.
The simple doctrine of the Christian Godhead, set forth in the New
Testament is corrupted by the meaningless jargon of these creeds,
and their explanations; and the learned who profess a belief in them
are wandering in the darkness of the mysticisms of the old pagan
philosophies. No wonder that Athanasius himself, whom Gibbon with a
quiet sarcasm calls the most sagacious of the Christian theologians,
candidly confessed that whenever he forced his understanding to mediate
on the divinity of the Logos (and which, of course, involved the whole
doctrine of the Godhead), his "toilsome and unavailing efforts recoiled
on themselves; and the more he thought, the less he comprehended: and
the more he wrote, the less capable was he of expressing his thoughts!"
It is a fine passage with which Gibbon closes his reflections upon this
subject, and hence I shall give it place here:
In every step of the inquiry, we are compelled to feel and
acknowledge the immeasurable disproportion between the size of the
object and the capacity of the human mind. We may try to abstract
the notions of time, of space, and of matter, which so closely
adhere to all the perceptions of our experimental knowledge; but as
soon as we presume to reason of infinite substance, or spiritual
generation; as often as we deduce any _positive_ conclusions from
a _negative_ idea, we are involved in darkness, perplexity, and
inevitable contradiction. [180]
Recurrence to the New Testament doctrine of God, and a comparison of
it with the doctrine of Deity set forth in the Nicean and Athanasian
creeds, will exhibit the wide departure--the absolute apostasy--that
has taken place in respect of this most fundamental of all doctrines
of religion--the doctrine of God. Truly "Christians" have denied the
Lord that bought them, [181] and turned literally to fables. They have
enthroned a conception of a negative idea of "being," which can stand
in no possible relationship to man, nor man to it; and to this they
ascribe divine attributes and give it title, knee and adoration which
belong to God alone. Small wonder that the angel whom John saw flying
in the midst of heaven having the everlasting Gospel to commit to the
earth in the hour of God's judgment, in the last days, should cry aloud
to the inhabitants of the earth, saying, "Fear God and give glory to
Him; * * * * and worship Him that made {LXXXIX} heaven, and earth, and
the sea, and the fountains of waters" [182]--small wonder, I repeat,
that such should be part of this great message, for truly the whole
world had departed from the worship of the true and living God.
_The Church of Christ Displaced by the Churches of Men_.
The departure from the form and spirit of church government was no less
marked than the moral and spiritual declension among the Christians
of the early centuries of the era, or the departure from the true
doctrine of Deity. Beyond filling the vacancy in the council of the
Twelve Apostles, occasioned by the fall of Judas, there is no clear
and satisfactory evidence that other successors of the Apostles were
ever chosen, though the fair implication is that the organization of
the Church with Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Seventies, Bishops,
Teachers, etc., was to be perpetuated as at first established. At
least this organization was given for the perfecting of the saints,
for the work of the ministry, until the saints should come to a unity
of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God; [183] so that the
plain inference is that as long as there are saints to be perfected,
or edified, or united, or brought to the knowledge of God; so long as
there is work for a ministry, or the necessity of a Church through the
agency of which the truth is to be taught to the world, so long as
it will be necessary to perpetuate the organization given of God for
the achievement of those high purposes. To say that man could devise
a better organization for the accomplishment of these several objects
would be to challenge the wisdom of God. To say that any of these means
provided in the Church organization could be dispensed with, would be
to contradict the plain teaching of scripture, which, in this very
connection forbids the eye to say to the hand, I have no need of thee;
or the head to the feet, I have no need of you; that is, one officer
of the Church may not say to another officer, I have no need of thee.
[184] The doctrine of scripture is that all the officers of the Church
together with their several gifts are essential to the Church of
Christ; essential to its perfection; essential to the performance of
the sacred functions assigned to it. Yet it must be conceded that the
organization described in the New Testament did not survive the last of
the Apostles; or preserve much beyond that time, the spirit which the
Master had impressed upon it. [185]
The Apostles, while they lived, exercised a general jurisdiction
over the Church, to which all submitted without question. In the
exercise {XC} of their general authority they organized branches
of the Church, appointed Elders or Bishops to take the oversight
of them, and instructed them in Church government, and discipline,
and doctrine. After the demise of the Apostles, there seems to have
been left no central authority to exercise the functions of general
supervision or presidency over the entire Church, such as the Twelve
had exercised. That center of unity, together with the power thereof,
seems to have vanished from the Church with the Apostles. The bishops
and some subordinate officers remained, it is true, but these were
local, not general authorities. The Church in each city or district of
country after the Apostolic age, seems to have been regarded as a sort
of independent republic of itself, without any bond of consociation
with any other church beyond that which was the result of possessing
a common faith in Christianity, which bond was one of sympathy
merely, not of hierarchal association. The rise of the hierarchy with
the centralization of its powers in the bishop of Rome, and which
ultimately dominated the whole Church, and not only the Church but,
directly or indirectly, the western civilized world, came later, and
was of gradual development; and when it was finally established, it
was not the organization described in the New Testament, the Church
with an inspired priesthood of Apostles, and Prophets, Evangelists,
Seventies, and Pastors, etc., but a hierarchy fashioned by man out
of such remnants of Church organization as survived Apostolic times.
