Continuation of the subject of the foregoing Chapter--Reference
to the Heresies, respecting the Creator, of the three first and
ensuing centuries.
The heresy of the Gnostic philosophers, like that of the geologists of
the present day, had to do with the question of a creator and creation
as its starting theme. "They boasted," says Mosheim, "of being able to
restore mankind to the knowledge of the true and supreme Being, [_i.
e._, the Deity, as superior to the evil being, regarded by them as
creator,] which had been lost in the world, and foretold the approaching
defeat of the _evil principle_, _i. e._, the Devil, to whom they
attributed _the creation_ of this globe." Their Unitarianism, like that
of later times, could tolerate the notion of _divine creatures_, a
_created creator_; but they could not allow that such a world as this
was or could have been created by the true Supreme Being.
"The Gnostic doctrine," adds the author above quoted, "concerning the
creation of the world by one or more inferior beings of an evil, or at
least an imperfect nature, led that sect to deny the divine authority of
the books of the Old Testament, whose accounts of the origin of things
so palpably contradicted this idle fiction. Through a frantic aversion
to those books, they lavished their encomiums upon the _Serpent_, the
first author of sin, and held in veneration some of the most impious and
profligate persons of whom mention is made in sacred history."
Those boasters furnished a notable example for all pretenders to
philosophy and rationalism in religion, who take reason for their guide,
and deem it competent to determine what it is proper for the Supreme
Being to do; who or what kind of being it is most proper should be the
creator of such a world as this; at what time, in what manner, of what
materials, and for what ends the world should be created; and whether
the Mosaic record should be wholly rejected, or only so far as this
subject, that of miracles, inspiration, the universality of the Deluge,
the doctrine of vicarious atonement, and a few others, are concerned.
The controlling influence to which the heretics and theorists of the
first centuries were manifestly subject, was that of their philosophy.
Assuming that their philosophical dogmas were true and founded in the
nature of things, they argued, as do our modern geologists, from their
assumptions, that the Scriptures must be consistent with them; and since
they were not taught in Scripture, nor consistent with the apparent
import of the language of Scripture, they found it necessary to imagine
an occult, allegorical, tropical, or spiritual meaning, couched under
the forms of the natural language. Thus Origen held "that, under cover
of the words, phrases, images, and narratives of the Scriptures, the
Holy Spirit had concealed the internal reasons and grounds of things;
that in the body of Holy Writ [so he denominates the _proper sense_ of
the words] there was a _soul_, [a recondite sense,] and that this soul
exhibits, to careful contemplators of it, as it were in a mirror, the
causes, connections, and dependences of both human and Divine wisdom."
Murdock's Commentaries of Mosheim, II. 156, 165. He took up "the ancient
doctrine of the Pharisees and Essenees, that of a double sense in Holy
Scripture;" and to confirm his philosophical notions by the authority of
the sacred oracles, by "bending the sense of Scripture to suit his
purpose, eliminated from the Bible whatever was repugnant to his
favorite opinions." Ibid. 165.
"It is very certain that the Jews, and among them the Pharisees
especially, and Essenees, before the birth of our Saviour, believed that
in the language of the Bible, besides the sense which is obvious to the
reader, there is another more remote and recondite, concealed under the
words of Scripture." Murdock's Commentaries of Mosheim, II. 166.
