An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine Part 36

2.

This mention of Angels leads me to a memorable pa.s.sage about the honour due to them in Justin Martyr.

St. Justin, after "answering the charge of Atheism," as Dr. Burton says, "which was brought against Christians of his day, and observing that they were punished for not wors.h.i.+pping evil demons which were not really G.o.ds," continues, "But Him, (G.o.d,) and the Son who came from Him, and taught us these things, and the host of the other good Angels who follow and resemble Him, and the prophetic Spirit, we wors.h.i.+p and adore, paying them a reasonable and true honour, and not grudging to deliver to any one, who wishes to learn, as we ourselves have been taught."[411:2]

A more express testimony to the _cultus Angelorum_ cannot be required; nor is it unnatural in the connexion in which it occurs, considering St.

Justin has been speaking of the heathen wors.h.i.+p of demons, and therefore would be led without effort to mention, not only the incommunicable adoration paid to the One G.o.d, who "will not give His glory to another,"

but such inferior honour as may be paid to creatures, without sin on the side whether of giver or receiver. Nor is the construction of the original Greek harsher than is found in other authors; nor need it surprise us in one whose style is not accurate, that two words should be used in combination to express wors.h.i.+p, and that one should include Angels, and that the other should not.

3.

The following is Dr. Burton's account of the pa.s.sage:

"Scultetus, a Protestant divine of Heidelberg, in his _Medulla Theologiae Patrum_, which appeared in 1605, gave a totally different meaning to the pa.s.sage; and instead of connecting '_the host_' with '_we wors.h.i.+p_,'

connected it with '_taught us_.' The words would then be rendered thus: 'But Him, and the Son who came from Him, who also gave us instructions concerning these things, and concerning the host of the other good angels we wors.h.i.+p,' &c. This interpretation is adopted and defended at some length by Bishop Bull, and by Stephen Le Moyne; and even the Benedictine Le Nourry supposed Justin to mean that Christ had taught us not to wors.h.i.+p the bad angels, as well as the existence of good angels.

Grabe, in his edition of 'Justin's Apology,' which was printed in 1703, adopted another interpretation, which had been before proposed by Le Moyne and by Cave. This also connects '_the host_' with '_taught_,' and would require us to render the pa.s.sage thus: '. . . and the Son who came from Him, who also taught these things to us, and to the host of the other Angels,' &c. It might be thought that Langus, who published a Latin translation of Justin in 1565, meant to adopt one of these interpretations, or at least to connect '_host_' with '_taught these things_.' Both of them certainly are ingenious, and are not perhaps opposed to the literal construction of the Greek words; but I cannot say that they are satisfactory, or that I am surprised at Roman Catholic writers describing them as forced and violent attempts to evade a difficulty. If the words enclosed in brackets were removed, the whole pa.s.sage would certainly contain a strong argument in favour of the Trinity; but as they now stand, Roman Catholic writers will naturally quote them as supporting the wors.h.i.+p of Angels.

"There is, however, this difficulty in such a construction of the pa.s.sage: it proves too much. By coupling the Angels with the three persons of the Trinity, as objects of religious adoration, it seems to go beyond even what Roman Catholics themselves would maintain concerning the wors.h.i.+p of Angels. Their well-known distinction between _latria_ and _dulia_ would be entirely confounded; and the difficulty felt by the Benedictine editor appears to have been as great, as his attempt to explain it is unsuccessful, when he wrote as follows: 'Our adversaries in vain object the twofold expression, _we wors.h.i.+p and adore_. For the former is applied to Angels themselves, regard being had to the distinction between the creature and the Creator; the latter by no means necessarily includes the Angels.' This sentence requires concessions, which no opponent could be expected to make; and if one of the two terms, _we wors.h.i.+p_ and _adore_, may be applied to Angels, it is unreasonable to contend that the other must not also. Perhaps, however, the pa.s.sage may be explained so as to admit a distinction of this kind.

The interpretations of Scultetus and Grabe have not found many advocates; and upon the whole I should be inclined to conclude, that the clause, which relates to the Angels, is connected particularly with the words, '_paying them a reasonable and true honour_.'"[414:1]

Two violent alterations of the text have also been proposed: one to transfer the clause which creates the difficulty, after the words _paying them honour_; the other to subst.i.tute st?at???? (_commander_) for st?at?? (_host_).

4.

Presently Dr. Burton continues:--"Justin, as I observed, is defending the Christians from the charge of Atheism; and after saying that the G.o.ds, whom they refused to wors.h.i.+p, were no G.o.ds, but evil demons, he points out what were the Beings who were wors.h.i.+pped by the Christians.

