APPLICATION OF THE THIRD NOTE Of A TRUE DEVELOPMENT.
ASSIMILATIVE POWER.
Since religious systems, true and false, have one and the same great and
comprehensive subject-matter, they necessarily interfere with one
another as rivals, both in those points in which they agree together,
and in those in which they differ. That Christianity on its rise was in
these circumstances of competition and controversy, is sufficiently
evident even from a foregoing Chapter: it was surrounded by rites,
sects, and philosophies, which contemplated the same questions,
sometimes advocated the same truths, and in no slight degree wore the
same external appearance. It could not stand still, it could not take
its own way, and let them take theirs: they came across its path, and a
conflict was inevitable. The very nature of a true philosophy relatively
to other systems is to be polemical, eclectic, unitive: Christianity was
polemical; it could not but be eclectic; but was it also unitive? Had it
the power, while keeping its own identity, of absorbing its antagonists,
as Aaron's rod, according to St. Jerome's illustration, devoured the
rods of the sorcerers of Egypt? Did it incorporate them into itself, or
was it dissolved into them? Did it assimilate them into its own
substance, or, keeping its name, was it simply infected by them? In a
word, were its developments faithful or corrupt? Nor is this a question
merely of the early centuries. When we consider the deep interest of the
controversies which Christianity raises, the various characters of mind
it has swayed, the range of subjects which it embraces, the many
countries it has entered, the deep philosophies it has encountered, the
vicissitudes it has undergone, and the length of time through which it
has lasted, it requires some assignable explanation, why we should not
consider it substantially modified and changed, that is, corrupted, from
the first, by the numberless influences to which it has been exposed.
2.
Now there was this cardinal distinction between Christianity and the
religions and philosophies by which it was surrounded, nay even the
Judaism of the day, that it referred all truth and revelation to one
source, and that the Supreme and Only God. Pagan rites which honoured
one or other out of ten thousand deities; philosophies which scarcely
taught any source of revelation at all; Gnostic heresies which were
based on Dualism, adored angels, or ascribed the two Testaments to
distinct authors, could not regard truth as one, unalterable,
consistent, imperative, and saving. But Christianity started with the
principle that there was but "one God and one Mediator," and that He,
"who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the
fathers by the Prophets, had in these last days spoken unto us by His
Son." He had never left Himself without witness, and now He had come,
not to undo the past, but to fulfil and perfect it. His Apostles, and
they alone, possessed, venerated, and protected a Divine Message, as
both sacred and sanctifying; and, in the collision and conflict of
opinions, in ancient times or modern, it was that Message, and not any
vague or antagonist teaching, that was to succeed in purifying,
assimilating, transmuting, and taking into itself the many-coloured
beliefs, forms of worship, codes of duty, schools of thought, through
which it was ever moving. It was Grace, and it was Truth.
§ 1. _The Assimilating Power of Dogmatic Truth._
That there is a truth then; that there is one truth; that religious
error is in itself of an immoral nature; that its maintainers, unless
involuntarily such, are guilty in maintaining it; that it is to be
dreaded; that the search for truth is not the gratification of
curiosity; that its attainment has nothing of the excitement of a
discovery; that the mind is below truth, not above it, and is bound, not
to descant upon it, but to venerate it; that truth and falsehood are set
before us for the trial of our hearts; that our choice is an awful
giving forth of lots on which salvation or rejection is inscribed; that
"before all things it is necessary to hold the Catholic faith;" that "he
that would be saved must thus think," and not otherwise; that, "if thou
criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding, if
thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasure,
then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge
of God,"--this is the dogmatical principle, which has strength.
That truth and falsehood in religion are but matter of opinion; that one
doctrine is as good as another; that the Governor of the world does not
intend that we should gain the truth; that there is no truth; that we
are not more acceptable to God by believing this than by believing that;
that no one is answerable for his opinions; that they are a matter of
necessity or accident; that it is enough if we sincerely hold what we
profess; that our merit lies in seeking, not in possessing; that it is
a duty to follow what seems to us true, without a fear lest it should
not be true; that it may be a gain to succeed, and can be no harm to
fail; that we may take up and lay down opinions at pleasure; that belief
belongs to the mere intellect, not to the heart also; that we may safely
trust to ourselves in matters of Faith, and need no other guide,--this
is the principle of philosophies and heresies, which is very weakness.
2.
Two opinions encounter; each may be abstractedly true; or again, each
may be a subtle, comprehensive doctrine, vigorous, elastic, expansive,
various; one is held as a matter of indifference, the other as a matter
of life and death; one is held by the intellect only, the other also by
the heart: it is plain which of the two must succumb to the other. Such
was the conflict of Christianity with the old established Paganism,
which was almost dead before Christianity appeared; with the Oriental
Mysteries, flitting wildly to and fro like spectres; with the Gnostics,
who made Knowledge all in all, despised the many, and called Catholics
mere children in the Truth; with the Neo-platonists, men of literature,
pedants, visionaries, or courtiers; with the Manichees, who professed to
seek Truth by Reason, not by Faith; with the fluctuating teachers of the
school of Antioch, the time-serving Eusebians, and the reckless
versatile Arians; with the fanatic Montanists and harsh Novatians, who
shrank from the Catholic doctrine, without power to propagate their own.