Essene es account of the doctrines of Cerinthus, a Gnostic Jew, who,
about the close of the first century, appeared as the leader of those
who sought to merge Christianity in Judaism, indicates the confusion and
uncertainty which then, probably to a great extent, perplexed the minds
of the Jewish and Gentile proselytes to the Christian faith. "He taught
that the Creator of this world, whom he considered also as the sovereign
and lawgiver of the Jewish people, was _a being_ endowed with the
greatest virtues, and derived _his birth_ from the _Supreme God;_ [thus
conceding that the Jehovah of the Old Testament was the same as the
Christ;] that this being fell, by degrees, from his native virtue, and
his primitive dignity; [referring, no doubt, to the withdrawment of the
Messenger Jehovah, the Creator, with the visible Shekina, from the
temple, and his apparent abandonment of the Jewish people, as they
themselves considered;] that the Supreme God, in consequence of this,
determined to destroy his empire, [meaning, probably, that as he no
longer appeared as the protector of the Jews, but rather as their
enemy, he was to be superseded,] and sent upon earth for this purpose
one of the ever-happy and glorious _æons_, whose name was Christ; that
this Christ chose for his habitation [alluding to the doctrine, then
extensively prevalent, of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of one
being into another] the person of Jesus, a man of the most illustrious
sanctity and justice, the son of Joseph and Mary, and descending in the
form of a _dove_, entered into him while he was receiving the baptism of
John in the waters of Jordan; that Jesus, after his union with Christ,
opposed himself with vigor to the _God of the Jews_, [_i. e._, He whom
the Jews originally worshipped as their Creator and Lawgiver, the Angel
Jehovah, now fallen,] and was, by his instigation, seized and crucified
by the Hebrew chiefs; that when Jesus was taken captive, [_i. e._, by
the instigation of Jehovah the Creator,] Christ ascended upon high, so
that the man Jesus alone was subjected to the pains of an ignominious
death. Cerinthus required of his followers that they should worship the
Father of Christ, even the _Supreme God_, in conjunction with the Son;
[_i. e._, the _æon_ whom he calls Christ;] that they should abandon the
Lawgiver of the Jews, whom he [from his knowledge of the Hebrew
Scriptures, or of the Chaldee paraphrases] looked upon _as the Creator
of the world_; that they should retain a part of the law given by Moses,
but should, nevertheless, employ their principal attention and care to
regulate their lives by the precepts of Christ," [_i. e._, the glorious
_æon_.] To encourage them to this, "he promised the resurrection of the
body;" [_i. e._, though he denied the death, and therefore the
resurrection of Christ, he held to that of man at the second coming;]
and held "that Christ will one day return upon earth, and, renewing his
former union with the man Jesus, [_i. e._, by then raising him from the
dead,] will reign with his people in the land of Palestine during a
thousand years." Cent. I. part 2, chap. 5, sec. 16. There can be no
mistake as to the source of what is correct in this creed, nor as to the
state of mind in which its stupendous errors were conceived and
propagated.
Marcion, Basilides, and others among the Gnostic leaders of the
_Asiatic_ and _Egyptian_ sects in the second century, held, in respect
to a creator and creation, sentiments very similar to those of
Cerinthus. The Valentinians, a very numerous sect, were taught by
Valentine their chief, as is recorded in Mosheim, "_That the Creator of
this world_," whom, in common with most of the heretics of that period,
he took to be a creature, "_came by degrees to imagine himself to be God
alone_, or, at least, to desire that mankind should consider him as
such." He therefore "sent forth prophets to the Jewish nation, to
declare his claim to the honor that is due to the Supreme Being." The
Patripassians asserted the unity of God in such a manner as to exclude
all distinction of Persons; and in this respect they were imitated by
the Sabellians of the ensuing century.
The leading features of nearly all the heresies of the first three
centuries, especially those which were widely diffused and long
perpetuated, whether invented by minds imbued by the Oriental philosophy
or with hereditary Jewish opinions and prejudices related to the Creator
and the works of creation. The best of them were in that particular, for
substance, like the heresy of Arius in the fourth century, who taught
"that the Son was the _first_ and _noblest_ of these beings, whom God the
_Father_ had created out of nothing, and was the instrument by whose
subordinate operation the universe was made." The Council of Nice,
convened in 325 to suppress this heresy, appears scarcely to have checked
its progress; and during the protracted discussions and contests which
ensued, and which agitated both the eastern and western divisions of the
Church, there is probably no single instance of a simple scriptural
statement respecting the Trinity, and the Person and work of the Mediator,
except in the case of such as dissented and seceded from the Established
Church, and were persecuted by all parties in that Church. The attention
of those whom the Councils called orthodox, in distinction from heretics,
was absorbed by attempts to explain the inexplicable questions in
controversy. They sought in this way to answer and confound their
opponents. The heretics nowhere in these controversies bring into view
anything scriptural, anything better than Paganism, with respect to a
Mediator; nor could they, consistently with the nature of the dogmas and
opinions which they contended for.
The disciples of the reformed Magianism of Zoroaster ascribed the
creation to the one supreme, invisible Deity, who was to be worshipped
directly, not through images, nor through a Mediator, nor any
intermediate agencies.