He names the true G.o.d, who is the source of all virtue; the Son, who proceeded from Him; the good and ministering spirits; and the Holy Ghost. To these Beings, he says, we pay all the wors.h.i.+p, adoration, and honour, which is due to each of them; _i. e._ wors.h.i.+p where wors.h.i.+p is due, honour where honour is due. The Christians were accused of wors.h.i.+pping no G.o.ds, that is, of acknowledging no superior beings at all. Justin shows that so far was this from being true, that they acknowledged more than one order of spiritual Beings; they offered divine wors.h.i.+p to the true G.o.d, and they also believed in the existence of good spirits, which were ent.i.tled to honour and respect. If the reader will view the pa.s.sage as a whole, he will perhaps see that there is nothing violent in thus restricting the words _wors.h.i.+p and adore_, and _honouring_, to certain parts of it respectively. It may seem strange that Justin should mention the ministering spirits before the Holy Ghost: but this is a difficulty which presses upon the Roman Catholics as much as upon ourselves; and we may perhaps adopt the explanation of the Bishop of Lincoln,[414:2] who says, 'I have sometimes thought that in this pa.s.sage, "_and the host_," is equivalent to "_with the host_," and that Justin had in his mind the glorified state of Christ, when He should come to judge the world, surrounded by the host of heaven.' The bishop then brings several pa.s.sages from Justin, where the Son of G.o.d is spoken of as attended by a company of Angels; and if this idea was then in Justin's mind, it might account for his naming the ministering spirits immediately after the Son of G.o.d, rather than after the Holy Ghost, which would have been the natural and proper order."[415:1]

This pa.s.sage of St. Justin is the more remarkable, because it cannot be denied that there was a wors.h.i.+p of the Angels at that day, of which St.

Paul speaks, which was Jewish and Gnostic, and utterly reprobated by the Church.

-- 4. _Office of the Blessed Virgin._

The special prerogatives of St. Mary, the _Virgo Virginum_, are intimately involved in the doctrine of the Incarnation itself, with which these remarks began, and have already been dwelt upon above. As is well known, they were not fully recognized in the Catholic ritual till a late date, but they were not a new thing in the Church, or strange to her earlier teachers. St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, and others, had distinctly laid it down, that she not only had an office, but bore a part, and was a voluntary agent, in the actual process of redemption, as Eve had been instrumental and responsible in Adam's fall. They taught that, as the first woman might have foiled the Tempter and did not, so, if Mary had been disobedient or unbelieving on Gabriel's message, the Divine Economy would have been frustrated. And certainly the parallel between "the Mother of all living" and the Mother of the Redeemer may be gathered from a comparison of the first chapters of Scripture with the last. It was noticed in a former place, that the only pa.s.sage where the serpent is directly identified with the evil spirit occurs in the twelfth chapter of the Revelation; now it is observable that the recognition, when made, is found in the course of a vision of a "woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet:" thus two women are brought into contrast with each other. Moreover, as it is said in the Apocalypse, "The dragon was wroth with the woman, and went about to make war with the remnant of her seed," so is it prophesied in Genesis, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her Seed. He shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel." Also the enmity was to exist, not only between the Serpent and the Seed of the woman, but between the serpent and the woman herself; and here too there is a correspondence in the Apocalyptic vision. If then there is reason for thinking that this mystery at the close of the Scripture record answers to the mystery in the beginning of it, and that "the Woman" mentioned in both pa.s.sages is one and the same, then she can be none other than St. Mary, thus introduced prophetically to our notice immediately on the transgression of Eve.

2.

Here, however, we are not so much concerned to interpret Scripture as to examine the Fathers. Thus St. Justin says, "Eve, being a virgin and incorrupt, having conceived the word from the Serpent, bore disobedience and death; but Mary the Virgin, receiving faith and joy, when Gabriel the Angel evangelized her, answered, 'Be it unto me according to thy word.'"[416:1] And Tertullian says that, whereas Eve believed the Serpent, and Mary believed Gabriel, "the fault of Eve in believing, Mary by believing hath blotted out."[416:2] St. Irenaeus speaks more explicitly: "As Eve," he says . . . "becoming disobedient, became the cause of death to herself and to all mankind, so Mary too, having the predestined Man, and yet a Virgin, being obedient, became cause of salvation both to herself and to all mankind."[417:1] This becomes the received doctrine in the Post-nicene Church.

One well-known instance occurs in the history of the third century of St. Mary's interposition, and it is remarkable from the names of the two persons, who were, one the subject, the other the historian of it. St.

Gregory Nyssen, a native of Cappadocia in the fourth century, relates that his name-sake Bishop of Neo-caesarea, surnamed Thaumaturgus, in the preceding century, shortly before he was called to the priesthood, received in a vision a Creed, which is still extant, from the Blessed Virgin at the hands of St. John. The account runs thus: He was deeply pondering theological doctrine, which the heretics of the day depraved.

