divines. Cranmer explicitly declared, that bishops and priests were of
the same order at the commencement of Christianity; and this was the
opinion of several of his distinguished contemporaries. Holding this
maxim, their support of episcopacy must have proceeded from views of
expediency, or, in some instances, from a conviction which prevailed
very generally at this early period, that it belonged to the supreme
civil magistrate to regulate the spiritual no less than the political
government; an idea involving in it that no one form of ecclesiastical
polity is of divine institution. At a later period, during the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, we find the same conviction, that it was no violation
of Christianity to choose different modes of administering the church.
Archbishop Whitgift, who distinguished himself by the zeal with which he
supported the English hierarchy, frequently maintains, that the form of
discipline is not particularly, and by name, set down in Scripture; and
he also plainly asserts, “that no form of church government is, by the
Scriptures, prescribed or commanded to the church of God.” This
principle is admirably illustrated and confirmed by the venerable
Hooker, in the third book of his work on ecclesiastical polity; and
another divine of the English church, who lived about the same period,
has laid down what he conceives to be an unquestionable position, “that
all churches have not the same form of discipline; neither is it
necessary that they should, because it cannot be proved that any
particular form of church government is enjoined by the word of God.” We
have, indeed, a succession of testimonies from the introduction of the
reformation down through the reign of Elizabeth,--testimonies given by
the primates, and bishops, and theologians, who have been venerated as
the luminaries of the church of England, that the divine right or
institution of episcopacy constituted no part of their faith; and this
is confirmed by their correspondence with reformed divines, who did not
live under the episcopal model, but who, notwithstanding, were often
consulted as to the ecclesiastical arrangements which the convocation
should adopt. The same general sentiment is to be traced in those
churches which had reverted to the primitive equality among the
ministers of Christ. In the second Helvetic confession, which was
approved by many churches, it is taught, that bishops and presbyters in
the beginning governed the church with equal power, none exalting
himself above another; the inequality which soon was introduced
originating from the desire of preserving order. Various passages from
Cyprian and Jerom are quoted in confirmation of this; and the article
thus concludes: “Wherefore no one can be lawfully hindered from
returning to the ancient constitution of the church of God, and to adopt
it in preference to what custom has introduced.” Had the compilers
believed that this ancient constitution was of divine obligation, they
would have expressed themselves much more strongly with respect to it;
and instead of representing the return to it as what ought not to be
hindered, they would have enjoined it, as what it was a violation of the
law of God to neglect.
5. The reformation in Scotland, conducted by Knox, who had spent a
considerable part of his life at Geneva, and who had imbibed the
opinions of Calvin, proceeded upon those views of polity which that
reformer had adopted. Still, however, he authorized a modification of
these opinions, accommodated to the state of his native country; for
although the title of bishop was not used, superintendents, with powers
little inferior to those committed to prelates in England, were
sanctioned by the first Book of Discipline; and these superintendents
were classed, in the acts of different general assemblies, among the
necessary ministers of the church. The necessity must have arisen out of
the circumstances of the period when the book was framed; for the polity
which it prescribed was said to be only for a time; and the office of
superintendent, as has been strenuously urged by some of the most
zealous defenders of presbytery, was not intended to be permanent. The
Lutheran church, with the exception of those branches of it established
in Denmark and Sweden, has adopted a kind of intermediate constitution
between episcopacy and presbytery. While it holds that there is no
divine law creating a distinction among ministers, it yet contends that
such a distinction is on many accounts expedient; and accordingly a
diversity in point of rank and privileges has been universally
introduced, approaching in different places, more or less, to the
hierarchy which subsisted before the reformation. But, although it has
thus regulated its own practice, it unambiguously admits, that as the
Gospel is silent as to any particular form of polity, different forms
may be chosen, without any breach of Christian union.