The Gentile Gnostics, in distinction from Cerinthus and other Judaizers,
in their attempts to subordinate Christianity to their system--which
taught that all evil resided in and proceeded from matter, and therefore
that the world could not have been created by a good being--ascribed the
creation to a created evil being, the evil principle, Satan. They
therefore rejected the Old Testament as irreconcilable with this system.
Prior to the Advent, they worshipped Satan as creator, and as having
chief control in the whole course of things in the world, and being an
over-match for the antagonist, good principle: and honoring him in this
way, they held Cain, and his other most conspicuous followers and
supporters, in the highest veneration. Yearning for some relief from the
unmitigated and intolerable miseries which they suffered in their
warfare with their bodies, which, as matter, they deemed the seat of
corruption, they hailed the appearance of the good principle in
Christianity, supported as it was by demonstrations of resistless power,
as likely to defeat the antagonist evil principle, the Devil, to whom
they still ascribed the creation of the world. Instead of longer
worshipping him, therefore, they now taught _that the Supreme Deity, the
Creator of the Devil, was to be worshipped. This was the doctrine which
undoubtedly had been lost to all idolaters, and which they now promised
to restore_.
Cerinthus, in his attempts to combine Gnosticism and Christianity with
Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures, as he understood them, maintains, not
that the world was created by the supreme, invisible Deity, for he did
not so understand those writings, but that the Being to whom Moses
ascribes the creation and government of the world (and whom he calls
Jehovah) was a derived, begotten, created being, and therefore liable to
degenerate; that though originally endowed with the greatest virtues, he
fell; (he had forsaken the Jews, and they had renounced him;) that his
Creator, the Supreme Deity, had therefore determined to destroy his
empire, (the dominion and rule which he exercised, prior to his quitting
the temple, and also after becoming, in their opinion, the enemy of the
Jews;) that the Christ, so far from being the same person, Son of the
Supreme Deity, and Creator, was a wholly different being in all
respects, a created being, sent expressly to supersede and destroy the
Creator and Jewish lawgiver; that, taking possession of the person of
Jesus, he set himself vigorously to oppose Jehovah the Creator, who, in
self-defense, contrived to induce the Jews to crucify the man Jesus, the
Christ in the mean time having forsaken him. Accordingly, he taught his
followers that they "should abandon the Lawgiver of the Jews, whom he
looked upon as the Creator of the world," _i. e._, the Jehovah of the
Old Testament; and that they should worship the Supreme Deity as the
Father of the Æon whom he called Christ, in conjunction with that
Christ, or Æon, assuming him to be the same with him whom the Christians
called the Christ and the Son; conformably to his notion that Christ,
having entered the man Jesus at his baptism, withdrew from him before
his death. He denied his resurrection, and was, very probably, a
disciple of the false teacher referred to and refuted in Paul's
argument, 1 Cor. xv.
To show that the Oriental philosophy, which comprehended the leading
principles of the false, in opposition to the revealed system of
religion, and that the early heresies, which, being founded on the
Oriental philosophy, passed under the imposing title of Gnosticism,
ascribed the creation and government of the world to Satan, the
following quotations are made from Mosheim's Commentaries, Cent. I.,
sec. 60, 61:
"By none of its adversaries or corrupters was Christianity, from its
first rise, more seriously injured; by none was the Church more
grievously lacerated, and rendered less attractive to the people, than
by those who were for making the religion of Christ accommodate itself
to the principles of the Oriental philosophy respecting the Deity, the
origin of the world, the nature of matter and the human soul. We allude
to those who, from their pretending that they were able to communicate
to mankind, at present held in bondage by the Architect of the world, a
correct knowledge (_gnosis_) of the true and ever-living God, were
commonly styled Gnostics. Intoxicated with a fondness for these
opinions, not a few of the Christians were induced to secede from all
association with the advocates for the sound doctrine, and to form
themselves into various sects, which, as time advanced, became daily
more extensive and numerous, and were for several ages productive of
very serious inconveniences and evils to the Christian commonwealth....
