An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine Part 35

[387:2] Vid. Tertull. Oxf. tr. pp. 374, 5.

[388:1] Clem. ch. 12. Vid. also Tertull. de Anim. fin.

[389:1] Tracts for the Times, No. 79, p. 38.

[389:2] Ruinart, Mart. p. 96.

[390:1] Mystagog. 5.

[390:2] [Vid. Via Media, vol. i. p 72.]

[393:1] [Via Media, vol. i. pp. 174-177.]

[396:1] Gieseler, vol. ii. p. 288.

[396:2] Ibid. p. 279.

[397:1] Or rather his successors, as St. Benedict of Anian, were the founders of the Order; but minute accuracy on these points is unnecessary in a mere sketch of the history.

[397:2] ???t??, 2 Kings ii. Sept. Vid. also, "They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins" (Heb. xi. 37).

[399:1] Rosweyde, V. P. p. 618.

CHAPTER X.

APPLICATION OF THE FIFTH NOTE OF A TRUE DEVELOPMENT.

ANTIc.i.p.aTION OF ITS FUTURE.

It has been set down above as a fifth argument in favour of the fidelity of developments, ethical or political, if the doctrine from which they have proceeded has, in any early stage of its history, given indications of those opinions and practices in which it has ended. Supposing then the so-called Catholic doctrines and practices are true and legitimate developments, and not corruptions, we may expect from the force of logic to find instances of them in the first centuries. And this I conceive to be the case: the records indeed of those times are scanty, and we have little means of determining what daily Christian life then was: we know little of the thoughts, and the prayers, and the meditations, and the discourses of the early disciples of Christ, at a time when these professed developments were not recognized and duly located in the theological system; yet it appears, even from what remains, that the atmosphere of the Church was, as it were, charged with them from the first, and delivered itself of them from time to time, in this way or that, in various places and persons, as occasion elicited them, testifying the presence of a vast body of thought within it, which one day would take shape and position.

-- 1. _Resurrection and Relics._

As a chief specimen of what I am pointing out, I will direct attention to a characteristic principle of Christianity, whether in the East or in the West, which is at present both a special stumbling-block and a subject of scoffing with Protestants and free-thinkers of every shade and colour: I mean the devotions which both Greeks and Latins show towards bones, blood, the heart, the hair, bits of clothes, scapulars, cords, medals, beads, and the like, and the miraculous powers which they often ascribe to them. Now, the principle from which these beliefs and usages proceed is the doctrine that Matter is susceptible of grace, or capable of a union with a Divine Presence and influence. This principle, as we shall see, was in the first age both energetically manifested and variously developed; and that chiefly in consequence of the diametrically opposite doctrine of the schools and the religions of the day. And thus its exhibition in that primitive age becomes also an instance of a statement often made in controversy, that the profession and the developments of a doctrine are according to the emergency of the time, and that silence at a certain period implies, not that it was not then held, but that it was not questioned.

2.

Christianity began by considering Matter as a creature of G.o.d, and in itself "very good." It taught that Matter, as well as Spirit, had become corrupt, in the instance of Adam; and it contemplated its recovery. It taught that the Highest had taken a portion of that corrupt ma.s.s upon Himself, in order to the sanctification of the whole; that, as a firstfruits of His purpose, He had purified from all sin that very portion of it which He took into His Eternal Person, and thereunto had taken it from a Virgin Womb, which He had filled with the abundance of His Spirit. Moreover, it taught that during His earthly sojourn He had been subject to the natural infirmities of man, and had suffered from those ills to which flesh is heir. It taught that the Highest had in that flesh died on the Cross, and that His blood had an expiatory power; moreover, that He had risen again in that flesh, and had carried that flesh with Him into heaven, and that from that flesh, glorified and deified in Him, He never would be divided. As a first consequence of these awful doctrines comes that of the resurrection of the bodies of His Saints, and of their future glorification with Him; next, that of the sanct.i.ty of their relics; further, that of the merit of Virginity; and, lastly, that of the prerogatives of Mary, Mother of G.o.d. All these doctrines are more or less developed in the Ante-nicene period, though in very various degrees, from the nature of the case.

3.