These sects had no stay or consistence, yet they contained elements of
truth amid their error, and had Christianity been as they, it might have
resolved into them; but it had that hold of the truth which gave its
teaching a gravity, a directness, a consistency, a sternness, and a
force, to which its rivals for the most part were strangers. It could
not call evil good, or good evil, because it discerned the difference
between them; it could not make light of what was so solemn, or desert
what was so solid. Hence, in the collision, it broke in pieces its
antagonists, and divided the spoils.
3.
This was but another form of the spirit that made martyrs. Dogmatism was
in teaching, what confession was in act. Each was the same strong
principle of life in a different aspect, distinguishing the faith which
was displayed in it from the world's philosophies on the one side, and
the world's religions on the other. The heathen sects and the heresies
of Christian history were dissolved by the breath of opinion which made
them; paganism shuddered and died at the very sight of the sword of
persecution, which it had itself unsheathed. Intellect and force were
applied as tests both upon the divine and upon the human work; they
prevailed with the human, they did but become instruments of the Divine.
"No one," says St. Justin, "has so believed Socrates as to die for the
doctrine which he taught." "No one was ever found undergoing death for
faith in the sun."[359:1] Thus Christianity grew in its proportions,
gaining aliment and medicine from all that it came near, yet preserving
its original type, from its perception and its love of what had been
revealed once for all and was no private imagination.
4.
There are writers who refer to the first centuries of the Church as a
time when opinion was free, and the conscience exempt from the
obligation or temptation to take on trust what it had not proved; and
that, apparently on the mere ground that the series of great
theological decisions did not commence till the fourth. This seems to be
M. Guizot's meaning when he says that Christianity "in the early ages
was a belief, a sentiment, an individual conviction;"[360:1] that "the
Christian society appears as a pure association of men animated by the
same sentiments and professing the same creed. The first Christians," he
continues, "assembled to enjoy together the same emotions, the same
religious convictions. We do not find any doctrinal system established,
any form of discipline or of laws, or any body of magistrates."[360:2]
What can be meant by saying that Christianity had no magistrates in the
earliest ages?--but, any how, in statements such as these the
distinction is not properly recognized between a principle and its
exhibitions and instances, even if the fact were as is represented. The
principle indeed of Dogmatism developes into Councils in the course of
time; but it was active, nay sovereign from the first, in every part of
Christendom. A conviction that truth was one; that it was a gift from
without, a sacred trust, an inestimable blessing; that it was to be
reverenced, guarded, defended, transmitted; that its absence was a
grievous want, and its loss an unutterable calamity; and again, the
stern words and acts of St. John, of Polycarp, Ignatius, Irenæus,
Clement, Tertullian, and Origen;--all this is quite consistent with
perplexity or mistake as to what was truth in particular cases, in what
way doubtful questions were to be decided, or what were the limits of
the Revelation. Councils and Popes are the guardians and instruments of
the dogmatic principle: they are not that principle themselves; they
presuppose the principle; they are summoned into action at the call of
the principle, and the principle might act even before they had their
legitimate place, and exercised a recognized power, in the movements of
the Christian body.
5.
The instance of Conscience, which has already served us in illustration,
may assist us here. What Conscience is in the history of an individual
mind, such was the dogmatic principle in the history of Christianity.
Both in the one case and the other, there is the gradual formation of a
directing power out of a principle. The natural voice of Conscience is
far more imperative in testifying and enforcing a rule of duty, than
successful in determining that duty in particular cases. It acts as a
messenger from above, and says that there is a right and a wrong, and
that the right must be followed; but it is variously, and therefore
erroneously, trained in the instance of various persons. It mistakes
error for truth; and yet we believe that on the whole, and even in those
cases where it is ill-instructed, if its voice be diligently obeyed, it
will gradually be cleared, simplified, and perfected, so that minds,
starting differently will, if honest, in course of time converge to one
and the same truth. I do not hereby imply that there is indistinctness
so great as this in the theology of the first centuries; but so far is
plain, that the early Church and Fathers exercised far more a ruler's
than a doctor's office: it was the age of Martyrs, of acting not of
thinking. Doctors succeeded Martyrs, as light and peace of conscience
follow upon obedience to it; yet, even before the Church had grown into
the full measure of its doctrines, it was rooted in its principles.
6.
So far, however, may be granted to M. Guizot, that even principles were
not so well understood and so carefully handled at first, as they were
afterwards. In the early period, we see traces of a conflict, as well as
of a variety, in theological elements, which were in course of
combination, but which required adjustment and management before they
could be used with precision as one. In a thousand instances of a minor
character, the statements of the early Fathers are but tokens of the
multiplicity of openings which the mind of the Church was making into
the treasure-house of Truth; real openings, but incomplete or irregular.
Nay, the doctrines even of the heretical bodies are indices and
anticipations of the mind of the Church. As the first step in settling a
question of doctrine is to raise and debate it, so heresies in every age
may be taken as the measure of the existing state of thought in the
Church, and of the movement of her theology; they determine in what way
the current is setting, and the rate at which it flows.
7.