As the number of Christians increased, the bishops of large cities
organized new branches of the Church in the suburbs of their cities,
and in the towns and villages adjacent, and ordained for them a
ministry. It was but natural perhaps that the officers of these new
branches of the Church, both the bishops and the subordinate clergy,
should look to the one who had brought them into existence as a sort
of general presiding authority over them. And hence, in time arose
what were called metropolitan bishops, bishops who had under their
direction the bishops of neighboring towns and villages--bishops of
the "suburbs and the fields," they were sometimes called--and perhaps
of the entire province of which the metropolitan city was recognized
as the center. As the bishops of the metropolis of a province, in
the manner described, became the center of ecclesiastical unity for
that province, so, too, in time, the bishops of cities which were the
capitals of the three great divisions {XCI} of the empire--Antioch,
Alexandria and Rome--asserted a superior dignity over metropolitan
bishops. It was in these cities that the exarchs of the empire
resided, and if we may trust the authority of Neander, the bishops of
these cities also, at first, took that title, but later made choice
of the more ecclesiastical name of Patriarch. [186] In addition to
the importance attached to these cities as the capitals of the great
divisions of the empire, a superior dignity in the minds of Christians
attached to the Churches founded by the Apostles as the surest
depositories of the Apostolic teaching and doctrine; and as Apostolic
origin could be claimed for the churches in the three cities named,
it is not surprising, when their political importance is added, that
the bishops of those cities claimed superior dignity for their office,
and united under their jurisdiction the metropolitan bishops of the
respective three great divisions of the empire. Subsequently the same
title was granted to the bishop of Jerusalem, and to the bishop of
Constantinople; to the former it was granted in virtue of the peculiar
sanctity which attaches to Jerusalem, and the fact that the first
Christian Church was planted there; to the latter, because it was
made the capital of the empire, "New Rome;" and because also it was
peculiarly the city of the first imperial patron of Christianity. Thus
five patriarchates were established.
Through circumstances too numerous and intricate to detail here, the
bishops of Rome changed the primacy of mere precedence which had been
accorded them among associated brethren, to a primacy of power and
jurisdiction, which resulted in the bishops of Rome becoming recognized
as the supreme head of the Christian Church; and the papacy entered
upon that marvelous career which by the impartial can but be regarded
as the shame of the Christian name.
Attention has already been called to the corruptions which prevailed
in that period of peace in the closing decades of the third century,
where bishops are represented as being full of pride and ostentation;
as deserting the law of piety and being inflamed against each other
with mutual strifes, only accumulating quarrels, threats, rivalships,
hostilities, hatred towards each other, and only anxious to assert
the Church government as a kind of sovereignty for themselves. [187]
And all this when Christianity was a proscribed religion; and when
the Church, and especially its leaders, the bishops, were liable to
severest persecution. Reason and a due consideration of human nature
both combined to fix upon us the conviction that the bitterness
of rivalry, of hatred, of ambition, must have greatly increased
when metropolitan and patriarchal bishops, formerly proscribed and
hunted like wild beasts, rose to the dignity of civil princes, and
took upon them more and ever more of the spirit of worldliness as
wealth and honor and popular applause were made the accompaniments
of their ecclesiastical offices. History confirms what reason and a
knowledge of human nature suggests; for the history of the Church
after the elevation of proscribed Christianity to the dignity of the
state religion of the Roman empire, is but the melancholy history of
unholy ambitions, jealousies, strifes, contentions, murders, and wars
between rival bishops and their adherents on the one {XCII} hand; and
equally unholy struggles for worldly advantages with kings and rulers
of this world, on the other. The spirit that actuated the bishops of
the Church after their elevation through the policy of Constantine is
admirably illustrated by a remark of Gregory of Nazianzus, made in
Constantinople, 380 A. D., when deploring the evils of the Church. He
says:
Would to heaven there were no primacy, no eminence of place, and no
tyrannical precedence of rank; that we might be known by eminence
of virtue alone! But, as the case now stands, the distinction of a
seat at the right hand or the left, or in the middle; at a higher
or a lower place; of going before or aside of each other, has given
rise to many disorders among us, to no salutary purpose whatsoever
and plunged multitudes in ruin. [188]
Matters in Church government did not mend with time, but grew worse
and worse. Pride increased; rivalship between contending prelates grew
more embittered; ambition mounted higher and ever higher in the breasts
of the shepherds of the flock of Christ. In his association with his
Apostles--to whom he committed the keys of His kingdom--the Master had
discouraged ambition and had said that he who would be great among his
followers must be their minister; and whosoever would be chief among
them, was to be their servant; and the government of His Church was to
be distinct in these particulars from the governments of this world.