6. It appears from the statement which has now been given, that all
Protestants immediately after the reformation, while they abjured the
papal supremacy, were united in holding that the mode of administering
the church might be varied, some of them being attached to episcopacy,
others to presbytery; but all founding this attachment upon the judgment
which they had formed as to the tendency or utility of either of these
modes of government. An idea soon was avowed by some of the reformers,
that the whole regulation of the church pertained to the magistrate;
this branch of power being vested in him no less than that of
administering the civil government; and to this opinion the name of
Erastianism, from Erastus, who first defended it, was given. Cranmer, in
an official reply which he made to certain questions that had been
submitted for his consideration, declared, “that the civil ministers
under the king’s majesty be those that shall please his highness for the
time to put in authority under him; as, for example, the lord
chancellor, lord great master, &c; the ministers of God’s word under his
majesty be the bishops, parsons, vicars, and such other priests as be
appointed by his highness to that ministration; as, for example, the
bishop of Canterbury, &c. All the said officers and ministers, as well
of the one sort as the other, be appointed, assigned, and elected in
every place by the laws and orders of kings and princes.” By the great
majority of Protestants, however, the tenets of Erastus were condemned;
for they maintained that the Lord Jesus had conveyed to his church a
spiritual power quite distinct from the temporal; and that it belonged
to the ministers of religion to exercise it, for promoting the spiritual
welfare of the Christian community. But, while they disputed as to this
point, they agreed in admitting there was no model prescribed in the New
Testament for a Christian church, as there had been in the Mosaical
economy for the Jewish church; and that it was a branch of the liberty
of the disciples of Christ, or one of their privileges, to choose the
polity which seemed to them best adapted for extending the power and
influence of religion.
ECLECTICS, a sect of ancient philosophers, who professed to select
whatever was good and true from all the other philosophical sects. The
Eclectic philosophy was in a flourishing state at Alexandria when our
Saviour was upon earth. Its founders formed the design of selecting from
the doctrines of all former philosophers such opinions as seemed to
approach nearest the truth, and of combining them into one system. They
held Plato in the highest esteem; but did not scruple to join with his
doctrines whatever they thought conformable to reason in the tenets of
other philosophers. Potamon, a Platonist, appears to have been the
projector of this plan. The Eclectic system was brought to perfection by
Ammonius Saccas, who blended Christianity with his philosophy, and
founded the sect of the Ammonians, or New Platonists, in the second
century. The moral doctrine of the Alexandrian school was as
follows:--The mind of man, originally a portion of the Divine Being,
having fallen into a state of darkness and defilement, by its union with
the body, is to be gradually emancipated from the chains of matter, and
rise by contemplation to the knowledge and vision of God. The end of
philosophy, therefore, is the liberation of the soul from its corporeal
imprisonment. For this purpose, the Eclectic philosophy recommends
abstinence, with other voluntary mortifications, and religious
exercises. In the infancy of the Alexandrian school, not a few of the
professors of Christianity were led, by the pretensions of the Eclectic
sect, to imagine that a coalition might, with great advantage, be formed
between its system and that of Christianity. This union appeared the
more desirable, when several philosophers of this sect became converts
to the Christian faith. The consequence was, that Pagan ideas and
opinions were by degrees mixed with the pure and simple doctrines of the
Gospel. See PLATONISM.
ECLIPSE. The word _eclipse_, ἔκλειψις, signifies _failure_, namely, of
light. An eclipse of the sun is caused by the intervention of the moon,
at new, or in conjunction with the sun, intercepting his light from the
earth, either totally or partially. An eclipse of the moon is caused by
the intervention of the earth, intercepting the sun’s light from the
moon, when full, or in opposition to the sun, either totally or
partially. The reason why the sun is not eclipsed every new moon, nor
the moon at every full, is owing to the inclination of the moon’s orbit
to the plane of the ecliptic, or earth’s orbit, in an angle of about
five degrees and a half; in consequence of which, the moon is generally
too much elevated above the plane of the ecliptic, or too much depressed
below it, for her disk to touch the earth’s shadow at full, or for her
shadow, or her penumbra, to touch the earth’s disk at new. An eclipse,
therefore, of either luminary can only take place when they are within