Thus, St. Clement may be called the representative of the eclectic
element, and Tertullian of the dogmatic, neither element as yet being
fully understood by Catholics; and Clement perhaps went too far in his
accommodation to philosophy, and Tertullian asserted with exaggeration
the immutability of the Creed. Nay, the two antagonist principles of
dogmatism and assimilation are found in Tertullian alone, though with
some deficiency of amalgamation, and with a greater leaning towards the
dogmatic. Though the Montanists professed to pass over the subject of
doctrine, it is chiefly in Tertullian's Montanistic works that his
strong statements occur of the unalterableness of the Creed; and
extravagance on the subject is not only in keeping with the stern and
vehement temper of that Father, but with the general severity and
harshness of his sect. On the other hand the very foundation of
Montanism is development, though not of doctrine, yet of discipline and
conduct. It is said that its founder professed himself the promised
Comforter, through whom the Church was to be perfected; he provided
prophets as organs of the new revelation, and called Catholics Psychici
or animal. Tertullian distinctly recognizes even the process of
development in one of his Montanistic works. After speaking of an
innovation upon usage, which his newly revealed truth required, he
proceeds, "Therefore hath the Lord sent the Paraclete, that, since human
infirmity could not take all things in at once, discipline might be
gradually directed, regulated and brought to perfection by the Lord's
Vicar, the Holy Ghost. 'I have yet many things to say to you,' He saith,
&c. What is this dispensation of the Paraclete but this, that discipline
is directed, Scriptures opened, intellect reformed, improvements
effected? Nothing can take place without age, and all things wait their
time. In short, the Preacher says 'There is a time for all things.'
Behold the creature itself gradually advancing to fruit. At first there
is a seed, and a stalk springs out of the seed, and from the stalk
bursts out a shrub, and then its branches and foliage grow vigorous, and
all that we mean by a tree is unfolded; then there is the swelling of
the bud, and the bud is resolved into a blossom, and the blossom is
opened into a fruit, and is for a while rudimental and unformed, till,
by degrees following out its life, it is matured into mellowness of
flavour. So too righteousness, (for there is the same God both of
righteousness and of the creation,) was at first in its rudiments, a
nature fearing God; thence, by means of Law and Prophets, it advanced
into infancy; thence, by the gospel, it burst forth into its youth; and
now by the Paraclete, it is fashioned into maturity."[363:1]
8.
Not in one principle or doctrine only, but in its whole system,
Montanism is a remarkable anticipation or presage of developments which
soon began to show themselves in the Church, though they were not
perfected for centuries after. Its rigid maintenance of the original
Creed, yet its admission of a development, at least in the ritual, has
just been instanced in the person of Tertullian. Equally Catholic in
their principle, whether in fact or anticipation, were most of the other
peculiarities of Montanism: its rigorous fasts, its visions, its
commendation of celibacy and martyrdom, its contempt of temporal goods,
its penitential discipline, and its maintenance of a centre of unity.
The doctrinal determinations and the ecclesiastical usages of the middle
ages are the true fulfilment of its self-willed and abortive attempts at
precipitating the growth of the Church. The favour shown to it for a
while by Pope Victor is an evidence of its external resemblance to
orthodoxy; and the celebrated Martyrs and Saints in Africa, in the
beginning of the third century, Perpetua and Felicitas, or at least
their Acts, betoken that same peculiar temper of religion, which, when
cut off from the Church a few years afterwards, quickly degenerated into
a heresy. A parallel instance occurs in the case of the Donatists. They
held a doctrine on the subject of Baptism similar to that of St.
Cyprian: "Vincentius Lirinensis," says Gibbon, referring to Tillemont's
remarks on that resemblance, "has explained why the Donatists are
eternally burning with the devil, while St. Cyprian reigns in heaven
with Jesus Christ."[364:1] And his reason is intelligible: it is, says
Tillemont, "as St. Augustine often says, because the Donatists had
broken the bond of peace and charity with the other Churches, which St.
Cyprian had preserved so carefully."[364:2]
9.
These are specimens of the raw material, as it may be called, which,
whether as found in individual Fathers within the pale of the Church, or
in heretics external to it, she had the power, by means of the
continuity and firmness of her principles, to convert to her own uses.
She alone has succeeded in thus rejecting evil without sacrificing the
good, and in holding together in one things which in all other schools
are incompatible. Gnostic or Platonic words are found in the inspired
theology of St. John; to the Platonists Unitarian writers trace the
doctrine of our Lord's divinity; Gibbon the idea of the Incarnation to
the Gnostics. The Gnostics too seem first to have systematically thrown
the intellect upon matters of faith; and the very term "Gnostic" has
been taken by Clement to express his perfect Christian. And, though
ascetics existed from the beginning, the notion of a religion higher
than the Christianity of the many, was first prominently brought forward
by the Gnostics, Montanists, Novatians, and Manichees. And while the
prophets of the Montanists prefigure the Church's Doctors, and their
professed inspiration her infallibility, and their revelations her
developments, and the heresiarch himself is the unsightly anticipation
of St. Francis, in Novatian again we discern the aspiration of nature
after such creations of grace as St. Benedict or St. Bruno. And so the
effort of Sabellius to complete the enunciation of the mystery of the
Ever-blessed Trinity failed: it became a heresy; grace would not be
constrained; the course of thought could not be forced;--at length it
was realized in the true Unitarianism of St. Augustine.