[189] But all in vain were the instructions of Messiah to the worldly,
ambitious prelates of an apostate Christianity which had gradually
supplanted the religion of Jesus Christ; and henceforth we may see in
that hierarchy which usurped the place of the Church of Christ from
the time of Constantine, all the spirit of pride, envy, jealousy,
contention, strife, selfishness, bitterness, and unholy ambition which
characterized the princes and rulers of this world; attended, too,
with all the evils that wait upon these passions of rulers when once
let loose, viz., secret plottings, usurpations of authority, corrupt
elections, cruel imprisonments, banishments, secret and public murders,
and wars; all undertaken, of course, in the interest of the gentle
religion of Jesus Christ, and the maintenance of that authority which
is based on love, and whose control over men is through the means of
persuasion and the teaching of true knowledge. Is it not evident that
the kingdom of peace, wherein was to dwell righteousness and truth,
had become merely one of the kingdoms of this world? And were not the
Fratriceli of the thirteenth century, though denounced as heretics,
right when they loudly proclaimed their conviction that "the fatal
gift of a Christian emperor had been the doom of the true Christian
religion?"
{XCIII} _The Testimony of Prophecy to the Universal Apostasy_.
Clear as the fact is made in this historical view that there was a
complete and universal apostasy from the religion established in
the Dispensation of the Meridian of Time; and clear as is the proof
from the same review that the Church of Christ then established was
destroyed, there is yet another line of evidence pointing to the same
solemn fact that I can not altogether omit, though often used in our
literature, viz., the testimony of prophecy to the apostasy from the
Christian religion, and the destruction of the Church of Christ.
The Apostles themselves through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost were
fully aware that such an apostasy would take place, as the following
several predictions bear witness: Paul passing through Ephesus
admonished the Elders of that Church to take heed to the flock "over
which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers; * * * * * for I know
this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among
you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise,
speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them." [190]
To Timothy Paul said: "the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the
latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing
spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having
their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry and
commanding to abstain from meats." [191] And again: "I charge thee to
preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke,
exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. For the time will come
when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts
they shall heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they
shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto
fables." [192]
And still again he said to Timothy: "This know also, that in the last
days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own
selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents,
unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce breakers, false
accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of
God; having a form of Godliness, but denying the power thereof: from
such turn away." [193]
Peter's prophecy concerning the rise of false teachers among the
saints, who privately would bring in damnable heresies, even denying
the Lord who bought them, and by reason of whom the way of truth would
be evil spoken of, we have already quoted. [194]
{XCIV} Paul in his second epistle to the Thessalonians gives utterance
to a prophecy which covers the whole ground of the absolute and
universal apostasy of Christendom. A prophecy which, if the apostasy
of so-called Christendom has not been complete and universal, proves
beyond all question that the great Apostle of the Gentiles is a false
prophet; or if fulfilled, then it proves that the Church of Christ, so
far as it existed in the earth was to be destroyed; that another and
different religion was to be substituted for the Christian religion:
that another church, one founded by men, was to take the place of the
Church of Christ, a worldly church dominated by the very spirit of
Lucifer, who, under its rule, would oppose and exalt himself above all
that is called God; and sit in the temple of God showing himself, so
far as this world is concerned, that he is God. Moreover Paul declared
in this very prophecy I am about to quote that the forces which would
ultimately bring to pass this universal apostasy from the Christian
religion--"the mystery of iniquity--" was already at work even in his
day. With this introduction, which is also to be considered as my
comment upon and interpretation of the passage, I quote Paul's great
prediction on the universal Apostasy.
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon
shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor
by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no
man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except
there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed,
the Son of Perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all
that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth
in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Remember
ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?
And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his
time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who
now letteth [hindereth] will let [hinder], until he be taken out
of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord
shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with
the brightness of His coming: even him whose coming is after the
working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and
with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish;
because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might
be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,
that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who
believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. [195]
A more ancient prophet than Paul also predicted a like condition of
the world in the last days. "Behold," says Isaiah, "the Lord maketh
the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and
scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the
people, so with the priest. * * * * * The land shall be utterly emptied
and utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word. The {XCV}
earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth away,
the haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is defiled
under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws,
changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath
the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate:
therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left."
