An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine Part 33

Since it has been represented as if the power of a.s.similation, 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 pa.s.sage in further ill.u.s.tration 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 was.h.i.+ng; 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.n.a.logy 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 a.n.a.lyzed, 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.

CHAPTER IX.

APPLICATION OF THE FOURTH NOTE OF A TRUE DEVELOPMENT.

LOGICAL SEQUENCE.

Logical Sequence has been set down above as a fourth test of fidelity in development, and shall now be briefly ill.u.s.trated in the history of Christian doctrine. That is, I mean to give instances of one doctrine leading to another; so that, if the former be admitted, the latter can hardly be denied, and the latter can hardly be called a corruption without taking exception to the former. And I use "logical sequence" in contrast both to that process of incorporation and a.s.similation which was last under review, and also to that principle of science, which has put into order and defended the developments after they have been made.

Accordingly it will include any progress of the mind from one judgment to another, as, for instance, by way of moral fitness, which may not admit of a.n.a.lysis into premiss and conclusion. Thus St. Peter argued in the case of Cornelius and his friends, "Can any man forbid water that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?"

Such is the series of doctrinal truths, which start from the dogma of our Lord's Divinity, and again from such texts of Scripture as "Thou art Peter," and which I should have introduced here, had I not already used them for a previous purpose in the Fourth Chapter. I shall confine myself then for an example to the instance of the developments which follow on the consideration of sin after Baptism, a subject which was touched upon in the same Chapter.

-- 1. _Pardons._

It is not necessary here to enlarge on the benefits which the primitive Church held to be conveyed to the soul by means of the Sacrament of Baptism. Its distinguis.h.i.+ng gift, which is in point to mention, was the plenary forgiveness of sins past. It was also held that the Sacrament could not be repeated. The question immediately followed, how, since there was but "one Baptism for the remission of sins," the guilt of such sin was to be removed as was incurred after its administration. There must be some provision in the revealed system for so obvious a need.

What could be done for those who had received the one remission of sins, and had sinned since? Some who thought upon the subject appear to have conceived that the Church was empowered to grant one, and one only, reconciliation after grievous offences. Three sins seemed to many, at least in the West, to be irremissible, idolatry, murder, and adultery.

But such a system of Church discipline, however suited to a small community, and even expedient in a time of persecution, could not exist in Christianity, as it spread into the _orbis terrarum_, and gathered like a net of every kind. A more indulgent rule gradually gained ground; yet the Spanish Church adhered to the ancient even in the fourth century, and a portion of the African in the third, and in the remaining portion there was a relaxation only as regards the crime of incontinence.

2.

Meanwhile a protest was made against the growing innovation: at the beginning of the third century Monta.n.u.s, who was a zealot for the more primitive rule, shrank from the laxity, as he considered it, of the Asian Churches;[385:1] as, in a different subject-matter, Jovinian and Vigilantius were offended at the developments in divine wors.h.i.+p in the century which followed. The Montanists had recourse to the See of Rome, and at first with some appearance of success. Again, in Africa, where there had been in the first instance a schism headed by Felicissimus in favour of a milder discipline than St. Cyprian approved, a far more formidable stand was soon made in favour of Antiquity, headed by Novatus, who originally had been of the party of Felicissimus. This was taken up at Rome by Novatian, who professed to adhere to the original, or at least the primitive rule of the Church, viz. that those who had once fallen from the faith could in no case be received again.[385:2]

The controversy seems to have found the following issue,--whether the Church had the _means_ of pardoning sins committed after Baptism, which the Novatians, at least practically, denied. "It is fitting," says the Novatian Acesius, "to exhort those who have sinned after Baptism to repentance, but to expect hope of remission, not from the priests, but from G.o.d, who hath power to forgive sins."[385:3] The schism spread into the East, and led to the appointment of a penitentiary priest in the Catholic Churches. By the end of the third century as many as four degrees of penance were appointed, through which offenders had to pa.s.s in order to a reconciliation.

-- 2. _Penances._

The length and severity of the penance varied with times and places.

Sometimes, as we have seen, it lasted, in the case of grave offences, through life and on to death, without any reconciliation; at other times it ended only in the _viatic.u.m_; and if, after reconciliation they did not die, their ordinary penance was still binding on them either for life or for a certain time. In other cases it lasted ten, fifteen, or twenty years. But in all cases, from the first, the Bishop had the power of shortening it, and of altering the nature and quality of the punishment. Thus in the instance of the Emperor Theodosius, whom St.

Ambrose shut out from communion for the ma.s.sacre at Thessalonica, "according to the mildest rules of ecclesiastical discipline, which were established in the fourth century," says Gibbon, "the crime of homicide was expiated by the penitence of twenty years; and as it was impossible, in the period of human life, to purge the acc.u.mulated guilt of the ma.s.sacre . . . the murderer should have been excluded from the holy communion till the hour of his death." He goes on to say that the public edification which resulted from the humiliation of so ill.u.s.trious a penitent was a reason for abridging the punishment. "It was sufficient that the Emperor of the Romans, stripped of the ensigns of royalty, should appear in a mournful and suppliant posture, and that, in the midst of the Church of Milan, he should humbly solicit with sighs and tears the pardon of his sins." His penance was shortened to an interval of about eight months. Hence arose the phrase of a "_pnitentia legitima, plena, et justa_;" which signifies a penance sufficient, perhaps in length of time, perhaps in intensity of punishment.

-- 3. _Satisfactions._

Here a serious question presented itself to the minds of Christians, which was now to be wrought out:--Were these punishments merely signs of contrition, or in any sense satisfactions for sin? If the former, they might be absolutely remitted at the discretion of the Church, as soon as true repentance was discovered; the end had then been attained, and nothing more was necessary. Thus St. Chrysostom says in one of his Homilies,[387:1] "I require not continuance of time, but the correction of the soul. Show your contrition, show your reformation, and all is done." Yet, though there might be a reason of the moment for shortening the penance imposed by the Church, this does not at all decide the question whether that ecclesiastical penance be not part of an expiation made to the Almighty Judge for the sin; and supposing this really to be the case, the question follows, How is the complement of that satisfaction to be wrought out, which on just grounds of present expedience has been suspended by the Church now?

As to this question, it cannot be doubted that the Fathers considered penance as not a mere expression of contrition, but as an act done directly towards G.o.d and a means of averting His anger. "If the sinner spare not himself, he will be spared by G.o.d," says the writer who goes under the name of St. Ambrose. "Let him lie in sackcloth, and by the austerity of his life make amends for the offence of his past pleasures," says St. Jerome. "As we have sinned greatly," says St.

Cyprian, "let us weep greatly; for a deep wound diligent and long tending must not be wanting, the repentance must not fall short of the offence." "Take heed to thyself," says St. Basil, "that, in proportion to the fault, thou admit also the restoration from the remedy."[387:2]