10.
Doctrine too is percolated, as it were, through different minds,
beginning with writers of inferior authority in the Church, and issuing
at length in the enunciation of her Doctors. Origen, Tertullian, nay
Eusebius and the Antiochenes, supply the materials, from which the
Fathers have wrought out comments or treatises. St. Gregory Nazianzen
and St. Basil digested into form the theological principles of Origen;
St. Hilary and St. Ambrose are both indebted to the same great writer in
their interpretations of Scripture; St. Ambrose again has taken his
comment on St. Luke from Eusebius, and certain of his Tracts from Philo;
St. Cyprian called Tertullian his Master; and traces of Tertullian, in
his almost heretical treatises, may be detected in the most finished
sentences of St. Leo. The school of Antioch, in spite of the heretical
taint of various of its Masters, formed the genius of St. Chrysostom.
And the Apocryphal gospels have contributed many things for the devotion
and edification of Catholic believers.[366:1]
The deep meditation which seems to have been exercised by the Fathers on
points of doctrine, the disputes and turbulence yet lucid determination
which characterize the Councils, the indecision of Popes, are all in
different ways, at least when viewed together, portions and indications
of the same process. The theology of the Church is no random combination
of various opinions, but a diligent, patient working out of one doctrine
from many materials. The conduct of Popes, Councils, Fathers, betokens
the slow, painful, anxious taking up of new truths into an existing body
of belief. St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, St. Leo are conspicuous for
the repetition _in terminis_ of their own theological statements; on the
contrary, it has been observed of the heterodox Tertullian, that his
works "indicate no ordinary fertility of mind in that he so little
repeats himself or recurs to favourite thoughts, as is frequently the
case even with the great St. Augustine."[366:2]
11.
Here we see the difference between originality of mind and the gift and
calling of a Doctor in the Church; the holy Fathers just mentioned were
intently fixing their minds on what they taught, grasping it more and
more closely, viewing it on various sides, trying its consistency,
weighing their own separate expressions. And thus if in some cases they
were even left in ignorance, the next generation of teachers completed
their work, for the same unwearied anxious process of thought went on.
St. Gregory Nyssen finishes the investigations of St. Athanasius; St.
Leo guards the polemical statements of St. Cyril. Clement may hold a
purgatory, yet tend to consider all punishment purgatorial; St. Cyprian
may hold the unsanctified state of heretics, but include in his doctrine
a denial of their baptism; St. Hippolytus may believe in the personal
existence of the Word from eternity, yet speak confusedly on the
eternity of His Sonship; the Council of Antioch might put aside the
Homoüsion, and the Council of Nicæa impose it; St. Hilary may believe in
a purgatory, yet confine it to the day of judgment; St. Athanasius and
other Fathers may treat with almost supernatural exactness the doctrine
of our Lord's incarnation, yet imply, as far as words go, that He was
ignorant viewed in His human nature; the Athanasian Creed may admit the
illustration of soul and body, and later Fathers may discountenance it;
St. Augustine might first be opposed to the employment of force in
religion, and then acquiesce in it. Prayers for the faithful departed
may be found in the early liturgies, yet with an indistinctness which
included the Blessed Virgin and the Martyrs in the same rank with the
imperfect Christian whose sins were as yet unexpiated; and succeeding
times might keep what was exact, and supply what was deficient.
Aristotle might be reprobated by certain early Fathers, yet furnish the
phraseology for theological definitions afterwards. And in a different
subject-matter, St. Isidore and others might be suspicious of the
decoration of Churches; St. Paulinus and St. Helena advance it. And thus
we are brought on to dwell upon the office of grace, as well as of
truth, in enabling the Church's creed to develope and to absorb without
the risk of corruption.
§ 2. _The Assimilating Power of Sacramental Grace._
There is in truth a certain virtue or grace in the Gospel which changes
the quality of doctrines, opinions, usages, actions, and personal
characters when incorporated with it, and makes them right and
acceptable to its Divine Author, whereas before they were either
infected with evil, or at best but shadows of the truth. This is the
principle, above spoken of, which I have called the Sacramental. "We
know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness," is an
enunciation of the principle;--or, the declaration of the Apostle of the
Gentiles, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are
passed away, behold all things are become new." Thus it is that outward
rites, which are but worthless in themselves, lose their earthly
character and become Sacraments under the Gospel; circumcision, as St.
Paul says, is carnal and has come to an end, yet Baptism is a perpetual
ordinance, as being grafted upon a system which is grace and truth.
Elsewhere, he parallels, while he contrasts, "the cup of the Lord" and
"the cup of devils," in this respect, that to partake of either is to
hold communion with the source from which it comes; and he adds
presently, that "we have been all made to drink into one spirit." So
again he says, no one is justified by the works of the old Law; while
both he implies, and St. James declares, that Christians are justified
by works of the New Law. Again he contrasts the exercises of the
intellect as exhibited by heathen and Christian. "Howbeit," he says,
after condemning heathen wisdom, "we speak wisdom among them that are
perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world;" and it is plain that nowhere
need we look for more glowing eloquence, more distinct profession of
reasoning, more careful assertion of doctrine, than is to be found in
the Apostle's writings.
