Augustin is the political; Eusebius is the man of erudition. He has left,
besides the small work against Hierocles (see Note 17), two works of
defence; the first the _Evangelica Præparatio_, against the Gentiles; the
second the _Evangelica Demonstratio_, more suited for the Jews. The former
work is to show that Christianity has not been accepted without just
cause; which he attempts to prove by a very elaborate discussion (valuable
to us in a literary point of view, on account of the quotations which he
has preserved) of the various religions, Egyptian, Phœnician, Greek, and
of the various types of Greek thought and belief; and, by a comparison of
them with the Hebrew, he shows the superiority of the last. The other
work, the _Evangelica Demonstratio_, is designed to prove that Christ and
Christianity fulfil the ancient prophecies. His apology marks the
transitionary time when Christianity was becoming the religion of the
Roman world, and men hesitated as to its truth, looking back with regret
to the past, with uneasiness to the future.
The other two Apologists are nearly a century later; when Christianity had
been long established.
Cyril has already come before us as the respondent to Julian. It is enough
to refer to Lecture II. and Note 19, in relation to him. It is worthy of
observation, that the circumstance that he should consider it necessary to
reply to Julian’s work, at so long a period after the death of the author,
and the frustration of his schemes, seems to show the continued existence
of a wavering in the faith of Christians, of which we seldom have the
opportunity of finding the traces at so late a period.
If Cyril marks the apology of the Alexandrian church at the commencement
of the fifth century, Augustin similarly exhibits that of the African in
presence of the new woes which were bursting upon the world. Christianity
had long lived down the charges made against it by prejudice, and shown
itself to be the philosophy which the educated craved. The charges of
treason too had ceased, for it had become the established religion; but
one prejudice still remained. Victorious with man; triumphant over the
prejudices of the vulgar, the opinions of the philosophers, and the power
of the state; it still was not, it seemed, victorious in heaven; and at
last the heathen gods were arousing themselves to take vengeance on the
earth for the overthrow of their worship, by a series of terrible
calamities. Apprehensions like these haunted the imagination; and it was
the object of Augustin, in his work, _De Civitate Dei_, to remove them.
That work was a philosophy of society; it was the history of the church
and of the world, viewed in presence of the dissolution, social and
political, which seemed impending.
These brief remarks will suffice to give a faint idea of the line of
argument adopted by the early Apologists. Further information in regard to
them may be found in the following sources:—
In a history of this period written by Tzchirner, _Geschichte der
Apologetik_, 1805; also another by Van Senden, 1831, translated into
German from the Dutch, 1841; Clausen, _Apologetæ Ecc. Chr.
ante-Theodosiani_, 1817; and a brief account in Stein, _Die Apologetik des
Christenthum_, § 6. p. 13. Other references may be found in Hase’s _Church
History_, E. T. § 52; Hagenbach’s _Dogmengeschichte_, § 29, 117; and in J.
A. Fabricius, _Delectus Argument_, ch. i. In the same work (ch. ii-v.) is
an account of the chief Apologists, and of the fragments of their lost
writings. In reference to the character of the apologetic works of the
early fathers, information may also be obtained in Walch’s _Biblioth.
Patristic._ (ed. Danz. 1834.) § 97-100. ch. x; and concerning some of them
in P. G. Lumper’s _Hist. Theol.-Crit. de Sanct. Patr._ 1785; Moehler’s
_Patrologie_, 1840; Ritter’s _Chr. Phil._ i and ii; Neander’s
_Kirchengeschichte_, i. 242 seq.; ii. 411 seq.; Kaye’a works on Justin,
Clement, and Tertullian; and Dr. A. Clarke’s _Succession of Ecclesiastical
Literature_, 1832.
On a review of these early apologies, some peculiarities are observable.
First, with the exception of Origen’s treatise, and some parts of
Eusebius, they are inferior as works of mind to many of modern
times.(1076) This was to be expected from the character of the age; the
literature of that period being poor in tone, compared with the earlier
and with the modern. In works of encyclopædic history and geography, and
in a reconsideration of philosophy by the light of the past, it had indeed
some excellences; but the literature as a whole, not only the Latin, but
even the Greek, was debased by the substitution of rhetoric for the
healthy freshness of thought and poetry of older times: and the apologetic
literature partakes of the tone of its age. The Christian writers, when
looked at in a literary point of view, must be compared with authors of
their own times. The Alexandrian apologies rise sometimes to philosophy;
but those of the Greek nation sink to rhetoric. In later times, men who
were giants in mind and learning have written on behalf of Christianity;
and it would be unfair to the apologetic fathers to compare them with
these.