[196]
Clearly all this prophecy of Isaiah's has not yet been fulfilled; for
the earth, however much it may have been defiled under the inhabitants
thereof, has not yet been burned, and but few men left. That is a
judgment that still hangs over the world; and will come upon it as
sure as the Lord has spoken the word; and that, too, because men have
transgressed the laws; because they have changed the ordinances,
because they have broken--not the covenant made with Moses, or with
Abraham--but because they have broken the everlasting covenant; of
which covenant the blood of Christ is the sign and seal. [197] In other
words, they have broken the Gospel covenant--departed from the Gospel
faith--hence the predicted judgment.
If I did not think these two great prophecies foretold completely the
universal apostasy of Christendom, I should be tempted to enter into
the consideration of the great prophecies to be found in the book
of Daniel and the book of Revelation, and show how to both of these
prophets, as well as unto Paul and other New Testament writers, the
Lord revealed the rise of an earth power that would not only open
his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name and them
who dwell in heaven; [198] who would speak great words against the
Most High, and so magnify himself as to stand up against the Prince
of princes [199]--but who would also make war with the saints and
"prevail against them;" [200] who would "wear out the saints of the
Most High;" [201] "destroy the mighty and the holy people;" [202] "make
war with the saints and overcome them." [203] But believing that the
two passages quoted at length entirely cover the subject prophetically,
I shall not here enter into further prophetic proofs either as to
the corruptions of the Christian religion or the destruction of
the Christian Church, deeming that what has already been set forth
sufficient on that head.
_Conclusion_.
The sum of the whole matter is:--The purpose of man's creation, and the
plan of his redemption, were known to God and the immense host {XCVI}
of the spirits of men before the creation of the earth. Adam came to
the new creation, the earth, under the divine commandment to people it
with his offspring. From Adam to Messiah numerous dispensations of the
Gospel were given to men; but these dispensations were limited in their
effectiveness, owing to the proneness of men to reject the truth, and
to walk in darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
Yet God left not Himself without witnesses in the earth; for there
were a few in all dispensations that honored Him and His righteous
laws. Finally, when the appointed time was come, Jesus of Nazareth,
the Son of God, came and made the appointed Atonement for the sins of
the world and brought men under the dominion of His mercy. He taught
the Gospel; He brought life and immortality to light; He brought into
existence His Church, and then ascended on high to His Father. For a
time the Gospel in its purity was preached in the world by the chosen
Apostles, though even in their day men began to mar it with their vain
philosophies, their doctrines of science, falsely so called; and when
the Apostles were all fallen asleep, then corruptions ran riot in the
Church, doctrines of men were taught for the commandments of God; a
church made by men was substituted for the Church of Christ; a church
full of pride and worldliness; a church which while it clung to forms
of godliness ran riot in excesses and abominations--until spiritual
darkness fell like a pall over the nations; and thus they lay for
ages. In vain men sought to establish reforms, and through them bring
back the religion of Jesus Christ, and the Church of Christ. To do
that, however, was beyond the power of these men, however good their
intentions. The Gospel taken from the earth, divine authority lost, the
Church of Christ destroyed, there was but one way in which all these
could be restored, viz.: By re-opening the heavens and dispensing again
a knowledge of the Gospel; by once more conferring divine authority
upon men, together with a commission to teach all the world, and
re-establish the Church of Christ on earth. In a word, it would require
the incoming of the Dispensation of the Fulness of Times to restore all
things, and gather together in one all things in Christ, both in heaven
and in earth. Such Dispensation is promised of God, as we have seen;
and now it only remains to add that the History of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, as set forth in these volumes, is the
history of that series of events which has resulted in the restoration
of the Gospel in its fullness, and the re-establishment of the Church
of Jesus Christ on earth.
Footnotes
1. Eph. 1:8-10.
2. I Peter 1:18-25.
3. Rev. 13:8.
4. Rev. 17:8.
5. Job 38:4-6.
6. Paul to Titus 1:2.
7. Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses, ch. 5:6-8, Edition of 1902,
quoted throughout.
8. Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses, ch. 5:56-59.
9. Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses, ch 6:48-52.
10. Gen. 5:24.
11. Heb. 11:5.
12. Pearl of Great Price, Book of Moses, ch. 7:69.
13. Heb. 7:1.
14. 1 Cor. 10:1-4.
15. Heb. 3:14-19 and 4:1-2. This cites the close of one chapter and
the opening verses of another, but it should be remembered that Paul
did not divide his epistle into chapters and verses; and this awkward
division is but one of the many divisions that exist in the Scriptures.