2.
In like manner when the Jewish exorcists attempted to "call over them
which had evil spirits the Name of the Lord Jesus," the evil spirit
professed not to know them, and inflicted on them a bodily injury; on
the other hand, the occasion of this attempt of theirs was a stupendous
instance or type, in the person of St. Paul, of the very principle I am
illustrating. "God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so
that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs and aprons,
and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of
them." The grace given him was communicable, diffusive; an influence
passing from him to others, and making what it touched spiritual, as
enthusiasm may be or tastes or panics.
Parallel instances occur of the operation of this principle in the
history of the Church, from the time that the Apostles were taken from
it. St. Paul denounces distinctions in meat and drink, the observance of
Sabbaths and holydays, and of ordinances, and the worship of Angels; yet
Christians, from the first, were rigid in their stated fastings,
venerated, as St. Justin tells us, the Angelic intelligences,[369:1] and
established the observance of the Lord's day as soon as persecution
ceased.
3.
In like manner Celsus objects that Christians did not "endure the sight
of temples, altars, and statues;" Porphyry, that "they blame the rites
of worship, victims, and frankincense;" the heathen disputant in
Minucius asks, "Why have Christians no altars, no temples, no
conspicuous images?" and "no sacrifices;" and yet it is plain from
Tertullian that Christians had altars of their own, and sacrifices and
priests. And that they had churches is again and again proved by
Eusebius who had seen "the houses of prayer levelled" in the Dioclesian
persecution; from the history too of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, nay from
Clement.[370:1] Again, St. Justin and Minucius speak of the form of the
Cross in terms of reverence, quite inconsistent with the doctrine that
external emblems of religion may not be venerated. Tertullian speaks of
Christians signing themselves with it whatever they set about, whether
they walk, eat, or lie down to sleep. In Eusebius's life of Constantine,
the figure of the Cross holds a most conspicuous place; the Emperor sees
it in the sky and is converted; he places it upon his standards; he
inserts it into his own hand when he puts up his statue; wherever the
Cross is displayed in his battles, he conquers; he appoints fifty men to
carry it; he engraves it on his soldiers' arms; and Licinius dreads its
power. Shortly after, Julian plainly accuses Christians of worshipping
the wood of the Cross, though they refused to worship the _ancile_. In a
later age the worship of images was introduced.[370:2]
4.
The principle of the distinction, by which these observances were pious
in Christianity and superstitious in paganism, is implied in such
passages of Tertullian, Lactantius, and others, as speak of evil spirits
lurking under the pagan statues. It is intimated also by Origen, who,
after saying that Scripture so strongly "forbids temples, altars, and
images," that Christians are "ready to go to death, if necessary, rather
than pollute their notion of the God of all by any such transgression,"
assigns as a reason "that, as far as possible, they might not fall into
the notion that images were gods." St. Augustine, in replying to
Porphyry, is more express; "Those," he says, "who are acquainted with
Old and New Testament do not blame in the pagan religion the erection of
temples or institution of priesthoods, but that these are done to idols
and devils. . . True religion blames in their superstitions, not so much
their sacrificing, for the ancient saints sacrificed to the True God, as
their sacrificing to false gods."[371:1] To Faustus the Manichee he
answers, "We have some things in common with the gentiles, but our
purpose is different."[371:2] And St. Jerome asks Vigilantius, who made
objections to lights and oil, "Because we once worshipped idols, is that
a reason why we should not worship God, for fear of seeming to address
him with an honour like that which was paid to idols and then was
detestable, whereas this is paid to Martyrs and therefore to be
received?"[371:3]
5.
Confiding then in the power of Christianity to resist the infection of
evil, and to transmute the very instruments and appendages of
demon-worship to an evangelical use, and feeling also that these usages
had originally come from primitive revelations and from the instinct of
nature, though they had been corrupted; and that they must invent what
they needed, if they did not use what they found; and that they were
moreover possessed of the very archetypes, of which paganism attempted
the shadows; the rulers of the Church from early times were prepared,
should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction the
existing rites and customs of the populace, as well as the philosophy of
the educated class.
St. Gregory Thaumaturgus supplies the first instance on record of this
economy. He was the Apostle of Pontus, and one of his methods for
governing an untoward population is thus related by St. Gregory of
Nyssa. "On returning," he says, "to the city, after revisiting the
country round about, he increased the devotion of the people everywhere
by instituting festive meetings in honour of those who had fought for
the faith. The bodies of the Martyrs were distributed in different
places, and the people assembled and made merry, as the year came round,
holding festival in their honour. This indeed was a proof of his great
wisdom . . . for, perceiving that the childish and untrained populace
were retained in their idolatrous error by creature comforts, in order
that what was of first importance should at any rate be secured to them,
viz. that they should look to God in place of their vain rites, he
allowed them to be merry, jovial, and gay at the monuments of the holy
Martyrs, as if their behaviour would in time undergo a spontaneous
change into greater seriousness and strictness, since faith would lead
them to it; which has actually been the happy issue in that population,
all carnal gratification having turned into a spiritual form of
rejoicing."[372:1] There is no reason to suppose that the licence here
spoken of passed the limits of harmless though rude festivity; for
it is observable that the same reason, the need of holydays for the
multitude, is assigned by Origen, St. Gregory's master, to explain
the establishment of the Lord's Day also, and the Paschal and the
Pentecostal festivals, which have never been viewed as unlawful
compliances; and, moreover, the people were in fact eventually reclaimed
from their gross habits by his indulgent policy, a successful issue
which could not have followed an accommodation to what was sinful.