Secondly, we cannot fail to remark the abundant use of what is now called
the philosophical argument for Christianity, the conviction that prejudice
must be removed, and antecedent probabilities be suggested, before the
hearer could be expected to submit to Christianity. The just inference
from this is not that which some would draw, the depreciation of the
argument from external evidence, but rather a corroboration of the
importance of the emotional element, as an ingredient in the judgment
formed on religion. The only practical inference that can be drawn in
reference to ourselves is, that if it be true that our age resembles
theirs, as has been suggested by Pressensé (see Lecture VIII. p. 356), we
must adopt the same plan; not because we admit that the external evidence
is uncertain or unreal, but because the other kind of evidence is best
adapted, from philosophical reasons, to such a state of society as ours.
Several centuries pass before we again meet with works of evidence. In the
dark ages, the public mind and thought were nominally Christian; and at
least were not sufficiently educated to admit of the generation of doubts
which might create a demand for apologetic works. Accordingly we pass over
this interval, and proceed at once to the middle ages.
II. The scepticism of the second period of free thought possessed so
largely the character of a tendency rather than an attitude of fixed
antagonism, that it gave no opportunity for direct works of refutation.
But the spirit of apologetic is seen in two respects; in the special
refutation of particular points of teaching, as in Bernard’s controversy
with Abélard, and more especially in the works of the scholastic theology.
This theology, especially as seen in the works of the great realist
Aquinas, and of others who took their method from him, was essentially, as
has been before said (pp. 11 and 92), a work of defence. In the two
centuries before his time we already find the spirit of reverent inquiry
working. Anselm’s two celebrated works, the _Monologium_ and _Proslogium_,
a kind of soliloquy on the Trinity, and the _Cur Deus Homo_, or theory of
the Atonement, are the work of a mind that was reconsidering its own
beliefs, and restating the grounds of the immemorial doctrines of the
church. (See J. A. Hasse, _Anselm_, 1843, 52.) In the following century
(viz. the twelfth), the work of Peter Lombard, called the _Sententiæ_,
marks an age when inquiry was active; and the material was supplied for
its satisfaction by means of searching amid the opinions of the past for
the witness of authority. But in the thirteenth century, the grand advance
made by Aquinas in his _Summa_, is no less than the result of the
conviction that religion admitted of a philosophy; that theological truth
was a science; and so, commencing with the plan of first discussing God;
then man; then redemption; then ethics; he created a method, which had
been indeed suggested by his predecessors, but was more fully displayed by
him, for arranging the truths of theology in a systematic form, in which
their reasonableness might appear, and through which they might commend
themselves to the judgment of a philosophical age.
The most successful mode of replying to objections is not to refute the
error contained in them, but to grasp the truth and build it into a
system, where the doubter finds his mind and heart satisfied with the
possession of that for which he was craving. If the twelfth century had
not had its Abélards, its spirit of inquiry, of analysis, and of doubt;
the church would never have had its champion philosopher Aquinas: but if
it had not had its Aquinas, the succeeding ages would probably have
produced many more Abélards. The scholastic theology accordingly must be
regarded as the true rationalism, the true use of reason in defence. Like
as the mind goes through the process of perceiving facts, then of
classifying and generalizing, next of defining and tracing principles to
practical results; so the church, in forming its theology, receives its
facts as they were once for all apprehended by inspired men of old, and
are corroborated by the experience of the Christian consciousness from age
to age: but, after so receiving them, it exercises its office in creating
a theology, by classifying and arranging them, and generalizing from them;
and when new doubts or objections arise, it recompares its teaching with
the faith once delivered to the saints; defines and prescribes the limits
of truth and error; and thus absorbs into its own system whatever is true
in the newly-presented doubts or objections. This is really the action of
the church in moments of peril; and is that which was effected by the
scholastic theologians,—Anselm, the two Victors, Aquinas, Bonaventura, and
others. It is sufficient to refer to Ritter’s _Christliche Philosophie_,
iii. 502 seq.; iv. 257 seq.; Neander’s _Kirchengeschichte_, vol. viii;
Stein’s _Die Apologetic_, § 7 and 8; Hagenbach’s _Dogmengesch._ § 150; and
Hase’s _Church History_, § 218, 277, 278; for information concerning these
writers and their position.