their proper limits, or distances, from the nodes or intersections of
both orbits. And because the limits of solar eclipses are wider than
those of lunar, in general there will be more eclipses of the sun than
of the moon. In any year, the number of eclipses of both luminaries
cannot be less than two, and these will both be of the sun, nor more
than seven: the usual number is four; and it is very rare to have more
than six. But though solar eclipses happen oftener, lunar are more
frequently observed in any particular place. For an eclipse of the moon
is visible to the inhabitants of half the globe at the same instant;
whereas, an eclipse of the sun is visible only within that part of the
earth’s surface, traversed by the moon’s total shadow, and by her
penumbra, or partial shadow. But her total shadow, when she is nearest
to the earth, cannot cover a space of more than a hundred and
fifty-eight geographical miles in diameter, nor at her mean distance
more than seventy-nine, and at her greatest distance may not touch the
earth at all. In the two former cases, the sun will be eclipsed in the
places covered by the shadow totally, or by the penumbra partially: in
the last it may be annular, but not total. Without the reach of the
shadow, and within the limits of the penumbra, which cannot cover more
than four thousand five hundred and fifty-two miles of the earth’s
surface, there will be a partial eclipse of the sun, and without these
limits no eclipse at all. Hence lunar eclipses are more frequently
noticed by historians than solar; and Diogenes Laertius may be credited
when he relates, that, during the period in which the Egyptians had
observed eight hundred and thirty-two eclipses of the moon, they had
only observed three hundred and seventy-three of the sun. In the midst
of a total lunar eclipse, the moon’s disk is frequently visible, and of
a deep red or copperish colour. This, in the poetic language of sacred
prophecy, is expressed by “the moon’s being turned into blood,” Joel ii,
31. This remarkable phenomenon is caused by the sun’s lateral rays in
their passage through the dense atmosphere of the earth, being inflected
into the shadow by refraction, and falling pretty copiously upon the
moon’s disk, are reflected from thence to the eye of the spectator. If
the earth had no atmosphere, the moon’s disk would then be as black as
in a solar eclipse. A total eclipse of the moon may occasion a privation
of her light for an hour and a half, during her total immersion in the
shadow; whereas, a total eclipse of the sun can never last in any
particular place above four minutes, when the moon is nearest to the
earth, and her shadow thickest. Hence it appears, that the darkness
which “overspread the whole land of Judea,” at the time of our Lord’s
crucifixion, was preternatural, “from the sixth until the ninth hour,”
or from noon till three in the afternoon, in its duration, and also in
its time, about full moon, when the moon could not possibly eclipse the
sun. It was accompanied by an earthquake, which altogether struck the
spectators, and among them the centurion and Roman guard, with great
fear, and a conviction, that Jesus was the Son of God, Matt, xxvii,
51–54.
Eclipses, says Dr. Hales, are justly reckoned among the surest and most
unerring characters of chronology; for they can be calculated with great
exactness backward as well as forward; and there is such a variety of
distinct circumstances of the time when, and the place where, they were
seen; of the duration, or beginning, middle, or end of every eclipse,
and of the quantity, or number of digits eclipsed; that there is no
danger of confounding any two eclipses together, when the circumstances
attending each are noticed with any tolerable degree of precision. Thus,
to an eclipse of the moon incidentally noticed by the great Jewish
chronologer, Josephus, shortly before the death of Herod the Great, we
owe the determination of the true year of our Saviour’s nativity. During
Herod’s last illness, and not many days before his death, there happened
an eclipse of the moon on the very night that he burned alive Matthias,
and the ringleaders of a sedition, in which the golden eagle, which he
had consecrated and set up over the gate of the temple, was pulled down
and broken to pieces by these zealots. This eclipse happened, by
calculation, March 13, U. C. 750, B. C. 4. But it is certain from
Scripture, that Christ was born during Herod’s reign; and from the visit
of the magi to Jerusalem “from the east,” ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν, from the
Parthian empire, to inquire for the true “born King of the Jews,” whose
star they had seen “at its rising,” ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ, and also from the age
of the infants massacred at Bethlehem, “from two years old and under,”
Matt, ii, 1–16. It is no less certain, that Jesus could not have been
born later than B. C. 5, which is the year assigned to the nativity by
Chrysostom, Petavius and Prideaux.