6.
The example set by St. Gregory in an age of persecution was impetuously
followed when a time of peace succeeded. In the course of the fourth
century two movements or developments spread over the face of
Christendom, with a rapidity characteristic of the Church; the one
ascetic, the other ritual or ceremonial. We are told in various ways by
Eusebius,[373:1] that Constantine, in order to recommend the new
religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to
which they had been accustomed in their own. It is not necessary to go
into a subject which the diligence of Protestant writers has made
familiar to most of us. The use of temples, and these dedicated to
particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees;
incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness;
holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars,
processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure,
the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date,
perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison,[373:2] are all
of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.
7.
The eighth book of Theodoret's work _Adversus Gentiles_, which is "On
the Martyrs," treats so largely on the subject, that we must content
ourselves with only a specimen of the illustrations which it affords, of
the principle acted on by St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. "Time, which makes
all things decay," he says, speaking of the Martyrs, "has preserved
their glory incorruptible. For as the noble souls of those conquerors
traverse the heavens, and take part in the spiritual choirs, so their
bodies are not consigned to separate tombs, but cities and towns divide
them among them; and call them saviours of souls and bodies, and
physicians, and honour them as the protectors and guardians of cities,
and, using their intervention with the Lord of all, obtain through them
divine gifts. And though each body be divided, the grace remains
indivisible; and that small, that tiny particle is equal in power with
the Martyr that hath never been dispersed about. For the grace which is
ever blossoming distributes the gifts, measuring the bounty according to
the faith of those who come for it.
"Yet not even this persuades you to celebrate their God, but ye laugh
and mock at the honour which is paid them by all, and consider it a
pollution to approach their tombs. But though all men made a jest of
them, yet at least the Greeks could not decently complain, to whom
belonged libations and expiations, and heroes and demi-gods and deified
men. To Hercules, though a man . . . and compelled to serve Eurystheus,
they built temples, and constructed altars, and offered sacrifices in
honour, and allotted feasts; and that, not Spartans only and Athenians,
but the whole of Greece and the greater part of Europe."
8.
Then, after going through the history of many heathen deities, and
referring to the doctrine of the philosophers about great men, and to
the monuments of kings and emperors, all of which at once are witnesses
and are inferior, to the greatness of the Martyrs, he continues: "To
their shrines we come, not once or twice a year or five times, but often
do we hold celebrations; often, nay daily, do we present hymns to their
Lord. And the sound in health ask for its preservation, and those who
struggle with any disease for a release from their sufferings; the
childless for children, the barren to become mothers, and those who
enjoy the blessing for its safe keeping. Those too who are setting out
for a foreign land beg that the Martyrs may be their fellow-travellers
and guides of the journey; those who have come safe back acknowledge the
grace, not coming to them as to gods, but beseeching them as divine men,
and asking their intercession. And that they obtain what they ask in
faith, their dedications openly witness, in token of their cure. For
some bring likenesses of eyes, others of feet, others of hands; some of
gold, others of silver; and their Lord accepts even the small and cheap,
measuring the gift by the offerer's ability. . . . . Philosophers and
Orators are consigned to oblivion, and kings and captains are not known
even by name to the many; but the names of the Martyrs are better known
to all than the names of those dearest to them. And they make a point of
giving them to their children, with a view of gaining for them thereby
safety and protection. . . . Nay, of the so-called gods, so utterly have
the sacred places been destroyed, that not even their outline remains,
nor the shape of their altars is known to men of this generation, while
their materials have been dedicated to the shrines of the Martyrs. For
the Lord has introduced His own dead in place of your gods; of the one
He hath made a riddance, on the other He hath conferred their honours.
For the Pandian festival, the Diasia, and the Dionysia, and your other
such, we have the feasts of Peter, of Paul, of Thomas, of Sergius, of
Marcellus, of Leontius, of Panteleëmon, of Antony, of Maurice, and of
the other Martyrs; and for that old-world procession, and indecency of
work and word, are held modest festivities, without intemperance, or
revel, or laughter, but with divine hymns, and attendance on holy
discourses and prayers, adorned with laudable tears." This was the view
of the "Evidences of Christianity" which a Bishop of the fifth century
offered for the conversion of unbelievers.
9.
The introduction of Images was still later, and met with more opposition
in the West than in the East. It is grounded on the same great principle
which I am illustrating; and as I have given extracts from Theodoret for
the developments of the fourth and fifth centuries, so will I now cite
St. John Damascene in defence of the further developments of the eighth.