It is by no means difficult to point out the way in which these people
contrived to make the religion of Christ appear to be altogether in
unison with their favorite system of discipline. All the philosophers of
the East, whose tenets, as we have seen, were, that the Deity had
nothing at all to do with matter, the nature and qualities of which they
considered to be malignant and poisonous; that the body was held in
subjection by a being entirely distinct from Him to whom the dominion
over the rational soul belonged; that the world, and all terrestrial
bodies, were not the work of the Supreme Being, the Author of all good,
but were formed out of matter by a nature either evil in its origin, or
that had fallen into a state of depravity; and lastly, that the
knowledge of the true Deity had become extinct, and that the whole race
of mankind, instead of worshipping the Father of Light and Life, and
source of every thing good, universally paid their homage to the Founder
and Prince of this nether world, or to his substitutes and agents: I say
all these looked forward with earnest expectation for the arrival of an
extraordinary and eminently powerful Messenger of the Most High, who,
they imagined, would deliver the captive souls of men from the bondage
of the flesh, and rescue them from the dominion of those genii by whom
they supposed the world and all matter to be governed; at the same time
communicating to them a correct knowledge of their everlasting Parent,
so as to enable them, upon the dissolution of the body, once more to
regain their long-lost liberty and happiness. An expectation of this
kind even continues to be cherished by their descendants of the present
day. Some of these philosophers, then, being struck with astonishment at
the magnitude and splendor of the miracles wrought by Christ and his
apostles, and perceiving that it was the object of our Lord's ministry
both to abrogate the Jewish law--a law which they conceived to have been
promulgated by the Architect or Founder of the world himself, or by the
chief of his agents--and also to overthrow those gods of the nations
whom they regarded as genii, placed over mankind by the same evil
spirit; hearing him, moreover, invite the whole world to join in the
worship of the one Omnipotent and only true God, and profess that he
came down from heaven for the purpose of redeeming the souls of men, and
restoring them to liberty, were induced to believe that he was that very
Messenger for whom they looked, the Person ordained by the Everlasting
Father, to destroy the dominion of the founder of this world as well as
of the genii who presided over it; to separate light from darkness, and
to deliver the souls of men from that bondage to which they were
subjected, in consequence of their connection with material bodies. To
various articles propounded in the Christian code as essential points of
belief, they utterly refused their assent: such, for instance, as that
which attributes the creation of the world to the Supreme Being, and
those respecting the divine origin of the Mosaic law, the authority of
the Old Testament, the character of human nature, and the like: for it
would have amounted to nothing short of an absolute surrender of the
leading maxims of the system to which they were devoted, had they not
persisted in maintaining that the creator of this world was a being of a
nature vastly inferior to the Supreme Deity, the Father of our Lord, and
that the law of Moses was not dictated by the Almighty, but by this same
inferior being, by whom also the bodies of men were formed and united to
souls of ethereal mould, and under whose influence the various penmen of
the Old Testament composed whatever they have left us on record." Again,
"according to the Gnostic scheme, an absolute and entire dominion over
the human race, and the globe we inhabit, is exercised by the founder of
the material world, a being of unbounded pride and ambition, who makes
use of every means in his power to prevent mankind from attaining to any
knowledge of the true God."
It is too plain to require a comment, that the fallen creature to whom,
in this religious system, the creation of the world is ascribed, and to
whom the nations universally paid their homage, was Satan; and that the
genii, his subordinates, were the angels who fell with him. On the other
hand, the Divine Messenger expected as the antagonist and conqueror of
Satan, could be no other than the Messenger Jehovah, appointed and sent
by the Everlasting Father.
Mosheim, in his Commentaries, Introduction, chap. 2, observes, that the
Jewish religion, at the time of our Saviour's appearance, "was
contaminated by errors of the most flagrant kind; even in the service
of the temple itself, numerous ceremonies and observances, drawn from
the religious worship of heathen nations, had been introduced and
blended with those of Divine institution; and in addition to
superstitions like these of a public nature, many erroneous principles,
probably either brought from Babylon and Chaldea by the ancestors of the
people at their return from captivity, or adopted by the thoughtless
multitude in conformity to the example of their neighbors the Greeks,
the Syrians, and the Egyptians, were cherished and acted upon in
private."
Again, "To the prince of darkness, with his associates and agents, they
attributed an influence over the world and mankind of the most extensive
nature; so predominant, indeed, as scarcely to leave a superior degree
of power even with the Deity himself."
"At the time of Christ's appearance, many of the Jews had imbibed the
principles of the Oriental philosophy respecting the origin of the
world, and were much addicted to the study of a recondite sort of
learning derived from thence, to which they gave the name of _Cabbala_.