EDEN, _Garden of_, the residence of our first parents in their state of
purity and blessedness. The word _Eden_ in the Hebrew denotes “pleasure”
or “delight:” whence the name has been given to several places which,
from their situation, were pleasant or delightful. Thus the Prophet
Amos, i, 5, speaks of an Eden in Syria, which is generally considered to
have been in the valley of Damascus, where a town called Eden is
mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and where the tomb of Abel is pretended
to be shown. This has in consequence been selected by some as the site
of the garden of Eden. By others, the garden has been placed on the
eastern side of mount Libanus; and by others again, in Arabia Felix,
where traces of the word _Eden_ are found. But the opinion which has
been most generally received on this subject is that which places the
garden on the Lower Euphrates; between the junction of that river with
the Tigris and the gulf of Persia. This is Dr. Well’s opinion; in which
he is supported by Huetius, Grotius, Marinus, and Bochart. To this it is
replied, that, according to this scheme, the garden was intersected by a
great branch of the Euphrates, in the lower and broadest part of its
course; which will give it an extent absolutely irreconcilable with the
idea of Adam’s “dressing” it by his own manual labour, or even of
overlooking it: beside that all communication would be cut off between
its different parts by a stream half a mile in width. Its local
features, too, if in this situation, must have been of the most
uninteresting kind; the whole of that region, as far as the sight can
reach, being a dead, monotonous, sandy, or marshy flat, without a single
undulation to relieve the eye, or give any of the beauties which the
imagination involuntarily paints to itself as attendant on a spot
finished by the hand of God as the residence of his creatures in a state
of innocence; whose minds may be supposed to be tuned to the full
enjoyment of the grand and beautiful in nature. How different will be
the aspect and arrangement of this favoured spot, if it be placed where
only, according to the words of Moses, it can be placed; namely, at the
heads or fountains of the rivers described, instead of their mouths.
The country of Eden, therefore, according to others, was some where in
Media, Armenia, or the north of Mesopotamia; all mountainous tracts, and
affording, instead of the sickening plains of Babylonia, some of the
grandest, as well as the richest scenery in the world. A river or stream
rising in some part of this country, entered the garden; where it was
parted into four others, in all probability, by first falling into a
basin or lake, from which the other streams issued at different points,
taking different directions, and growing into mighty rivers; although at
their sources in the garden, they would be like all other rivers, mere
brooks, and forming no barrier to a free communication between the parts
of the garden. Dr. Wells, in order to support his hypothesis of the
situation of Eden on the lower parts of the Euphrates and Tigris, after
giving these rivers a distribution which has now no existence, makes the
Pison and Gihon to be parts of the Tigris and Euphrates themselves: an
arrangement at perfect disagreement with the particular description of
Moses; beside, that the Gihon thus called, instead of compassing the
whole land of Cush, can only be said to skirt an extreme corner of it.
It appears, indeed, that in the time of Alexander, the Euphrates pursued
a separate course to the sea; or, at least, that a navigable branch of
it was carried in that direction: in the mouth of which, at Diridotis,
Nearchus anchored with his fleet. But what reliance can be placed on the
ever shifting channels of a river flowing through an alluvial soil, and
over a perfect level divertible at the pleasure of the people inhabiting
its banks? Or, what theory can be founded on their distribution, which
will not be as unstable as the streams themselves? This very channel, so
essential to the hypothesis which places Eden in this situation, was
annihilated by the Orcheni, a neighbouring people; who directed the
stream to water their own land, and thus gave it a shorter course into
the Tigris, which it has ever since preserved. But it is only the lower
parts of the Euphrates and Tigris, as they creep through the plains of
Babylonia, which are thus inconstant: higher up in their courses, they
flow over more solid strata, and in deeper valleys, unchanged by time.
It is here that their conformity with the Mosaic account is to be
sought; and it is here that they may be found, in the exact condition in
which they were left by the deluge, and, indeed, according to Moses, in
which they existed before that event. It is true, that the heads of the
four rivers, above described, cannot now be found sufficiently near, to
recognise thence the exact situation of paradise; but they all arise
from the same mountainous region; and the springs of the Euphrates and
Tigris, as already mentioned, are even now nearly interwoven. Mr. Faber
supposes the lake Arsissa to cover the site of Eden; and that the change
which carried the heads of the rivers to a greater distance from it, was
occasioned by the deluge. But it is far more probable that this change,
if we may infer from the account given by Moses that the courses of all
the streams remained unaltered by the flood, may have taken place at
man’s expulsion from the garden: when God might choose to obliterate
this fair portion of his works, unfitted for any thing but the residence
of innocence; and to blot at once from the face of the earth, like the
guilty cities of the plain, both the site and the memorial of man’s
transgression,--an awful event, which would add tenfold horrors to the
punishment.