"As to the passages you adduce," he says to his opponents, "they
abominate not the worship paid to our Images, but that of the Greeks,
who made them gods. It needs not therefore, because of the absurd use of
the Greeks, to abolish our use which is so pious. Enchanters and wizards
use adjurations, so does the Church over its Catechumens; but they
invoke devils, and she invokes God against devils. Greeks dedicate
images to devils, and call them gods; but we to True God Incarnate, and
to God's servants and friends, who drive away the troops of
devils."[376:1] Again, "As the holy Fathers overthrew the temples and
shrines of the devils, and raised in their places shrines in the names
of Saints and we worship them, so also they overthrew the images of the
devils, and in their stead raised images of Christ, and God's Mother,
and the Saints. And under the Old Covenant, Israel neither raised
temples in the name of men, nor was memory of man made a festival; for,
as yet, man's nature was under a curse, and death was condemnation, and
therefore was lamented, and a corpse was reckoned unclean and he who
touched it; but now that the Godhead has been combined with our nature,
as some life-giving and saving medicine, our nature has been glorified
and is trans-elemented into incorruption. Wherefore the death of Saints
is made a feast, and temples are raised to them, and Images are
painted. . . For the Image is a triumph, and a manifestation, and a
monument in memory of the victory of those who have done nobly and
excelled, and of the shame of the devils defeated and overthrown." Once
more, "If because of the Law thou dost forbid Images, you will soon have
to sabbatize and be circumcised, for these ordinances the Law commands
as indispensable; nay, to observe the whole law, and not to keep the
festival of the Lord's Pascha out of Jerusalem: but know that if you
keep the Law, Christ hath profited you nothing. . . . . But away with
this, for whoever of you are justified in the Law have fallen from
grace."[377:1]
10.
It is quite consistent with the tenor of these remarks to observe, or to
allow, that real superstitions have sometimes obtained in parts of
Christendom from its intercourse with the heathen; or have even been
admitted, or all but admitted, though commonly resisted strenuously, by
authorities in the Church, in consequence of the resemblance which
exists between the heathen rites and certain portions of her ritual. As
philosophy has at times corrupted her divines, so has paganism
corrupted her worshippers; and as the more intellectual have been
involved in heresy, so have the ignorant been corrupted by superstition.
Thus St. Chrysostom is vehement against the superstitious usages which
Jews and Gentiles were introducing among Christians at Antioch and
Constantinople. "What shall we say," he asks in one place, "about the
amulets and bells which are hung upon the hands, and the scarlet woof,
and other things full of such extreme folly; when they ought to invest
the child with nothing else save the protection of the Cross? But now
that is despised which hath converted the whole world, and given the
sore wound to the devil, and overthrown all his power; while the thread,
and the woof, and the other amulets of that kind, are entrusted with the
child's safety." After mentioning further superstitions, he proceeds,
"Now that among Greeks such things should be done, is no wonder; but
among the worshippers of the Cross, and partakers in unspeakable
mysteries, and professors of such morality, that such unseemliness
should prevail, this is especially to be deplored again and
again."[378:1]
And in like manner St. Augustine suppressed the feasts called Agapæ,
which had been allowed the African Christians on their first conversion.
"It is time," he says, "for men who dare not deny that they are
Christians, to begin to live according to the will of Christ, and, now
being Christians, to reject what was only allowed that they might become
Christians." The people objected the example of the Vatican Church at
Rome, where such feasts were observed every day; St. Augustine answered,
"I have heard that it has been often prohibited, but the place is far
off from the Bishop's abode (the Lateran), and in so large a city there
is a multitude of carnal persons, especially of strangers who resort
daily thither."[378:2] And in like manner it certainly is possible that
the consciousness of the sanctifying power in Christianity may have
acted as a temptation to sins, whether of deceit or of violence; as if
the habit or state of grace destroyed the sinfulness of certain acts, or
as if the end justified the means.
11.
It is but enunciating in other words the principle we are tracing, to
say that the Church has been entrusted with the dispensation of grace.
For if she can convert heathen appointments into spiritual rites and
usages, what is this but to be in possession of a treasure, and to
exercise a discretionary power in its application? Hence there has been
from the first much variety and change, in the Sacramental acts and
instruments which she has used. While the Eastern and African Churches
baptized heretics on their reconciliation, the Church of Rome, as the
Catholic Church since, maintained that imposition of hands was
sufficient, if their prior baptism had been formally correct. The
ceremony of imposition of hands was used on various occasions with a
distinct meaning; at the rite of Catechumens, on admitting heretics, in
Confirmation, in Ordination, in Benediction. Baptism was sometimes
administered by immersion, sometimes by infusion. Infant Baptism was not
at first enforced as afterwards. Children or even infants were admitted
to the Eucharist in the African Church and the rest of the West, as now
in the Greek. Oil had various uses, as for healing the sick, or as in
the rite of extreme unction. Indulgences in works or in periods of
penance, had a different meaning, according to circumstances. In like
manner the Sign of the Cross was one of the earliest means of grace;
then holy seasons, and holy places, and pilgrimage to them; holy water;
prescribed prayers, or other observances; garments, as the scapular,
and sacred vestments; the rosary; the crucifix. And for some wise
purpose doubtless, such as that of showing the power of the Church in
the dispensation of divine grace, as well as the perfection and
spirituality of the Eucharistic Presence, the Chalice is in the West
withheld from all but the celebrant in the Holy Eucharist.
12.