III. At the time of the Renaissance, in the fifteenth century, which was
the third period at which the Christian faith was in peril from doubt, we
begin to meet with works of evidence of a more directly controversial
kind. Defence is no longer a spirit, but a fact. Apologetic theology is
severed from Dogmatic.
One work remains, written in the fourteenth century by Petrarch (_Opp. de
Otio Religiosor_), which defends the truth of Christianity against
Philosophers, Mahometans, and Jews: partly on the evidence of miracles,
but mainly on the internal evidence of the purity and godliness of
Christianity. In the early part of the fifteenth century, Raimond de
Sebonde, professor of medicine at Barcelona, wrote his _Theologia
Naturalis_, which was afterwards translated into French by Montaigne. It
was charged with deism, but really was in spirit, as previously observed
(p. 104), only like Locke’s _Reasonableness of Christianity_. See Hallam’s
_History of Literature_, i. 138; Ritter’s _Christliche Philosophie_, iv.
658 seq. Another exists by Æneas Sylvius; another by Ficinus, 1450, _De
Relig. Christianâ_, in which the evidence of prophecy and miracles is
adduced; the arguments from the moral character of the apostles and
martyrs, the wonderful spread of Christianity, and the wisdom of the
Bible, are used; and a comparison is drawn between Christianity and other
creeds.
In the close of the same century, as soon as printing became common,
several similar treatises occur. One exists by Alphonso de Spina,
_Fortalitium Fidei contra Judæos, &c._ 1487; also by Savonarola,
_Triumphus Crucis, sive de Vera Fide_, 1497; also by Pico di Mirandola;
and by Ludovicus Vives, _De Veritate Christianâ_, 1551. A carefully
written account of all these is given by Staüdlin, in Eichhorn’s
_Geschichte der Literatur_, vol. vi. p. 24 seq. See also Fabricius,
_Delect. Argument_, ch. xxx.
The preceding works were mostly directed against the first of the two
species of unbelief which belonged to this period, viz. the literary
tendency (see Lecture III. p. 93, 94). A few however exist which were
directed against the second species, which was connected with the
philosophy of Padua. They are not so much general treatises, as works
written against particular opinions, of Pomponatius, Bruno, or Vanini. An
account of them may be found in the memoirs respectively published
concerning these writers; the references to which are given in the notes
to Lecture III. (See pp. 101-103.) The work of Mornæus, _De Veritate
Religionis Christianæ adv. Atheistas, Epicureos, &c._ 1580, was probably
suggested by this species of philosophy.
IV. The fourth great period, marked by the unbelief connected with the
activity of modern speculation and the influence of modern discovery,
commenced in the sixteenth century. The works of defence are so numerous
that we can only give a brief notice of the principal writers and
writings. A list may be collected, down to the respective dates of their
publication, from J. A. Fabricius’s _De Veritate Rel. Christ._ c. 30;
Pfaff’s _Hist. Litt. Theol._ ii. § 2; Buddeus’s _Isagoge_, pp. 856-1237;
Walch’s _Biblioth. Theol. Select._ vol. i. ch. v. § 5-7: and the principal
arguments are summed up in Stapfer’s _Instit. Theol. Polem._ 1744, vol. i.
ch. iii. and vol. ii. Tholuck also has written a history of modern
apologetic, _Ueber Apologetik und ihre Litteratur_ (Vermischte Schriften,
i. pp. 150-376), and the Abbe Migne has published a most important
collection of the principal treatises on apologetic in all ages, arranged
in chronological order. It is contained in twenty vols. 4to. 1843. The
title of the work is given below.(1077)
The work of Grotius, _De Veritate Religionis Christianæ_, is the one which
opens the period of evidences which we are now considering; of which a
notice may be found in Hallam’s _History of Literature_, ii. 364, and in
Tholuck, _Verm. Schr._ i. 158; but no very definite cause can be pointed
out why it was written. It was merely indeed one of the class of treatises
already described (Notes 4 and 5), which devoted a portion of space to the
controversy with the Jews and Mahometans. It is when a new standpoint had
been assumed by scepticism, and the causes, intellectual or moral, which
have been pointed out in these lectures, had begun to create a real peril,
that writings on the evidences begin to derive a new value and assume a
new form.
