An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine Part 17

Since the corruption of an idea, as far as the appearance goes, is a sort of accident or affection of its development, being the end of a course, and a transition-state leading to a crisis, it is, as has been observed above, a brief and rapid process. While ideas live in men's minds, they are ever enlarging into fuller development: they will not be stationary in their corruption any more than before it; and dissolution is that further state to which corruption tends. Corruption cannot, therefore, be of long standing; and thus _duration_ is another test of a faithful development.

_Si gravis, brevis; si longus, levis_; is the Stoical topic of consolation under pain; and of a number of disorders it can even be said, The worse, the shorter.

Sober men are indisposed to change in civil matters, and fear reforms and innovations, lest, if they go a little too far, they should at once run on to some great calamities before a remedy can be applied. The chance of a slow corruption does not strike them. Revolutions are generally violent and swift; now, in fact, they are the course of a corruption.

2.

The course of heresies is always short; it is an intermediate state between life and death, or what is like death; or, if it does not result in death, it is resolved into some new, perhaps opposite, course of error, which lays no claim to be connected with it. And in this way indeed, but in this way only, an heretical principle will continue in life many years, first running one way, then another.

The abounding of iniquity is the token of the end approaching; the faithful in consequence cry out, How long? as if delay opposed reason as well as patience. Three years and a half are to complete the reign of Antichrist.

Nor is it any real objection that the world is ever corrupt, and yet, in spite of this, evil does not fill up its measure and overflow; for this arises from the external counteractions of truth and virtue, which bear it back; let the Church be removed, and the world will soon come to its end.

And so again, if the chosen people age after age became worse and worse, till there was no recovery, still their course of evil was continually broken by reformations, and was thrown back upon a less advanced stage of declension.

3.

It is true that decay, which is one form of corruption, is slow; but decay is a state in which there is no violent or vigorous action at all, whether of a conservative or a destructive character, the hostile influence being powerful enough to enfeeble the functions of life, but not to quicken its own process. And thus we see opinions, usages, and systems, which are of venerable and imposing aspect, but which have no soundness within them, and keep together from a habit of consistence, or from dependence on political inst.i.tutions; or they become almost peculiarities of a country, or the habits of a race, or the fas.h.i.+ons of society. And then, at length, perhaps, they go off suddenly and die out under the first rough influence from without. Such are the superst.i.tions which pervade a population, like some ingrained dye or inveterate odour, and which at length come to an end, because nothing lasts for ever, but which run no course, and have no history; such was the established paganism of cla.s.sical times, which was the fit subject of persecution, for its first breath made it crumble and disappear. Such apparently is the state of the Nestorian and Monophysite communions; such might have been the condition of Christianity had it been absorbed by the feudalism of the middle ages; such too is that Protestantism, or (as it sometimes calls itself) attachment to the Establishment, which is not unfrequently the boast of the respectable and wealthy among ourselves.

Whether Mahometanism external to Christendom, and the Greek Church within it, fall under this description is yet to be seen. Circ.u.mstances can be imagined which would even now rouse the fanaticism of the Moslem; and the Russian despotism does not meddle with the usages, though it may domineer over the priesthood, of the national religion.

Thus, while a corruption is distinguished from decay by its energetic action, it is distinguished from a development by its _transitory character_.

4.

Such are seven out of various Notes, which may be a.s.signed, of fidelity in the development of an idea. The point to be ascertained is the unity and ident.i.ty of the idea with itself through all stages of its development from first to last, and these are seven tokens that it may rightly be accounted one and the same all along. To guarantee its own substantial unity, it must be seen to be one in type, one in its system of principles, one in its unitive power towards externals, one in its logical consecutiveness, one in the witness of its early phases to its later, one in the protection which its later extend to its earlier, and one in its union of vigour with continuance, that is, in its tenacity.

FOOTNOTES:

[172:1] Commonit. 29.

[173:1] Milman, Christ.

[174:1] De Deo, ii. 4, -- 8.

[184:1] Ch. xlix.

[193:1] Pusey on German Rationalism, p. 21, note.

[194:1] Halloix, Valesius, Lequien, Gieseler, Dollinger, &c., say that he was condemned, not in the fifth Council, but in the Council under Mennas.

[194:2] Mem. Eccl. tom. viii. p. 562.

[195:1] Def. Tr. Cap. viii. init.

[197:1] Hallam's Const. Hist. ch. vi. p. 461.

[201:1] Tracts for the Times, No. 85, p. 73. [Discuss. p. 200; _vide_ also Essay on a.s.sent, pp. 249-251.]

[201:2] Ep. 162.

[201:3] Ib. p. 309.

[201:4] Prideaux, Life of Mahomet, p. 90.

[202:1] German Protestantism, p. 176.

[202:2] Vol. i. p. 118.

CHAPTER VI.

APPLICATION OF THE SEVEN NOTES TO THE EXISTING DEVELOPMENTS OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.