The founders of several of the Gnostic sects, all of whom, we know, were
studious to make the Christian religion accommodate itself to the
principles of the ancient Oriental philosophy, _had been originally
Jews_, and exhibited in their tenets a strange mixture of the doctrines
of Moses, Christ, and Zoroaster. This is of itself sufficient to prove
that many of the Jews were in no small degree attached to the opinions
of the ancient Persians and Chaldeans. Such of them as had adopted these
irrational principles would not admit that the world was created by God,
but substituted, in the place of the Deity, _a celestial genius_
endowed with vast powers; from whom, also, they maintained that Moses
had his commission, and the Jewish law its origin. To the coming of the
Messiah, or deliverer, promised by God to their fathers, they looked
forward with hope, expecting that he would put an end to the dominion of
the being whom they thus regarded as the maker and ruler of the world."
Mosheim, Int., Com., chap. 2.
It would be alike tedious and useless much further to multiply citations
from the history of Gnostic and other Oriental writers, to show that the
nations represented by those writers regarded Satan as the creator of
the world and god of their idolatry.
"Beyond that vast expanse, refulgent with everlasting light, which was
considered as the immediate habitation of the Deity and those natures
which had been generated from him, these philosophers placed the seat of
matter, where, according to them, it had lain from all eternity, a rude,
undigested, opaque mass, agitated by turbulent, irregular motions of its
own provoking, and nurturing, as in a seed-bed, the rudiments of vice
and every species of evil. In this state it was found by a genius or
celestial spirit of the higher order, who had been either driven from
the abode of the Deity for some offense, or commissioned by him for the
purpose, _and who reduced it into order, and gave it that arrangement
and fashion which the universe now wears_. Those who spoke the Greek
tongue were accustomed to refer to this _creator of the world_ by the
name of _Demiurgus_. Matter received its inhabitants, both men and other
animals, from the same hand that had given to it disposition and
symmetry.... When all things were thus completed, Demiurgus, _revolting_
against the great First Cause of every thing, the all-wise and
omnipotent God, _assumed to himself the exclusive government of this
new state_, which he apportioned out into provinces or districts;
bestowing the administration and command over them on a number of genii
or spirits of inferior degree, who had been his associates and
assistants." Mosheim, Intro., sec. 34.
"In the following respects, they [the Gnostic sects] appear to have been
all of one mind; namely, that in addition to the Deity, _matter_, the
root and cause of every thing evil and depraved, had existed from all
eternity, that this corrupt matter had not been reduced into order by
the Supreme and all-benevolent Deity, but by a nature of a far inferior
rank; that the founder of the world, therefore, and the Deity, were
beings between whom no sort of relationship whatever existed." Ibid.,
1., sec. 65.
These representations of the sentiments of the Orientals may suffice to
show that the Arch-apostate claimed to be the creator and prince of this
world, and led his followers to adopt that usurped and impious claim as
a primary article of their faith, and to worship and serve him
accordingly. Nor does it otherwise seem possible to account for the
origin and adoption, at a very early period, of the doctrine of two
antagonist principles or powers, one as the creator of the world and
author of all evil, the other as an ineffectually counteracting agent of
good.
Divested of Eastern figure, and of bias from Western notions of
mythology and polytheism, the Oriental doctrine plainly exhibits Satan
as the creator and ruler of this world, and, on that ground, as exacting
the homage of its population. This primary arrogation on his part is the
ground of all idolatry, and of the great heresies of Gnostic and Popish
origin. Accordingly, the great antagonism which, since the fall, has
been in progress in the view of the whole universe, and of which the
termination is to fill the hosts of heaven with adoring and rapturous
ecstacy, and the ransomed Church with ceaseless exultation and praise,
exhibits the great Adversary as chief of a rebel faction of his own
species, instigating the original revolt, and ruling as his vassals the
race of man, arrogating the titles and prerogatives of the Creator and
Sovereign of the world, and persisting in his rebellion, usurpation, and
rivalship, till finally vanquished and imprisoned, his purposes
defeated, and his works destroyed; and at length displays, on the other
hand, the majesty and power, the titles, prerogatives, and rights, the
supremacy, rectitude and glory of the self-existent Creator, Proprietor
and rightful Sovereign, effectually reässerted, vindicated, and
universally acknowledged.
In these earliest and most prevalent systems of heresy are contained the
perversions and false doctrines against which the contemporaries and the
immediate and later orthodox successors of the apostles were called to
contend; and they present in bold relief the points brought into
controversy, as they are indicated in the creeds and decrees of Councils
specially convened to condemn and suppress them.