We shall give an account of them according to countries. THE ENGLISH WORKS
OF EVIDENCE.—Those which were called forth in England by Deism were of
several kinds. Perhaps they may be arranged under four heads.
The first class consists of specific answers to certain books, published
from time to time; of which kind are most of those which are named in the
foot-notes to Lecture IV. Waterland’s reply to Tindal is a type of this
class. Occupied with tracking the opponent from point to point of his
work, such replies, though important while the sceptical book is operating
for evil, become obsolete along with the war of which they are a part, and
henceforth are only valuable in literary history, unless, as in the
special instance of Bentley’s _Phileleutherus Lipsiensis_ in reply to
Collins, they are such marvellous instances of dialectical ability and
literary acuteness that they possess a philosophical value as works of
power, when their instructiveness has ceased.
A second kind consisted of homilies rather than arguments; sermons to
Christian people, warning them against forms of unbelief, and regarding
unbelief from a practical point of view rather than a speculative; and
discussing, as would appropriately belong to such an object, the moral to
the exclusion of the intellectual causes of doubt. Some of Tillotson’s
sermons are an example of the highest of this kind of works. The value of
this class is twofold: in a purely pastoral point of view, the suggestions
which they contain concerning the moral causes of doubt being founded on
the real facts of the human heart, and on the declarations of scripture,
have a lasting value; and in a literary point of view, these works
contribute to the knowledge of the state of public feeling of the time.
This is seen in this instance. Until about the end of the seventeenth
century, there is no clear perception, except among the very highest of
this class of writers, of the particular character of the forms of doubt
against which their remarks are directed. The general name, _Atheism_, is
used vaguely, to describe every form of unbelief. This fact tells its
tale. It witnesses to the consciousness that they lived in an age of
restlessness, when change of creed was going on, and doubt was prevalent;
but when unbelief had not shaped itself into form, and found as yet few
organs of expression. We are reminded of the works before named of the
fifteenth century (p. 93 seq. 104.) At that time doubt and restlessness
prevailed, as we learn from the frequent references to it; yet the works
which transmit the knowledge of it to us are few, and the allusions to it
vague: while the works of evidence then written are directed against
antiquated forms of it,—Mahometan, Jewish, or philosophical. In like
manner, in the seventeenth age, we see, as we look back, that the
Christian sermons were mostly directed against older forms of
unbelief,—the atheism of the ancients, or of the Paduan school; and that
the contemporary unbelief had not become definite enough to enable the
Christian writers to apprehend its nature. This fact too explains another
circumstance. The preachers evince a bitterness, which is not merely the
rudeness common in that age on all subjects, nor the indignation which
arises from solicitude for souls, common in all ages on a subject so
momentous as salvation; but it is the bitterness of alarm. There is a
margin in their expression of vituperation, which is only to be explained
by the fact, that the absence of a clear statement of the grounds of
doubt, such as was subsequently given in the eighteenth century, deprived
the preachers of the means of understanding the alleged excuse for the
prevailing doubt. They appear not to be conscious of the causes which
could create in the minds of others a restlessness which they did not feel
themselves. They seem like persons living in a state of political society,
who are conscious of a vast amount of general dissatisfaction, and a
suspicion of a plot against society, the authors of which are unknown, as
well as the causes of their supposed grievances; and where the danger is
necessarily heightened from the very absence of knowledge as to its
precise amount.
A third class of the English apologies consists of works which have
neither the speciality of the first class, nor the vagueness of the
second. They were directed against special writers and particular books;
but instead of being adapted as a detailed reply, chapter by chapter, to
the special work, the authors of them seized hold of the central errors of
the unbeliever, or the central truths by which he was to be refuted. The
works of the two Chandlers against Collins, and Leland’s work on the
deists, rise into this tone at times. Bishop Gibson’s later Pastorals
against Woolston are a good type of it; and still better, many of the
courses of Boyle Lectures; and above all, Warburton’s _Divine Legation of
Moses_.