Since it has been represented as if the power of assimilation, spoken of
in this Chapter, is in my meaning nothing more than a mere accretion of
doctrines or rites from without, I am led to quote the following passage
in further illustration of it from my "Essays," vol. ii. p. 231:--
"The phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this:--That great
portion of what is generally received as Christian truth is,
in its rudiments or in its separate parts, to be found in
heathen philosophies and religions. For instance, the doctrine
of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is
the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. The
doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the
Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of
Angels and demons is Magian; the connexion of sin with the
body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a
sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is
Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacramental virtue is
Pythagorean; and honours to the dead are a polytheism. Such is
the general nature of the fact before us; Mr. Milman argues
from it,--'These things are in heathenism, therefore they are
not Christian:' we, on the contrary, prefer to say, 'these
things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen.'
That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears
us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor
of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide
over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and
grown up as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living;
and hence that, as the inferior animals have tokens of an
immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the
philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain
true ideas, though they are not directly divine. What man is
amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools
of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him,
so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth,
noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She began
in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canaanites, and went
down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she
rested in her own land. Next she encountered the merchants of
Tyre, and the wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of
Sheba. Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to
the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in trouble or in
triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of
the Most High; 'sitting in the midst of the doctors, both
hearing them and asking them questions;' claiming to herself
what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying
their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their
surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the
range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then
from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles
foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which
Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by
enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world,
and, in this sense, as in others, to 'suck the milk of the
Gentiles and to suck the breast of kings.'
"How far in fact this process has gone, is a question of
history; and we believe it has before now been grossly
exaggerated and misrepresented by those who, like Mr. Milman,
have thought that its existence told against Catholic
doctrine; but so little antecedent difficulty have we in the
matter, that we could readily grant, unless it were a question
of fact not of theory, that Balaam was an Eastern sage, or a
Sibyl was inspired, or Solomon learnt of the sons of Mahol, or
Moses was a scholar of the Egyptian hierophants. We are not
distressed to be told that the doctrine of the angelic host
came from Babylon, while we know that they did sing at the
Nativity; nor that the vision of a Mediator is in Philo, if in
very deed He died for us on Calvary. Nor are we afraid to
allow, that, even after His coming, the Church has been a
treasure-house, giving forth things old and new, casting the
gold of fresh tributaries into her refiner's fire, or stamping
upon her own, as time required it, a deeper impress of her
Master's image.
"The distinction between these two theories is broad and
obvious. The advocates of the one imply that Revelation was a
single, entire, solitary act, or nearly so, introducing a
certain message; whereas we, who maintain the other, consider
that Divine teaching has been in fact, what the analogy of
nature would lead us to expect, 'at sundry times and in divers
manners,' various, complex, progressive, and supplemental of
itself. We consider the Christian doctrine, when analyzed, to
appear, like the human frame, 'fearfully and wonderfully
made;' but they think it some one tenet or certain principles
given out at one time in their fulness, without gradual
enlargement before Christ's coming or elucidation afterwards.
They cast off all that they also find in Pharisee or heathen;
we conceive that the Church, like Aaron's rod, devours the
serpents of the magicians. They are ever hunting for a
fabulous primitive simplicity; we repose in Catholic fulness.
They seek what never has been found; we accept and use what
even they acknowledge to be a substance. They are driven to
maintain, on their part, that the Church's doctrine was never
pure; we say that it can never be corrupt. We consider that a
divine promise keeps the Church Catholic from doctrinal
corruption; but on what promise, or on what encouragement,
they are seeking for their visionary purity does not appear."
FOOTNOTES:
[359:1] Justin, Apol. ii. 10, Tryph. 121.
[360:1] Europ. Civ. p. 56, tr.
[360:2] p. 58.
[363:1] De Virg. Vol. 1.
[364:1] Hist. t. 3, p. 312.
[364:2] Mem. Eccl. t. 6, p. 83.
[366:1] Galland. t. 3, p. 673, note 3.
[366:2] Vid. Preface to Oxford Transl. of Tertullian, where the
character of his mind is admirably drawn out.
[369:1] Infra, pp. 411-415, &c.
[370:1] Orig. c. Cels. vii. 63, viii. 17 (vid. not. Bened. in loc.),
August. Ep. 102, 16; Minuc. F. 10, and 32; Tertull. de Orat. fin. ad
Uxor. i. fin. Euseb. Hist. viii. 2; Clem. Strom. vii. 6, p. 846.
[370:2] Tertull. de Cor. 3; Just. Apol. i. 65; Minuc. F. 20; Julian ap.
Cyr. vi. p. 194, Spanh.
[371:1] Epp. 102, 18.
[371:2] Contr. Faust. 20, 23.
[371:3] Lact. ii. 15, 16; Tertull. Spect. 12; Origen, c. Cels. vii.
64-66, August. Ep. 102, 18; Contr. Faust. xx. 23; Hieron. c. Vigil. 8.
[372:1] Vit. Thaum. p. 1006.
[373:1] V. Const. iii. 1, iv. 23, &c.
[373:2] According to Dr. E. D. Clarke, Travels, vol. i. p. 352.
[376:1] De Imag. i. 24.
[377:1] Ibid. ii. 11. 14.
[378:1] Hom. xii. in Cor. 1, Oxf. Tr.
[378:2] Fleury, Hist. xx. 11, Oxf. Tr.