To meet the doctrine advanced by the earliest and adopted by the later
heretics, that the creation and government of the world was the work of
a creature, supposed by some to be the Evil One; by others, a being
originally good, but afterwards degenerate; by some, to be one of two
rival creatures; by others, to have derived his birth from the Supreme
God; they, rejecting with abhorrence such ideas of the Creator, and all
the notions associated with them, and impelled by their philosophy, as
well as by their knowledge and regard for the Scriptures, to assert in
the plainest manner that the Creator of all things is himself
uncreated--God, in distinction from creatures--planted themselves upon
that as an impregnable position.
But they had at the same time to maintain the doctrines of the Trinity
and the Divinity of Christ. They were to assert the Deity of Christ,
whom the heretics held to be a creature, and yet ascribed to him the
works of creation. It is at least natural to suppose that, to avoid
giving the heretics any advantage in popular argument, and to use
expressions importing the broadest contrast to theirs, they at first
ascribed the creation to God, without any reference to the distinction
of Persons in the Godhead; or, to maintain that doctrine at the same
time, and to meet the point in question as to the Deity of the Creator,
they ascribed the works of creation and providence to God the Father.
Whatever may have been the process, this was the result. It is not
unlikely that, at the date of the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds, there
were many who at length joined in adopting them, who from ignorance, or
from the sway of heretical influences, were greatly confused upon these
subjects; many, more or less perverted by Gnostic and Judaizing dogmas;
many who saw no possibility of maintaining the doctrines which they held
concerning the Father, as the Father of Christ the Son by _eternal
generation_, and as the fountain of all authority and power, without
specifically ascribing to him the works of creation and providence; many
who, relying on the doctrine of the _eternal_ generation of the Son, as
the most conclusive and unanswerable proof of his Divinity, confined
their attention to that, and saw no possibility of meeting and
counteracting the dogmas of Cerinthus, or of other heretics, if they
ascribed the creation to the Son.
It must be considered that the terms which they employed were adopted
expressly to meet the growing and fatal errors which infested the
Church; and that they had, at the date of the Nicene Creed, a most
powerful motive to concession and accommodation for the sake of unity,
in the notion already prevalent concerning schism--defection from the
faith of the dominant or Catholic Church, or separation from that body
on that account--as a mortal sin.
It was pointedly to their purpose to maintain, in opposition to
Cerinthus, that the Christ was the Son of God, and the only being
designated by that title; and equally to their purpose, in opposition to
Arius, to maintain that he was not created. They were to meet these
points somehow, or accomplish nothing against the most formidable
heresies. They hit upon a phraseology which, if it be not wholly
unintelligible to mortals, was probably then deemed to be unanswerable,
in the assertion that he was the Son by _eternal generation_; begotten,
not made, &c.
The language of the creeds, hereafter more particularly referred to, is
presumed to have become gradually familiar to the opposers of heresy
before it was embodied in those formularies. They express in a condensed
form the sentiments and terms by which the leading controvertists
repelled the dominant heresies of the time.
It is worthy of a passing notice, that from the origin of the Assyrian
empire down to the Christian era, the sway, over the whole Pagan world,
of the Oriental doctrines, embodied in the Sabian, Magian, Brahminical,
Lamaist, Boodhist, and other systems, laid the foundation and prepared
the way for the rise and spread of the Mohammedan imposture, after those
doctrines had, by the propagation of Christianity, been in some degree
intercepted and modified within, and in some directions beyond, the
limits of the Roman empire. The theory of the system of Mohammed, like
that ascribed to Zoroaster, which aimed to unite the Sabians, who
worshipped images, and the Magians, who refused them, with the Jews of
Babylon and its provinces after they had renounced idolatry and the
doctrine of mediation, involved a union of the same school of Jews in
the seventh century, with the nominal but already apostate churches
(churches characterized by Gnostic heresies and Pagan corruptions) of
Babylonia, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Northern Africa, Spain, &c.
Hence the first and, with respect to the Divine Being, the only article
of the Mohammedan faith is that of THE UNITY. For this, the Jews, the
judaizing professors of Christianity, the Cerinthians, Arians, &c., were
prepared; and in like manner for the exclusion of the doctrine of
mediation and the consequent proscription of images and sacrificial
offerings.