16. Gal. 3.
17. Doctrine and Covenants, sec. 84:19-28.
18. Mark 1:15.
19. Gal. 4:4.
20. Heb 1:1, 2.
21. I John 2:18.
22. Acts 2:15-21.
23. Joel 2:28-32.
24. Isaiah 11:6-9.
25. Matt. 24:29-31.
26. Eph. 1:10.
27. Dan. 2:37-45.
28. Edition of 1878, page 622.
29. Rev. 5:10.
30. Rev. 11:15.
31. Ibid. 11:17, 18.
32. Ibid. 20:6.
33. Matt. 21:43.
34. Acts 13:46, 47.
35. History of the Church, vol. 1, p. 6.
36. Matt. 20:20-24.
37. Matt. 26:69-75.
38. Acts 15
39. Galatians 2:1-14.
40. Acts 16:1-4.
41. Gal. 1:6, 7.
42. Acts 13:13.
43. I Cor. 1:12-13.
44. I Cor. 3:3, 4.
45. I Cor. 5:1-3.
46. I Cor. 6:1-20, and Matt. 18:15, 17.
47. I Cor. 11:2-22 and 29, 30.
48. I Cor. 11:19.
49. I Cor. 15:12-34.
50. 2 Cor. 11:21
51. 2 Cor. 2:17.
52. 2 Cor. 11:12-14.
53. Gal. 1:6, 7.
54. Phil. 1:15, 16.
55. Phil. 3:2.
56. Phil. 3:17, 19.
57. Col. 2:8, 18.
58. I Tim. 1:4-7.
59. I Tim. 1:19, 20.
60. I Tim. 6:20, 21.
61. 2 Tim. 1:15.
62. 2 Tim. 2:16, 18.
63. 2 Tim. 4:10.
64. 2 Tim. 4:16.
65. Titus 1:9-14.
66. 2 Peter 2.
67. Ibid. 3:16.
68. I John 2:18, 19.
69. I John 4:1.
70. 2 John 1:7.
71. Jude 3, 4.
72. 2 Tim. 3:13.
73. Vol. 1, pp. 656, 657.
74. Lardner's _Works_, vol. 8, p. 330.
75. Eus. _Ec. Hist_., bk. 3, ch. 32.
76. _Institutes_, bk. 1 cent. 1, part 2, ch. 2.
77. Jortin's _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_, vol. 1, p. 248.
78. Eusebius, bk. 3, ch. 39.
79. Lardner _Works_, vol. 8, p. 418.
80. Lardner _Works_, vol. 8, 449:470; also I Peter 3:18-21; Ibid, 4:6;
I Cor. 15:29.
81. Lardner, vol. 8, p. 460.
82. Ibid. p. 581-2.
83. Lardner, vol. 8, p. 345.
84. Held in 325 A. D.
85. Jortin, vol. 1, p. 166, note.
86. Lardner, vol. 8, p. 344.
87. Lardner, vol. 8, p. 345.
88. Neander's_ History of the Christian Religion and Church_, vol. 1,
p. 191.
89. Student's _Eccles. Hist._, vol. 1, p. 49.
90. Gibbon's _Roman Empire_, Preface by Dean Milman, p. 15.
91. _Institutes_, vol. 1, cent. 2, ch. 4.
92. Ibid. cent. 3, part 2. ch. 4.
93. Neander _Ch. Hist_., vol. 1, p. 253. _Decline and Fall_, vol. 2,
chap. 20.
94. Eusebius' _Life of Constantine_, bk. 1, 27.
95. _Hist. Eccles_., vol. I, bk. 1, ch. 17.
96. Zosimus, bk. 2, p. 104.
97. Neander's _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 8.
98. Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, vol. 3, ch. 20.
99. Neander _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 23.
100. Neander _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 21.
101. _Intellectual Development of Europe_, vol. 1, p. 280.
102. Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, ch. 20.
103. Neander _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 24.
104. Mosheim's _Institutes_, vol. 1, p. 214.
105. Lardner, vol. 4, p. 39.
106. Lardner, vol. 4, p. 39.
107. Lardner, vol. 4, p. 44.
108. Neander,_ Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 25.
109. Neander, _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 25.
110. Draper, _Intellectual Development_, vol. 1, p. 283.
111. _Decline and Fall_. ch. 20.
112. _Life of Constantine_ (Eusebius) I, ch. 2:44.
113. Ibid, ch. 45.
114. _Life of Constantine,_ (Eusebius) I, ch. 4:23, 25.