There is a fourth class of works, of a grander type, which resemble the
one just named, in discussing subjects rather than books: but differ in
that they are not directed against particular books or men, but take the
largest and loftiest view of the evidences of Christianity. The first of
this class, though a small one, is Locke’s _Reasonableness of
Christianity_. The best examples are, _Things Divine and Human conceived
of by Analogy_, by Dr. Peter Browne, 1733; and the _Analogy_ of Bishop
Butler, in reference to the Philosophical Evidence of Christianity; with
the works of Lardner and Paley in reference to the Historical. Books of
this class are elevated above what is local or national, and are in some
sense a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί.
After this description of the different classes of works of evidence, it
remains to give a brief notice of a few of the more important writers,
especially of the two latter classes, in chronological order.
Omitting the repetition of those books named in the foot-notes of Lect.
IV. which were directed against Herbert, Hobbes, and Blount, and which, as
already remarked, belonged to the first of the four classes just named,
and also the enumeration of the various sermons which belong to the
second, we meet with the following writers:—Robert Boyle (1626-1691), an
intelligent philosopher and devout Christian, who wrote works to reconcile
reason and religion, suggested by the growth of new sciences; and with
Ray, who first supplied materials for the argument for natural religion,
drawn from final causes, 1691; and Stillingfleet, who investigated
religion from the literary side, as the two just named from the
scientific. Boyle not only wrote himself on the Evidences, but founded the
Boyle Lectures,(1078) a series which was mainly composed of works written
by men of real ability, and contains several treatises of value, as works
of mind, as well as instruction. Among the series may be named those of
Bentley (1692); Kidder, 1694; Bp. Williams, 1695; Gastrell, 1697; Dean
Stanhope, 1701; Dr. Clarke, 1704, 5; Derham, 1711; Ibbot, 1713; Gurdon,
1721; Berriman, 1730; Worthington, 1766; Owen, 1769: all of which belong
to the third of the classes named above, while one or two approach to the
grandeur of the fourth.
Among separate treatises, the popular ones by the Non-juror Charles Leslie
([+]1722), _Short Method with the Deists_; Jenkins’s _Reasonableness of
Christianity_, 1721; Foster’s _Usefulness and Truth of Christianity_,
against Tindal; and Bp. Sherlock’s _Trial of the Witnesses_, against
Woolston; Lyttelton on _St. Paul’s Conversion_; Conybeare’s _Defence of
Revelation_, 1732; Warburton’s _Divine Legation of Moses_; are the best
known. A complete list of the respective replies to deist writers may be
found under the criticism of each writer, in Leland’s _Deists_, and
Lechler’s _Gesch. des Engl. Deismus_. The great work of Bishop Butler,
which appeared in 1736, has been sufficiently discussed in Lect. IV. p.
157 seq. It was the recapitulation and condensation of all the arguments
that had been previously used; but possessed the largeness of treatment
and originality of combination of a mind which had not so much borrowed
the thoughts of others as been educated by them. Balguy’s works also,
though brief, are scarcely inferior. (See his _Discourse on Reason and
Faith_, vol. i. serm. i-vii; vol. ii. serm. ii, iii, iv; vol. iv. serm.
ii. and iii.)
We have already pointed out (p. 207), that in the latter half of the
century, the historical rather than the moral evidences were developed.
The philosophical argument preceded in time, as in logic. First, the
religion of nature was proved: at this point the deist halted; the
Christian advanced farther. The chasm between it and revealed religion was
bridged at first by probability; next by Butler’s argument from analogy,
put as a dilemma to silence those who objected to revelation, but capable,
as shown in Lect. IV. of being used as a direct argument to lead the mind
to revelation; thirdly, by the historic method, which asserted that
miracles attested a revelation, even without other evidence. The argument
in all cases however, whether philosophical or historical, was an appeal
to reason; either evidence of probability or of fact; and was in no case
an appeal to the authority of the church.