And they were all objects of offence or of scorn to philosophers, priests, or populace of the day. With varieties of opinions which need not be mentioned, it was a fundamental doctrine in the schools, whether Greek or Oriental, that Matter was essentially evil. It had not been created by the Supreme G.o.d; it was in eternal enmity with Him; it was the source of all pollution; and it was irreclaimable. Such was the doctrine of Platonist, Gnostic, and Manichee:--whereas then St. John had laid it down that "every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is the spirit of Antichrist:" the Gnostics obstinately denied the Incarnation, and held that Christ was but a phantom, or had come on the man Jesus at his baptism, and left him at his pa.s.sion. The one great topic of preaching with Apostles and Evangelists was the Resurrection of Christ and of all mankind after Him; but when the philosophers of Athens heard St. Paul, "some mocked," and others contemptuously put aside the doctrine. The birth from a Virgin implied, not only that the body was not intrinsically evil, but that one state of it was holier than another, and St. Paul explained that, while marriage was good, celibacy was better; but the Gnostics, holding the utter malignity of Matter, one and all condemned marriage as sinful, and, whether they observed continence or not, or abstained from eating flesh or not, maintained that all functions of our animal nature were evil and abominable.

4.

"Perish the thought," says Manes, "that our Lord Jesus Christ should have descended through the womb of a woman." "He descended," says Marcion, "but without touching her or taking aught from her." "Through her, not of her," said another. "It is absurd to a.s.sert," says a disciple of Bardesanes, "that this flesh in which we are imprisoned shall rise again, for it is well called a burden, a tomb, and a chain."

"They execrate the funeral-pile," says Caecilius, speaking of Christians, "as if bodies, though withdrawn from the flames, did not all resolve into dust by years, whether beasts tear, or sea swallows, or earth covers, or flame wastes." According to the old Paganism, both the educated and vulgar held corpses and sepulchres in aversion. They quickly rid themselves of the remains even of their friends, thinking their presence a pollution, and felt the same terror even of burying-places which a.s.sails the ignorant and superst.i.tious now. It is recorded of Hannibal that, on his return to the African coast from Italy, he changed his landing-place to avoid a ruined sepulchre. "May the G.o.d who pa.s.ses between heaven and h.e.l.l," says Apuleius in his _Apology_, "present to thy eyes, O Emilian, all that haunts the night, all that alarms in burying-places, all that terrifies in tombs." George of Cappadocia could not direct a more bitter taunt against the Alexandrian Pagans than to call the temple of Serapis a sepulchre. The case had been the same even among the Jews; the Rabbins taught, that even the corpses of holy men "did but serve to diffuse infection and defilement." "When deaths were Judaical," says the writer who goes under the name of St. Basil, "corpses were an abomination; when death is for Christ, the relics of Saints are precious. It was anciently said to the Priests and the Nazarites, 'If any one shall touch a corpse, he shall be unclean till evening, and he shall wash his garment;' now, on the contrary, if any one shall touch a Martyr's bones, by reason of the grace dwelling in the body, he receives some partic.i.p.ation of his sanct.i.ty."[404:1] Nay, Christianity taught a reverence for the bodies even of heathen. The care of the dead is one of the praises which, as we have seen above, is extorted in their favour from the Emperor Julian; and it was exemplified during the mortality which spread through the Roman world in the time of St. Cyprian. "They did good," says Pontius of the Christians of Carthage, "in the profusion of exuberant works to all, and not only to the household of faith. They did somewhat more than is recorded of the incomparable benevolence of Tobias. The slain of the king and the outcasts, whom Tobias gathered together, were of his own kin only."[404:2]

5.

Far more of course than such general reverence was the honour that they showed to the bodies of the Saints. They ascribed virtue to their martyred tabernacles, and treasured, as something supernatural, their blood, their ashes, and their bones. When St. Cyprian was beheaded, his brethren brought napkins to soak up his blood. "Only the harder portion of the holy relics remained," say the Acts of St. Ignatius, who was exposed to the beasts in the amphitheatre, "which were conveyed to Antioch, and deposited in linen, bequeathed, by the grace that was in the Martyr, to that holy Church as a priceless treasure." The Jews attempted to deprive the brethren of St. Polycarp's body, "lest, leaving the Crucified, they begin to wors.h.i.+p him," say his Acts; "ignorant,"

they continue, "that we can never leave Christ;" and they add, "We, having taken up his bones which were more costly than precious stones, and refined more than gold, deposited them where was fitting; and there when we meet together, as we can, the Lord will grant us to celebrate with joy and gladness the birthday of his martyrdom." On one occasion in Palestine, the Imperial authorities disinterred the bodies and cast them into the sea, "lest as their opinion went," says Eusebius, "there should be those who in their sepulchres and monuments might think them G.o.ds, and treat them with divine wors.h.i.+p."