"In such thoughts," says his name-sake of Nyssa, "he was pa.s.sing the night, when one appeared, as if in human form, aged in appearance, saintly in the fas.h.i.+on of his garments, and very venerable both in grace of countenance and general mien. . . . Following with his eyes his extended hand, he saw another appearance opposite to the former, in shape of a woman, but more than human. . . . When his eyes could not bear the apparition, he heard them conversing together on the subject of his doubts; and thereby not only gained a true knowledge of the faith, but learned their names, as they addressed each other by their respective appellations. And thus he is said to have heard the person in woman's shape bid 'John the Evangelist' disclose to the young man the mystery of G.o.dliness; and he answered that he was ready to comply in this matter with the wish of 'the Mother of the Lord,' and enunciated a formulary, well-turned and complete, and so vanished."

Gregory proceeds to rehea.r.s.e the Creed thus given, "There is One G.o.d, Father of a Living Word," &c.[418:1] Bull, after quoting it in his work upon the Nicene Faith, refers to this history of its origin, and adds, "No one should think it incredible that such a providence should befall a man whose whole life was conspicuous for revelations and miracles, as all ecclesiastical writers who have mentioned him (and who has not?) witness with one voice."[418:2]

3.

It is remarkable that St. Gregory n.a.z.ianzen relates an instance, even more pointed, of St. Mary's intercession, contemporaneous with this appearance to Thaumaturgus; but it is attended with mistake in the narrative, which weakens its cogency as an evidence of the belief, not indeed of the fourth century, in which St. Gregory lived, but of the third. He speaks of a Christian woman having recourse to the protection of St. Mary, and obtaining the conversion of a heathen who had attempted to practise on her by magical arts. They were both martyred.

In both these instances the Blessed Virgin appears especially in that character of Patroness or Paraclete, which St. Irenaeus and other Fathers describe, and which the Medieval Church exhibits,--a loving Mother with clients.

FOOTNOTES:

[404:1] Act. Arch. p. 85. Athan. c. Apoll. ii. 3.--Adam. Dial. iii.

init. Minuc. Dial. 11. Apul. Apol. p. 535. Kortholt. Cal. p. 63. Calmet, Dict. t. 2, p. 736. Basil in Ps. 115, 4.

[404:2] Vit. S. Cypr. 10.

[406:1] Act. Procons. 5. Ruinart, Act. Mart. pp. 22, 44. Euseb. Hist.

viii. 6. Julian, ap. Cyr. pp. 327, 335. August. c. Faust. xx. 4.

[406:2] Clem. Strom. iv. 12.

[407:1] Tertull. Apol. fin. Euseb. Hist. vi. 42. Orig. ad Martyr. 50.

Ruinart, Act. Mart. pp. 122, 323.

[407:2] De Hab. Virg. 12.

[408:1] Athenag. Leg. 33.

[408:2] Lumper, Hist. t. 13, p. 439.

[409:1] Galland. t. 3, p. 670.

[410:1] Routh, Reliqu. t. 3, p. 414. Tertull. de Virg. Vel. 16 and 11.

Orig. in Num. Hom. 24, 2. Cyprian. Ep. 4, p. 8, ed. Fell. Ep. 62, p.

147. Euseb. V. Const. iv. 26.

[410:2] Placuit picturas in ecclesia esse non debere, ne quod colitur aut adoratur, in parietibus depingatur. Can. 36.

[410:3] Answ. to a Jes. 10, p. 437.

[410:4] P. 430. The "colitur _aut_ adoratur" marks a difference of wors.h.i.+p.

[411:1] Dissuasive, i. 1, 8.

[411:2] ??e???? te, ?a? t?? pa?' a?t?? ???? ?????ta ?a? d?d??a?ta ??? ta?ta, [?a? t?? t??

????? ?p????? ?a? ??????????? ??a??? ??????? st?at??,] p?e?a te t? p??f?t???? se?e?a ?a?

p??s?????e?, ???? ?a? ????e?? t???te? ?a? pa?t? ??????? a?e??, ?? ?d?da???e?, ?f?????

pa?ad?d??te?.--_Apol._ i. 6. The pa.s.sage is parallel to the Prayer in the Breviary: "Sacrosanctae et individuae Trinitati, Crucifixi Domini nostri Jesu Christi humanitati, beatissimae et gloriosissimae semperque Virginis Mariae fcundae integritati, et omnium Sanctorum universitati, sit sempiterna laus, honor, virtus, et gloria ab omni creatura," &c.

[414:1] Test. Trin. pp. 16, 17, 18.

[414:2] Dr. Kaye.