115. Lardner, vol. 8, p. 169.
116. Neander, _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 26, 27.
117. Lardner, _Works_, vol. 4, p. 49.
118. Lardner, _Works_, vol. 4, p. 50.
119. Lardner, _Works_, vol. 8, p. 169.
120. In 353 A. D., according to Gothford.
121. The law is extant in the Theodocian Code
122. Neander, vol. 2, p. 34.
123. Neander, _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, pp. 88-110.
124. Neander, _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 67.
125. Lardner, _Works_, vol. 8, p. 164.
126. Lardner, _Works_, vol. 8, p. 276.
127. _Decline and Fall_, ch. 21.
128. _Decline and Fall_, ch. 21.
129. _Decline and Fall_, ch. 21.
130. Lardner, _Works_, vol. 4, p. 36.
131. _Life of Constantine_, Eusebius, p. 66.
132. This event occured about 476 A. D.
133. _Decline and Fall_, ch. 16.
134. Luke 9:54-56.
135. Matt. 10:34-36.
136. _End of Religious Controversy_, Milner, Letter 26.
137. I Cor. 6:9-11.
138. Neander, _Ch. Hist_., vol. 1, p. 250.
139. Neander,_ Ch. Hist_., vol. 1, p. 259.
140. Milner's _Ch. Hist_., vol. 1, cent. 3, ch. 6.
141. Milner's _Ch. Hist_., vol. 1, cent. 3, ch. 6.
142. Milner's _Ch. Hist_., vol. 1, cent. 3, ch. 8.
143. Milner's _Ch. Hist_., vol. 1, cent. 3, ch. 17.
144. Eusebius' _Eccl. Hist_., bk. 8, ch. 1.
145. _New Witnesses for God_, pp. 75, 76.
146. Eusebius' _Eccl. Hist_., bk. 8, ch. 2.
147. _Book of Martyrs_, ch. 12.
148. See Milner's Introduction to his _Church Hist_., vol. 1.
149. Neander's _Church Hist_., vol 2, pp. 29-30.
150. Neander's _Church Hist_., vol 2, p. 30.
151. _Decline and Fall_, ch. 20.
152. Augustine on St. John, tract 25, ch. 10.
153. Neander's _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 120.
154. _Mosheim_, book 2, cent, 4, part 2, chap. 3.
155. Mark, 16:15-18.
156. I Cor., 12:4-11.
157. Gal. 5:22-24.
158. _Student's Ecclesiastical History_, vol. 1, p. 62.
159. Jortin's _Eccl. Hist_., vol. 1, pp. 134-6.
160. John 10; Matt. 27; Mark 14:61, 62.
161. For all of which see John 1:1-4, 14; Heb. 1:1-3; Matt. 28:18.
162. Col. 1:15-19, and 2:9.
163. Heb. 1:2, 3.
164. John 10:30; 17:11-22.
165. John 14:9.
166. John 14:1-9; John 1:18.
167. I Tim. 3:16.
168. John 14:10, 11, 19, 20; also John 17.
169. Eph. 3:14-19.
170. Acts 5:1-14. To lie to the Holy Ghost is to lie to God, because
the Holy Ghost is God.
171. Matt. 28:19, 20.
172. 2 Cor. 13:14.
173. Phil. 3:20, 21.
174. I Cor. 14.
175. See Shedd's _History of Christian Doctrine_, vol. 1, p. 342, _et
seq_. and note.
176. John 1:1-5, 14.
177. _Hist. Christian Councils_ (Hefele), p. 294.
178. _Catholic Belief_ (Bruno), p. 1.
179. I.e. without materiality.
180. _Decline and Fall_, 21.
181. 2 Peter, 2:1.
182. Rev. 14:6, 7.
183. I Cor. 12; Eph. 4.
184. I Cor. 12.
185. Matt. 20.
186. Neander, _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 196.
187. See pp. 73-75.
188. This remark is quoted by Neander, _Ch. Hist_., vol. 2, p. 198.
189. Matt. 20:26, 27.
190. Acts 20:28-30.
191. I Tim. 4:1, 2, 3.
192. 2 Tim. 4:1, 2, 3, 4.
193. 2 Tim. 3:1-5.
194. See page 48, and 2 Peter 1:3.
195. 2 Thes. 2:1-12.
196. Isaiah 24:1-6.
197. Heb. 13:10.
198. Rev. 13:6.
199. Dan. 7:25; 8:25.
200. Dan. 7:21.
201. Dan. 7:25.
202. Dan. 8:24.
203. Rev. 13:7.
{1}
Chapter I.
Joseph Smith's Birth and Lineage--the Prophet's First Vision--"This Is
My Beloved Son."
[Sidenote: The Prophet's Introduction.]