Julian, who had been a Christian, and knew the Christian history more intimately than a mere infidel would know it, traces the superst.i.tion, as he considers it, to the very lifetime of St. John, that is, as early as there were Martyrs to honour; makes the honour paid them contemporaneous with the wors.h.i.+p paid to our Lord, and equally distinct and formal; and, moreover, declares that first it was secret, which for various reasons it was likely to have been. "Neither Paul," he says, "nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark, dared to call Jesus G.o.d; but honest John, having perceived that a great mult.i.tude had been caught by this disease in many of the Greek and Italian cities, and hearing, I suppose, that the monuments of Peter and Paul were, secretly indeed, but still hearing that they were honoured, first dared to say it." "Who can feel fitting abomination?" he says elsewhere; "you have filled all places with tombs and monuments, though it has been nowhere told you to tumble down at tombs or to honour them. . . . . If Jesus said that they were full of uncleanness, why do ye invoke G.o.d at them?" The tone of Faustus the Manichaean is the same. "Ye have turned," he says to St. Augustine, "the idols" of the heathen "into your Martyrs, whom ye honour (_colitis_) with similar prayers (_votis_)."[406:1]

6.

It is remarkable that the attention of both Christians and their opponents turned from the relics of the Martyrs to their persons.

Basilides at least, who was founder of one of the most impious Gnostic sects, spoke of them with disrespect; he considered that their sufferings were the penalty of secret sins or evil desires, or transgressions committed in another body, and a sign of divine favour only because they were allowed to connect them with the cause of Christ.[406:2] On the other hand, it was the doctrine of the Church that Martyrdom was meritorious, that it had a certain supernatural efficacy in it, and that the blood of the Saints received from the grace of the One Redeemer a certain expiatory power. Martyrdom stood in the place of Baptism, where the Sacrament had not been administered. It exempted the soul from all preparatory waiting, and gained its immediate admittance into glory. "All crimes are pardoned for the sake of this work," says Tertullian.

And in proportion to the near approach of the martyrs to their Almighty Judge, was their high dignity and power. St. Dionysius speaks of their reigning with Christ; Origen even conjectures that "as we are redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus, so some are redeemed by the precious blood of the Martyrs." St. Cyprian seems to explain his meaning when he says, "We believe that the merits of Martyrs and the works of the just avail much with the Judge," that is, for those who were lapsed, "when, after the end of this age and the world, Christ's people shall stand before His judgment-seat." Accordingly they were considered to intercede for the Church militant in their state of glory, and for individuals whom they had known. St. Potamiaena of Alexandria, in the first years of the third century, when taken out for execution, promised to obtain after her departure the salvation of the officer who led her out; and did appear to him, according to Eusebius, on the third day, and prophesied his own speedy martyrdom. And St. Theodosia in Palestine came to certain confessors who were in bonds, "to request them," as Eusebius tells us, "to remember her when they came to the Lord's Presence."

Tertullian, when a Montanist, betrays the existence of the doctrine in the Catholic body by protesting against it.[407:1]

-- 2. _The Virgin Life._

Next to the prerogatives of bodily suffering or Martyrdom came, in the estimation of the early Church, the prerogatives of bodily, as well as moral, purity or Virginity; another form of the general principle which I am here ill.u.s.trating. "The first reward," says St. Cyprian to the Virgins, "is for the Martyrs an hundredfold; the second, sixtyfold, is for yourselves."[407:2] Their state and its merit is recognized by a _consensus_ of the Ante-nicene writers; of whom Athenagoras distinctly connects Virginity with the privilege of divine communion: "You will find many of our people," he says to the Emperor Marcus, "both men and women, grown old in their single state, in hope thereby of a closer union with G.o.d."[408:1]

2.

Among the numerous authorities which might be cited, I will confine myself to a work, elaborate in itself, and important from its author.