APPLICATION OF THE FIRST NOTE OF A TRUE DEVELOPMENT. PRESERVATION OF TYPE.

Now let me attempt to apply the foregoing seven Notes of fidelity in intellectual developments to the instance of Christian Doctrine. And first as to the Note of _ident.i.ty of type_.

I have said above, that, whereas all great ideas are found, as time goes on, to involve much which was not seen at first to belong to them, and have developments, that is enlargements, applications, uses and fortunes, very various, one security against error and perversion in the process is the maintenance of the original type, which the idea presented to the world at its origin, amid and through all its apparent changes and vicissitudes from first to last.

How does this apply to Christianity? What is its original type? and has that type been preserved in the developments commonly called Catholic, which have followed, and in the Church which embodies and teaches them?

Let us take it as the world now views it in its age; and let us take it as the world once viewed it in its youth, and let us see whether there be any great difference between the early and the later description of it. The following statement will show my meaning:--

There is a religious communion claiming a divine commission, and holding all other religious bodies around it heretical or infidel; it is a well-organized, well-disciplined body; it is a sort of secret society, binding together its members by influences and by engagements which it is difficult for strangers to ascertain. It is spread over the known world; it may be weak or insignificant locally, but it is strong on the whole from its continuity; it may be smaller than all other religious bodies together, but is larger than each separately. It is a natural enemy to governments external to itself; it is intolerant and engrossing, and tends to a new modelling of society; it breaks laws, it divides families. It is a gross superst.i.tion; it is charged with the foulest crimes; it is despised by the intellect of the day; it is frightful to the imagination of the many. And there is but one communion such.

Place this description before Pliny or Julian; place it before Frederick the Second or Guizot.[208:1] "Apparent dirae facies." Each knows at once, without asking a question, who is meant by it. One object, and only one, absorbs each item of the detail of the delineation.

SECTION I.

THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST CENTURIES.

The _prima facie_ view of early Christianity, in the eyes of witnesses external to it, is presented to us in the brief but vivid descriptions given by Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny, the only heathen writers who distinctly mention it for the first hundred and fifty years.

Tacitus is led to speak of the Religion, on occasion of the conflagration of Rome, which was popularly imputed to Nero. "To put an end to the report," he says, "he laid the guilt on others, and visited them with the most exquisite punishment, those, namely, who, held in abhorrence for their crimes (_per flagitia invisos_), were popularly called Christians. The author of that profession (_nominis_) was Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was capitally punished by the Procurator, Pontius Pilate. The deadly superst.i.tion (_exitiabilis superst.i.tio_), though checked for a while, broke out afresh; and that, not only throughout Judaea, the original seat of the evil, but through the City also, whither all things atrocious or shocking (_atrocia aut pudenda_) flow together from every quarter and thrive. At first, certain were seized who avowed it; then, on their report, a vast mult.i.tude were convicted, not so much of firing the City, as of hatred of mankind (_odio humani generis_)." After describing their tortures, he continues "In consequence, though they were guilty, and deserved most signal punishment, they began to be pitied, as if destroyed not for any public object, but from the barbarity of one man."

Suetonius relates the same transactions thus: "Capital punishments were inflicted on the Christians, a cla.s.s of men of a new and magical superst.i.tion (_superst.i.tionis novae et maleficae_)." What gives additional character to this statement is its context; for it occurs as one out of various police or sumptuary or domestic regulations, which Nero made; such as "controlling private expenses, forbidding taverns to serve meat, repressing the contests of theatrical parties, and securing the integrity of wills." When Pliny was Governor of Pontus, he wrote his celebrated letter to the Emperor Trajan, to ask advice how he was to deal with the Christians, whom he found there in great numbers. One of his points of hesitation was, whether the very profession of Christianity was not by itself sufficient to justify punishment; "whether the name itself should be visited, though clear of flagitious acts (_flagitia_), or only when connected with them." He says, he had ordered for execution such as persevered in their profession, after repeated warnings, "as not doubting, whatever it was they professed, that at any rate contumacy and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished." He required them to invoke the G.o.ds, to sacrifice wine and frankincense to the images of the Emperor, and to blaspheme Christ; "to which," he adds, "it is said no real Christian can be compelled."

Renegades informed him that "the sum total of their offence or fault was meeting before light on an appointed day, and saying with one another a form of words (_carmen_) to Christ, as if to a G.o.d, and binding themselves by oath, (not to the commission of any wickedness, but) against the commission of theft, robbery, adultery, breach of trust, denial of deposits; that, after this they were accustomed to separate, and then to meet again for a meal, but eaten all together and harmless; however, that they had even left this off after his edicts enforcing the Imperial prohibition of _Hetaeriae_ or a.s.sociations." He proceeded to put two women to the torture, but "discovered nothing beyond a bad and excessive superst.i.tion" (_superst.i.tionem pravam et immodicam_), "the contagion" of which, he continues, "had spread through villages and country, till the temples were emptied of wors.h.i.+ppers."