EDOM, a province of Arabia, which derives its name from Edom, or Esau,
who there settled in the mountains of Seir, in the land of the Horites,
south-east of the Dead Sea. His descendants afterward extended
themselves throughout Arabia Petrea, and south of Palestine, between the
Dead Sea and the Mediterranean. During the Babylonish captivity, and
when Judea was almost deserted, they seized the south of Judah, and
advanced to Hebron. Hence that tract of Judea, which they inhabited,
retained the name of Idumea in the time of our Saviour, Mark iii, 8.
Under Moses and Joshua, and even under the kings of Judah, the Idumeans
were confined to the east and south of the Dead Sea, in the land of
Seir; but afterward they extended their territories more to the south of
Judah. The capital of east Edom was Bozrah; and that of south Edom,
Petra, or Jectael. The Edomites, or Idumeans, the posterity of Esau, had
kings long before the Jews. They were first governed by dukes or
princes, and afterward by kings, Gen. xxxvi, 31. They continued
independent till the time of David, who subdued them, in completion of
Isaac’s prophecy, that Jacob should rule Esau, Gen. xxvii, 29, 30. The
Idumeans bore this subjection with great impatience; and at the end of
Solomon’s reign, Hadad, the Edomite, who had been carried into Egypt
during his childhood, returned into his own country, where he procured
himself to be acknowledged king, 1 Kings xi, 22. It is probable,
however, that he reigned only in east Edom; for Edom south of Judea
continued subject to the kings of Judah, till the reign of Jehoram, son
of Jehoshaphat, against whom it rebelled, 2 Chron. xxi, 8. Jehoram
attacked Edom, but did not subdue it. Amaziah king of Judah, took Petra,
killed a thousand men, and compelled ten thousand more to leap from the
rock, upon which stood the city of Petra, 2 Chron. xxv, 11, 12. But
these conquests were not permanent. Uzziah took Elath on the Red Sea, 2
Kings xiv, 22; but Rezin, king of Syria, retook it. Some think that
Esarhaddon, king of Syria, ravaged this country, Isaiah xxi, 11–17;
xxxiv, 6. Holofernes subdued it, as well as other nations around Judea,
Judith iii, 14. When Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, the Idumeans
joined him, and encouraged him to rase the very foundations of that
city. This cruelty did not long continue unpunished. Five years after
the taking of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar humbled all the states around
Judea, and in particular Idumea. John Hyrcanus entirely conquered the
Idumeans, whom he obliged to receive circumcision and the law. They
continued subject to the later kings of Judea till the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Romans. They even came to assist that city when
besieged, and entered it in order to defend it. However, they did not
continue there till it was taken, but returned into Idumea loaded with
booty. The prophecies respecting Edom are numerous and striking; and the
present state of the country as described by modern travellers has given
so remarkable an attestation to the accuracy of their fulfilment, that a
few extracts from Mr. Keith’s work, in which this is pointed out, may be
fitly introduced:--
2. There are numerous prophecies respecting Idumea, that bear a literal
interpretation, however hyperbolical they may appear. “My sword shall
come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment.
From generation to generation it shall lie waste, none shall pass
through it for ever and ever. But the cormorant and the bittern shall
possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall
stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.
They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom; but none shall be
there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up in
her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof; and it
shall be a habitation of dragons, and a court for owls. Seek ye out of
the book of the Lord and read; no one of these shall fail, none shall
want her mate; for my mouth it hath commanded, and his Spirit it hath
gathered them. And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath
divided it unto them by line; they shall possess it for ever, from
generation to generation shall they dwell therein,” Isa. xxxiv, 5,
10–17. “I have sworn by myself, saith the Lord, that Bozrah” (the strong
or fortified city) “shall become a desolation, a reproach, a waste, and
a curse; and all the cities thereof shall be perpetual wastes. Lo, I
will make thee small among the Heathen, and despised among men. Thy
terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou
that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the
hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will
bring thee down from thence, saith the Lord. Also Edom shall be a
desolation; every one that goeth by shall be astonished, and shall hiss
at all the plagues thereof. As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah,
and the neighbour cities thereof, saith the Lord, no man shall abide
there, neither shall a son of man dwell in it,” Jer. xlix, 13–18. “Thus
saith the Lord God, I will stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut
off man and beast from it, and I will make it desolate from Teman.” “I
laid the mountains of Esau and his heritage waste for the dragons of the
wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return
and build the desolate places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall
build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of
wickedness,” Malachi i, 3, 4.