Owing to the many reports which have been put in circulation by
evil-disposed and designing persons, in relation to the rise and
progress of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, all of
which have been designed by the authors thereof to militate against
its character as a Church and its progress in the world--I have been
induced to write this history, to disabuse the public mind, and put
all inquirers after truth into possession of the facts, as they have
transpired, in relation both to myself and the Church, so far as I
have such facts in my possession. In this history I shall present the
various events in relation to this Church, in truth and righteousness,
as they have transpired, or as they at {2} present exist, being now the
eighth [1] year since the organization of said Church.
[Sidenote: Birth and Ancestry.]
I was born in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
five, on the twenty-third day of December, in the town of Sharon,
Windsor county, state of Vermont. My father, Joseph Smith, was born
July 12th, 1771, in Topsfield, Essex county, Massachusetts; his father,
Asael Smith, was born March 7th, 1744, in Topsfield, Massachusetts;
his father, Samuel Smith, was born January 26th, 1714, in Topsfield,
Massachusetts; his father, Samuel Smith, was born January 26th, 1666,
in Topsfield, Massachusetts; his father, Robert Smith, came from
England. My father, Joseph Smith, Senior, left the state of Vermont,
and moved to Palmyra, Ontario (now Wayne) county, in the state of New
York, when I was in my tenth year, or thereabouts. In about four years
after my father's arrival in Palmyra he moved with his family into
Manchester, in the same county of Ontario, his family consisting of
eleven souls, namely--my father, Joseph Smith, my mother, Lucy Smith,
(whose name, previous to her marriage, was Mack, daughter of Solomon
Mack,) [2] my brothers Alvin, (who died November 19th, 1824, in the
27th year of his age,) Hyrum, myself, Samuel Harrison, William, Don
Carlos, and my sisters Sophronia, Catherine, and Lucy.
[Sidenote: Religious Excitement in Western New York.]
Some time in the second year after our removal to Manchester, there
was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject
of religion. It commenced with the Methodists, but soon became general
among all the sects in that region of country. Indeed, the whole
district of country seemed {3} affected by it, and great multitudes
united themselves to the different religious parties, which created no
small stir and division amongst the people, some crying, "Lo here!" and
others, "Lo, there!" Some were contending for the Methodist faith, some
for the Presbyterian, and some for the Baptist. For notwithstanding
the great love which the converts to these different faiths expressed
at the time of their conversion, and the great zeal manifested by the
respective clergy, who were active in getting up and promoting this
extraordinary scene of religious feeling, in order to have everybody
converted, as they were pleased to call it, let them join what sect
they pleased--yet when the converts began to file off, some to one
party and some to another, it was seen that the seemingly good feelings
of both the priests and the converts were more pretended than real; for
a scene of great confusion and bad feeling ensued; priest contending
against priest, and convert against convert; so that all their good
feelings one for another, if they ever had any, were entirely lost in a
strife of words and a contest about opinions.
[Sidenote: Reflections on Divided Christendom.]
I was at this time in my fifteenth year. My father's family was
proselyted to the Presbyterian faith, and four of them joined that
church, namely--my mother Lucy; my brothers Hyrum and Samuel Harrison;
and my sister Sophronia. During this time of great excitement, my mind
was called up to serious reflection and great uneasiness; but though my
feelings were deep and often poignant, still I kept myself aloof from
all these parties, though I attended their several meetings as often
as occasion would permit. In process of time my mind became somewhat
partial to the Methodist sect, and I felt some desire to be united with
them; but so great were the confusion and strife among the different
denominations, that it was impossible for a person young as I was, and
so unacquainted with men and things, to come to any certain conclusion
who was right and who was wrong. My mind at times was greatly excited,
the cry and tumult {4} were so great and incessant. The Presbyterians
were most decided against the Baptists and Methodists, and used all
the powers of both reason and sophistry to prove their errors, or, at
least, to make the people think they were in error. On the other hand,
the Baptists and Methodists in their turn were equally zealous in
endeavoring to establish their own tenets and disprove all others.
[Sidenote: Perplexity of the Prophet.]
In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said
to myself, what is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or,
are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is
it, and how shall I know it? While I was laboring under the extreme
difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists,
I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth
verse, which reads:
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all
men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
[Sidenote: The Promise of James Tested.]
Never did any passage of Scripture come with more power to the heart
of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with
great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again
and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did;
for how to act I did not know and unless I could get more wisdom than
I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the
different sects understood the same passage of Scripture so differently
as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to
the Bible. At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain
in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that
is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to "ask of God,"
concluding that if He gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would
give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture. So, in accordance
with this, my determination to ask God, I retired to the woods to make
{5} the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early
in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in
my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I
had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.