St. Methodius was a Bishop and Martyr of the latter years of the Ante-nicene period, and is celebrated as the most variously endowed divine of his day. His learning, elegance in composition, and eloquence, are all commemorated.[408:2] The work in question, the _Convivium Virginum_, is a conference in which ten Virgins successively take part, in praise of the state of life to which they have themselves been specially called. I do not wish to deny that there are portions of it which strangely grate upon the feelings of an age, which is formed on principles of which marriage is the centre. But here we are concerned with its doctrine. Of the speakers in this Colloquy, three at least are real persons prior to St. Methodius's time; of these Thecla, whom tradition a.s.sociates with St. Paul, is one, and Marcella, who in the Roman Breviary is considered to be St. Martha's servant, and who is said to have been the woman who exclaimed, "Blessed is the womb that bare Thee," &c., is described as a still older servant of Christ. The latter opens the discourse, and her subject is the gradual development of the doctrine of Virginity in the Divine Dispensations; Theophila, who follows, enlarges on the sanct.i.ty of Matrimony, with which the special glory of the higher state does not interfere; Thalia discourses on the mystical union which exists between Christ and His Church, and on the seventh chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians; Theopatra on the merit of Virginity; Thallusa exhorts to a watchful guardians.h.i.+p of the gift; Agatha shows the necessity of other virtues and good works, in order to the real praise of their peculiar profession; Procilla extols Virginity as the special instrument of becoming a spouse of Christ; Thecla treats of it as the great combatant in the warfare between heaven and h.e.l.l, good and evil; Tysiana with reference to the Resurrection; and Domnina allegorizes Jothan's parable in Judges ix. Virtue, who has been introduced as the princ.i.p.al personage in the representation from the first, closes the discussion with an exhortation to inward purity, and they answer her by an hymn to our Lord as the Spouse of His Saints.

3.

It is observable that St. Methodius plainly speaks of the profession of Virginity as a vow. "I will explain," says one of his speakers, "how we are dedicated to the Lord. What is enacted in the Book of Numbers, 'to vow a vow mightily,' shows what I am insisting on at great length, that Chast.i.ty is a mighty vow beyond all vows."[409:1] This language is not peculiar to St. Methodius among the Ante-nicene Fathers. "Let such as promise Virginity and break their profession be ranked among digamists,"

says the Council of Ancyra in the beginning of the fourth century.

Tertullian speaks of being "married to Christ," and marriage implies a vow; he proceeds, "to Him thou hast pledged (_sponsasti_) thy ripeness of age;" and before he had expressly spoken of the _continentiae votum_.

Origen speaks of "devoting one's body to G.o.d" in chast.i.ty; and St.

Cyprian "of Christ's Virgin, dedicated to Him and destined for His sanct.i.ty," and elsewhere of "members dedicated to Christ, and for ever devoted by virtuous chast.i.ty to the praise of continence;" and Eusebius of those "who had consecrated themselves body and soul to a pure and all-holy life."[410:1]

-- 3. _Cultus of Saints and Angels._

The Spanish Church supplies us with an antic.i.p.ation of the later devotions to Saints and Angels. The Canons are extant of a Council of Illiberis, held shortly before the Council of Nicaea, and representative of course of the doctrine of the third century. Among these occurs the following: "It is decreed, that pictures ought not to be in church, lest what is wors.h.i.+pped or adored be painted on the walls."[410:2] Now these words are commonly taken to be decisive against the use of pictures in the Spanish Church at that era. Let us grant it; let us grant that the use of all pictures is forbidden, pictures not only of our Lord, and sacred emblems, as of the Lamb and the Dove, but pictures of Angels and Saints also. It is not fair to restrict the words, nor are controversialists found desirous of doing so; they take them to include the images of the Saints. "For keeping of pictures out of the Church, the Canon of the Eliberine or Illiberitine Council, held in Spain, about the time of Constantine the Great, is most plain,"[410:3] says Ussher: he is speaking of "the representations of G.o.d and of Christ, and of Angels and of Saints."[410:4] "The Council of Eliberis is very ancient, and of great fame," says Taylor, "in which it is expressly forbidden that what is wors.h.i.+pped should be depicted on the walls, and that therefore pictures ought not to be in churches."[411:1] He too is speaking of the Saints. I repeat, let us grant this freely. This inference then seems to be undeniable, that the Spanish Church considered the Saints to be in the number of objects either of "wors.h.i.+p or adoration;" for it is of such objects that the representations are forbidden. The very drift of the prohibition is this,--_lest_ what is in itself an object of wors.h.i.+p (_quod colitur_) should be wors.h.i.+pped _in painting_; unless then Saints and Angels were objects of wors.h.i.+p, their pictures would have been allowed.