Who that considers the character and mission of Mohammed, as depicted
Rev. ix. 1-12, and illustrated by the histories of his time, can fail to
regard him as, in the hands of the great Adversary, one of the most
extraordinary visible agents of his antagonism. With no preliminary
indications, like a meteor fallen to the earth, he suddenly appears on
the scene. He receives the key and opens the abyss of darkness. The
blinding smoke of the pit ascends, and generates a locust army with the
power of scorpions, led on by Satan as their king, "whose name in Hebrew
is Abaddon, and in Greek, the Destroyer." As visible head of the
apostate faction, he subdues, and with enduring chains of mental
darkness manacles and holds fast the Eastern empire: while, in the
Western, essentially the like results, under the same leadership, are
accomplished by the head of the Papal hierarchy.
These great systems of influence and control, by which, in the Eastern
world, the Arch-deceiver held the human mind in bondage, required and
depended on implicit, unquestioning faith. Thus, throughout the Roman
empire prior to the Advent, and subsequently in the eastern division,
under the Mohammedan, and in the western, under the Popish faith.
The shock of the Reformation awaked and roused up the mind of western
Europe, and brought new antagonist influences into operation, which, by
recalling attention to the Scriptures as the only rule of faith, by
giving prominence to the cardinal doctrines of redemption, and by a
revival of learning, threatened wholly to subvert the dominion of Popish
superstition and imposture.
This aspect of his affairs required a new course of tactics on the part
of the great Adversary, by which the tendencies, intellectual,
speculative, philosophical, scientific, which were rising and spreading,
might be so perverted as to counteract the objects of the Reformation,
and, in place of the former outward and vulgar superstition, to give
sway to infidelity; a course of tactics adapted to the intellects of
men, stimulated to inquiry and earnest in the pursuit of knowledge; a
course by which the peculiar doctrines of the Scriptures and of the
Reformation, and the reality of inspiration and of miracles, might be
explained away, and by which, in effect, the arrogations of the
Arch-deceiver and the Pope, of lordship over men's minds, and over the
province of theological dogma, together with an ascendency of influence
in the seats of intellectual and physical science, might be imputed and
transferred to HUMAN REASON.
REASON, thus deified and installed as in a pontifical chair,
_progressively developed_ its hierarchs and suffragans in the seats of
learning, secular and sacred, in every part of the Protestant world.
Witness the rise, progress and results of this course of tactics in
Germany itself. Witness the infidel and atheistic fruits of this homage
of reason, in the departments of German metaphysics, theology,
criticism, physical science, &c. Witness the stealthy, insidious,
infectious inculcation and progress of this infidelity, in the same
departments, on this side of the Atlantic,--in some universities and
colleges under cover of the principles and discoveries of natural
science; in some theological schools, in the name of the science of
criticism, interpretation, &c. in lyceums and halls of popular resort,
by scientific lectures; and at the doors and in the face of all, by the
ceaseless issues of the press.
Can any observer within the precincts of Protestantism account, upon any
other view of the subject, for the progress and effects of this
infection, with its intuitional, conceptional, subjective and
transcendental cant; for its fascinating and transforming power over men
previously trained in schools of an opposite character; for its
leavenous working in scientific and ecclesiastical fraternities, or its
popular effects as administered orally and by the press? Must we not
suppose a subtle and powerful agency behind the scenes, as truly as in
the case of Gnosticism, Mohammedanism, Romanism, Mormonism? Has not
experience shown that a teacher from the pulpit or from a theological or
literary chair, who, notwithstanding his knowledge of the Scriptures
and of their peculiar doctrines, begins to exhibit signs of his
conversion to German rationalism in any respect; to pantheism, idealism,
neology, infidelity under any of its designations; soon becomes
confident, pertinacious, progressive, and at length is recognized as
having ceased to be restrained either by his former principles and
professions, or by the authority of the sacred oracles? In short, if the
Evil One is still abroad, seeking whom he may devour; if he is what the
Scriptures represent him to be; and if, through the great organisms and
mediums of domination above referred to, he still carries on his
warfare, we must needs conclude, from its nature and results, that he is
equally the prime mover and the actuating power of this rationalistic
system, deceiver of the educated through their idolatry of reason; as of
the ignorant through the imposing forms of superstition and the arts of
priestcraft.