[Sidenote: Effort of Satan to Destroy the Prophet.]
After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go,
having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and
began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done
so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely
overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind
my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around
me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden
destruction. But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver
me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the
very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to
destruction--not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual
being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had
never before felt in any being--just at this moment of great alarm, I
saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the
sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.
[Sidenote: The First Vision.]
It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy
which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two
personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing
above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and
said--pointing to the other--
_"THIS IS MY BELOVED SON, HEAR HIM."_
[Sidenote: State of Christian World.]
My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the
sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore,
did I get possession of {6} myself, so as to be able to speak, than
I asked the personages who stood above me in the light, which of all
the sects was right--and which I should join. I was answered that I
must join none of them, for they were all wrong, and the personage who
addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in His
sight: that those professors were all corrupt; that "they draw near to
me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; they teach for
doctrines the commandments of men: having a form of godliness, but they
deny the power thereof." He again forbade me to join with any of them:
and many other things did he say unto me, which I cannot write at this
time. When I came to myself again, I found myself lying on my back,
looking up into heaven. When the light had departed, I had no strength;
but soon recovering in some degree, I went home. And as I leaned up to
the fireplace, mother inquired what the matter was. I replied, "Never
mind, all is well--I am well enough off." I then said to my mother, "I
have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true."
[Sidenote: Sectarian Opposition.]
It seems as though the adversary was aware, at a very early period of
my life, that I was destined to prove a disturber and an annoyer of
his kingdom; else why should the powers of darkness combine against
me? Why the opposition and persecution that arose against me, almost
in my infancy? Some few days after I had this vision, I happened to be
in company with one of the Methodist preachers, who was very active in
the before-mentioned religious excitement, and, conversing with him
on the subject of religion, I took occasion to give him an account of
the vision which I had had. I was greatly surprised at his behavior;
he treated my communication not only lightly, but with great contempt,
saying, it was all of the devil, that there were no such things as
visions or revelations in these days; that all such things had ceased
with the Apostles, and that there {7} would never be any more of them.
I soon found, however, that my telling the story had excited a great
deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion, and was the
cause of great persecution, which continued to increase; and though I
was an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and
my circumstances in life such as to make a boy of no consequence in the
world, yet men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite
the public mind against me, and create a bitter persecution; and this
was common among all the sects--all united to persecute me.
[Sidenote: Reflections upon Sectarian Opposition.]
It caused me serious reflection then, and often has since, how very
strange it was that an obscure boy, of a little over fourteen years
of age, and one, too, who was doomed to the necessity of obtaining a
scanty maintenance by his daily labor, should be thought a character
of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the great ones of
the most popular sects of the day, and in a manner to create in them
a spirit of the most bitter persecution and reviling. But strange or
not, so it was, and it was often the cause of great sorrow to myself.
However, it was nevertheless a fact that I had beheld a vision. I have
thought since, that I felt much like Paul, when he made his defense
before King Agrippa, and related the account of the vision he had when
he saw a light, and heard a voice; but still there were but few who
believed him; some said he was dishonest, others said he was mad; and
he was ridiculed and reviled. But all this did not destroy the reality
of his vision. He had seen a vision, he knew he had, and all the
persecution under heaven could not make it otherwise; and though they
should persecute him unto death, yet he knew, and would know to the
last breath, that he had both seen a light, and heard a voice speaking
unto him, and all the world could not make him think or believe
otherwise. So it was with me. I had actually seen a light, and in the
midst of that light I saw two personages, and they did in reality {8}
speak to me; and though I was hated and persecuted for saying that I
had seen a vision, yet it was true; and while they were persecuting me,
reviling me, and speaking all manner of evil against me falsely for so
saying, I was led to say in my heart, Why persecute me for telling the
truth? I have actually seen a vision, and who am I that I can withstand
God, or why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually
seen? For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it,
and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it, at least I knew that by
so doing I would offend God, and come under condemnation.
[Sidenote: All Doubts Settled.]
I had now got my mind satisfied so far as the sectarian world was
concerned; that it was not my duty to join with any of them, but to
continue as I was until further directed. I had found the testimony of
James to be true, that a man who lacked wisdom might ask of God, and
obtain, and not be upbraided.
Footnotes
1. That is, 1838, since the Church was organized April 6th, 1830. The
date at which the Prophet began the writing of this History is also
indicated on a subsequent page, where reference is made to the final
return of the plates to the angel, in whose charge they remained "until
this day, the second day of May, 1838."
2. The Mack family, at least back to Ebenezer Mack, grandfather
of Lucy, was from the state of Connecticut (_Joseph Smith and his
Progenitors_, by Lucy Smith, ch. 9.)
{9}